Light Fiction

My latest request for recommendations was for books that are light and not too depressing.  Erika asked me for recommendations falling into this category after spin class and I was so tired and sweaty I seriously couldn't think.  But even once I cooled off, it actually took longer to think of what books fall into this category than I thought it would.  I read plenty of light fiction, the question is how to define "not too depressing."

For example, I usually recommend Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes to people looking for light reading as I did in my post on vacation reading, but though they write with a light touch, there are also lots of heavy topics addressed in their books - death of loved ones, domestic abuse, etc.  Every book has to have some dramatic conflict to make it interesting, so all too often books involve some element of sadness either in the plot or the main character's backstory.  And I for one love a good cathartic fiction-inspired cry, so I don't mind some sadness even in a light book.  So, I kept considering and rejecting books, but ultimately came up with a few that seem light and charming and, hopefully, not too depressing!

From the Top 10 Archives: Jen's Ten Favorite Books of 2000

Continuing our journey through my top 10 list archives, today we'll re-visit my 10 favorite books from 2000.  As a reminder, that means books I read in 2000, not necessarily books published that year.

Here's my list from 2000, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende
Bee Season - Myla Goldberg
Local Girls - Alice Hoffman
Who's Irish - Gish Jen
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
Jewel - Brett Lott
While I Was Gone - Sue Miller
Lucy Crocker 2.0 - Caroline Preston
Drowning Ruth - Christina Schwartz
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

Please Don't Call Your Book the Next 'Gone Girl'!

Please, do me a favor, and don't call your book "the next Gone Girl."  It's just going to set your readers up for disappointment.

Look, I get it - it's not necessarily the authors that do this - it's the publishers or the marketers or the reviewers.  And I even understand why they think it's the right thing to do, because it will draw people in.  And I might even be one of those people who is a sucker for pithy blurbs myself - I recently saw something about a book described as "'Station Eleven' meets the 'Hunger Games'" and pretty much started drooling and added the book to my Amazon wishlist.

But if you make a promise, you better deliver on it, and all too often these books - especially the "next Gone Girl" books - are disappointing.

GCBC - "The Shadow Sister" and "Cocoa Beach"

A little later in this post, you will hear a discussion of the books "The Shadow Sister" by Lucinda Riley and "Cocoa Beach" by Beatriz Williams.  But first, I need to introduce you to Sarah Binder and our book club (which is just the two of us!), which we call "GCBC."

Sarah and I met many years ago at the law firm where we both worked.  Over time, we became close friends and we discovered our shared love of books.  (And those things were surely related, as our shared obsessive love of books definitely bonds us!)  So, back in 2012, we decided to start a book club at work, inviting a variety of our other friends at the office to join us.  But with everyone working hard, often people either didn't have time to meet to discuss the book, or didn't even get around to reading it, so it was often just the two of us and maybe one or two others.  Eventually, we started picking books for just the two of us, which was convenient when we both stopped working there!  Since Sarah lives in the city and I live in Westchester, we started meeting for lunch at Grand Central, and would generally pick a book to discuss when we were getting together, and finally gave our book club a name - Grand Central Book Club, or GCBC for short.  Sometimes we go months without reading anything together, sometimes we read a bunch of books in a very short period of time.  If we pick a book and don't end up meeting in person, we often end up discussing the book over e-mail.

This past month, we read two historical novels, "The Shadow Sister" and "Cocoa Beach," and we had a great back and forth about them over e-mail, which seemed like the perfect basis for a blog!  So without further ado, I present to you our conversation!

Books Being Adapted Into Movies Coming out in 2018

Thought it would be interesting to take a look at some books that are being adapted into movies coming out in 2018.  This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, just going to highlight a few based on books I have already read, and a few based on books that I already own or have been meaning to read and perhaps I'll read before the movies come out.

So if you also like to read books before seeing the movies, here are some books you may want to check out before they come out in the movie theater this year!

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's Ten Favorite Books of 1999

I was asked to post my old top 10 lists on the blog, so this will be the first in a series of blogs where I revisit a top 10 list from the past.  As a reminder, these are books I read in the year in question, not necessarily books that were published that year.

For this one, I'm going to go all the way back to my very first top 10 list, from 1999.

Confessions of a Book Hoarder

My name is Jen, and I'm a bookaholic.  Almost everyone knows I love to read, and a fair amount of people know that I love to accumulate books.  But few people know the depths of my book hoarding.

See that photo above?  That's the bookcase in my bedroom.  My bookcase of UNREAD books.  The books I've read are on bookcases elsewhere in my house.  This is all books I've acquired but yet to read.  

Dystopian fiction

Last night, my friend Becca asked for a recommendation of a book in the dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction category.   This happens to be one of my many favorite genres, so I had a lot of suggestions for her, and I figured it would make a good post too.  I'll be covering other genres in future posts, so if you have any specific requests, let me know!

"Wonder" the movie vs. "Wonder" the book

I went to see the movie "Wonder" with my 9 year old son Jonah yesterday, which got me thinking about what makes a successful adaptation from a book to a movie.

I thought the movie was great, though not quite as a great as the book.  What made the viewing experience  different for me this time was that often when I see the movie version of a book I read, I read the book a year ago or more, sometimes quite a few years, so I might remember just the general gist of what the book is about.  And while I did read "Wonder" for the first time back in 2013, I JUST finished reading it with Jonah, who hadn't previously read it.  For the last month or two, we have read a few chapters of the book out loud before he goes to bed, and we literally finished reading it on Saturday night and then went and saw it in the movie theater on Sunday before it leaves theaters all together.  So, it was unusually fresh in my mind in terms of making direct comparisons between the book and the movie.

Anticipated Books of 2018

I probably have enough books in my possession to last me at least the next 5 years if not more.  But as if that's not enough, here are some books I'm particularly looking forward to reading which are going to be published in 2018.  I'm lucky enough to already have advance copies of a few of these, but will have to wait for the others!  Publication dates are listed in parentheses, and I've listed them in order of currently scheduled publication date.

Jen's Top 10 Books of 2017

For many years, I have been compiling a list of my ten favorite books read in the year just ended and sharing with my friends, first through e-mail and then through Facebook as well.  Now that I have a blog, I'm excited not to just share my list here but also be able to go into a little more detail!

As those of you who have been receiving these lists know, it's not necessarily books published in that year, just books I read that year.  Here's my list for 2017, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

Tell Me Three Things - Julie Buxbaum
The Dollhouse - Fiona Davis
The Arrangement - Sarah Dunn
The Dry - Jane Harper
Castle of Water - Dane Huckelbridge
Maybe in Another Life - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Forever Is the Worst Long Time- Camille Pagan
The Garden of Small Beginnings - Abbi Waxman
The Secret Life of Violet Grant - Beatriz Williams
Young Jane Young - Gabrielle Zevin

As always, I love to hear everyone's personal choices for favorites of the year!



And if you're interested in some more random information on these books, keep reading: