Today's book, "Glasgow, 1939. On the eve of war, Mirrin Stewart, a newly qualified young teacher, is too absorbed in her own troubles to pay much attention to world affairs. Having lost her mother to cancer at a tender age, she must now face up to the fact that her beloved father is getting older, and needs her care. She has neither the time nor the inclination, it seems, for love or romance. But then two very different young men enter her life."
Shallow thoughts:
- I'm sure this is going to come as a shock to no one, but I picked today's book without even reading the description. I just liked the cover. I'm shallow, so I can be seduced by a nice cover. I also picked the book because it was short. After reading a book that was over 500 pages yesterday, my brain needed a rest. In fact, my brain spent most of the day on strike, whining But I just read a book yesterday, and it was a really looooong one, and I want to spend the day watching bad TV and eating Oreos. And then I had to have a stern lecture with my brain and remind it that my Oreos days are over, and that the bad TV will still be waiting for me on the DVR when I'm done reading the book.
- I have mixed feelings about the book - it was well written but the plot was boring - not even the addition of several deaths and a world war could pep it up. So I wouldn't recommend this book in particular, but I do plan to check out the other books this author has written. In fact, I went to look up the author, and color me shocked to find out the book was written in 2005. I spent the entire book thinking it was written sometime around the 40s because the writing style just had that kind of feeling to it. I feel unsettled now - almost as unsettled as when I find out the author looks nothing like I imagined.
- There were also parts of the book that suffered from an overuse of dialect. I can appreciate an author that's aiming for accuracy, but there were a couple of pages where I had no idea what was going on because it was taking too much effort to figure out what everyone was saying. And then there was the worst problem of all, one of the characters mentions a Myrna Loy movie and then doesn't even tell us what movie is it. So I spent most of the book trying to figure out what movie they were talking about (and also trying to talk myself out of putting aside the book so I could watch one of my favorite Myrna Loy movies Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. I love that movie.)
