Sophia Kinsella's Undomestic Goddess

I've seen Ms. Kinsella's books off and on for several years now, usually prominantly displayed. The title "Shopaholic and" whatever turned me off. I'm missing that particular girl-gene and thus the premise appealed not to me. Recently though, I saw a stand alone novel titled The Undomestic Goddess.

The book tells the tale of Samantha, a young lawyer and veritable rising star in her field who's life takes a complete u-turn. One Comedy of Errors later and she finds herself employed as a housekeeper, expected to know how to do everything from produce Cordon Blue style meals to removing stains from fancy clothes. Not to mention making the beds and cleaning the loo. Eventually the heroine finds a balance between her old life and then her new one, and in the process finds herself and true love.

Definitely "chick-lit" Undomestic Goddess is still an enjoyable story. Personally I felt empathy for Samantha...especially as she struggles to make meringue or figure out what the heck blanching is. The later is a struggle I've had in my own life recently as I learned to cook asparagus. In any case, I would reccomend Goddess, and if you like shopping more than I, give her more popular series a try. Kinsella's style is an enjoyable one.

Dawn Cook's Truth series

The computer ate the nice long post I was working on about this series, which I recently read in its four book entirity. Shame on the computer. Suffice it to say they were good; I teared up at the end of the last one.

I'll try and recreate my "review" at some point, but wanted to put something out there NOW.

Sharon Shinn's Summers at Castle Auburn

Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn was recommended to me through an author's blog, though I'm embarrassed to admit I forget which one. I found it recently at the library and picked it up on a whim.

The book follows the coming of age of a young woman named Coriel. She is the illegitimate daughter of a deceased noble, and her uncle has brought her to spend her summers among the ruling class. Corie goes from about 14 to 18 over the course of the book and Shinn does an excellent job of portraying the changes from naive adolescence to a girl on the brink of adulthood. Corie must learn first to recognize, then deal with the machinations of court life and she does her own unpredictable way before choosing her own future.

The book touches on sisterhood, slavery, first crushes, friendship and introduces the aliora, a fey like race with magical properties. I found it to be an enjoyable and engrossing novel and look forward to unearthing more of Shinn's novels.

Sweatin' to the Oldies

Did you know that you burn more calories on an elliptical machines than a treadmill? Or that the arc machine is kind of like a stair master that's easy on the knees? Or that reading books while sweating makes the sweating a little less miserable?

I've averaged approximately a book every two days this week, mostly courtesy of the gym, however I've nothing new to report. I've plowed through the first two books in the "Full" series, luckily it doesn't matter much that I've read them out of order. Also in my pile of library books are Meg Cabot's Boy Meets Girl and some of her regency romances under the Patricia Cabot name, Holly Black's Valiant, Sharon Shinn's Summers at Castle Auburn and Dawn Cook's Truth quartet. As I get to the new books I shall be sure to review them.