You get what you need

The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion (Simon & Schuster, 2013)

I actually paid for a Kindle book! And this book faced some tough circumstances; I started reading it while spending my Saturday night at the emergency vet. Not the most auspicious of beginnings. But it was funny, and helped take at least a little of my mind off my poor sick cat.

And the book turns out to be a totally charming romantic comedy, and one from a guy's point of view, which is refreshing. Don is an Australian genetics professor with what seems to be an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. (He gives a talk on Asperger's early in the novel, and pretty much diagnoses himself then.) He's created an amazing and extremely rigid order and schedule for his life, all of which gets upended when his friend and fellow professor (also a cad) sends a seemingly wild child woman to his office. The woman herself isn't unexpected in and of herself, since he's developed a rather thorough questionnaire meant to screen for a compatible mate, but Rosie is clearly all wrong. And yet...

Don's journey away from the safe boundaries of his world is charming and often silly, but it works. I had a smile on my face pretty much the entire time.

She's back!

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy - Helen Fielding (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013)

In college, my girlfriends and I wrote long and absurd email chains about - as I recall it - how much we related to Bridget Jones and of course her ancestor characters from Jane Austen. And I fell in love with Fielding's earlier novel, Cause Celeb, which introduced a character not unlike Bridget, but a little stronger and perhaps less absurd. And years later there was Olivia Joules, and I have fond memories of sitting on a beach, laughing outloud; Olivia was yet another mashup of Bridget & CC's Rosie.

But I digress. Fast forward some amount of time, and news breaks about a new Bridget Jones novel and the huge plot twist that destroyed everyone's notion of Bridget's happily ever after. Fielding killed off Colin Firth. (Or, you know, Mark Darcy, but for all intents and purposes...) Now Bridget is a single mom, at 51 shepherding her 7- and 5-year-old son & daughter to school, activities, playdates, etc. (Good news there for any ladies worried about the "your eggs shrivel at 30" forces, perhaps.) Still surrounded by her crazy friends, and after several years of just trying to survive the loss of her husband, she's ready to put herself back out there in the world. And in true Bridget-style too.

The book is fat, but of course too quick a read. Oh, and of course I laughed aloud several times. And despite its imperfections, I found myself slowing down to a snail's pace as I approached the end, because I was so enjoying spending time with Bridget again. And when I finished, I flipped back to the beginning and started over. It's not so much that I identify with Bridget -- I'm not sure that I do -- but being with that voice takes me back to a fun era of my life, and makes me laugh, and reminds me that our absurdities are what make us most lovable.

Lad lit!

The Calligrapher - Edward Docx (Houghton Mifflin, 2003)

Vacation reading. In fact, I was on a cruise line resort "in" Haiti when I finished this book. And I made everyone else in my cabana (#firstworldproblems) listen to my wtf explanations when I got to the last page and realized that there was no next chapter.

But if I complain too much, I'll probably give away too much, and I'm sure plenty of people will be perfectly satisfied with this ending anyway.

Jasper is this suave superior London calligrapher, who is working on a series of John Donne love poems. Along the way, his philandering ruins one relationship and sets him on a collision course with his sexy new neighbor. He pulls out all the stops to win her over, but will his past misdeeds catch up with him?

I saw the plot twists coming, and didn't find Jasper particularly sympathetic, but yet was perfectly happy to come along for the ride. Jasper was a prick, but an interesting storyteller, and you reached the point where you'd be fine seeing him either weasel his way to victory or receive a humiliating comeuppance. Either way. I saw the plot twists coming from pretty far away (and perhaps that was the intention) but they were still nicely delivered. In the end I was willing to accept that Docx's ending was probably better than the one I was waiting for. Or the other one I was waiting for. Or the third.

Surveys!

Wife 22 - Melanie Gideon (Ballantine Books, 2012)

Another example of a book that got on my list somehow. I was at the library, trying to find something (unwarlike) for a weekend plane ride. And this was what was on the shelves. Of course, then I stuck to Thucydides on the plane, so got to this almost a week after I got back.

But then I blew through it. I didn't want to put it down.

Wife 22 is Alice, a Bay Area woman approaching a mid-life crisis. At the same time, her husband and children are having crises of their own. In her free-wheeling state of wondering what comes next, she finds an invitation in her spam folder to participate in a marriage study. The questions are open-ended (the researcher assigned to her case compares his job to what they do to songs at Pandora) and cover the past, the present, and the future. And as she goes through, her interactions with the researcher get increasingly personal.

Chapters are usually short, and the plot is presented in a variety of forms: first-person narrative, texts, emails, survey responses (without the questions!), and playwritten scenes. It's a difficult gimmick to pull off without feeling gimmicky, but I felt like it worked here, even when some of the social media facts felt un-true.

Don't want to give much more away, but I was enraptured by this tale of how a life and a love look from outside and from within.  

A Glittering Void

The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (Bloomsbury, 2004)

...and the last in my trilogy of Sunday posts. This was the book I started reading first, and the one that I finally just finished this morning. And I can't decide what that says about the book itself.

First, let me set the scene. Nick is a young gay man in early 1980s London, an Oxbridge grad who is living with an upper-class friend's family. The father has just been elected to Parliament, right as Thatcher was re-elected (I think). "The Lady" is an enormous figure in the book, although she herself appears only briefly, and it was a (lucky?) coincidence that she died while I was reading the book, and I got to see why she loomed so controversially larger than life in the minds of Britons. Meanwhile, the inexperienced Nick gets his first taste of sex and reciprocated love, which spirals out of control in the way only the '80s really could.

The prose was beautiful. So lovely and readable. Once I picked up the book, I tended to read in great big chunks. But I wasn't compelled to sneak in reading time, which is how it lingered while I snuck in two (lesser) books.

Ashes ashes they all fall...

Reached - Ally Condie (Dutton Books, 2012)

Book One was just Cassia, Book Two introduced Ky's POV, so no surprise that in the final entry of the trilogy we get Cassia, Ky, and Xander. (As I was hoping for.)

Because I'm not in the mood for spoilers, there isn't a whole lot to share without giving away too much. But the rebellion against Society comes to a head, and things get out of control, and somehow -- like in all great revolutions -- three teenagers are the key to saving the world.

If you're really in it for the love triangle, which I'll admit I may have been, you may find yourself feeling a little unsatisfied. On the other hand, you get to face the exciting possibility that instead of Cassia being torn between two very different loves, both guys may decide on a future that moves on without her. [For Vampire Diaries watchers, this is akin to wanting Stefan to run off with Caroline and Damon to run off with ... well, someone, and Elena to sit around wondering how she somehow stopped being the center of attention. And don't we all kind of want that?]

Anyway, super propulsive read. I kept trying to find ways to sneak in chapters despite the fact that I spent the whole weekend running around doing other stuff. (And finishing up yet another book - post coming shortly....)

Fate and such

You're (Not) the One - Alexandra Potter (Plume, 2010)

I am totally not sure what I thought of this book. Other than I think I need a break from romantic comedy-type fiction. Maybe. It's cute. Lucy moves to NYC from England, is like any good heroine in that she is messy and tends toward lateness, and has a perfectionist sister and a suitably wacky roommate. Also a crazy boss. And she's an arty type - specifically a once-aspiring artist who works in a gallery. Check, check, and check. But more importantly, she once kissed a young lover under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset, which should have bound her to him forever. Except they didn't work out, and Lucy can't help wondering what might have been.... until she runs into him again. Sparks fly like mad, but then it turns out that they've grown into two very different people, and opposites don't attract.

But Lucy & Nate can't get rid of each other, even though they would both very much like to. And even though she's met a new guy, one who is so much more like her. Which raises the question: if someone who is so completely unlike you is not the right match, is it really better to fall for a guy who explicitly reminds me of yourself?! I'm skeptical, but then I'm not the one writing the book. And Lucy has to end up with one of her two suitors, right?

Plus two other looks of what love and soul mates might look like, courtesy of the supporting cast. Charming, but not up to the expectations set by Charlotte Merryweather.

The perfect marriage gone perfectly wrong

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn (Crown Publishers, 2012)

I don't think there is anything to be said about Gone Girl that hasn't already been said in the buzz of media attention it got last year. What I'm impressed about is that somehow I managed to miss all the spoilers. Or maybe I didn't, because as it happened, my initial suspicions about plot twists proved pretty spot on.

Has anyone missed the overview yet? Amy and Nick are celebrating ("celebrating") their fifth anniversary, except she goes missing the morning of. The novel alternates between Nick's first person narrative as Amy's disappearance is discovered and the investigation begins, and Amy's diary entries, ranging from when they met and through their marriage. That the marriage is troubled is immediately clear, and it's additionally clear that they both have secrets. But that's the thing about secrets - you can keep them hidden even from your reader. And boy is authorial reliability brought into question here.

It's much more than the tale of a disappearance, it's the story of a marriage, and even before that, the ways that childhood shapes (or misshapes) you in ways both seen and unseen.

And even though I guessed right about Amy's disappearance, I didn't actually trust that I was right, which made the turn almost as surprising. And even more to the point, I could not have predicted all of the twists and turns, and the flood of detail.

I'm not sure it's the ideal read for someone like me, whose relationship with anxiety is so fraught. I coiled up so tense that I am still trying to work myself out. And my dreams last night.... well, let's just say that Plants vs. Zombies and Gone Girl combine in bizarre and frightening ways.

And it gets a little more complicated

Crossed - Ally Condie (Dutton Books, 2011)

I think what I liked most about this sequel to Matched is that it adds narration by Ky. This allows us to track both teens as they try both to survive and to make their way back to the other, which occasionally is pretty cute, and also stressful. But more importantly, we get inside Ky's head and learn his secrets before Cassie does. Because in addition to everything else going on, there is trouble brewing for the couple. Cassie wants to be part of the Rising; Ky has his own reasons for avoiding it. (Erin thinks that parts of this sound quite a bit  like The Hunger Games.) And while Xander only makes a brief appearance in the book, his presence is enormous. Which leads me to believe that maybe if I ever manage to get a copy of Reached, we'll get some Xander-narration too. Very exciting.

Teens love a good romantic triangle

Matched - Ally Condie (Dutton Books, 2010)

Would it even be a young adult novel without a love triangle? Which reminds me of my first young venture into romance reading. When I was younger, there was a series of YA historical fiction that always had a young woman in some interesting time/place. And against the backdrop of History, said heroine had to choose between two suitors: one stable, the other exciting. While it seemed like Mr. Exciting usually won out, Mr. Dependable got the girl often enough too.

Anyway, before I get too bogged down in wondering about the elements of a good triangle (Who is Mr. Dependable in Twilight? Jacob? Edward? Um, no.) let me move back to Condie. Love story PLUS dystopian future. And believe me, if you go on Goodreads you will read no end of opinions about the various other dystopias that helped inform Condie's world. (People get cranky on Goodreads.)

Long story short. Cassia lives in a future where the Society plans everything out for optimal results - when and whom to marry, where to live, where to work and in what profession, and more. Crazy enough, she's "matched" with someone from her area, her best friend. Except on the little microcard with his info, another face appears - and yet another guy she knows. And, like any good 17 year old, she finds herself drawn to this second, false, match. Which leads her to question everything she's ever known.

This story had its ups and downs. I wasn't crazy about Cassia or the writing. But it had enough momentum to keep me going, and I requested the second book in a hurry.

(PS - The Society relies heavily on statistics. Which I have to admit, sounds a little awesome. But even I recognize that probabilities work exactly because they are only that: probabilities.)

Love and history

Overseas - Beatriz Williams (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011)

Very early on in reading this novel, I described it as Fifty Shades of Grey meets The Time Traveler's Wife. Except then I realized that I haven't read Fifty Shades, and besides I wasn't talked about the kinky sex parts. I meant the deal with the superhot bazillionaire who is head-over-heels for a girl who sees herself as totally average. So perhaps the better comparison is Twilight meets Time Traveler's Wife. Okay.

That's it. End of review.

Except I guess I should flesh it out so that I can argue for why you should consider reading it. First of all, it's set mostly in 2008, on Wall Street. So you have a fun look at that world from the standpoint of junior analyst, both before and during the crash. (Well, during the crash she's living with her bazillionaire, so her perspective there is a little different.) And then when it's not in 2008, it's back in 1916, in France during the First World War. Kate ends up back there because she needs to stop the man she loves from .... well, it's complicated.

Time travel stories can create fun conundrums (conundra?) but this one does a pretty good job of dancing around how the characters' actions could change history, even if the characters act almost blindly in that regard. On the other hand, that meant that I sort of saw the shape of the story pretty early on. But that's okay, because what makes for a beautiful love story often isn't the plot twist.

What happens when the story takes over

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon, trans. Lucia Graves (Penguin Books, 2004)

The word that keeps coming to mind is "virtuoso" - this novel is pretty stunningly crafted. It's got plenty of melodrama, plot twists, hints of something just shy of magical realism. It's the sort of thing where you sort of think to yourself: well, of course it was written in Spanish. Whatever I mean by that.

There is a boy, Daniel. He is the son of a bookseller. He gets captivated by a book. But the book has enemies - someone is trying to destroy every book written by the author. And as he grows older, what seems like a cascade of sinister events start occurring, and they all seem caught up in the uncertain fate of the novel's author, Julian Carax. And as Daniel and a cast of other characters interact, each bringing together some threads of the story, you start to wonder if Daniel is actually living out Julian's fate. And if so, that is bad bad news for them both.

If that's a poor synopsis, that is at least in part because this isn't the kind of work that lends itself to synopsis. The beauty is in the lushness of the details and the longing in the voices of the characters.

As much as anything, this portrait of postwar Barcelona made me want to revisit the films of Pedro Almodovar and Julio Medem. Perhaps another project for one of these days...

10 days, 100 stories

The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio (trans. G.H. McWilliam (Penguin 1972, orig. 13??)

It may have struck you that I've been reading a lot of lighter fare recently (although now that I have discovered Hart of Dixie on Netflix all my soapy attention may be placed there) but in addition to whatever other books have passed over my nightstand, since around Thanksgiving I've also been working through a "big book."

Yes, nothing says holiday season reading like a fourteenth-century collection of stories themed around a group of young people trying not to succumb to the Black Death. Wooooo!

And yet, I forgot for hundreds of pages at a time that plague lurked around every page of this book. In some respects, this may have been the lightest reading of all. Ten young folk (plus servants) set out from Florence to escape not only the disease itself, but the obsession with it that has struck everyone. To amuse themselves, they wander and frolic, sing and dance, eat... and tell stories. Each day, each member of the party shares a story. Ten days, ten people = one hundred tales.

Most days have a theme. And this is when you learn that Italy in the 1300s was a pretty rocking place. My lingering cold makes me too lazy to go through and count statistics, but stories generally involved one or more of the following: wives and husbands cheating on each other (usually wives); corrupt priests, nuns, or other members of the clergy; people scheming to steal and play tricks on one another; individuals pinballing wildly between extreme wealth and fortune and abject poverty. But really mainly sex. So much sex. And described in such hilariously euphemistic ways.

For the first several (3?) "days" I was utterly enthralled by this, and recounted each story to my indulgent boyfriend. But after a while, I grew accustomed to the return of these same topics, and the remaining days passed by in a strangely soothing rhythm. (This girl likes structure.)

A couple points. Just because I'm not going into the details of the stories doesn't mean that many of them weren't awfully enjoyable. (I have told the First Day, Second Story to probably 10 different people.) And just because it took over a month to get through the 830 pages doesn't mean it was dull or slogging. It was actually a surprisingly quick read. But with holiday stuff and my desire to jump around and experience other stories, it just got spread out across a longer period of time.  Anyway, recommended with more enthusiasm than I might have expected. Good work Boccaccio :)

Dream lover

Imaginary Men - Anjali Banerjee (Downtown Press, 2005)

Yet another book that mysteriously made its way onto my "to read" list. But it seems right up my alley. Once upon a time I was reading a lot of South Asian-inflected fiction, and chick lit is my specialty. But to be honest, I'm still not quite sure how I felt about this one.

The premise totally works - Lina is a matchmaker (one of those professions I really only hear about in novels) and in the eyes of her Indian family, an old maid now that she's crossed 30. And to avoid a relative's meddling matchmaking, she claims to be engaged. And hijinks ensue. Mainly because she uses the name of the hot (but terribly conservative) man she just met, and because her family gets SO excited and demands to meet him, and because she's still trying to come to terms with the death of her former fiance.

The plot moves quickly, and I plowed through this book during finals week like it was candy. All good. But I found myself wondering what role Lina's fiance played in the book. People seemed blithely inconsiderate of her loss, and I couldn't quite understand why. And then we have Lina's imaginary man, who is either a)aforementioned lost love; b)her fake new lover; c)the new man she's actually falling for; d)some weird amalgamation. The answer is e)all of the above, but I somehow wanted more from him.

Am I too demanding? Is this why I'm still unmarried?

On the other hand, I really appreciated the ending, which offered a richer, more real portrait of how "happily ever after" doesn't just happen.

Did we meet in Capri?

The Overnight Socialite  - Bridie Clark (Weinstein Books, 2009)

So, the rain in Spain now falls mainly on the isle of Capri. Or something like that. The novel is billed as a modern retelling of Pygmalion, but it's really far more My Fair Lady, up to and including the moment where I expect our good Pygmalion to dance Eliza around the room.

Lucy is a wannabe designer from the heartland, and Wyatt is the best of Old Money New York as well as a promising anthropologist who never bothered to have a career. So when he breaks up with his It Girl girlfriend, he claims he can train anyone to be a blue blood socialite... and he'll write a book about the process. Lucy just happens to be nearby when he hits on this plan, and besides, she could use the connections to make inroads with the fashion industry.

And the plot is pretty obvious from there, but with some nice minor character plots as well. It's fun to get to know Wyatt's mom, and the "will he propose or won't he?" drama between Wyatt's best friend and his longtime girlfriend is probably the most interesting relationship question of the entire novel. Plus you get a whole bunch of aspirational brand name-dropping, even though the book is set against the collapse of the financial industry. All the chick lit Ts crossed and Is dotted.

And while we are adapting GB Shaw, can I get Arms and the Man?

Runaway Bride!

The Great Escape - Susan Elizabeth Phillips (William Morrow, 2012)

Instead of a fake marriage, we have a wedding that aborts just before takeoff. And if this sounds familiar, it may be in part because it's the other half of Phillips' last novel. There, the runaway bride's best friend finds herself stranded with the just-too-perfect groom. Here, we ditch Texas for the Great Lakes, where the bride ends up after a stint on the back of a motorcycle. (This, btw, is not the first time this scenario has played out in a Phillips' novel.)

Did we mention the bride is the daughter of the former president, and thus this non-wedding is a huge scandal?

Lucy didn't get to sow any wild oats during her teen years. So she's going to do that now. With a reluctant biker named Panda, and some hair dye, and fake tattoos, and whatever else it takes. The love story plays out more or less the way you'd expect. But the B and C plots are delightful. Lucy picks up some girlfriends along the way, and an orphaned boy, and there are some nice lessons learned about resilience, vulnerability, and the ways in which communities can provide for one another. Pretty charming.

(Why did I never set up an "absurd but adorable marriage plot" tag for my blog?)

Spirited away

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday, 2011)

I am going to admit that I held off on reading this book because I was jealous that someone named Erin wrote such a well-received novel. Stealing my thunder and all. But thank goodness I got over this absurdity. Because this book is magical. MAGICAL.

Most of the week I was reading The Night Circus, I spent non-reading time really wishing I were reading. It was transporting. Short chapters (and intros and such) whisk through between characters, times, and places. Which is a little like the circus itself. The circus, which appears as if by magic, runs only at night and only in black & white, and is the venue for increasingly inspired flights of magical imagination.

It is also the venue for a competition of sorts. Two men facing off; their proxies young, well-trained, and mostly ignorant of the rules governing their battle. And can two practitioners of such powerful magic grow to know their opponent so well without falling in love?

The novel is stunning. I reached the climactic scene one sofa over from my boyfriend, who was engrossed in someone on the television. (Fringe maybe?) And when I started silently weeping just because I was too overcome by the emotion of the whole thing, I had to hide it, because how do you explain that you're crying because it's just all too lovely?

Vaguely disagreeable olde England

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (Laurel Edition, 1944, 1945)

It's kind of fun to read old paperbacks. This one cost 75 cents when it was printed in 1965 (I think) and it is falling apart something pretty impressive. I think I'll be its final reader.

That sentiment is probably not true for the novel itself. (Obviously.) I am not crazy about Waugh, and it was a bit of a slog at the beginning. Lots of chummy gay college boys or something. Someone told me to not bother with the read and go straight to the movie, and I was sorely tempted. But I was glad to have stuck it through. Because after a spell it gets easier, and then suddenly, it gets much much easier. And without offering spoilers, I'm perhaps a little troubled by why I might find certain plots more agreeable than others.

That said, I still didn't have much affection or sympathy for any of the characters. It's been a week since I finished reading, and I had forgotten the narrator's name. He seems ... so distant, I suppose.

But! Onto the film adaptations!

We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (Harper Perennial, 2003)

Do you believe me that I picked out this book to read next before Aurora happened? The idea of reading a novel about the aftermath (ish) of a mass shooting seemed a little much to handle, but I pushed on. And was in the thick of it when the Oak Creek shooting occurred. All of which could send me off on a diatribe about violence and weapons and cavalier disregard for the sanctity of human life and and and.

But no. This novel has too much to say on its own. The Post-Birthday World is one of my favorite novels - although no one I've foisted it on has enjoyed it as much as I did - but this one is the award-winner. And it was time to tackle something difficult.

It's November 2000, about 18 months after Eva's son changed their worlds forever by murdering a handful of classmates and two school staff members, about a week before Columbine. And Eva shares her story in epistolary fashion, in a series of letters to her estranged husband. The result is three narratives that unfold over about six months, with the final letter in April 2001. The first is world events; remember that election? and how it dominated everything? The second takes us back in time, as Eva details the couple's decision to have a baby, and the child's early years. The third is also current, about her ongoing relationship with Kevin, her visits to him in the juvenile prison upstate, as she strives to come to terms - to the extent such a phrase even makes sense - with his horrific acts, and her part in them.

Never has anything made me so scared about the prospect of having a child. From even before his birth, Eva was uneasy about Kevin. And Kevin made everyone uneasy except her husband, who desperation to adore his own son is so touchingly naive as seen through Eva's eyes. Whether or not Kevin was really a sociopath from Day One, how terrifying to consider not loving your own child.

And then some sort of trigger switched inside me. Eva does this complicated dance, of assuming all the responsibility for Kevin and his actions, and simultaneously abjuring it in favor of an argument that sort of runs, "I tried to warn you about him." It made me uncomfortable, which I can only assume was Shriver's intent. As are the growing signs that maybe Eva really is to blame, that maybe Kevin has always, desperately, sought his mother's love and affection. That maybe his malicious attacks on people's passions were both a way of destroying what he didn't have and couldn't abide in others. And even more so, a cry for his mom to notice and love him.

I feel terribly inarticulate trying to get at what I mean. Besides, did I really just place the responsibility for all these murders on this poor woman's shoulders? Plenty of people have awful parents who they fear don't really love them, and the vast majority of these people do not become killers at age 15. It's pretty much bullshit to absolve Kevin of any responsibility. And yet, I fear he just wanted to impress her. Although impress isn't quite the right word.

Before I fall too deeply down a rabbit hole, let me just say what I probably should have said in summary from the very start: this novel disquieted me in ways that few novels have. I will be thinking about Kevin for a long time to come.

How we learn to be ourselves

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2001)


The Second Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2003)


Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2005)


Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2007)


Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares (Random House, 2011)


I've been moving! Which meant that I was very excited when a friend had a book swap and I was able to bring over all the books I had been saving up. It also meant that despite my best efforts, when I saw 3  of the Sisterhood novels, I picked them up. Years ago, a friend recommended them (or the movie?) and I had vaguely planned to read them. So in the midst of packing, I started reading the first one. Because really, what is better than YA as an escape from stress?

And then the second, and the third. And then I started looking online to see if there were more. All told, I think I read the five in about 4 weeks? Everyone already know the story, right? Four friends, and a pair of jeans that magically fits them all, and not just fits, but makes them look extra hot. The Pants become the way they "stay together" when summer takes them to different places. The Pants bear witness to their struggles to cope with change, and growing up, and love and loss. The first summer, the girls are a summer away from their 16th birthdays, by the third they are about to leave for college. The fourth finds them after their freshman years, and the last novel comes a decade later.

Reading them in the span of a month rather than over ten years, as they were written, it really jumps out at you how much the girls have to learn the same lessons over and over and over. How to be brave, how to be open to change and to forgive those who change around you, how to see past surfaces and accept the love that's offered, how to be vulnerable. And then to return to them, as young women about to turn 30, with years more of experience, the lessons are still there to be learned.

And that tore me up. It was an unexpected sucker punch. Maybe because it threw into such stark relief that fact that the lessons I have learned over the years need to be learned again and again and again. You don't just reach an epiphany and get to happily ever after. Or even to the next level, like some sort of video game. Or perhaps, to play with the video game analogy some more, you do, but you just repeat the same level again and again, in slightly different guise. You have to reach that epiphany, defeat the same boss, time and again. And that's a tough realization.

But no one reads the same book. We bring so much of ourselves - our past and especially our present - to what we read. I'm curious to know how others found Lena, Carmen, Tibby, and Bridget.