Flight into Fantasy

Book 25: on the Bright Side, I’m now the Girlfriend of a Sex God is the sequel to Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging. Like its predecessor, this book was extremely cute. But it had the exact same flaws–namely the heroine, Georgia Nicolson, is a little snot who should be smacked upside the head.

Speaking of people who should be smacked upside the head:

Lolita was my book club’s selection this month. I did not enjoy it. I’m apparently not enough of an intellectual reader to pick up on the myriad symbols present in the text, and I found the characters, at best flat and boring, and at worst irritatingly whiny and psychotic. Plus, it’s about a pedophile. I just really couldn’t get past that.

• 1. Conducted marathon reading session of Lolita. Still
  don’t like it.

• 2. Ran errands with sister. We got into a bit of a row because I think
  she lets other people walk all over her, particularly her friends, and
  particularly her best friend, who has been hanging onto her and her
  boyfriend like a particularly insidious leech.

• 3. My sister is a much better cook than I am.
• 4. I need to start winding down earlier in the evening. Like… oh say
  before 2 a.m.

So while I’m happily (or not, as the case may be) tripping through Lolita, I am also indulging in a bit of fluffy YA stuff. This particular series of books was recommended to me by my sister, who has excellent tastes. I didn’t think this first book was nearly as funny as she did, and our heroine, who keeps a journal in the style of Bridget Jones, really is as superficial and shallow as people accuse her of being. But some of her antics–like going to a boy for kissing lessons, and accidentally shaving off her eyebrows–are quite hysterically funny.

I really detest this book.

Humbert Humbert and I have been having conversations as I read… Mostly of
me making very cutting remarks at his expense.

Did not finish reading my six chapters so will have to catch up tomorrow.
This is like homework, but with child porn!

I really want Chinese food. I know I don’t need Chinese food and should probably find something else to eat, but something else is not what I want. Should I order it?

Of course, I probably will anyway.

In other news, Lolita is the latest book I will struggle through. I knew I wasn’t going to like it, and thus far I have not been disappointed. Oh well, at least when I go to the book club I joined I can say I’ve read a little of it. (I’m assigning myself six chapters a day for the next week and praying that’ll get me a respectable chunk through the book.

This book actually had me going along swimmingly at first. I love urban fantasy, and part of the action was centered in our own universe. But this sequel to The Golden Compass suffered from a lot of the same problems as its predecessor.

My biggest beef with the second book (and what I have read so far of the third) is that the main character, Lyra, becomes such a wuss. She totally lets Will, arguably the main character in the second book, walk all over her and dictate what she should and shouldn’t do, which is way out of character from the first book.

And the theme of “religion sucks” starts to pervade the series more clearly in this second book, though Pullman doesn’t start pounding us over the head with that theme until early in the third book.

So every book critic I’ve ever read who reviews SF and fantasy novels has said that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books are excellent. So I found copies and started in on the series.

I really don’t like the books as much as I thought I would. Only toward the end of this first book did I really become engaged with the characters, so I guess it’s a good thing there are two more books.

As a character, I don’t particularly like Lyra Belacqua, the protagonist. I find her annoying rather than spunky. Then again, I don’t really like kids all that much.

However, people with different personal preferences than mine will probably find this book good reading. It just wasn’t for me.