Today my brain decided that it has had enough of books that are almost 400 pages and it's going on strike. I tried everything; short breaks, promising it lots and lots of bad TV as soon as I was done reading the book, a trip to dlisted.com to make fun of celebrities, but no dice. So instead, I had to take a break for several hours in the afternoon and then quickly try to finish the book after that. I am still aiming for my goal of 100,000 pages read by the end of the year, but I've begun to realize that this goal is going to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated.
Today's book, "Sisters Dahlia, Iris, Violet, and Rose, all with grown children of their own, have a complicated relationship, so when their grandmother's will requires them to spend the whole summer - without friends or family - "camping in" at her run-down lodge on remote Lake Clare in order to inherit the valuable land, old rivalries and new understandings emerge, with plenty of laughs along the way."
Despite my brain attempting to go on strike for most of the day, I really liked today's book. Which was a huge relief, since I've read several crappy books in a row this week and I was starting to wonder if the bad streak was ever going to end. I am now officially out of the literary desert dear readers - and it feels good to be back in the land of good books.
But before I was able to read today's book I had to first overcome my extremely shallow and really confusing aversion to the word ladies. I can't figure out why I detest that word so much, but it's like nails on a chalkboard whenever I hear someone use it. But I decided to grow as a person, and act like the adult that I'm supposed to be, and not let a crappy book title stop me from reading a book that otherwise looks like a great story. Plus, I really liked the cover - and so I let one form of shallowness overpower another form of shallowness.
Favorite sentences (because I couldn't settle on just one):
- "There's nothing wrong with this family that a funeral or two wouldn't fix." - This was the first sentence of the book, and it instantly made me excited to read the rest of the book. How could I not like a book that was filled with characters like that? And that was one of the best parts of the book, that I enjoyed all of the characters - even the totally obnoxious ones were obnoxious in a fun way.
- "I looked at them and burst into I Love Lucy tears." - So basically that sentence just described the entire month of March for me. I spent the entire month having hysterical blogging-related moments and crying like Lucy Ricardo about it. It wasn't pretty, but it was all part of my process (I'm starting to loath myself just a little bit that I can use phrases like "my process" without the slightest bit of sarcasm.)
I would definitely recommend this book, but I think it would have been better to have read it in the summer. It was very strange reading about spending the summer by the lake while watching the leaves fall outside of my window.
