How to Kill a Rockstar - my favorite book of 2010 (so far)
I am going to do a proper book post for all the books I read on the trip. But I do want to gush about my favorite of the bunch - Tiffanie DiBartolo's How to Kill a Rockstar. I remember checking it out in a bookstore a long time ago, drawn by the bizarre title. But I put it back, uncertain if I wanted it at the time. But I finally read it and loved it the way I haven't loved a novel in a really long time even if my knowledge/interest in rock music is nil - I giggled, I sniffled, and I shipped like a mad woman. I also adored the writing style. Am madly in love with it and am rereading it already.
A lot of books that classify as 'books for women' (I use that term because it's more encompassing that just chick lit which is a subset) don't really appeal to me. To like a book, I need a protagonist that is either interesting or relatable. And a typical 30-something single woman looking for Mr Right and obsessed with shoes is not someone I can see as either (I have been with my own Mr Right from college and am closer to a Korean drama ahjumma with a husband and kid, and shoes bore me.) Eliza Caelum, the protagonist of Rockstar is not much like me - in her late 20s, formerly suicidal, with a crippling phobia of flying, obsessed with rock music, unafraid to grab what she wants. But I could relate to her because of the way she was written - hopeful above all, sometimes selfconscious and sometimes not. But more importantly, she was interesting. And I loved her.
The story chronicles a couple of years in Eliza's life but it's mainly a love story. As the story opens, Eliza's sheer nerve and desperation get through to an aging (fictional) rock legend who gives her an interview, which leads to a job with a music magazine (not a glamorous job but a job she wants anyway) which leads to her move to New York. There, the almost broke Eliza becomes roomates with Paul Hudson, the singer for her brother Michael's band (most of the characters in the novel are obsessed with music - either making it or listening to it or both). The book is largely Paul and Eliza's love story and I shipped them so insanely hard, I started bawling at one point in the middle at 2am. Don't ask. If you are looking for a typical "girl finds love and meaning with sexy rock god" book, this isn't really a book I'd recommend (there is a sexy rock god character and I adore him but it's a secondary character and not the recipient of Eliza's love). Paul is struggling on the edge of poverty (and it's probably not a spoiler to say the book does not end with him becoming a sensation of any sort) but, more importantly, he is weird. He is as weird as Eliza is, and probably weirder, but their breaks perfectly fit together (that is why I love the book - if someone like Paul even tried to hit on me, I'd run away. Far far away. But he and Eliza are perfect together). The novel is written as an alternating series of first-person narratives, Eliza's and Paul's (though at one point a couple other characters get a go) and it really fits the mood of the story, but especially comes handy about midpoint, when there is a big plot twist that one party is aware of and the other not.
So I really recommend it. It was a lovely lovely book about people I ended up loving. But, more importantly, I ended up believing they really loved each other.
Worst Book honors went to Gordon Keith, an excruciatingly dull and disjointed Victorian novel by Thomas Nelson Page that I finished only through sheer stubborness. The man was famous for his short stories and should have stuck with them.
In other news, I started Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel (I like her books and am unashamed of who knows it) and am incredibly amused. I know CC is a Dunnett fangirl and her previous hero, Jace, was basically a dead ringer for Dunnett's Lymond, but her new hero, Will, is a dead ringer for Jerrott! Heh.
A lot of books that classify as 'books for women' (I use that term because it's more encompassing that just chick lit which is a subset) don't really appeal to me. To like a book, I need a protagonist that is either interesting or relatable. And a typical 30-something single woman looking for Mr Right and obsessed with shoes is not someone I can see as either (I have been with my own Mr Right from college and am closer to a Korean drama ahjumma with a husband and kid, and shoes bore me.) Eliza Caelum, the protagonist of Rockstar is not much like me - in her late 20s, formerly suicidal, with a crippling phobia of flying, obsessed with rock music, unafraid to grab what she wants. But I could relate to her because of the way she was written - hopeful above all, sometimes selfconscious and sometimes not. But more importantly, she was interesting. And I loved her.
The story chronicles a couple of years in Eliza's life but it's mainly a love story. As the story opens, Eliza's sheer nerve and desperation get through to an aging (fictional) rock legend who gives her an interview, which leads to a job with a music magazine (not a glamorous job but a job she wants anyway) which leads to her move to New York. There, the almost broke Eliza becomes roomates with Paul Hudson, the singer for her brother Michael's band (most of the characters in the novel are obsessed with music - either making it or listening to it or both). The book is largely Paul and Eliza's love story and I shipped them so insanely hard, I started bawling at one point in the middle at 2am. Don't ask. If you are looking for a typical "girl finds love and meaning with sexy rock god" book, this isn't really a book I'd recommend (there is a sexy rock god character and I adore him but it's a secondary character and not the recipient of Eliza's love). Paul is struggling on the edge of poverty (and it's probably not a spoiler to say the book does not end with him becoming a sensation of any sort) but, more importantly, he is weird. He is as weird as Eliza is, and probably weirder, but their breaks perfectly fit together (that is why I love the book - if someone like Paul even tried to hit on me, I'd run away. Far far away. But he and Eliza are perfect together). The novel is written as an alternating series of first-person narratives, Eliza's and Paul's (though at one point a couple other characters get a go) and it really fits the mood of the story, but especially comes handy about midpoint, when there is a big plot twist that one party is aware of and the other not.
So I really recommend it. It was a lovely lovely book about people I ended up loving. But, more importantly, I ended up believing they really loved each other.
Worst Book honors went to Gordon Keith, an excruciatingly dull and disjointed Victorian novel by Thomas Nelson Page that I finished only through sheer stubborness. The man was famous for his short stories and should have stuck with them.
In other news, I started Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel (I like her books and am unashamed of who knows it) and am incredibly amused. I know CC is a Dunnett fangirl and her previous hero, Jace, was basically a dead ringer for Dunnett's Lymond, but her new hero, Will, is a dead ringer for Jerrott! Heh.