The Dangerous Husband

I picked Jane Shapiro's book up at the library - I really wanted to read something that wasn't for a challenge! Unfortunately, The Dangerous Husband was only ok... It's the story of a marriage gone sour and dangerous. It's described as funny, but I thought it was more sad than funny. The amusing feeling was only superficial, underneath that the topic was serious. Maybe it's me.

Amsterdam

I finished Ian McEwan's Amsterdam during my vacation - it was fairly easy to read, but I didn't find it very engrossing. I didn't really care about the characters - three men who meet again at the funeral of a woman who was dear to all three. I wanted to finish it though because I was curious what the title meant and you only find that out towards the end of the book. That was kinda cool as endings go, but Amsterdam can't possibly be McEwan's best. The only other book of his that I read was Atonement and that was way better.

Amsterdam won the Man Booker Prize in 1998 - I haven't read anything off the shortlist so can't say if I thought they were better. Maybe one of you has?

Challenges: Man Booker Challenge, 10 out of 100 out of 1001, 888 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Seconds 2008 (I'm counting it even though I finished in August, technically)

Gossip Girl

Yea, I finished my first audiobook! :-) It was Cecily Von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl and it was a nice and light introduction to the world of audiobooks.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this book and I didn't get much. I thought both the story and the characters were flat. Maybe I just can't relate. The books tells the story of some spoiled rich kids living in New York. They live in a different world than that of other teenagers and they know it. But their problems are the same - sex, friends, gossip, acceptance. The story went along quickly enough, but I don't really care what happens to the characters next. Ah well, you can't like everything and at least I have something to put in the 2 stars category!

But audiobooks... The idea was to force myself to go walking more often. Originally I put a lot of fast-paced music on my ipod, but music that's good to walk to isn't the sort of music that I like so that didn't go very well. The book thing worked though. I went out on Saturday morning just because I wanted to finish this book! I'm very pleased with the concept and already signed up to Audible.co.uk and got my next one - I happened upon something called The X-mas Factor by Annie Sanders and it sounded interesting - and it starts with X so it's perfect for the A-Z challenge! I was going to cheat and read Douglas Coupland's Generation X or something like that, but I can save that till next year!