The Last Few Weeks...

So, in the last few weeks I’ve read three books: One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell, Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg, and Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande. They were all pretty quick reads, and they were all pretty good, but all very different.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Candace Bushnell is the woman behind Sex and the City. New York plays a starring role in all of her work, and this book is no exception. But instead of focusing on the single-ladies-looking-for-love-in-the-City, instead she focuses on the EXTREMELY wealthy people who inhabit a world that most of us can only dream about. These are the people who pay tens of millions of dollars for a penthouse apartment and then hire a designer to renovate the place. Granted, they occasionally mingle with normal people who are scraping by to make their rent, but those people are abnormal in other ways (trust me). That is probably my biggest disappointment with the book – there are really no “normal” people. I mean, are there really 22-year-old women in NYC whose parents pay their rent, after having already paid for a boob job and liposuction, all so the little darling can marry a wealthy man? REALLY?? If you are a fan of Bushnell’s work I’m sure you will like it, but it’s not Sex and the City.

After that foray into how the other half lives, I was ready for something a little more accessible. Home Safe was the right choice. Elizabeth Berg is a very good writer, whose characters deal with deep emotional issues but without crossing the line to melodrama or whining, and who generally have a sense of humor about themselves. I think the thing I liked most about this novel is that the main character is a novelist who is going through a very dry spell, and her feelings about writing and reading and books in general made me long to start writing my own fiction. This is a nice novel, about a woman’s journey from loss to acceptance of herself.

When I returned those books to the library I was looking through the pathetically minimal new book selections, and came across Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies, which my library apparently considers new even though it was published in 2006. Anyway, as a word geek I couldn’t resist it. Casagrande takes issue with people who use grammar rules to bludgeon people (if you’ve read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, you know who I mean), and she uses humor AND research to back up her points. A very useful book and a very quick read, and Casagrande seems to have a fabulous time using the various style manuals against each other. I’m considering buying a copy to keep in my office.