welcome to elaney!

As we mentioned, vintage elaney has been on the mind lately, and we’ve been thinking about some of the old segments of yester year (when readership was limited to Readers g-love, c-handler, shawtygetlow, Kenny (then called Kelly), and a VERY skeptical version if emum (not yet named).  So, Once Upon an elaney, one of the favorite reader segments was the monthly book list!

How It Worked: At the end of the month, we shared all of the books we’d read the previous month and gave a short opinion.
Why We Stopped It: The disproportionate amount of beach reads got embarrassing.
Why We’re Bringing It Back: We’ve embraced our inner love for beach trash.

So here goes!  July 2010′s Book List:

The Man of My Dreams – Curtis Sittenfield

After LOVING Prep and American Wife, we decided to read Ms. Sittenfield’s lesser hailed second novel.  While it’s clear that Sittenfield is gifted with words, the protagonist Hannah is so hard to like that it was difficult to give in to the world and relate to the characters.    The story doesn’t feel totally believable, and we were pretty ready for it to be over about 2/3 of the way through.  Verdict:  Eh…glad to’ve read it as a lover of Curtis, but not something we strongly recommend.

Hush – Kate White

Have read every one of the Kate White, Editor-n-Chief of Cosmo, murder mysteries, and like the others, this one delivers!  This is her first standalone mystery (not part of the Bailey Wiggins series), and we quickly fell in love with the new protagonist, a marketing consultant in NYC going through a messy divorce.  They are super quick reads, but White has a gift for making the high profile NYC life come alive.  Verdict:  Fun and frivolous.  Borrow, don’t buy.

Prospect Park West – Amy Sohn

Stumbled upon this one at the library, and let us tell you, it’s scandalous.  It is tantalizing, sneaky, and steamy from page 1 on, but it’s also seriously well-written.  Sort of like Candice Bushnell for Brooklyn, follows 5 women around Park Slope and explores their secrets, relationships, and “neuroses.”  The story sort of abruptly ends with no real resolution but the characters are complex and intiguing.  They’ll make a complicated woman feel simple.  Verdict:  So bad, but so good.

Past Lists:
May ’08
April ’08
March ’08
February ’08
January ’08

1.  Mergers and Acquisitions, Dana Vachon.  Vachon, a 2002 Duke grad and former employee of JP Morgan, writes an account of a male protagonist’s first year out in the world of NYC investment banking.  What the novel lacks in plot (the story doesn’t develop with the appropriate robust), it almost makes up with vivid scenes into a greedy subculture.  The dinners at Cipriani, the galas at Moma, and the summers on the shore vividly offer hilarious, poignant, and often sad insights.  Bottomline:  A mediocre version ofThe Bonfire of the Vanities with a cup of The Devil Wears Prada.

2.  Remember Me?  Sophie Kinsella.  This book makes the official decrowing of the former Queen of the Beach Read.  After Shopaholic and Sister, we didn’t think things could get much worse.  And they don’t.  But they don’t get any better with this strange tale of a 28 year old city savvy exec that got amnesia and can’t remember getting her teeth done.  It is painfully predictable, and we suggest rather than reading the book, just read the back cover.  Nothing much else interesting happens.

We have a choice to make:  we have to suspend the monthly book list, or we have to start reading books with some more depth.  Obviously we are not stopping with the chick lit (bikinis and beach read season!), but we can at least read something that suggests we went to college.  However, we didn’t get there this month, so check out the trash we did read:

1.    Queen of Babble in the Big City, Meg Cabot:  We’ve only read some of Cabot’s work and we were sort-of ambivalent about it, but the Lizzy Nichols series is v. cute.  It takes place in Manhattan, and Lizzy has a Becky Bloomwood obliviousness that is mostly charming.  We decided to read the rest of the series!

2.   Size 14 is Not Fat Either, Meg Cabot:  Of the two Meg Cabot books we read, the Heather Wells series is our favorite.  Heather is a 29 year old has been pop star who wants to be a criminal investigator and is an assistant dorm director at New York College.  The mystery part is a little predictable, but Heather’s cynical, yet hopeful personality kept us giggling throughout.  Plus, each chapter begins with the lyrics of her pop songs that are so bad they’re good.

3.   Trading Up, Candace Bushnell:  Candace Bushnell could be a Jane Austen of our time, because her characters are dark, complex, and driven to succeed in the societies in which they belong.  Janey Wilcox, the protagonist, is no exception and is ruthless, ambitious, and completely unlikable.  While part of us finds Bushnells novels offensive, we’ve read them all.  Bottom line: it’s like a car wreck.  You feel like you should look away, but you can’t stop yourself.