Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella

Another piece of delightfully absurd fluffiness, courtesy of Sophie Kinsella. Just the thing to absorb the mind of a brain-dead mother on summer vacation!

After utterly failing at what should have been a simple deal-closing meeting in Glasgow, junior marketing assistant Emma Corrigan finds herself on a very, very bumpy plane ride back to London. When the turbulence convinces her that she's counting down the final minutes of her life, Emma contracts a serious case of verbal diarrhea. By the time the plane lands safely at home, she has told her seatmate, a quiet American man, every single secret of her life. She doesn't cut corners - he learns about everything from her true feelings about her boyfriend, Connor, to her opinion about g-string underpants, to the way she pretends to like the garish crocheted garments made by her friend Katie.

The next day, she arrives at work to find everyone in a tizzy. The owner and founder of the large corporation is visiting for the first time. Guess who he turns out to be? And guess who Emma finds herself falling in love with over the next few weeks?

I have to say I found this book hard to put down, in spite of its chick-lit predictability. It's not so much "what" happens in books like this, it's more "how" the story is told, and Sophie Kinsella has a wonderful gift for writing a truly laugh-out-loud story with characters you can't help rooting for at the same time you're chuckling over their ditziness.

Blessed are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch

Abbey is a displaced Irishwoman living on a remote tropical island with her distant, obsessive husband, who is not everything he seems. Kit is a drunken New York City investment banker who has recently lost his wife, who was not everything she seemed, either. Both Abbey and Kit need to get away and start a fresh life.

Meanwhile, over in County Cork, Ireland, Abbey's grandfather Corrie and his lifelong friend Fee have realized that their time as artisan cheesemakers may be coming to an end soon. They need someone - or preferably two someones - to take over their world-famous cheesemaking operation and carry on a longtime tradition of taking in unwed mothers who milk the cows in exchange for room and board during their pregnancies. Hmm... I wonder who those two someones will turn out to be?

This book, as you probably guessed, is rather predictable, but it's a cute and fun read all the same. Since "funny, fluffy chick lit" seems to be the order of the day for me right now, I was happy that I'd selected it from my overflowing shelf of unread books and brought it with me on this vacation. Although the plot of Blessed are the Cheesemakersbrings no surprises (I guessed how the whole thing would work out, right up till the last scene, and I'm not someone who is too great at that - I didn't even figure out Professor Lupin's secret in the third Harry Potter book... duh!) , the characters are appealing. I found myself simultaneously caught up in Kit and Abbey's eventual coming together in mutual happiness, rooting for them while at the same time groaning inwardly over how predictable the whole affair was.

Next up - more fluffy fun courtesy of Sophie Kinsella!

Shopaholic & Sister by Sophie Kinsella

I picked this book up off the kitchen counter at a friend's house and next thing I knew, I was sucked into this hilarious example of British chick lit at its best. I generally like to read a series in order, but in this case I'm glad I didn't let that stop me from reading.

Our heroine, Becky Bloomwood, has a bit of an impulse control problem when it comes to shopping. She just can't resist the latest shoes, makeup, gourmet food, clothing, handbags or jewelry, among other things. With her trendy London loft apartment filling up with useless junk collected on her honeymoon, her credit cards maxed out and her career as a personal shopper in limbo, Becky is not ready for the big shock in her life - she has a long-lost half sister, Jess, the product of an affair her father had prior to marrying Becky's mother. Meanwhile, Becky's best friend, now a mother of three, seems to have ditched her for a snotty fellow mum called Lulu, and Becky's husband Luke shows his increasing exasperation for her spendthrift ways as pressures mount in his PR company.

Seeing the appearance of a sister as her best chance for intimate companionship, Becky throws herself into being the greatest sister that Jess could ever wish for. Somewhat predictably, Jess turns out to be Becky's polar opposite, but Kinsella's "odd couple" play off one another to make for a truly funny novel. Becky remains completely clueless about her shortcomings while the reader sees the "saner" characters' reactions to her behaviour through Becky's remarkably clear-sighted observations.

I am now eager to read other books by Sophie Kinsella, which seem to be just the right level of fluff for my currently addled brain.

still here, honestly

I have not forgotten about this blog, I'm just suffering from a prolonged bout of low mental capacity that seems to be making it impossible for me to do much more than sit in front of the television. Also known as the FIFA World Cup.

Well, I can't really blame the World Cup for my lack of reading. If I can gobble up 2-3 books a week even when I'm studying for final exams, I can certainly read in between 2 or 3 soccer games a day. I'm not really sure what the problem is. I've got some great books in my stack here, and absolutely no interest in picking them up. Let's hope this turns around soon. Meanwhile, please enjoy some of the links in the sidebar.

Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer

I hoped that reading some light young adult fantasy would help to get me reading again, so I picked up this sequel to Artemis Fowl. In this story, Artemis learns that his father, long missing and presumed dead, has been kidnapped by the Russian Mafiya and sets out to rescue him. He is helped by his bodyguard Butler, and Julius Root and Holly Short, the two "LEPRecon" agents he met in the first book. Along the way they help to foil an attempt to take over the entire underground fairy kingdom.

I think Colfer could have done a lot more with this story; on the whole, though it was a cute book, it didn't grab me. The premise isn't quite clever enough to match its predecessor, the characters feel recycled, and poor Artemis himself - the curiously likeable, highly intelligent and immoral teenager we know and love - becomes a wimpy, boring background character while various elves, goblins and nefarious humans in the book vie for "page time". I'm disappointed, but I know that sequels and second novels are not always an easy thing to pull off so I might give this series another chance.