In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 43/52

Five books last week - 2nd June to 8th June.

Ghost Moth, Silent Scream, and The Double Clue (the book with no image) are books I all read for bookclubs which I didn't end up attending.  I didn't really get Ghost Moth; I didn't understand why Katherine had any dilemma.  She wasn't really into her fiance, so why not just leave him for the guy she liked?  There was never an explanation given for that.

The Double Clue was the first collection of Hercule Poirot stories I've ever read.  I'm definitely a Holmes girl, but they were pretty good!

Silent Scream is set in the Black Country, and I do wonder if it was self-published.  The story-telling is excellent, but the author's grammar isn't brilliant.  She uses commas incorrectly quite a few times, and she's got a really irritating habit of referring to people as "males" and "females" outside of biological concepts.  i.e., "the female corpse" would work, because you're identifying the characteristics of something that is now inanimate, in a biological context, but "the female walked into the room" sounds weird, because you're now talking about a human, in a social context, while identifying her biologically.  It's a weird tic.

The Devil Wears Prada is a book I keep reading, even though it annoys me.  Something about the experience appeals to me, clearly.  I got the audiobook this time.

The Green Mile I'd read before, but I'd forgotten how utterly horrifying it was, particularly Delacroix's death.  While we know he's a rapist and a murderer, that's offscreen; onscreen, he's the closest thing we have to a clown, which makes it particularly heart-rending, quite apart from the sheer horror of what happens to him.

I have this as both an audiobook and a kindle book (because I forgot about one when I bought the other) but I only listened to the audio.  I really need to write an update for my Stephen King project; I'm three books behind!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week VI

I started lots of books this week. I didn't finish many.

 A lot of the books I've been reading are short stories - Night Shift, Binocular Vision, and The Best Russian Short Stories, those first two by Stephen King and Edith Pearlman respectively.  Because they're short stories, I've not been reading them in one go; instead I've been dipping in and out at random.

I've also been reading Mansfield Park; I've never gotten along with Austen but I listened to a Freakonomics podcast a while back that theorised about her novels being an exploration of game theory in a social setting, which made me a little more interested.  Plus, Project Gutenberg is one site that's unblocked at work and that no one says a thing about me looking at during quiet times.  So I've been dipping into Flatland when Mansfield Park becomes a bit too much.

I also started reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for a bookclub I'll be attending on Tuesday evening.  I like it so far.  It's about HeLa cells, the first immortal strain of human cells, which is still propagating in petri dishes all over the world, and the woman they came from in the first place.

Going back to what I actually did finish reading this week.  I've read The Devil Wears Prada before.  I remember Brit-picking it, and you can read that rant here.  You can also read my longer review of the book here.

I reread The Devil Wears Prada this week because I got my hands on a copy of Revenge Wears Prada and figured I should reread the original so it was fresh in my mind.  It worked pretty well.  Both were 99p on the Kindle store.

Revenge Wears Prada is in third person, which is a bit of a jump from the first person viewpoint of Devil.  Weisberger has also dropped that religion theme-naming thing she was doing.  All of the old characters pop back up, and the work is thematically similar, in that Andy is treated unfairly until she snaps and fixes her life.  I quite enjoyed it, though it wasn't anything too special.  If you liked the original book, it's probably worth a look if you have the time and 99p to spare.  There isn't really any revenge though.

I think I gave them both 3/5 stars.

In Which We Discuss The Devil Wears Prada

When Andrea (Andy) Sachs takes on a job in fashion – telling herself it's only a stepping stone to her dream job at the New Yorker – she takes on more than she bargained for. Her boss, Miranda Priestly, is the most influential person in fashion, and, Andrea is convinced, the Devil incarnate. Every day, as Miranda's personal assistant, Andrea is asked to achieve the impossible, and, once she manages it, it's added to her list of daily duties.

It's said that working for Miranda for a year – and not getting fired – can guarantee you a job almost anywhere you like, and trusting in this, Andrea begins counting down the days. Her boyfriend, Alex, and her best friend Lily, and even her parents, are unable to understand how important this is to her, and how strict Miranda is. Too rushed off her feet to find time to explain, Andrea finds her relationships with everyone close to her suffering.

One area in which the novel suffers is in characterization. Miranda Priestly, the boss from hell, is a masterpiece. You really do hate her, and since that is her role in the novel, since that's the whole idea behind her existence, then it works great. But there are very few likable characters in the novel. Christian Collinsworth, who plays the role of Andy's knight in shining armour, her apple in Eden, is smarmy, arrogant, and selfish. Andy's boyfriend, Alex, is moralistic preacher figure, and although I'm sure he's a lovely person, he's not someone I'd enjoy spending time with. Andy's best friend, Lily, is equally selfish. Every character in the novel goes on and on about Andy's neglecting them, yet not one of them attempts to understand how difficult her life and her job is, or even help her hold on to her sanity for the year she needs to spend there.

The book is told in first person, and so the main character the reader gets to know is Andy herself. Andy is something of a hypocritical snob, yet manages to be the most likable character in the book. This speaks volumes.

Lauren Weisberger writes in a very gossipy style, and it's rumored that the book is a roman à clef about Vogue magazine, with the character of Miranda Priestly based on the editor of the aforementioned magazine, Anna Wintour. Although Weisberger denies that this is true, that's said to be the defining factor that propelled the book up the bestseller lists.

Perhaps not entirely unexpected in a book whose title contains the word "devil" religion is something of a subliminal theme. Andrea is Jewish, as was Miranda Priestly before she changed her name, became the editor of Runway, and stopped writing home. Andrea's Jewish friends Alex Fineman and Lily Goodwin, find themselves neglected in favour of Miranda Priestly, and Christian Collinsworth as the book progresses, as if Andrea is turning her back on everything she knows, in this case, religion, and following the same path Miranda once did.

The ending suffers, and greatly degrades the rest of the book. It's almost heavily moralistic, and very clichéd.

In summary, a fairly interesting novel, far too weighed down by its morals and unlikable characters.

In Which We Discuss the Problems with Not Proof-Reading

I like the book (and the film) of The Devil Wears Prada. They're both fun and interesting. But the book has two major mistakes and every time I get to them, I just want to go find Lauren Weisberger - or, possibly, her editor - and ask them how they could possibly miss something so obvious.

Firstly, the following;

I had Googled her and was surprised to find that Miranda Priestly was born Miranda Princhek in London's East End. Hers was like all the other orthodox Jewish families in the town, stunningly poor but devout. Her father occasionally worked odd jobs, but mostly they relied on the community for support, since he spent most of his days studying Jewish texts. Her mother had died in childbirth with Miriam and it was her mother who'd moved in and helped raise the children. And were there children! Eleven in all. Most of her brothers and sisters went on to work blue-collar jobs like their father, with little time to do anything but pray and work; a couple managed to get themselves into and through the university, only to marry young and begin having large families of their own. Miriam was the single exception to the family tradition.

After saving the small bills her older siblings would slip her whenever they were able, Miriam promptly dropped out of high school upon turning seventeen - a mere three months shy of graduation - to take a job as an assistant to an up-and-coming British designer, helping him put together his shows each season.

Firstly, there aren't that many Orthodox Jewish families in London, and it's highly doubtful that any of them would survive by donations, let alone have eleven children.

Miriam did not save bills. We have pounds and pound notes. She would have saved notes, or coins. Not bills.

Miriam did not drop out of high school. She would never have attended high school, since we don't have those in the UK. And even if Andy was just translating it into American, and meant 'secondary school' then Miriam would have left at sixteen. And she wasn't three months shy of graduation whenever she left, because we don't graduate (except from university, around the age of 23).

Oh, and London isn't a town.

Goddamit, do some fucking research.

The second mistake is minor compared to this one. A character says something to Andy at the start of a chapter, Andy goes into an inner monologue, and then, when she comes out of it, finds out that the person in question has been in a coma, and couldn't possibly have been around to say whatever it was, that Andy doesn't acknowledge anyway.