Vacation Reads

We've been dealing with crazy smoke from the fires here in Northern California, so we booked a last-minute house in the mountains for a weekend getaway with friends. There was no internet, but there was a yurt! And also, there were books. (By the way I now added a third library to my Overdrive app, and I now have a constant stream of free books on my phone, and it is amazing.) Here is what I read:

The Year of Magical Thinking (by Joan Didion)

I loved Play It As It Lays, but The Year of Magical Thinking left me cold. Didion's overwhelming New York privilege and pretension are presented in such an off-putting way, even while I feel for what she's experiencing (and, with the subsequent death of her daughter, about to experience). It's not that I think her wealth and power insulate her from grief in any way; it's not even that she intellectualizes her grief; it's something about the character of herself that she creates here that I simply, guiltily, did not like.

The most moving passage was actually an excerpt from C.S. Lewis's book on grieving his wife; it makes me think I should read that instead. Here's the quote:

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead through to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontier-post across it. So many roads once, now so many culs de sac.

Landline (by Rainbow Rowell)

The premise of this one is completely ridiculous. A couple has to split up for the holidays because of the woman's job, and then it turns out the landline phone at her mother's house allows her to call her husband's past self.  I could suspend my disbelief over the magic phone, I suppose, but the machinations to get this plot into place make no sense.  (Why would she completely disintegrate emotionally when she seems like a competent professional? Why would she not buy a phone charger? Why would she not just go back to her house? Why would Neal not call her from Omaha or answer her calls?)

Speaking of which, the main issue with this book is that the character of Neal is such an a-hole that you don't actually root for their love story. Georgie I found charming, if flawed, and I enjoyed reading about her showbiz career. I thought her rationale for not going to Omaha made sense and if Neal was supposedly so "supportive," ignoring her for a week belied that characterization. He's basically an a-hole the whole time, even early in their relationship, and Georgie admits she tends to fall for unavailable assholes. Yet we're supposed to root for them? Rowell's sheer charm as a writer almost carries it off, but in the end, this is... not her best.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (by Jenny Han) 

Great, great, young adult romance.  The characters are terrific, especially the main character, Lara Jean. The interactions among the three sisters and their father have complexity and realism. The plot is actually quite unpredictable -- I loved that moment where what you think is the obvious endgame might not be the endgame after all. But maybe it is? But maybe not? This was overall a sheer joy to read, and I was delighted to find out that there are two sequels. And I can get them all from the library!