Thursday, May 25, 2006

What I'm reading now

The last couple of days I've been sick. Or maybe not sick so much as tired out. But it's been hard to concentrate on the biography I've been reading (the very good Mozart's Women by Jane Glover), so I grabbed a book off the top of my TBR mountain and have really been enjoying it. It's called Stupid and Contagious by Caprice Crane (can you beat that name???), and I guess it's chick-lit. Am not quite sure why I picked it up in the first place. I'm not huge on chick-lit, though I have always enjoyed Brit-chick-lit (Bridget Jones' Diary, Marian Keyes, stuff like that). But once I started reading the American variety (Red Dress Ink, etc) I realized that what I really love about those books is the "Brit" part. Where everyone talks like Keira Knightley, goes to the pub and Topshop, says things like "grotty bedsit"and "you really need a PROPER hat for Ascot" (not usually in the same bit of the book, of course). I lurve that. Never could get into very many of the American chick-lit books.

But S&C is very funny. I guess I picked it up because I liked the road trip premise (though I'm halfway through and the road trip is only just now starting), and I also like Nirvana, so got sucked in by the title. I've actually laughed aloud a couple of times, which rarely happens, and the dialogue is so snappy and fun (though, strangely, the man and woman both talk in exactly the same style. And so do their friends). A great book for times when you're sick/have a lowgrade fever/don't want to read historical bios right now. Recommended.

2 comments:

Betty S said...

Have you finished the book on magic? How was it? Give us a review.

Amanda McCabe/Amanda Carmack/Laurel McKee said...

It was very good--just not long enough. :) Her writing was honest and open-minded, I thought, and a few scenes were very funny (like the one where her over-the-top costume contributed to a very uncomfortable ritual in Salem!). She never "talks down" to the people she meets. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Zora Neale Hurston and hoodoo. Her attitude is a bit similar to mine--skeptical, but curious, and almost wanting to believe, so I enjoyed her "voice." And that's my rambling review. :)

p.s. Her last books, "Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead", is also very good.