I am so glad I didn’t study English Literature at A Levels. The Great Gatsby was a set text for the exams and after finally reading this novel, I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed taking it apart. I have a friend who absolutely adored The Great Gatsby back then and still avidly references it in his conversations with people. Frankly, I don’t see the appeal.
MATERIAL GIRLS by Elaine Dimopoulous
Reading Material Girls felt like an immersion into an alternate reality. I hesitate to call it futuristic, as many dystopian novels tend to be, because there was no sense of history in relation to our world today.
FREE TO FALL by Lauren Miller
As I sit down here to review Free to Fall, my mind is till completely lost in Angelfall by Susan Ee, which I finished listening to only a while ago. No matter, I took down notes as I read Free to Fall, and sometimes impressions after a few weeks give a much better idea of the impact of a book.
MY SINGAPORE LOVER by Judy Chapman
I visited the library earlier today, fully determined to check out the Singapore collection. Faced with the fiction shelf of Singapore literature, this one bright blue spine popped out, so I took it from the shelf. Turns out it was My Singapore Lover. While I didn’t really know what it was about, I had seen copies of that book on display at bookstores. I thus started to read the book. 20 pages in, I already wanted to chuck it aside. Nothing really grabbed me but I didn’t want to make snap judgements. Plus, My Singapore Lover was published fairly recently, which I figured fits in squarely with Crazy Rich Asians, another book set in Singapore that was published last year. (I have yet to read it.)
CONFESSIONS OF AN ALMOST-GIRLFRIEND (Confessions #2) by Louise Rozett
Rose is back, a year older, a sophomore, with a slight bit more mature voice, and a whole lot more problems than when readers first got to know her in Confessions of an Angry Girl. She needs to decide for herself what to do with Jamie. She still has the cheerleaders on her case. She and her brother are not exactly talking to each other either. She also hasn’t stopped missing her dad who died in Iraq the previous year. In the very least, she has her best friend back by her side.
