I wanted to like you....

I hate starting the new blog on such a down note, but there are a number of books that I've tried to read over the past weeks that just have left me cold. Books that got good reviews in the papers, books that sounded good from the blurbs, but that, for some reason, just didn't translate well. Maybe it was my mood, maybe I was in more of a 'good fluff' frame of mind. By good fluff I mean a well-written 'chicklit' book. There are such things out there, where they are well-written but not deep. They are entertaining and lighthearted, but not mighty tomes of death and depression. And they will be reviewed in a future blog.

Here are the ones I've tried so far, and was disappointed:

The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie. On the surface, and according to the blurb, it has everything you'd ever want in a novel, harems, imaginary wives, travelers from strange, exotic climes, a little bit of magic...yet somehow nothing coalesced. It felt as if I was plodding through the book, and that I'd missed the magic carpet. *sigh*

Eve: A Novel of the First Woman, by Elissa Elliott. This had potential. It really did. But it could have used some more cohesive editing and rewriting. She does have some lovely language and imagery to describe the Garden, but somehow the family dynamics fall flat. I suspect the problem is in too many points of view, as it is told through the eyes of different female family members, but somehow the characters are flat, and are very one-note. I was really disappointed in this one.

Lulu in Marrakech, by Diane Johnson. I have to admit, I have never read any of Diane Johnson's novels before, and probably never will again. I was hoping for an intelligently written piece of 'good fluff', and it just completely failed. None of the characters resonated or felt true to me at all. It just felt very contrived, as if the author had only seen Marrakech through visits, and hadn't had experience with people of other cultures...

Lastly, a nonfiction piece I'd had great hopes for, but alas, it too went ptttthhhhbbbtttt. The food of a younger land, by Mark Kurlansky. I suspect part of the problem is that I expected something a little different, based on the cover, and the blurb. What it is is a series of essays about food in different regions of the country, taken from the 'America Eats' Project, under the auspices of the Federal Writers' Project, created by President Roosevelt in the 1930s. The problem with the book, I think, is that it lacks a unifying framework, a wholeness. It seems to be tidbits thrown together in a mishmash without any kind of unifying thread to it, apart from it being about food. If Kurlansky had done a little more to give a theme to the book: seasonality, unusual feasts that have since died out, and organized it that way, rather than by state, I think it would have been more what I was expecting, as some of the essays are rather short, and it just feels jumpy and choppy. Its an example of how arranging your material can really make a difference in the feel of the book.

I promise not to be a negative Nelly next time, and to review some really wonderful books that you can escape into in this rainy summer weather...