"shopgirl" by steve martin

now i have to admit, i saw the movie before i read the book, so i couldn't help but see claire danes as the titular character and steve martin as her older beau. however, this didn't hamper my enjoyment of the book. i've always thought steve martin is a great writer. his play, "picasso at the lapin agile" is hilarious and intellectual and i'm sure if i ever get around to seeing "roxanne" and reading "cyrano de bergerac", i'd agree that the former is a fantastic retelling of the latter.

"shopgirl" is the story of mirabelle, a clerk who works behind the glove counter at neiman marcus in beverely hills. she lives a rather sad, solitary existence until, mr.ray porter, a customer, starts to woo her and they embark on a relationship.

this book wasn't as quirky as i was expecting. it has an understated humour, but for the most part is a simple telling of a simple story. it's quite elegantly written and there's some beautiful descriptions, but it's not something i'd gush about or read again.

i did learn a new word though. propinquity. it means nearness or proximity and was not to be found in my canadian oxford dictionary. mr. martin gets bonus points for that.

"second helpings" by megan mccafferty

since my stint on the children and young adult's floor of the public library, i've become quite a fan of young adult literature. there is a lot of high quality writing that shouldn't be brushed off just because it's targeted for a teenage audience. i find that young adult (ya) books are perfect for when i'm in the mood for something light as they tend to be less dense than your average adult fiction novel, but just as satisfying.

i read the first book of this series by megan mccafferty ("sloppy firsts") at the recommendation of a friend. now i'm onto the second and it's as much fun to read as the first. the protagonist, jessica "notso" darling, is entering her last year in high school and is at the important point in her life when she needs to make a decision regarding her future.

one of the reasons i like these diary-entry style books so much is that jessica darling reminds me of myself in high school. she's a bit of a braniac, hyper-literate, sexually frustrated, angsty and an insomniac. she obsesses over the intellectual non-conformist nerdy types that others find weird and does her best to avoid the cliques of popular, sporty and otherwise. i also love how graphic these books are. while a lot of ya literature tiptoes around sexuality and coarse language, jessica darling is free to be as crude as she likes in her journal. there is copious amounts of the word 'fuck' and candid statements about sexuality that rival adult lit. examples;

"She might have expressed her own point of view, a feminist take that would have been diametrically opposed to Scotty's, if she had taken a moment to remove his cock from her mouth."

"I tell myself to breath, Jessica, breath, and curse all those years of running for winding my leg muscles tighter than my hymen."

"This coming from a girl whose moral compass is in the form of two erect nipples pointing towards the nearest penis."

while not the most intellectually stimulating of novels, "second helpings" is an enjoyable piece of ya chick lit and i'm not ashamed to have enjoyed it.