Jump Around

It’s been a good reading week. I did enjoy the Shanna Swendson 'Kiss and Spell as much as I thought I would. I read Shanna’s blog, so I kind of knew that she was playing with the constructs of romantic comedy movies with this one, but I am a full on sucker for both rom-com tropes and having them turned on their heads. It’s hard to give much of a summary without getting into spoiler territory, so I’ll just give it a thumbs up. It’s a romance book with all that implies. Character development is limited to exposition in the spaces left between the action scenes, so we don’t learn a ton about the inner workings of any single character. You know, though, it doesn’t all have to be Proust. It’s fun and quick and surprised me a couple of times. It sounds like this will be the last in the series and I’ll miss Katie’s world.

I polished off Jim Gaffigan’s 'Dad is Fat in about 24 hours. It’s just Jim Gaffigan, talking about his 5 kids and how to raise them in a 2 bedroom apartment in New York.. It’s a quick read and funny, but it’s not the deepest book around. There are a number of jokes so corny they require rim shots, but he could read a take-out menu and I’d laugh. I heard his voice in my head while I read and that made it book much, much funnier than it deserved to be.

I moved from Gaffigan to Lauren Graham’s book, 'Someday, Someday, Maybe, but I’m not hearing her voice in my head. For some reason, I’m listening to 'Sutton Foster tell me about being a struggling actress in New York. I figured I knew Graham’s voice well enough to plug her right in after that many years of 'Gilmore Girls, but I guess I can only hold one fast-talking Amy Palladino lady in my head. I’m distracting myself with the inner narration, though, since Franny in Someday, Someday, Maybe is supposed to be in her early 20’s and I’m picturing a world-weary 40 year old telling the tale. Here’s the thing - Lauren Graham wrote a book, y’all. I don’t know why that stuns me, but I’m as proud of her as if I knew her. I might not even tell you guys if I don’t like it.