book 71

i feel obliged to preface this book w/ a brief anecdote about why on earth i read this book all the way through. so tonight after dinner out w/ the family and with the steelers game on tv, i announced that i needed a book. unfortunately, my mother's recent book purchases are generally mysteries ("r is for rigor mortis!") or chick lit books (by the way, has anyone else noticed that over 50 percent of chick lit books feature legs or high heels on the cover?). she promptly handed me three chick lit books, informing me that good in bed is really good, and even my sister read it and loved it. i, being me, mocked the selections. my dad called me a book snob and needled me until i agreed to read the damn thing. and the fact that i had to write this big paragraph justifying this book proves that i am indeed a book snob. so what else is new?

jennifer weiner's good in bed
ok, i mean, this book doesn't totally suck. it's probably better than most chick lit. i just don't have an interest in reading about a fictional character who constantly harps on her weight and her singlehood (perhaps b/c i harp on my singlehood myself--i mean, i cringe when i hear myself saying these things, so do i really want to escape into a novel where this is the primary discussion? uh, no!). it's also entirely predictable--she's oblivious to the interest of the one guy who's nice to her, she becomes friends w/ a movie star, and by the final third of the story, the entire thing has devolved into hopeless melodrama, but you just know that by the final ten pages it will all be worked out. weiner is not a bad writer really, and there are some funny and sweet parts--the slightly overweight main character is a sarcastic (jewish) reporter and gets in some zingers, and the bits about her lovable dog were great, and the nice guy is really nice . . . but blah, blah, blah, i guess i'm too picky (or too unwillingly to enjoy something so saccharine) to really get into chick lit.