Julia
This would be the BEST BEACH READ EVER, since it's a 900+ page potboiler, but I have to admit, after having invested 900+ pages worth of reading time, I was disappointed not to get a happy ending. Amber is a heinous bitch, so I guess she gets what she deserves, but for chrissakes, where's the love for the Cruella DeVilles of the world? An entertaining read, nonetheless, and apparently a very historically accurate lampoon of Restoration England.
AH! HYSTERICAL! WONDERFUL! The photos are goofy & weird, the layout is dizzying but fascinating, and my only complaint is that the recipes are scattered throughout instead of lumped together in a more traditional cookbook style–you have to work a little to find what you want, but really...this book is fabulous.
I picked this book up randomly off the shelf of the woman a babysit for–who has a huge thing for historical fiction. Apparently this is THE lesbian fiction novel to read, and I have to say, it's a good novel to boot. The setting (fin de siecle London) is delightful, the plot intruiguing, and yes, the sex was hot. It was definitely one of those books that I put off doing important stuff to read.
So all during my cross-country tour for grad school interviews, this book I borrowed from Lauren was waiting for me in my suitcase. I kept reading other things...“Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” “No Reservations,” and InStyle magazine, mainly. Quick airport reads. I'm really glad I finally committed myself to reading this. I was off to a slow start, but as the book progresses, the language becomes ever more deliberate and ever more beautiful. I've read a lot of contemporary fiction about the immigrant/child of immigrant experience (such as Indian-Americans Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, etc., which are exquisitely wonderful in their own right), but I don't know much about Korean culture (right, culture CAPITAL C and all that, too long to go into in a goodreads review), so a Korean-American experience, not to mention a male Korean-American experience in particular, was really an interesting one to feel I was gaining insight into. In some ways, Lee's writing reminds me of Marilynne Robinson's. All of sudden, you realize that a page and a half ago you've been smacked between the eyes with a heartbreakingly beautiful insight, rendered into concise yet poetic language. Count me as a big fan. Four starts instead of five only because it took me (and possibly entirely due to my own halted reading pace) a while to realize all that this book had to offer.
