I’m reading this morning, just as I promised I would, but I’m having a rough go of it. My friend gave me her copy of “PS, I Love You” (by Cecelia Ahern) with rave reviews. I’m somewhere around 25 pages in, and the writing is just not working for me. It’s very amateurish.
I don’t want to sound all pretentious bullshitty about this, but for me, reading is as much about words and turns of phrase as it is about story and characters. This book is so far failing in all areas, but the word choices are particularly cringe-worthy. There are too many unnecessary adverbs, the descriptions are elementary (”long, slender fingers”), and don’t get me started on, “His honey-colored hair matched his honey-colored skin.” So you mean honey-colored matches honey-colored? Really? Hey, did you know that ball rhymes with ball?
I just read a bit more about this author, and it turns out she was 22 years old when she wrote this, so I suppose that accounts for her lack of polish, but she’s also the daughter of Ireland’s Prime Minister, which turns it back to the distasteful side, as it’s now certain in my mind that she was published based who she is rather than her writing talents.
Of course, I could just be an asshole who thinks she’s above this type of novel. Nah. I like chick-lit. I read Jennifer Weiner as soon as her books hit the shelves. It’s just that I like well-written chick-lit. Which this is not. Still, I’ll carry on and hope that eventually the story can pull me in. And then I will never accept a book from this friend again.
I’m fond of Jennifer Weiner too! Have you read the new one?
I haven’t. You know me with books. I own it, but it’s sitting on my “on deck” shelf right now. I read PS, I Love You because Lori gave it to me to read, so I felt like I should read it. When I let her know that I had started it, she showed no interest in the fact that I was reading. That’s a huge difference between us. If I give someone a book, DVD, teevy recommendation, whatever, I’m really excited when they finally read/watch it, and I want to hear opinions and such. Of course, I was really looking forward to sharing my opinion about this, and she didn’t ask. Booooo!
I don’t have it yet, partly because I just found out about it and partly because I’ll just add it to the bookshelf that has become my To Be Read stack. *sigh*
And yes, Boo!!