Book #33: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have read the other three books that have come out from the Austen Project--modern retellings of all of Jane Austen's books--and this, of course, was my most highly anticipated. Can anyone really retell Pride and Prejudice in a way that will be satisfying to anyone? (I mean, I read plenty of Jane Austen fan fiction, but it's a high bar.) And yet, I totally loved this book. Once I started it this afternoon, it was hard to put it down. (Obviously, since I finished it this evening and it's 500 (short) pages.) I think my favorite part of it was how Sittenfeld (Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, surprisingly) updated the Bennet family for the 21st century, how the three youngest Bennets are boomerang kids who went to college and moved back home and never got jobs, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have spent all their money and are bankrupt, and how Jane and Liz live in New York and rarely come home to visit their family in Cincinnati. And Bingley! Was a contestant on the "Bachelor" (or "Eligible" as it is called in the book)! I loved that twist, and how they incorporated it into the end. I think some purists would not appreciate all of the twists and things in this book, but I didn't mind them and it was pretty fun to pick out the events of the original book happening in today's world. The thing that I REALLY didn't like at the beginning was Liz's relationship with Wickham and how he was a sleazy married man--someone she had spent 15 years of her life pining after? That does NOT sound like the Lizzy that we know and love, and it really irritated me. And I also didn't love Jane's whole artificial insemination situation either--it seemed a bit contrived. But everything else was fun and definitely worth a read. I do love me some Jane Austen though. It never gets old.

Book #32: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I hadn't planned to buy this, but I decided to last week and thanks to the real-life magic of Amazon Prime, I had it in two days. I sat down and read it in just a couple of hours--it moved really quickly since it was a play script and not a traditional novel. And that right there is the main difference between this and the other books--the format interferes with your total immersion into the story like you get from the books. But I think it is really important to not let that get in the way of the enjoyment of this--since it is a script and you're not actually getting the real, full experience from seeing it as a play. I have read several places that it is amazing on the stage--or at least better than just reading it. As much as I wish I could see the play sometime, that seems unlikely unless it comes to Dallas, or at least the U.S., so reading the script will have to be all we get.

I didn't really realize that this script/play wasn't actually written by Rowling. It was written by Jack Thorne, the director of the play--although she helped to come up with the story. I feel like some places it does read like fanfiction--like when Severus Snape shows up again, and a few times whenever Albus and Scorpius refer back to specific small events that happened during Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts that seem unlikely that they would have known about (but everyone reading the books knows every one of them). I didn't love how Ron was portrayed as a total joke/jokester, never saying anything serious or being taken seriously--I feel like that was taking his role from the books wayyyy too far and I liked him less for it. I thought it was a little too neat at the end to have Harry and all his pals rushing off into danger again--but it was kind of satisfying. AND I really didn't like all the crazy effects of the time-travel--it didn't seem to jive with the time-travel from the books, where they don't make any changes but just see what already happened from a different perspective. This was totally different from that, and I think that's where it doesn't seem like Rowling wrote it. I did like seeing some human sides to Harry as a grown-up and the real-life things he's struggling with, and I liked seeing the relationship between Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny as grown-ups. And also Malfoy! As a multi-faceted character! With a son who is totally unlike him! I loved that.

Overall, a pretty satisfying read that is pretty much required reading for any Potter fan. Maybe not the best ever, but necessary.