Skinny Bitch & Skinny Bitch in the Kitch -- Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

I want to be healthy, and have a body that is pure and good and perfect. I don't want to be told I am fat and disgusting, and that eating flesh is wrong and evil and gross, and be pelted with extremely dubious science. I am prepared to believe that eating organic and eating fresh and natural and avoiding chemicals and sugar is bad for you--no, I totally believe it. But I am not prepared to believe that the only way to be healthy is to become a vegan. This is possibly because I am not prepared to give up butter and cheese and milk and yes, animal flesh. Yes, I am looking into agave nectar, because I have never been comfortable with nutrasweet and I am thinking about giving up soda, because really, it is all chemicals, they're right. But I won't stop taking Midol for my cramps, and I am going to continue to enjoy bloody steak, and I am going to continue to be pissed off that they think it is hip and awesome and cool and in any way okay to call their readers disgusting pigs. Okay? Okay.

Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries -- Alexander McCall Smith

I don't like his other series. The famous one. I'm sorry. I like the main character, who is a woman of substance and very funny. But the books--they're just too gentle and slow-moving and precious and quirky, and it's really hard to keep plowing ahead when I just don't care all that much about the mysteries that don't seem too mysterious.

The Isabel Dalhousie mysteries are--well, pretty much the same. Pretty quiet, the mysteries aren't particularly mysterious, but I like them so much better. They feel more urban, and contemporary. I like the cut of Isabel's jib--she is an ethical philosopher, and there is a lot of speculation about ethical morals and quandries. And she's an older lady who's in love with her niece's ex boyfriend who is 15 years younger, and I am salaciously intrigued. The stories move slowly, the resolutions are not very resolute, and I shouldn't sit and read these back to back, the way I did the first two because the problems with the series will just get larger and make me irritated, but I'll keep picking them up slowly, when I need something light to read.

Lean Mean Thirteen -- Janet Evanovich

The titles in this series just mean less and less, don't they. Not that they ever had much to do with the actual content of the story, really. But they seem less relevant every time. The books also seem less relevant. They are fun, Stephanie is wacky, the men who are inexplicably enamoured of her and her wackiness are all hot and sexy, but--the story isn't moving forward at all. Stephanie remains wacky, has two men and a zany grandma, and has car troubles. I figure Evanovich figures she has a formula that people seem to love, and why mess with it? But it's starting to drive me a little bit fucking batty. So much so that this entry in the series took me over a week to finish, when usually it only takes a couple of hours. TV is shiny! Something better happen next time. That is a plea in vain, I know.

I'm Not the New Me -- Wendy McClure

I read this a long while back--when it first came out. I raced through it, and liked it so much, though I had some questions about the distance of the narrator, which seemed at odds with the kind of book it was. Aren't memoirs supposed to be confessional, I thought?

This time, I read it for the elastic waist book club, and was able to read it more slowly, and I saw the same distance issues, but on second reading, realized what she was doing--really, the book uses that distance deliberately, the disconnect between who she was and who she thought she wanted to be (the new me) and how things don't turn out the way you hope they will, and what you're supposed to actually do about that. Reading it again also let me appreciate the language, which was gorgeous, the metaphors, which were brilliant, and the comedy, which was comical. It is a very funny book, but it's also remarkably touching, thoughtful, penetrating and such a good read. I'm glad I read it a second time.

once more, with feeling

Again, I come back to my book blog. It was a resolution I made, for the new year, because it's always nice to remember that I've read something. For instance, looking back over this page, I was surprised that I had read We Have Always Lived in the Castle really not all that long ago, when it feels like I've loved it for just about ever. I haven't had much time for the reading, since the first of the year, but I did just finish a few books, and that means that probably, if I am going to be good to my word and also brave and strong, I ought to write about those books. If I can remember what they were. Which I shall try to do right this second.