From the depths of Doctorow to the shallows of chick lit

March 5 to March 10, 1976 I read:

Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow

This is a lovely book. I now realize that the format was experimental (and that this did not always work for Doctorow) But at the time I read it, I drank it in without seeing anything that interrupted the story. The author's rambling fit well with the soundtrack--the renaissance that ragtime music and Scott Joplin in particular went through in the mid-1970s.

Three for Tomorrow: Three Original Novellas of Science Fiction (Hardcover)
by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, James Blish

You Can Get There from Here, Shirley MacLaine

While I was looking up this book (still available used and evidently frightening some readers to this day), I found that there’s a “noir cartoon” book—aka “graphic novel,” I’m unclear on the distinction entitled You Can’t Get There from Here by Norwegian cartoonist Jason. This one “chronicles one of the oldest love triangles in the world: Mad scientist creates monster, mad scientist creates woman for monster, mad scientist...falls in love with the woman he created for the monster!” Ha, and they thought Shirley MacLaine was scary! Seriously it sounds kind of sweet, in an angsty kind of way.

Word Play : What Happens When People Talk, Peter Farb
Working, Studs Terkel

My note indicates that I found Word Play and Working invigorating, but didn’t finish either. Too fragmentary in structure, I suspect. I ended up dipping into each of them repeatedly over the years since.


March 5 to March 10, 2006 I read:

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

This book made me laugh, which is something I value highly. Sedaris’ adventures with unusual French phrase books, such as the English-to-French for Medical Practitioners reminded me of a book that found its way to my bookshelves, the 1972 edition of A Practical Spanish Grammar for Border Patrol Guards (issued by the US Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service). What it lacks in political correctness, it makes up in phrases that are hard to find elsewhere such as: Give me the knife. Where did you bury the body? And: Provided that you tell us the truth we will let you go tomorrow.


Asking for Trouble: A Novel, Elizabeth Young

I had an odd experience with this book. I was sure I had read it before—but I think it was three other books I’d read wherein the heroine hires an escort to save face at an important wedding, and ends up finding love. This book eventually became a movie—The Wedding Date. In referring to that movie, the movie Pretty Woman was often evoked. I think that is totally inappropriate. The heroine of Pretty Woman, the Julie Roberts character, was portrayed as an ordinary streetwalker given the Pygmalion treatment to turn her into an acceptable date for an upscale executive.

Contrarily in the female-hires-male scenario, it is repeatedly stressed that the male lead is NOT a prostitute—just briefly dabbling in the escort biz as a favor for a friend.

I’m not going to delve into that treasure trove of gender expectations.

Asking for Trouble is classic chick lit—which is closer to farce than romance. While I read this I noted the author’s strenuous efforts to keep the heroine and her hero from disclosing the secrets that kept them apart. The similarity to farce is that both require juggling of ongoing deceptions. A surprising amount of skill is required to keep up the illusion of believability. Asking for Trouble is a first novel, and did not always pull off that trick, but I enjoyed it enough to finish it.