Four Totally Different Books

Unfortunately--and this is all my fault and shouldn't reflect on the book--the main thing I learned here was that I should steer clear of audio format for anything that I actually want to retain. Since they end of tax season meant a return to many work tasks that could probably be performed by a really smart monkey, I decided do download some spoken word content to my ipod to help pass the time. Although I enjoyed listening, I really couldn't reiterate or summarize anything from this book. From now on, I'll stick to podcasts and fluffy fiction...

This young-adult book had a fairly standard story, revolving around an orphaned boy who lives by himself in a train station. What's innovative is the way the story is told; the illustrations don't just augment the narrative, they take on parts of it, so some of the action is described only through pictures, not text.

I liked this book a lot less than I was expecting to. I had read and loved Ahab's Wife and Four Spirits, so I knew I liked the author. But it was kind of like getting stuck talking to someone boring at a party.

The book is told in the first person from Marie Antoinette's point-of-view. I don't know if it was Naslund's goal to make her likable or sympathetic, but she came off as self-centered, petty, and oblivious, even if (as Naslund points out in the forward) she didn't actually say "Let them eat cake." She certainly did make Marie Antoinette seem like a real, albeit flawed, person, though, and maybe that was Naslund's goal all along.

Although I did learn a few historical details I didn't know before, she's never been an object of fascination for me (like, say, the Romanovs). And the one detail that I already knew from the Coppola movie--that she had to leave her beloved dog, Mops, behind when she left Austria--was ruined when I learned that when she was reunited with Mops and wasn't very interested in him.

Writing fiction about such a well-known historical figure--especially one with such a famous death--presents an interesting challenge because the reader knows what is coming all along. If she'd been written as more likable, I would have been dreading the march towards the Guillotine the whole time, hoping that maybe the author would rewrite history and give her a last-minute fictional pardon. As it was, though, I was really looking forward to the execution. I didn't hate the book, but I was definitely disappointed.

Oh, these Shopaholic books are just fluffy crap, but they're fun and funny, and only take a day or so to read. This one introduces Becky's long-lost half-sister, who is a total cheapskate.