10.01.2007

Friendly reading

I'm slowly making my way through the entire book aisle at Target. It's sad but true. When my kids have thrown one too many cordless phones in the toilet and I want to get away for a few minutes, I keep ending up pushing a cart around Target buying stuff I don't technically need. This generally includes a few books. And generally it's chick lit. Many years ago I read romance novels. But they got formulaic pretty quick. So then I read mysteries and thrillers. But I noticed several years ago that they were making me paranoid. Murder mysteries before bed combined with too much Law & Order: SVU and I was obsessively locking doors and hearing weird noises at night. I swore off SVU, too. Although I blame that on a particularly heinous episode several years ago.

At any rate, because I make all my book purchases at Target, I end up with a lot of bestsellers. Which is fine. I guess. Except I'm starting to feel very blah about them. Which makes me start to feel intellectually like one great big blah. I just finished Best Friends by Martha Moody. It was okay. I think it was the fact that it was about lifelong friends that made me buy it. The two girls met on the first day of college. They remain best friends for several decades despite living cross country from each other. I think I wanted to live vicariously through the book and have that sort of lifelong friend. Since having children, I've discovered I'm above average terrible at keeping up with friends. Not that I was great before kids either. But I'm terrible now. Emails take two minutes but I still seem to not find the two minutes. I have a hundred and one excuses for not making phone calls.

One of the girls in the book is a doctor. She's also a single mother. She finds time to fly across country several times a year. This baffles me. Much like it baffled me that the daughter took so long to ask what kind of magazines her dad publishes. Someone says to me, "I'm a magazine distributor." I gotta tell you. My first question is, "What magazines do you distribute?" Not because I'm super nosy. I'm just curious if I read any of them. But maybe that's just me.

So I'm glad that book is done. Mostly because I'm reading Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini next. Not only is it not chick lit it's not even written by a girl. I'm not sure I'll be able to handle it but I've heard it's very good so I'm excited to try.

8 comments:

no way said...

Here are two recommendations-The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. They're both great and will suck you in. They're also on the older side, so you might have to get them from the library.

Additionally, I had to stop watching Sopranos when I got pregnant with my first child, and never saw it again. I also had to stop reading People Magazine because there were too many stories about random tragic things happening to children or their parents and it was making my brain work in overdrive. Ignorance is bliss in some cases.

Sarahviz said...

The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns are excellent reads! They were my favorite books this summer.

Kellan said...

I also like Target - but I'm a Wal-mart girl at heart (I think it's that big yellow happy face). I don't think I read the Kite Runner - might have read half of it - I only ever seem to read half of anything I buy - I either lose interest or run out of time. I hope you enjoy it - I'm sure it was a good pick. I have a whole stack of books (Bee Season, Sleep Toward Heaven, Nowhere Else on Earth ...) that I picked up at the 1/2 price book store - still haven't read. I need to make time to read these books - I need to make time to take a shower too!

Miguelita said...

Love The Kite Runner. It was a moving respite from all of the (loved and light but schlocky) Red Dress Ink stuff I was reading. Also loved Bel Canto. Read that next.

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean. A lot of the stuff out there quickly becomes predictable and therefore boring. There's always those classics to fall back on... : )

Anonymous said...

I'm going to try the books everyone selected. Not even joking. I'm starting with The Memory Keeper's Daughter. My husband was ordering books last night from Barnes and Noble and I told him to throw that into the shopping cart. Incidentally, Kite Runner is really good. I'm a hundred pages in and totally hooked.

Christy said...

As soon as I unpack in a couple of days, and find my copy of kite runner I will be reading it too. I just finished The Time Traveler's Wife, which I highly recommend you add to your must read list :)

Anonymous said...

Consider it added to the list. I swear I'm reading every single recommendation.

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