Author: Amanda Brown Year published: 2001 Pages: 272 Genre: Chick lit Sub-genre(s): self discovery Where got: Bought in Prague
The Story: For those who have not read the book or seen the movie and don’t want to know the ending, please stop reading NOW!
SPOILERS ahead
Those who have seen the movie are already familiar with the basic plot of the book: Bel Air princess Elle Woods is rejected by her boyfriend and follows him to law school to show him that while she is a blonde, she is not dumb. All kinds of funny chaos ensues, Elle defends Brooke, a former sorority sister in a murder trial, gets sexually harassed by her supervisor, and finally rejects the ex in favour of continuing law school and being with the cute lawyer she met.
That was the movie.
The book has the same basic plot, but with important differences. One is that instead of heading east to Harvard and losing all connections with her friends, Elle heads north to Stanford, meaning that she still has relatively easy access to her social network, which is what gets her the internship on the Brooke Vandermark defence team. Another is that her supervisor is actually quite nice and there even seems to be some mutual sexual attraction between him and Elle. The third is that the trial is not about murder, but an inheritance dispute. Brooke Vandermark has been sued by her husband’s daughter and ex wives for the inheritance and stands to lose everything if she is proven guilty of the murder. There is no Emmet, and Elle is happily single at the end of the book. Elle gets somewhat annoying at times because she is so perfect: so beautiful that even movie stars stare at her, and so kind that everyone who gets to know her beyond the superficial can’t help liking her. Internally, though, she’s a mess and quite human.
Technique and plot: The book drags a bit at times, especially the middle section, but for the most part it moves along well. Elle’s culture shock, coming from her pampered Bel Air environment, to the harsh and competitive law school where everyone instantly assumes her to be a stereotypical dumb blonde, is not quite as funny as it is in the movie, but a lot more real (I speak from experience, having suffered culture shock myself).
Rating: Interesting read, good support to the movie. 3 stars.
The unavoidable book/movie comparison: All in all, I think many of the changes to the story from book to movie were well warranted, especially the expansion of the character of Paulette, played by Jennifer Coolidge, who steals every scene she is in. In the book Paulette is just a sympathetic French manicurist who is mentioned a couple of times in passing. Changing the trial from an inheritance case to a murder trial did make the movie story more thrilling. Elle in the movie is a lot more assertive than Elle in the book, and gets ahead on brains and hard work, while Elle in the book, although clearly smart (she wouldn’t have stood a chance in law school otherwise) is constantly struggling to keep up with her schedule, skipping classes and generally slacking off. Elle in the book is trying to get Warner back by dangling herself in front of him all the time, while Elle in the movie is intent on proving to him she is smart enough to deserve him. In spite of the differences in portrayal, Reese Witherspoon’s Elle is still recognisable as Amanda Brown’s Elle, and I think that reading the book gives one a better understanding of the turmoil that is supposed to be going on beneath Elle’s sunny smiles and sulky pouts in the movie. Reese Witherspoon is quite a good actress, but she has not yet mastered the subtlety needed to express finely nuanced emotions. I’m not saying she mugs, but her face is expressive in a big way, rather than subtle.
I didn’t quite understand why they changed the schools from Stanford to Harvard. Perhaps they wanted to make sure the audience really understands how alone Elle is once she starts law school? And since they had to add a romance element, why couldn’t they have made it sizzle a bit? I mean, Luke Wilson’s Emmett is cute, but that’s just it, he is just another cute guy around campus and there is no tension between them, it’s all just sibling-like banter and no apparent attraction.
Since I am reading a book about scriptwriting, I can’t help adding that I am now beginning to understand better why the plots in books are so often altered in screen adaptations. Books have different dynamics from movies, and while we will patiently slog through a slow middle section of a book in anticipation of a good climax and ending, we want a movie to keep up a good pace and entertain us throughout. The middle section of the book is about Elle’s problems fitting in, her struggles with her studies, legal stuff and internal struggles that would have bogged down the movie had they been shown in full. In a movie the short and snappy scenes of her interaction with her teachers and co-students serve much better to show this, even if it makes her loneliness and isolation seem a bit trivial compared with the book. But, after all the movie is supposed to be a lighthearted comedy, while the book is an occasionally funny story about self discovery.
Last night I sat down and made an analysis of what I’ve read so far, in order to discover if I was really following the rules of my challenge.
I have, for the most part, been observant of the “new authors” rule. 23 of the 32 authors I had never read before, except in two cases I had read short stories by them which made me curious to read more.
Of the 32 books, 6 have been re-reads or second, more thorough readings.
I have not fulfilled the genre/category rule yet: I have not read a travel book, nor a romance (bonus reads don’t count), nor fairy tales, and the “classics” I’ve read were all from the 20th century.
Of the genres I didn’t mention in the rules, I have not read a thriller, or erotica, or a western, or drama, or true crime (I’m sure there are more genres I have left out). Neither have I read any Icelandic books yet (I’m not counting Icelandic Food & Cookery because it’s in English and published by an American publisher).
I only have 20 books left to read as part of the challenge, so I will have to remedy this fairly quickly. I have already lined up books that fall within some of these genres/categories, and am still looking for others.
Author: T.S. Eliot Year published: 1939 Pages: 59 Genre: Poetry Where got: Faber & Faber bookshop, London
This week I'm cheating a little, as last week's book turned out to be a tougher bite to swallow than I expected. I will hopefully finish it on Friday. As a result, I decided to pick a short and easy read for this week, and furthermore, one I have read before.
Every time I read this book I am transported back to the year 1993, sitting in the second-best seats at the New London Theatre and watching Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s brilliant musical based on these poems.
Celebrate your freedom: Read a banned/challenged book
Story is proving to be a harder read than I thought it would be. It is educative, but unfortunately it’s also about 100 pages too long. McKee seems to be the writing equivalent of those talkers who drone on and on, using 10 words where 2 would suffice, loving the sound of their own voices. Even though I’m learning a lot about screenwriting and story structure from reading the book, I can only read about a chapter before my thoughts begin to wander and I either start to yawn or become filled with a longing to skim, which is something that does not reflect well on the writing style.
I have therefore decided to give this book another week before I review it. Tomorrow I will nominate a book for this week, but it will be something short. I’m considering a collection of poems.
P.S. I haven't forgot the vote. The winner is......drumroll........ ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... The Eyre Affair (I asked my reading group to vote as well and Fforde won by a landslide). That's for week 34. The others will follow, either as books of the week or bonus reads.
Alternative (American) title: The Boy Next Door Author: Meggin Cabot Year published: 2002 Pages: 392 Genre: Chick lit/romance Where got: Public library
This book was recommended to me by an online friend. It was written by the author of The Princess Diaries.
The Story: Melissa “Mel” Fuller, the gossip columnist for The New York Journal, is in danger of losing her job because she’s always late for work. As the book begins, she is late again, but this time she has an excuse: her elderly neighbour has been assaulted and Mel has had to call the police and then take care of the old lady’s pets, two cats and a Great Dane. Getting hold of the old lady’s heir, playboy photographer Max Friedlander, is hard, but finally she tracks him down in Florida where he is cavorting with a supermodel and has no intention of coming to New York to take care of his aunt’s pets. To make sure he doesn’t lose his inheritance if the old lady wakes up from her coma, Max calls in a favour from college buddy John Randolph Trent. John, who works for a living in spite of his huge trust fund (he is a crime reporter for the Journal’s rival newspaper), reluctantly takes on the role of Max, moves into the old lady’s apartment and begins investigating the attack. He is immediately charmed by Mel, and before too long the two begin to fall in love. John’s uneasiness about the deception increases as he falls deeper and deeper in love with Mel. Of course the shoe has to drop some time, and when it does, heartbroken Mel decides to get revenge on John and Max for the deception. Adding a bit of action is the fact that Mel finally puts two and two together and uncovers the identity of the old lady’s attacker.
Technique and plot: This is an epistolatory novel, the first I’ve read as part of my challenge. This being the age of computers, it takes the form of e-mails rather than the traditional letters. The form gets to be somewhat annoying at times, especially when it takes more time to read the to/from headers than a short message. Although the book is nearly 400 pages, a lot of space is taken up by headers and spaces between e-mails, and it makes a fairly quick read. I estimate the reading time at about 3 hours, which is pretty good for such a long book.
The story falls somewhere between chick lit and romance. It starts slowly, but builds up speed quickly. There aren’t a lot of laughs in the first half of the book, but the second one makes up for it. Mel’s revenge is especially funny, and so is the inter-office banter between the co-workers at the Journal. Most of the characters have distinctive voices, and the fashion reporter and the gay co-worker get some very funny lines, as do John’s pregnant and sex-starved sister in law and Mel’s mother with her old-fashioned advice.
Complaint #1: OK, what’s with Amazon? They classify this as a children’s book! The classification is probably based on the books that the author writes as Meg Cabot (the Princess Diaries), but sorry, the book is about people in their 20’s and 30’s doing adult things, including having sex.
Complaint #2: The Boy Next Door? Excuse me, he’s 35 years old!
Rating: 3 stars. Would have got 4 if the e-mail form had not annoyed me so much.
I recently got into a discussion with an online acquaintance on the subject of reading. He solemnly stated that he likes reading and prefers books that make him think, that are informative and/or have a moral point and/or are meaningful and/or improving for the reader. Fine with me – it’s his choice and I respect it.
Things would have been OK if he hadn’t then added that only plebs read for pure “mindless” enjoyment. This struck a cord of anger within me. There he was, arrogantly posed on his high horse, dismissing my reading choices and those of millions of other people as vulgar. I politely ended the chat there and then, and promised myself I would cut him off for good. I respect people’s choice of reading material, but I don’t feel anyone has the right to judge a person from how or what they like to read.
If you haven’t already, please cast your vote for next week’s book (the second post below).
I’m in a bit of a reading slump, and one of the symptoms in indecisiveness: I want to read Isomething, but can’t decide what.
These are the books I have lined up as possible candidates for next week’s read: Eats, shoots & leaves by Lynne Truss. Punctuation, humourous. The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter. Memoir, philosophy. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Literature, humourous. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter. Literature, magic realism. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. Literature, satire.
Full title: Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting Author: Robert McKee Year published: 1998 Pages: 466 Genre: Non-fiction. Story structure, screenwriting, practical film theory Where got: Student book store Large cover image
This is apparently one of the best books available to people who want to learn screenwriting, and is required reading for many courses on the craft. And no, I’m not about to run off to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. This is one of two set books for the university course I’m taking on media translation. Since a lot of media translation consists of translating movies and TV series the teacher thought it would be a good idea if we were well acquainted with the way such material is built up. In order to become a good screen translator, one needs to be aware of the extra-linguistic content of the story one is translating, not just the linguistic aspects. This is why I’m reading the book.
Week 31: The Old Man Who Read Love Stories - review
The Story: All Antonio José Bolívar Proaño wants to do is to live his life quietly, read the love stories the itinerant dentist brings him twice a year, and be left alone. Then a hunter is stupid enough to kill some baby ocelots (a protected species) and the enraged mother ocelot begins killing every human she can find. The village is threatened, and the mayor sends out a search party, forcing Antonio to come along. Antonio is saddened by the whole situation, but has no choice but to follow orders and hunt the creature down.
Translation, technique and plot: The translation is well done and the story has no translation flavour. The narrative has a flowing, lyrical quality that critics have likened to the style of Hemingway’s early works. On the surface it is a simple story of man against nature, but on a deeper level it may be seen as a parable for the way the Amazonian rainforest is being depleted and it’s native inhabitants (aborigines and animals) hunted and driven ever deeper into the forest. Civilized man, in the guise of Slimy Toad the mayor, the gold prospectors and the white hunters are pitted against nature, symbolized by the ocelot and the natives. In the middle stands Antonio, who comes from outside like the mayor, hunters and prospectors, but has adapted himself to the life in the rainforest.
This book is going on my keeper shelves, and I will definitely read it again.
Rating: This is a beautifully told story about sad but inevitable events. 5 stars.
Author: Luis Sepúlveda Original title: Un viejo que leía historias de amor Translator: Peter Bush Year published: 1989/2002 Pages: 128 Genre: Literature Where got: Any Amount of Books, London (second-hand bookshop)
I have been registered with Ebay for nearly 2 years, but I had never participated in an auction until yesterday when I finally went ahead and made a bid. It was a bunch of books, and I just found an e-mail in my inbox saying I’d won the auction. Great! I got 4 second-hand Georgette Heyer novels for a slightly lower price than one new one on Amazon.
I got: The Foundling Black Sheep The Nonesuch The Black Moth
Next I’ll be looking for the early Pratchett books – I decided that since I re-read them so often I would get then all in hardcover. Made my brother very happy by giving him all the Pratchett paperbacks I also had in hardcover, and promised him he would get them all once I got the hardcovers.
Reading crisis It’s about time to post the book of the week, and I’m not finished reading last week’s book. But I’m going to review it anyway – after all, it is a reread, even if I originally read it in Icelandic. Luckily for me I picked a short book for this week…
The Story: Middle-aged siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables decide to adopt an orphan boy to help them with the farm work. What they get is Anne Shirley, a red-headed girl with an overactive imagination, a temperament as fiery as her hair, and a flair for getting herself in trouble. The book tells of Anne’s first years with the Cuthberts, the scrapes she is continually getting herself into, her friendship with Diana Barry and her war with Gilbert Blythe.
Technique and plot: The book is full of wonderfully evocative descriptions of Prince Edward Island that make it sound like a paradise on earth (for all I know it may well have been at the time of writing). Anne’s exploits and other people’s reactions to her are described with gentle humour. The only thing I don’t like is Anne’s long speeches. They are certainly very funny at times, as Anne uses a rather literary language that is often inappropriate to the occasion and uses words you would not expect an adolescent girl to know, but I found myself skipping some of those passages because many of them are really just empty speech. I last read this book about 10 years ago, in Icelandic. When I began reading I couldn’t remember a thing, but as I got into the story things started coming back to me and since the chapter headings are indicative of what happens, I sometimes would think “ahhh, here comes the time she got Diana drunk, here comes the time she broke her ankle” etc. Rereading a much-loved book after so long a time is like visiting an old friend you haven’t seen in years, and finding she is still the same wonderful person you remembered.
Rating: A wonderful classic story that has enchanted generations of readers, young and old. 5 stars.
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends: they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers. “ Charles W. Eliot
I can’t remember all the books I bought, not having them with me, but here is a partial list. Losing my wish list was perhaps for the best – it made me pay more attention to books I might not have looked at had I simply tried to chase down the contents of the wish list. Presented in no particular order.
James Herriot: Vet in Harness. This is the final of eight books I needed to complete my collection of his early work, and the only book from my wish list that I bought.
Georgette Heyer: Cotillion and The Masqueraders. Heyer died in 1974, but many of her books are being reissued, and by two different publishers, so they are (relatively) easy to come by. Picking Heyer books was a bit difficult, as neither of the two that I had put on my wish list were available in any of the bookshops I went to. Turns out one is out of print and the other isn’t coming out until October, but I got these instead.
Susan Vreeland: Girl in Hyacinth Blue. I first heard about this book when I read a review in a newspaper and then through a reader’s forum on the Web, where more than one reader said it was better than Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, which is also about a Vermeer painting, but totally different in all other respects. Coming across a nearly mint copy in the bargain rack of a second-hand bookshop was a piece of good fortune.
Anita Loos: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. What can I say? I liked the movie, so reading the book was the next step. I never knew there was a sequel; guess I’ll have to get hold of that one as well.
Amanda Brown: Legally Blonde. Same as for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Janet Evanovich: One for the Money. Bought this on recommendation from more than one member of the Reader’s Paradise forum.
Cecil Roberts: And So to Rome. One of two hardcover books I bought; episodes from 2000 years of Roman history.
Suzanne Brockmann: The Unsung Hero. I’ve said somewhere before that I’m not particularly fond of romances that are mushy, but here is a book that combines action with romance and promises to be sexy rather than emotional.
Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim. I’d been hearing about this book for ages, and after reading an excerpt from it in David Lodge’s The Art of Fiction, I decided it was time I read it. I found it and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in a Copenhagen bookshop that was selling books by weight, and the two books together cost less than a hot dog.
Sir Walter Scott: The Talisman. The other hardcover book I bought. Not one of Scott’s best or best known, but it was the first of his books I ever read, and I have always liked it. The historical correctness is dubious (to say the least), but it’s still a good story.
Ian McEwan: The Comfort of Strangers. Years ago I read a collection of his short stories and liked them enough to want to read more of his work. I never got round to it, but this book was so deliciously cheap that I bought it on the spot and plan to read it as soon as I get it back from my mother.
Roger Welsch: Outhouses. Being the kind of reader who will pass the time on the loo with a book, I thought this was something I could keep in there to grab when needed, which is the expressed purpose of the book.
Spent Sunday and Monday in bed with back pain. Can’t call it lumbago because it wasn’t in the right place, but it was the same kind of pain. Woke up this morning with the pain mostly gone, which is good because I’m starting my classes tomorrow. Will be doing a course on screen translation, which I’m very much looking forwards to.
Back to the books: The second book I read was Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue, the fictional story of an imagined Vermeer painting that traces its ownership history backwards in time. This was an interesting read, and more like a collection of short stories with a connecting theme than a book with chapters.
Next was Amanda Brown’s Legally Blonde. Having loved the movie, I jumped at the chance of buying the book when I found it in a Prague bookshop. The book delves much deeper than the movie (don’t all books?) and is different in some respects, but the story is quite recognisable.
More on these two books later.
The last holiday book I read was another Heyer, Cotillion, which I finished on the flight back home. This is a light and frothy story of a young woman who is determined to avoid being forced into a marriage of convenience that will get her a large inheritance but not much happiness, and her attempt to have some fun at the same time. It is also about the young man who helps her, and how he turns out not to be quite the simpleton everyone thought he was. As in previous Heyer stories I have read, the protagonists don’t admit their love for each other until right at the end, the main romance in the story taking place between a pair of side characters whose escapades provide quite a lot of the book’s comedy.
I was quite young when I discovered L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books. The first four books were translated into Icelandic a long time ago and my mother had all of them. I loved reading about Anne’s escapades and her growing up on Prince Edward Island. I was only allowed to read the first three books as a child, as my mother considered the subject matter of the fourth book to be too serious and beyond my childish understanding. I only got to read that book when I was in my teens and found it to be rather melodramatic. This will be the first time I read any of the books in the original English, and it will be interesting to see how it compares with the translated text. In the past, some Icelandic translators and/or publishers had an unfortunate habit of removing blocks of text from translated books, and some translators even went as far as altering the text and even making some up. I dearly hope the Icelandic translations of the Anne stories are not among those books.
I’m sitting at the computer trying to ignore the pain in my back. I don’t know if it’s a result of returning to my own comfy bed after three weeks of sleeping on a hard bunk, or from sitting in an airplane for three hours without being able to move much, or something else altogether, but my back is frozen and really painful. I’m eating muscle relaxants and painkillers like candy and hoping I will recover enough to go to work tomorrow.
I did promise to write about the books I read while I was travelling. I mostly did my reading to pass the time while we were driving between destinations, so I didn’t finish many books. Fortunately the movement of the camper is more like a train than a car when you sit in the back, so I didn’t get motion sickness like I usually do when I try to read in a moving car. The first one I finished was the book I brought along to read on the flight to the UK:
Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy.
This is a highly comic book about a young lady who comes to live temporarily with her aunt’s family and sets about fixing her cousins’ various problems, much to the dismay of her stuffy oldest cousin who is the virtual head of the family owing to his father’s financial obligations to him. He is altogether unhappy with Sophy’s intrusion into his carefully ordered life, but he might as well try to stop the tide coming in as try to tame Sophy. There’s action, and the humour is a blend of subtle observations and occasional slapstick, and Heyer’s use of language is, as always, superb. There is not as much Regency cant and slang as in some of her other books, which was a relief since I didn’t have a dictionary with me. Rating: A fine book to pass the time and a definite re-read at some future date.
Had a lovely holiday. Started by bumming around London for 2 days, didn’t even bother about culture or sightseeing (done that already on earlier visits), just went browsing through the bookshops on Charing Cross Road and went to HMV on Oxford Street to buy some DVDs for my brother. Am planning a return trip in the spring. I love discount airlines, they make travel so cheap that it costs nearly the same to fly from Iceland to the UK as it does from Reykjavík to Akureyri. Book count: 7
Next I flew to Hanover, Germany, where my parents picked me up and we set off in their camper. I love having a house on wheels instead of using hotels or sleeping in a tent. You have many of the comforts of home compressed into a smaller space, and a lot more room for stuff you buy. We drove through Germany along the Romantic Route, ending at spectacular Neuschwanstein castle in the Bayern Alps. From there we continued on to Austria. It was raining too hard for sightseeing so we bypassed Salzburg and drove straight on to the Czech Republic and stayed in Prague for 2 days. Did some sightseeing and walked a lot around the city centre. Book count: 3
From Prague it was pretty much straight driving all the way to Denmark, because the weather was lousy – it rained almost the whole way from Prague to Aabenraa in Denmark. After chasing around for a part for the camper for a day, we drove on to Ribe, one of the oldest towns in Denmark, where we visited the Viking Center. Book count: 3
Then on to Fyn (Funen) where we had a lovely day exploring a scenic part of the Marguerite (Daisy) Route, and then to Copenhagen. In Copenhagen we came across a big book market in a church on Stroget (the main pedestrian shopping street), and I had a great time browsing the market and several second-hand bookshops before flying home on Wednesday night. Book count: 10
Total book count: 23
As you can see, my TBR pile just got bigger, or will once my parents return (they’re taking the ferry back from Norway). The books were too heavy to take along in my luggage, so they are bringing them back for me. Until then, it’s back to my 50 or so other unread books…
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About me
What this blog is about:
Reading and books.
If you’re wondering about the name 52 books, it stems from a book-a-week reading challenge I set myself. The challenge is over, but I'm still reading, and will continue to blog about the books I read and my reading experiences, and other stuff connected with books and reading.
I rate the books (if I feel like it), giving them stars ranging from zero to 5.
Books I have already read (sporadically updated):Cover gallery
Note: Some of the entries are linked to the months the reviews appeared in, because I made several entries for each book. I have marked those reviews with an asterix (*). If you want to read the whole review from beginning to end, you must scroll down and read from the bottom up (but you probably already knew that ;-) >
