CHICK LIT

Read The wonder spot by Melissa Bank a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure I agree with Curtis Sittenfeld's very well-written review in the New York Times where she calls The wonder spot chick lit. While it is a bit lacking in substance (in the way that you don't really care about what happens to the protagonist) and it isn't nearly as good as Bank's debut novel The girl's guide to hunting and fishing, I just don't think about it as chick lit which to me are books where the girl more often than not works in PR, the designer labels that she wears are randomly mentioned on every second page, as is the salon where she does her hair, she has a group of girlfriends that she drinks mojitos with and who all seem more interested in the protagonist's life than their own, she has her eyes set on her dream guy whose outfits and hair is just as meticulously described as her own and the ending always consists of the girl realising that he loved her all along or - in order to switch it up a bit - that she didn't really love him but that other guy waiting in the wings who maybe doesn't have the right credentials (i.e. money, an interest in celebrities) but who nevertheless has great hair and loves her for who she is. Basically, Everyone worth knowing by Lauren Weisberger (I think I might have just inadvertently described the plot) or Bergdorf Blondes by Plym Sykes, or anything by Sophie Kinsella. And that's not what I got out of The wonder spot. (Side-bar, while we are on the subject: I also don't regard Helen Fielding's novels about Bridget Jones or anything by Marian Keyes as chick-lit. And also, I don't necessarily think that chick lit novels are always a bad thing).
Having said that, I didn't especially like The wonder spot.

After that, I read some books in Swedish, so feel free to go to the Swedish blog. Now I'm reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which is just so, so, so good.