The Rosie Project: A Novel by Graeme Simsion (2013)

Pink Sweetheart Roses. Source: muffet1 via deviantart

You know when you stay up super late because you started a book, and you just have to finish it before going to bed?

It’s almost 1 a.m. local time, and I just finished this book. I’m still processing. I can’t sleep yet, so I figured I’d blog about it instead.

You know when a book is so good that as soon as you’ve read the last page, you want to flip it over and start from the beginning again? Even though you figured out the plot twist halfway through and you know how the story ends?

I have to work in the morning, so I can’t re-read this right away. But it’s still a newbie at the library, and pretty popular (and for good reason) so it’s only a seven-day loan. Which gives me ’til Saturday. I only started this book on my lunch break today, so I’ve got plenty of time to re-read it before it goes back to the library. Maybe even twice.

The Rosie Project just reminds me so much of ME, and it reminds me so much of SO MANY PEOPLE I KNOW, and it’s like it explains so many things about the human condition, and yet I’ve got more questions now than I did before. I kind of teared up at one little section towards the end, and I don’t know why, of all the scenes or sentences or phrasings, that was the section my brain went for.

More questions to answer. More thoughts to ponder. Not sure if I’ll fall asleep with my brain on like this… maybe I’ll start re-reading Rosie again right now. (Rosie is the name of one of the main characters, by the way.)

Dolls Behaving Badly: A Novel for Every Woman Who’s Earned a Little Fun by Cinthia Ritchie (2013)

This was a perfectly good book until I got to the end and there were Discussion Questions. As in a book club. Is that really a thing people do? Like, not just for the wine? It seems like all that talk would ruin the story, just like grade-school book reports did. I don’t really understand how the author and/or editor(s) think this book is so high-falutin and literary it needs reading group discussion questions at the end, and yet saw fit to put blow-up dolls on the cover (and it’s a really good cover! Good imagery and symbolism; totally appropriate for the story! So eye-catching I picked it up, even though I’d never heard of the book or the author!).

But yeah.

Discussion Questions.

*swigs wine*