#CBR8 Book 19: "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

Page count: 277 pages
Rating: 1 star

This review will contain spoilers, so if you want to avoid knowing all the details of the sparse and meaningless plot, maybe skip the first couple of paragraphs. 

Holden Caulfield is a self-important, spoiled and worthless little shit. At the start of the book, he is cooling his heels at the fourth boarding school he's been expelled from because he just can't be bothered to even try to apply himself (having failed four out of five subjects completely), and generally bitching about how phony his room mate, dorm mates and teachers are. Holden, ever heard of the pot calling the kettle black? You are that pot. Not content to waste his the money his parents spent on tuition, he also manages to lose all the fencing equipment belonging to the school before he's expelled. because apparently reading a subway map and keeping track of bags of equipment at the same time overloads the fragile little mind of special disenfranchised snowflake Holden.

Having spent a while internally bitching about some of his school friends and being jealous of their luck with the ladies, he picks a fight with his room mate and decides to leave school early, before his parents are alerted to his most recent failure. His grandmother is apparently overly generous, so he has cash to spare and goes by train to New York, where he books himself into a rather sleazy hotel. Here he proceeds to ruminate about girls he's known but never managed to hook up with (probably because they can tell a mile away that Holden is an emo narcissist with an inflated sense of his own self-worth and no apparent sense of humour) and gets beaten up by a pimp after paying a prostitute NOT to have sex with him. He also goes out drinking and hemorrhaging money all over the place. After a couple of days, when he's nearly broke, he goes home to see his little sister. Then he visits an old teacher who seems to have escaped Holden's go to judgement of being too phony, but said teacher may or may not make a pass at him, so Holden flees into the night. He then has some sort of mental breakdown and ends up in an institution, from whence he tells the entire story of the book.

As is hopefully clear from my rating of this book, I absolutely loathed this so-called piece of classic literature. I don't think I've ever seen a better example of the fact that it's not always the worthy texts that survive to become classics. I honestly have no idea how this book is lauded as a great novel or why it speaks to people even today. Holden is absolutely insufferable. He's a whiny, snivelling, spoiled and clueless little brat, who seems to think he is better than everyone around him, adults as well as kids his own age. The only hardship he's ever experienced is the death of his younger brother, apart from that, he's lived a life of ease and privilege and is determined to throw everything he is given away, because growing up is just so, you know, boring.

Not only is Holden absolutely insufferable, and very high on my list of fictional characters I want to knee in the groin and punch in the face (Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is probably still number one, closely followed by Cathy from that same book). He doesn't appear to undergo any sort of significant development over the course of the book. He starts out a horrible waste of oxygen, and ends the book the same way. The only nice thing I can find to say about him is that he loves his little sister Phoebe, who is about as great a character as Holden is awful.

I seriously, for real, do not understand what is supposed to be so great about this book. What purpose does it serve? Nothing of consequence happens. Holden is atrocious and likes to ramble on about nothing, thinking back to previous events in his life that are also fairly insignificant and amounted to very little. Like so many other teens, he feels alienated from his surroundings and doesn't fit in. Not that he does a thing to change that or to find some sort of purpose. All he does is complain and sulk, and I wanted to slap him so hard his teeth rattled. My colleagues in the English department have decided that all the higher level kids are to read this book when we're embarking on our current topic of Classics, and I just desperately hope that it reads better to teenagers than it did to me. As several of my colleagues seemed rather appalled at my vehement hate for the book, it can be their job to defend its worthiness on the curriculum. None have so far been able to explain in a satisfying way to me why this book deserves to still be read in schools or by anyone, anywhere. Sorry, Mr Salinger, your book is bad and if you weren't dead, you should feel bad. The only upside for me as a teacher that I can think of is that the kids reading the book won't be able to find a movie adaptation they can watch to cheat and thus escape the reading.

I can now tick this book off the list of "books to read before you die". I found it even more pointless and hard going than The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina (though at least, like Gatsby, it's a blessedly short book, not a massive brick like Anna), but don't loathe it with every fiber of my being like I do Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Although with all those books, I at least see what they bring to literature. This book - nothing. I'm pretty sure it's going to be the lowest rated book I read this year, so at least I got that out of the way early.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 85: "This Heart of Mine" by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Page count: 420 pages
Rating: 1 star

Warning! This review will contain spoilers for the book, because it's impossible for me to convey all my vitriol without going into plot specifics. 

Molly Sommerville (who we first met as a frankly horrid teenager in It Had to Be You) is now all grown up and making a living as a children's book author, writing illustrated books about Daphne the Bunny, a rabbit who appears to wear designer clothes and going on adventures based on events in Molly's own life. While Molly inherited a multi-million dollar fortune from her horrible father, the former owner of the Chicago Stars, she gave it all away to a charitable foundation some years back (this is the only likable thing she does in the WHOLE book). Every few years, Molly appears to feel bored and acts out in crazy ways. She tends to change her hair drastically before each such crazy act.

Molly has had an unrequited crush on Kevin Tucker, the star quarterback of the Chicago Stars, for years. He lives a life of dating foreign fashion models and doing extreme sports and barely knows she exists. There's a badger in Molly's twee little books based on him. Then one weekend, Kevin and Molly find themselves in the same house in the country, and Molly seems to think that it would be a good idea to get undressed and get into bed with man she's been in love with, while he's asleep. He, thinking he is dreaming, has sex with her, and wakes up, appalled that his boss' younger sister is naked in bed with him, and took advantage of him. Molly has the audacity to be disappointed that the sleep sex she initiated wasn't great. Kevin points out that she basically RAPED him, and they go their separate ways.

Of course Molly gets pregnant, and when Phoebe, her overprotective sister, and Dan, her brother-in-law discover it, they don't rest until they've figured out who the baby daddy is. Now, Kevin is worried he'll be seen as a victim (and also doesn't want to piss off his boss), so says nothing about the RAPE. Molly, because she's a terrible human being, refuses to come clean about her horrible nocturnal sexual assault, and the two are forced to marry. Molly miscarries shortly thereafter, because I guess karma's a bitch. I want to stress here, to any reader of my reviews who may be offended, that I would never wish a miscarriage on any woman in real life, but Molly is a fictional character, and a reprehensible one at that. I wanted nothing but bad things for her. Losing the baby she gained from RAPE only seems like cosmic justice.

When Kevin discovers that his shotgun wedding bride is languishing away, all depressed because she lost their baby, he takes her along to the holiday cabins his parents owned, because he thinks it'll do her good to get away and he needs to sell the place. Having spent every single summer there as a child, surrounded by middle aged people, Kevin has no fond memories of the holiday camp, and can't wait to unload it on someone else. Molly, however, decides that the place looks like the real life version of her children's book universe, and does everything in her power to make Kevin see how "exciting" it is there, mainly by getting herself into dangerous situations, so he has to rescue her.

Even having been warned by Mrs. Julien's review that this was a terrible book, I forced myself to keep reading it, hoping against all hope that maybe Molly would show some sort of redemptive qualities. But no, she's awful all the way through. I felt really bad, because Kevin is such a good guy, and I loved him as a supporting character in Nobody's Baby But Mine. He deserved so much better than an emotionally manipulative, spoiled shrew of a wife. When she climbed into bed with him, I was uncomfortable. By the time she has the nerve to express disappointment that the sex she had with a SLEEPING man who she took advantage of wasn't as great as she'd hoped, I wanted to throw my e-reader across the room in disgust. I didn't really like Molly in her first appearance in the series, but here I outright hated her.

Not only did I hate Molly, but because Phoebe and Dan from It Had to Be You are supporting characters in this, and behave absolutely atrociously to Kevin all the way through, I now retroactively dislike their book a lot more too. The end of book, when Phoebe basically forces Kevin to choose between his career or staying married to the woman who sexually assaulted him and that the Calebows forced him to marry, in order to orchestrate some sort of elaborate grand gesture had me swearing loudly. Which reminds me, another reason this book pissed me off. Instead of swearing, Molly says "Slytherin" every time she's upset. Of her many deplorable qualities, it was probably one of the least bad, but it was still incredibly annoying.

The only reason this book is getting a full one star is because I liked the secondary romance between Kevin's birth mother and a famous artist. I wish poor Kevin had sold the holiday cottages (having always hated camping I was firmly on his side about his super boring childhood summers), drowned Molly and run off with someone worthy of him. At least now Lisa Kleypas no longer needs to worry about being responsible for the worst romance I've read this year. I cannot imagine anything I'll read this year that I'll hate more than this book. I honestly don't know if Susan Elizabeth Phillips was trying to do some form of clever reversal of the "heroine falls in love with her rapist" trope that so frequently occurred in Old School romances. If that was her intention, she failed. Badly. Do yourself a favour and avoid this book like the plague.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 17: "Nokon kjem til å komme" (Someone is going to come) by Jon Fosse

Page count: 80 pages
Rating: 1 star

A couple, he somewhere in middle age, around his fifties (according to the stage directions), she in her thirties arrive at a house by the ocean, in a remote and lonely location. Here they are finally going to be alone, alone together, away from everyone and everything. But she is worried. "Someone is going to come" she laments. Their perfect solitude will be shattered by outsiders, she's convinced of this. He tries to reassure her that no one will come, they will just be alone, together.

Of course, someone does come. Their closest neighbour, the young man in his twenties who sold them the house, is clearly desperate for company, what with living in such a lonely and remote location. The man hides as he approaches, and watches the neighbour's somewhat needy conversation with the woman. He is racked with jealousy. Perhaps she wasn't lamenting earlier? Perhaps she wanted someone to come? Maybe she'd rather talk to the young man than be alone with him in their new home?

As I mentioned in last year's review of The Son, a different Jon Fosse play that I had to read for my course back then, I'm not a fan of Modernist literature. As Fosse is one of the chief Neo-Modernist playwrights writing today, it was never going to be a good fit between us. I like the things I read to have purpose of some kind. I like characters to be complex and develop and my favourite stories are strongly character driven narratives, preferably with a bit of romance, action and adventure thrown in. This play is not very long, and there is little character or plot development to speak of. It's easy to read, because the same damn three lines keep being repeated ad nauseum throughout. "We will be alone", "Alone together, in our love", "Someone is going to come".

There are only the three characters in the entire play, and even the sadsack neighbour only appears in two scenes. It becomes painfully obvious as soon as he shows up that whatever relationship the couple are planning on having alone in by the sea is doomed to failure, if the man is going to fall to pieces with jealousy as soon as the woman so much as looks at another man. Perhaps buying a house in the middle of nowhere wasn't such a good idea?

Among the students of my course, there were also a lot of different interpretations of the tone of the play, and how the neighbour was perceived (which is one of the advantages of such a minimalist play with hardly any stage directions). Myself and several others thought he was a threatening presence, and that he acts aggressively pushy towards the poor woman, who also has to contend with an insanely jealous partner, who falls into a massive sulk and forces her to do any further communication with the neighbour, even when she appears very unwilling to do so. Quite a few felt that she'd do well to get the heck away from said lonely location as soon as possible, lest she be either murdered by her jealous partner, or assaulted by the desperate and lonely neighbour. Of course, if such a thing were to happen, there would actually mean something happened, which it doesn't. There's conversations outside the house, and inside the house, and nothing really seems to happen or come to a head or be resolved in any way.

Having now read two Fosse plays, I desperately hope I won't have to read anymore. I find him tedious in the extreme, a waste of time (although because his plays are so short, at least it's a blessedly short amount of my time being wasted) and I certainly don't see why anyone would want to pay money to see this frustratingly sparse play be acted out on a stage. I clearly have much better things to do than to read Neo-Modernist drama. If you like Beckett and Pinter, than you should absolutely check Fosse out, because he keeps being very favourably compared to them. In my case, this play is definitely going to be on my worst of the year list.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 27. "Sonen" (The Son) by Jon Fosse

Page count: Not sure, it was part of a collection of plays
Rating: 1 star

Jon Fosse is a contemporary Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright and his works have been translated into more than forty languages (which isn't shabby for a Norwegian). He is highly critically acclaimed both nationally and internationally and apparently considered one of the world's greatest contemporary playwrights.

In the play Sonen, or The Son, an elderly couple (most likely living somewhere in the picturesque but often sparse region in the West of Norway - because that's where Fosse sets a lot of his works) go about their daily life in the same monotonous routine as every other day. They keep repeating the same phrases over and over, lamenting the darkness outside (it's worth pointing out that in the winter time, much of Norway barely gets any daylight at all) and the increasing lack of people in their little village. The young people move away to the cities because there is nothing to do, the old people wither away and die. The only light they see is the window of their neighbour's house. They wonder about their son, who they haven't heard from in months.

It seems their widowed neighbour, who is prone to drunkenness, has heard their son was in prison for some unspecified crime. They're not sure what to believe, but as they haven't heard from their son, they are worried and uncertain. When the long lost son suddenly shows up for a surprise visit, they don't know how to relate to him at all. The drunken neighbour's presence doesn't improve things.

The best thing about this play, which is one of the many texts I have to read for my current course, is that it's short. I read it in less than an hour. Having listened to a very interesting lecture, and several of my fellow students discussing the play earlier today convinced me that I wanted to give it a try, even though my previous attempts at Fosse's literary output in assorted short stories left me decidedly unmoved and unimpressed. I doubt I would've bothered finishing the play if I hadn't already listened to a very engaging analysis about it.

Fosse is classified as a neo-Modernist, and there is a lot of things in the play that reminded me of Becket and Pinter, while the play is a lot less absurd than some of their output. Now, I absolutely loathe Modernist literature, and I didn't like the extremely minimalist style in which Fosse writes. Because he leaves immense amounts of things unsaid in every scene, it's up to the reader to interpret and draw his or her own conclusions. There are very sparse descriptions and stage directions, leaving a lot up to the reader (or viewer, in the case of the play). The characters are incredibly passive, and static. Fosse has stated that he cares very little for obvious themes or messages in his works, and that's painfully obvious here.

Very little actually happens in the play. The mother and father are colourless, inscure and spineless. The drunken neighbour is like a malevolent serpent spreading unsubstantiated rumours. One might have a bit of sympathy with the son, but at the same time, the young man has been gone for over six months without any communication with his parents, so no matter how neglectful and inept his parents may have been in the past (and again, most of this is left up to the reader to interpret for themselves), he seems a bit callous and heartless. Then again, if your parents would rather believe unsubstantiated gossip from an alcoholic rather than your word, maybe you'd want to disown your parents too? Based on this play, and the previous short stories I've read, I'm not really interested in exploring more of Fosse's writing. He may be one of the great Norwegian writers of right now, but it's clear it's not for me.

#CBR5 Book 4. "In Bed with a Highlander" by Maya Banks

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 1 star

I was going to start this review by presenting some facts about how big a sub-genre of historical romance the Highlander romance is, but it turned out that it wasn't easily found by just briefly searching Google, and this book isn't worth the effort to actually spend a lot of time researching the odd quirks of romance literature. Suffice to say, there are a whole bunch of sub-genres to historical romance.

There's Regency - which is when Jane Austen wrote her books, this is a huge sub-genre. Victorian, Medieval, Pirate, Western, American Civil War - usually the hero and heroine are on opposite sides, oh noes, how will they ever make their romance work? Then there is Highlander. There's a bafflingly huge number of romances with covers featuring half-naked men wearing kilts and/or tartans. Just look up and over to the left, to the cover of this book. Tartan, all over the place, despite the fact that the hero never wears any (probably because a huge amount of these books are pretty much Medieval romance set in the Scottish Highlands, when tartans were NOT what Scotsmen wore, I don't care what Braveheart made you believe).

Anyways, you want to hear what this book is about, do you, not hear me rant about the historical inaccuracies of romance novel covers? Mairin Stuart is the illegitimate daughter of the former Scottish king and niece of the current one. She's been hiding in a convent for years and years because she doesn't want unscrupulous Scottish men marrying her for her huge dowry and possible political influence. Then she gets kidnapped by one such unscrupulous Scottish Laird, who beats the snot out of her when she refuses his proposal, and because she's sheltering a charming plot moppet she rescued while being taken from the convent to his stronghold. She's helped to escape by some of his servants (no good explanation given as to why) and takes the child with her.

He's the runaway (and conveniently motherless) son of another Laird, who fortuitously for Mairin is the sworn enemy of her kidnapper. He's happy that she rescued his son, and once he discovers her true identity (which thanks to her dear old Dad, who branded the royal seal into her thigh as a baby (!) is easily verifiable), he decides that the best way to save her from evil kidnapper Laird is to marry her himself, which would of course mean that he could strengthen his impoverished, but oh so noble clan with her generous dowry.

Being a woman in Medieval Scotland, Mairin basically has the choice between marrying her abusive kidnapper, or the overbearing lummox whose castle she ended up in because she happened to save a wretched child from being beaten for horse thievery. Having spied on Ewan (widowed single dad Laird) and his brothers swimming naked in a nearby Loch, and being kissed a couple of times (Ewan thinks that kissing her is a good way to shut her up when she's trying to have her say, he's charming like that), she clearly decides that better the devil you know, and all that.

There's a bunch of complications where Mairin keeps being nearly killed in attempt on Ewan's life, and then another complicated plot by Evil Kidnapper Laird to claim he married her first, so he can claim her dowry for his own. Mairin keeps being wilful and trying to do her own thing, and gets yelled at a lot by Ewan. They have a lot of sexy times in between the shouting at each other and Mairin's near death encounters.

Everyone in the book has pretty much one character trait. Mairin is spirited. Ewan is brawny and protective (these go together). His two interchangeable brothers who are heroes in the rest of the McCabe-trilogy are very loyal. I don't even remember their names, and I finished the book about half an hour ago. Evil Kidnapper Laird is evil. Plot moppet is an 8-or 9-year-old boy, who despite his age keeps sneaking in to sleep in Mairin's bed, both before and after her marriage to his father. I found this creepy and inappropriate, but I'm pretty sure the author was aiming for adorable and charming.

I read this book because it's the alt read in January's Vaginal Fantasy Hangout, and I re-read the main pick, Outlander, just last year. It became clear quite quickly that the book was dreadful, but I decided to see if it got interesting or the characters actually developed as the book progressed. No suck luck. I'm pretty sure this will be a top pick for my 2013 Worst of the Year List, so there is that.

CBR4 Book 103:"Edenbrooke" by Julianne Donaldson, also known as the worst book I've read this year

Page count: 264 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: November 23rd, 2012
Date finished: November 24th, 2012

Marianne Daventry is an innocent 17-year-old whose mother died the year before in a riding accident. Her father's scarpered off to France to grieve, her twin sister's in London with family friends enjoying a season, while poor little Marianne is wasting away with boredom at her grandmother's in Bath. Her gran, a cranky and unpleasant old biddy, decides to disinherit her no good scoundrel nephew and bestow her fortune of forty thousand pounds on Marianne, as long as the girl will learn to behave like a proper lady (she likes running about out of doors without a bonnet, and prefers the countryside to town life - dreadful stuff).

Marianne clearly needs role models, and is shipped off to Edenbrooke, the estate where Lady Wyndham, a bosom friend of Marianne's mother lives. Marianne's twin sister is besties with Lady Wyndham's daughter, and the girls are set to return to the estate from London, so Marianne will have some company. On the way to Edenbrooke, Marianne's carriage is set upon by a highwayman, and when her coachman is shot, she has to drive the carriage to the nearest inn by herself (this was one of the few useful and admirable things the girl did in the entire novel). At said inn, she's insulted by a gentleman, because of her dishevelled appearance. Once he realises that she is of good standing, he apologises for his incredible rudeness and instead proceeds to condescendingly take matters completely out of her hands. He insists that they be on first name basis, and refuses to divulge anything about his identity.

Once Marianne arrives at Edenbrooke and promptly falls in the river, twice (because she loves to twirl uncontrollably to express happiness, and apparently never looks where she does this), she discovers that Philip is indeed Lady Wyndham's second oldest son. They two strike up a highly unlikely and inappropriate friendship, and just before Marianne's twin Cecily is about to arrive complications rear their ugly head when it's revealed that Philip's older brother died a few years back, making him the lord of the manor, and the man Cecily has set her sights on as a future husband. As Marianne apparently always gives in if her slightly older sister calls dibs on something, this means she has to give up on Philip. Oh noes! How can this conflict ever be resolved!?!

As this book is currently one of the finalists in the Goodreads Choice 2012 awards, and has a huge number of positive reviews both there and here on Amazon, I decided to give it a try. Many of the reviews compare the writing to that of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and all I can say is that both women must be spinning in their graves. Or possibly "twirling" like the heroine in this preposterous story.

It's labelled as a "proper romance", because there aren't any graphic love scenes, but the behaviour of the hero and heroine is deeply improper from the moment they first meet. As the heroine is an inexperienced young girl from the country, her ignorance and foolishness might be explained away, but the so-called "gentleman" hero should know better than to encourage the girl to call him by her first name, flirt inappropriately with her in private and in front of his family. At one point, Philip encourages Marianne to take a nap outside, while he sits around watching her (Edward Cullen alert!), and subsequently claims that "she snores like a big, fat man". If that's the makings of a "proper" romance, give me the kind with sexy times every day of the week. 

The first half is full of badly done exposition, the author overuses adjectives, and in pretty much every scene, all the characters seem to feel an excess of emotions from joy to anger to despair, if the descriptions of their feelings and facial expressions is to be believed. The book is wildly melodramatic, and might have been better if it was written in 3rd person - but sadly, it's not.'

Then there's the plot, highwaymen, falling into rivers, inappropriate flirting and banter, dreadfully characterised supporting characters (both Marianne's twin sister Cecily and Philip's younger sister Louisa are total mean girl bitches for most of the story, only to make a total turnaround and become super supportive and helpful "fairy godmothers" in the wrap up of the story), kidnappings, random due (inside in the common room at an inn - how do you even go about that?) - it may sound exciting, but most of the time, it's just dull, and there's a limit to how far I can suspend my disbelief.

I fully understand that readers may be looking for clean, chaste Regency romances - but do yourselves a favour and read something by Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer novel instead. This is simply a very poor excuse for a novel, pretty cover notwithstanding.

CBR4 Book 64: "At Your Pleasure" by Meredith Duran

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 1 star

Date begun: June 3rd, 2012

Date finished: June 5th, 2012

The year is 1715, and England is a divided county, with a lot of complicated political and religious unrest. Lady Eleonora is a young widow, who's put in a very difficult position when an agent of the Crown comes to search her brother's estate, where he has weapons and barrels of gunpowder buried in the basement, to be used in a Jacobite rebellion against King George I. If the weapons are found, Nora and her brother will be tried for treason. Making the situation even harder is the fact that the King's agent is Adrian Ferrers, the Earl of Rivenham, and Nora's first love.

Adrian used to be a Catholic, and Nora's family refused to let them marry, forcing Nora into an unhappy marriage with an older, violent man. Now that she's a widow, she wants nothing more than to manage her brother's estate for him (a place she loves, but has no rights to, being a mere woman in a time when women were considered chattel). Adrian, however, doesn't know that Nora was forced, and believes she faithlessly abandoned him. Having converted to Protestantism and worked his way up in Queen Anne's court, he's now helping King George track down and stop Jacobite rebels. He knows Nora's brother is guilty, he now needs to know if she's willingly abetting him, or unaware of his doings and whereabouts.

During Adrian's siege of the estate, he learns just how miserable Nora's marriage was, how much she lost when her family discovered her youthful tryst with Adrian, and that she thought he'd abandoned her. Can the lovers be reunited, even though they are on opposite sides of the political and religious divide?

This book was a huge disappointment to me, made even more so by the fact that I rate Meredith Duran's previous novels so very highly, with several of them being among my all time favourites. Add to that the fact that this book's been very favourably reviewed by a lot of reviewers whose opinions I trust on the internet, so my expectations were high. As it was, only stubbornness, and the desperate hope that it would get better at some point if I only kept reading, allowed me to finish the book and not quit it in anger and disgust.

While Nora should probably be pitied, being a woman in a time when they were completely at the mercy of the men in their lives, and treated like property, I just wanted to reach into the book and slap her, hard and repeatedly, for her incredible stupidity. Even though she owes her brother nothing (he helped sell her into marriage to an abusive man) and knows he's committing treason, she helps him endanger her life and those of all the people on the estate she loves, by letting him bury huge amounts of very volatile and dangerous explosives under the manor house. She keeps protecting him, even after it's clear that he intended to marry her off to a cousin, again without even asking how she felt about the match.

Adrian is no prince, either. He tortures Nora by depriving her of sleep for several days, acts in an incredibly arrogant and high-handed way towards her, and even marries her by force (she's bound and gagged at the time) because he's decided that it's what's best for her. Even with all this, he's still the more sympathetic of the two, and that should tell you how insufferably idiotic Nora was.

The only reason I'm giving the book 2 stars is because even though I hated the main characters, and had to force myself to finish the book, Duran still has a magnificent grasp of language and should also be commended for writing a novel set in a different time period than most historical romances. The book is very well researched and written, I just really disliked the plot and central premise. I really hope that this was a one-time occurrence, and that Duran's next book is more to my liking. I would hate for this to be the last of her books I ever read.

CBR4 Book 22: "I Only Have Eyes for You" by Bella Andre

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: March 1st, 2012
Date finished: March 2nd, 2012

This is apparently the fourth book in the series, but I haven't read any of the others, and I suspect it works fine on its own.

Sophie Sullivan's been in love with her brother's best friend since she was five years old. She's a twin, and her sister's always been nicknamed "Naughty", while Sophie is "Nice". She's known to be sensible, level-headed and works as a librarian. Her brother's best friend is Jake McCann, a successful business man who runs a chain of Irish pubs. Jake had a sucky childhood, with a mother who abandoned him, a drunken dad, and what is quite clearly dyslexia (although he was never diagnosed with it). Jake's been a bit of a playboy, but has also fancied Sophie for a long time. He just never really thought he was good enough for her.

During her brother's wedding, where Sophie is one of the bridesmaids, she decides to show Jake once and for all that she's not just the sweet and innocent little girl he thinks of her as. She has the stylist make her up all bombshell, and after the wedding is over, shows up on his doorstep and proceeds to take all her clothes off in front of him. Jake can't really resist, they spend the night together, but then he panics, decides that Sophie's clearly made a huge mistake and leaves without saying anything to her. He doesn't contact her for two months and then Sophie discovers that she's pregnant. Can they get over their differences and make the relationship work, or will Sophie end up a single mum?

I bought I Only Have Eyes for You because it was the book club pick for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and several of their earlier selections have been awesome. This, unfortunately, was not. The premise was not necessarily bad - innocent librarian and business man playboy (who hates to read, but can't tell anyone for fear of showing weakness!). However, the author gives us very little chance to get to know either of the characters that much, and most of their romance seems to be focused on having a lot of great sex. As soon as Jake finds out that Sophie is pregnant, he is determined that she will marry him and that they will clearly spend the rest of their lives together without difficulties, despite the fact that after hooking up with her, he left her without a word and avoids and doesn't speak to her AT ALL for the next ten weeks. He seems to think that one week of spending time together will change her mind (and to be fair, it does), but it seems forced, and implausible. Of course, because we find out so little about the main characters, except that they're both sexy and clearly very compatible in the bedroom department, we're supposed to just take the author's word for it.

Romance readers get criticised a lot, and accused of reading romance because they're frustrated and repressed, and it's a more acceptable reading choice than outright porn. This isn't true. Romance readers enjoy good stories and being entertained, and the best romances are so popular not because they feature hot sex scenes (which many of them don't), but because the readers like the characters and care about their issues, and want to see them overcome obstacles and learn to communicate to find their happy endings. I have strong doubts that Sophie and Jake in this book will have a healthy relationship, but most importantly, I don't CARE, because their so-called romance bored me. Frequently, when I start a series, I want to track down the other books and find out what happened before and after. In this case, not so much. I will not be reading any more Bella Andre books.

CBR3 Book 27: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Publisher: Penguin Classics
Page count: 177 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: April 7th, 2011
Date finished: April 10th, 2011

I try to read at least one literary classic as part of Cannonball every year, and knowing that The Great Gatsby was at least fairly short, it seemed like a good choice. I am also a huge fan of the web comics of Kate Beaton, and wanted to understand brilliant strips like these on all the levels that Ms. Beaton clearly intended.

Normally, 177 pages would be a breeze, especially considering that the period in which I read them included a weekend. The Great Gatsby, however was quite a slog, and the only reason I finished it at all was stubbornness and that fact that I refused to let a novel of less than 200 pages beat me.

The plot is narrated by Nick Carraway, whose settled in the East (Long Island, working in New York) to make money from bonds. The book is set in 1922, and Carraway narrates the story of his distant cousin Daisy Buchanan, her oafish husband Tom, his mysterious neighbour Jay Gatsby, and the rather complicated connections between them. The majority of the characters in the book are unfaithful, and absolutely everyone in it are deeply dislikable. This is the main reason I had such a hard time getting through the book, despite its relative shortness. Carraway is smug and self satisfied, Tom Buchanan is a brute and a fascist, Daisy is a cold-hearted and narcissistic ninny and Jay Gatsby is pitiful and pathetic, hoping to buy both friendship and love.

My husband claims that I just don't get why the book is great, and that Fitzgerald brilliantly captures a period in time with precision and excellent language. That I can't appreciate art for its own sake. When it comes to books, I simply cannot enjoy a book, no matter how beautifully written, if I can't engage with a single character in it. It's the reason I hate greatly acclaimed novels like Wuthering Heights, Atonement, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and now, The Great Gatsby. I do however, find the Kate Beaton comic, even funnier, so that's something. I can also cross the book off as read on all those "Greatest Books of the 20th Century" lists.

CBR3 Book 8: "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali

Publisher: Black Swan
Page count: 496 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: January 29th, 2011
Date finished: January 30th, 2011

Brick Lane was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. It's an international bestseller and was turned into a movie in 2007. It's been sitting on my shelf since 2004, and has been moved with my stuff from Scotland to Norway. It was Monica Ali's debut novel, and the cover and first three-four pages are covered with quotes from rave reviews from literary critics on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm wondering if they read the same book as me, but more on that later.

Nazneen is born in a small village in Bangladesh in 1967 and at first appears to be stillborn. She miraculously draws breath and starts screaming after a minute or two, but refuses to nurse for the first five days of her existence. Her mother is determined to leave her to her Fate, rather than interfering with said Fate and taking the baby to the nearest hospital. After five days, the baby finally starts eating, and Nazneen is told throughout her childhood and adolescence in rural Bangladesh that she must never stand in the way of her Fate, but calmly accept all life throws at her. Her younger sister, the beautiful Hasina has no intention of accepting the traditional path her parents have planned for her, and runs off with the nephew of the village's saw-mill owner to make a love marriage. Shortly after, eighteen-year-old Nazneen is married off to a fat stranger twenty years her elder. Having been raised to be compliant, she doesn't protest, even when he takes her far away to London, England.

Nazneen knows no English and spends most of the early days of her arranged marriage confined to a council flat, cleaning, dusting and cooking. Her husband fancies himself a great scholar, with a degree in English literature from Dhaka University. He occasionally has the local doctor over for dinner, and is sure he will be promoted in his job soon, as he has a much better education than many of his colleagues. Nazneen treasures each new English word she learns as a gem, and founds diversion from her monotonous life by watching glamorous figure skaters on the TV occasionally. She is aware that she is lucky - her husband doesn't hit her, and buys her new saris or anything else she might want, but neither does he understand why she'd want to learn to speak English or leave the confines of the council estate once in a while.

Years pass, Nazneen becomes the mother of two girls, and gets to know most of the the other housewives in the Bangladeshi community near London's Brick Lane well. Her husband is still full of dreams and schemes for making enough money to take the family back "home" to Bangladesh, where the girls can be raised the "proper" way, without all the influence of English society. Nazneen, despite her quiet discontent, is aware that she is much better off than her sister Hasina, who keeps writing every so often. Her love marriage didn't turn out well and as the years go by she ends up worse and worse. Nazneen tries to get enough money put aside to send to her sister, but it's difficult when her own family barely has enough to get by on, and her husband won't let his wife break with tradition and get a job as well.

This book is nearly 500 pages long. It's a very detailed description of immigrant life in London from the 1980s to early 2002, and shows the many difficulties faced by young women brought over from "the old country" through arranged marriages. The meal Nazneen cooks, the clothes she wears, the contents of the flat she lives in, the council estate, Brick Lane and all the people in Nazneen's life are described in painstaking detail. The letters from Hasina are written with a limited vocabulary and poor grammar, which again adds authenticity, but also makes them (at least for me, an English teacher) painfully difficult to read without getting a headache. Despite the great attention to detail and local colour, I found the book dreadfully dull.

I shall from now on think of Brick Lane as the literary equivalent of Woody Allen's film Match Point, which was also lauded by critics everywhere, and which nearly bored me to tears. I'm still convinced all those enthusiastic movie critic saw a different Match Point from me, one that was actually worth all those rave reviews. Same with this - perhaps all those book reviewers read a different book, coincidentally called Brick Lane, which was not a dreary 500-page slog. This book is being donated to charity as soon as possibly, as I'm definitely never reading it again, and I won't have it taking up precious book shelf space any longer either.

CBR2 Book 100: "Victoria" by Knut Hamsun

Publisher: Den Norske Bokklubben
Page count: 140 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: October 16th, 2010
Date finished: October 31st, 2010

Johannes is the miller's son, pining for Victoria, daughter of the local estate owner. The book starts when he is 14 and she is 10. A lonely child, Johannes wants to play with the rich children, but is normally only called upon to wait on them and row them around when they have guests from the city visiting. He spends most of his time alone, using his fertile imagination to invent solitary games and adventures.

When he is 18, and returns home from school in the city, he hopes he has finally been noticed by Victoria after he rescues a young girl from drowning, in front of Victoria and her rich friends. But she still seems more taken with Otto, a young soldier and friend of the family, and once again his hopes are dashed.

Johannes goes to university, and becomes a poet and a writer. After publishing several poems, he moves on to novels, all the while dreaming of Victoria. He is aware that they are from different social classes, but pines for her nonetheless. As his literary fame grows, he is accepted into higher layers of society, among them the home of the girl he rescued from drowning. He also sees Victoria again, but she appears to be engaged. Still, one evening, when he walks her home, she professes his love for him.

Knowing that her family would never accept his suit, Johannes writes several angsty romantic novels and moves abroad. When he finally returns, years later, he arrives back in time for Victoria's engagement party to Otto. Victoria's family are in great need of money, Otto's family have lots. Camilla, the girl he rescued is also there, and nearly 18, she is very infatuated with him. The romance between Johannes and Victoria seems more impossible than ever.

Victoria was written by Hamsun in 1898, and is apparently considered not only one of his most popular books, but one of the most beautiful and well known love stories in Norwegian literature. If so, the state of romantic literature in Norway before 1898 and since, is deplorable. While I understand what Hamsun was trying to do with his tragic romance, it is just not very effective. Mainly because Johannes is a total weenie and Victoria is given as much personality as a wet rag.

Why should Hamsun bother infusing the object of Johannes' affection and love with any sort of personality or character? The more important thing is the development of the young man and HIS feelings. Also, the lyrical descriptions of the Norwegian country side, those are important. This is period literature, and as a former lit student, I know I shouldn't be upset that writers who lived a 150 years are misogynistic or write only from the POV of the gender they know.

It's not like Jane Austen writes anything but the female point of view in Pride and Prejudice. But at least there is some substance in her books. In Victoria, the whole romance seems based on the characters interacting a few times when they were kids, then pining a whole lot for each other and constructing elaborate fantasies about the other party, a few short meeting as adults, where they have no chance to get to know each other more closely, a lot of angst from Johannes' side, then the book ends.

I read this mainly because we (the Norwegian teachers at the school where I work) are forcing the 10th graders to read the book so they have a literary classic to analyze for their final exam in the spring. I suspect that most of them are going to find the book both boring and deeply uninteresting, and I can't say that I blame them. This is the second Hamsun novel I have read now, and while his descriptions of the Norwegian nature are stunning, his plotting and so called romances leave a lot to be desired, and I don't know if I will read any more of his books unless forced.

CBR2 Book19: "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: January 6th, 2010
Date finished: January 9th, 2010

When Elpeth Noblin dies, she leaves her London flat and most of her possessions to her twin nieces, daughters of her twin sister Edie. Julia and Valentina inherit on their 21st birthday, on the condition that they live in the flat for at least one year, and they never let their parents set foot in it. There is obviously some bad blood between the eldest pair of twins, an event in their past caused their long estrangement. Julia and Valentina are inseparable (somewhat to the annoyance of Valentina) and while puzzled by the bequest, they decide to move to London for a year.

Once they move into the flat, located on the edge of the historic Highgate cemetery, they eventually meet Elspeth's two neighbours. In the flat above theirs lives the reclusive yet charming Martin, a crossword compiler who suffers from OCD so bad his wife has left him and moved to Amsterdam. In the flat below theirs lives Robert, Elspeth's grieving lover, a PHD-candidate who also works as a guide at the cemetery. Elspeth herself is also a significant character in the novel, who we get to know partially through flashbacks, but mostly because after her death she haunts the flat where she lived, trying to make contact with the living by making light bulbs flash and the like.

Her Fearful Symmetry is Audrey Niffenegger's second novel, the follow-up to her hugely successful debut The Time-Traveler's Wife (which I absolutely adored and included in my best of the decade list). So I obviously had some expectations. Niffenegger creates fascinating characters, richly drawn and with many layers. She very deftly describes the bond between the two sets of twins, and makes the reader understand both why one twin seems to always want to stay close to her sister, yet the other longs for freedom and independence. However, in the final third or so of the book, the story takes a direction I distinctly disliked. It is to Niffenegger's credit as a writer that I still felt compelled to finish the book, even when it took a completely unexpected turn and became something entirely different from what I had expected. I did not think it worked, but will allow others to make up their minds for themselves as to whether they think the story came to a satisfying end.