Tales of a reformed English major

Back in the old days, when I had an attention span, I was a voracious reader. I used to read a wide variety of topics and kept several books going at once. Now, the back of the Cheerios box looks like fresh prose every morning. I also used to be a bit of a snob about pop literature. Anything with an Oprah stamp was beneath me (unless I'd already read it, then Oprah was a wanna-be) and I scoffed at the idea of chick lit. Well, then I became a mom. The piles of unread, untouched books got larger on my nightstand the longer the kids existed. I now have a couple K2-sized stacks blocking my view of the alarm clock (I don't need it anyway) and my access to my face cream (my wrinkles cry themselves to sleep every night). Serious reading takes so long now with all the re-reading I have to do when I open up the book and realise that I can't remember what I read the night before. Why would anyone use more than three characters in a book? They just confuse me!

Anyway, all this to say that when my mother-in-law came down with a stack of Sophie Kinsella novels, I was wary and at the same time in need of some good brain-light reading. Verdict? I love these books! I ignored all my other books and read through every single one. They are like Harlequins for people with brain cells. The shopaholic series is a fun read and the main character is surprisingly interesting and intelligent. The other two novels (Can You Keep a Secret and The Undomestic Goddess) are even better and could also be directly translated to movies (I can already see the trailers). The women are all beautiful, the men that fall for them are all handsome, rich, talented, well-built, or all of the above, but Kinsella has taken the time to write them well and research her topics. Maggie has just given me another potential chick-lit find by Emily Giffin, I'll let you know how that goes.