And this time I’m being properly critical!
First day back at work after the festive season, and it’s a terrible shock. It was the first time in all my working adult life that I’ve had that much time off over the Xmas/New Year period. Hospitals don’t get to shut down over the break like normal workplaces. Anyway it’s given me time to do plenty of recreational reading which was a real treat.
Random thoughts:
1) Even though my husband laughs at me for persisting with more “literary” works, most of the time I’m glad I did as they give me much more food for thought than the easier/comfort reads.
2) I was going to say, “Can we retire the term ‘Chick Lit’ ?” but on further reflection, I can’t remember hearing the phrase for a long time. Is it still a thing? It’s a pretty condescending term. On the other hand, I find it does generally fall into the category of easy reads, see point one above. I think of this genre as the sort of glorified soap that gets made into miniseries with Nicole Kidman in it. (I seem to be conflicted on this one. I’m trying to be a feminist, but…)
3) What compels authors to start a story at the end, and then go back to the start to then spend the rest of the book explaining how we got there? Why not, you know, start at the beginning? There’s a reason why jokes don’t start with the punchline. I had a friend at school who liked to read the last two pages of a book first, so that she’d know she’d like the ending before committing herself to it. Madness. Mind you, she also used to sneakily throw library books out of the window to source new books, rather than wasting money at bookshops, so I probably should have guessed she wasn’t someone to take life advice from.
4) Can we please ban the simile of rosebuds for nipples?