The Gift

One of my favorite “Chick Lit” authors is Cecelia Ahern. I read Chick Lit semi often just because I can blast through those pages like lightning and it’s a fabulous escape. It’s sort of like watching a sitcom on TV- just a distraction from the real world purely for the sake of being entertained. As long as there’s something more than just shoes, shopping, and sex in the plot of a girlie book, I usually enjoy it. Of course, finding quickie reads in the Chick Lit section that contain more plot elements than just shoes, shopping, and sex is pretty difficult since for some reason female authors think those three things all by themselves make up a riveting story… and I digress.

So enter Cecelia Ahern, because when it comes to Chick Lit, she’s pretty fresh. She writes very creative stories. Her characters are well thought out and believable. I haven’t yet found a *ahem* love scene that lasts more than a paragraph. Plus, she’s a very young woman and that tickles me a bit, because I’m sure that half of the things she writes about she hasn’t even come close to experiencing in her so-far short life. Her first novel was about a woman who had been married for 15 (ish? I can’t remember how long) years, had just lost her husband, and was probably one of the most believable characters I’ve ever read in a chick book. Watching this young author develop that character was sort of the equivalent to watching 16-year-old LeeAnn Rimes sing “How Can I Live Without You”… only Ahern actually pulled that character off and was a LOT less annoying. And I digress again.

So! I just finished The Gift, a book I got from the library because all the Christmas readers had finally returned it. Yep, it’s a Christmas book. Yep, it’s chickie. Yep, it’s got a moral. Yep, it’s basically It’s a Wonderful Life meets Tuesdays With Morrie meets Eat Pray Love. Yep, we’re supposed to read it around Christmas time so that we remember what we have, understand the true gifts of both the season and life, change our way of thinking, become all around better people, blah, blah, blaaaaahhhhh… Yep, it was still an entertaining book and whadevah, it was a good time-killer. This one is not going to win a Pulitzer, but every author (apparently) has to write themselves a nice little seasonal lesson-learner, so I’ll give Ahern hers. As long as she goes back to writing the usual distracting non-moral-preaching stuff soon. Please. More story. Less preaching. (And yes, Cecelia… I did know exactly how it was going to end within the first ten pages, but you did mean for that to happen, yes? This wasn’t exactly Hercule Poirot…)

Matilda

I love Roald Dahl. Love, love, love him. I’ve loved to read his books ever since I was a kid, and not just the standard Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I read everything of his that I could get my hands on when I was younger. However, since my book availability was limited to what was in the library at school and the public library downtown (you know, it’s hard to drive that buggy all the way to the bookstore in South Bend) I actually didn’t read that many of his books until recently. But, last year I found a great boxed set of his books that were all illustrated by Quentin Blake so I nabbed it. It is full of gems that I didn’t even know existed. I’m sure there’s many, many more books of his out there that I haven’t found yet, but, well, I’m too lazy to actually go find them. My reading habits are still rather dependent on what’s really within arm’s reach. And my horse gets tired when I take him on long trips down to Powell’s.

So anyway, I just read Matilda for the first time and it didn’t disappoint. The thing that makes Roald Dahl’s books so enjoyable is that he has a ridiculous and impossible imagination. He’s always putting normal people into fantastical situations- not fantastic worlds, but fantastic situations within our regular, every day world. When you read a Dahl book you always end up wishing that you were one of the characters in the book rather than stuck on the outside looking in. This book is exactly like that- it’s so engaging that it seems perfectly acceptable to the reader that a brilliant five-year-old discovers she has telekinesis and thus saves the lives of everyone around her. Why not, right? In fact, why not just go a step further? Since this five-year-old can do it, why not just believe I have telekinesis myself? I bet I can put those books away back on the shelf just be thinking on it real hard. I can scrub the upstairs bathroom from the couch downstairs just by concentrating a bit. Why, I can lift that glass right off the counter and put it into the dishwasher with my mind!

Yeah, as the books strewn all over my floor, the shower door covered with water spots, and the dishes hiding my kitchen countertops can bear witness to, I have no such powers. But it’s still fun to imagine I do, and that’s what makes this book so cool. I’m a grown woman (well, almost) projecting myself into a five-year-old’s world thanks to one of the world’s greatest storytellers. So if you haven’t already, go read the darn book. Or, if you’re too mature to read a kids’ book, go buy it and give it to some kid who isn’t so old and crusty that they can’t enjoy a good story.