To Top
Do you need to jump start your new year? Do you need to find yourself a new outlook on life? Do you sometimes wish you were alive in the 20s and 30s and 40s, sipping the bubbly out of delicate coupe glasses, experiencing the budding jazz movement in a smokey bar, surrounded by gentleman who still open the doors and pick up the check for a pretty lady? Do you enjoy reading a perfectly poetic and unexpected story, one that you cannot put down until the very end and then even at the end you long for just a little more, just one more sentence. Dear friends, then run … do not walk, to the nearest book store and pick up this gem of a tale, namely the ‘Rules of Civility’.
My new office is a multi-company space, largely filled by an architecture firm that surrounds the walls + crevices + overhangs with towers and bridges and skyscrapers. The rest of the space is filled with a combination of tech companies, start-ups and one non-profit. There is a free, one-cup-flowing-a-plenty coffee maker within the kitchen/staff room and a large, flat screen TV adorning the wall. And while all these things are welcome and quite an upgrade from past work environments – my favorite feature of my new office is the employee book exchange.
The deal is thus … you bring a book, you share a book, you take a book, you read a book. This is how I came to hold ‘The Girl in Blue’. See, a friend had given me two of the ‘Twilight’ books because he was uninterested in the tale – and I admit to feeling the exact same way. But throwing away a book is incredibly wasteful, so instead I brought the two tomes to my book exchange and instead found this brightly-covered, humorous, little gem and was able to enjoy a tale much more to my liking.
Vices are weaknesses indulged in by most; avoided by a few. Some people drink, some people smoke, some people gamble, some people visit ladies of the night … and me, I read/buy books. In every room of my house you are able to find a well-loved, well-read novel, or two, or ten. When I get super-stressed, my favorite thing to do is disappear into a world unlike mine and make friends with a novel’s cast of characters. And one of my favorite author’s imaginations to visit is that of Sarah Addison Allen.
I originally found Sarah Addison Allen sitting on a clearance bin. Well not her exactly, obviously – but one of her novels, The Sugar Queen. And ever since I have been hooked. The woman writes women well. She speaks to my heart and is so dear and enlightening about love and relationships – platonic or passionate. Sarah reminds me that sometimes there is still magic however small in the world. And when my husband bought me two more of her novels for my birthday, it only took me three days to fly through them both. Then my sister bought me one last Allen and I blew through it overnight, not that this will be the only time I read through these tomes – these books are repeat offenders.
‘Expecting conceit they found courtesy. Expecting arrogance they found a man concerned with people’s thoughts and feelings.’
And me - expecting a sweet little story – found an in-your-face, wham bam, bordering-on-vulgar, yet nonetheless exciting mobster tale. Let me tell you, dear little Jackie Collins has got a mouth on her like a truck driver. She frequently drops the f’bomb, hesitates little in calling women C-U-Next-Tuesdays or – most blush-inducing for me because I hate the word – the p word {the p-word = sometimes followed by cat or willow}, and describes sexual acts in extreme details, aka this book is NOT for the faint of heart.
I read Gregory MaGuire’s ‘Wicked‘ when it first came out back in 1995 – and loved it. I quickly collected and read Greg’s other fairytale adaptations – ‘Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister’, ‘Lost’, and ‘Mirror, Mirror’ – and must admit to being disappointed in these other lackluster tales. Whereas ‘Wicked’ was nothing short of captivating, these other adaptations were confusing and without the heart of MaGuire’s magnum opus. This is largely why I waited over 10 years to read the second and third installements of the Wicked Witch series.
‘We came home because we were failures … we crafted careful excuses and alibis, and wrapped them around ourselves like a cloak to keep out the cold truth.’
The story opens as three sisters: Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia – named after characters from Shakespeare’s infamous writings – head back to their childhood home, for three different reasons and with three very different internal issues to work out.
I picked up this book because:
A.) It was on clearance
B.) I was desperate for a book
C.) I like sugar
D.) I admired the font treatment used
What I did not expect was this book to be so incredibly:
A.) Heart-warming
B.) Mystical
C.) Enchanting
