Sunday, August 22, 2010

A Pleasure From Start to Finish (Lucky Me! :))

Not that I didn't know this before, but I LOVE DADDY-LONG-LEGS! I just finished reading it for the I-don't-know-what time (but well enough that I occasionally quote from it, so we're talking the teens here for sure) and it is *INCREDIBLY* romantic.  First of all, the story is obviously fantastic - totally classic, handsome prince fairy tale - I was thinking as  I finished it what a total fairy tale this book is - more on that later.  Then of course, I love the characters - well chiefly, Judy is very cute and likeable.  Great things always happen to her (like Anne in that way) but besides that she's always happy and I love that in a person.  It makes the book totally stress free.  Well not that it would have any stress at all, but when Judy stays upbeat, so does the book's tone.  So that's another thing to like - absolutely no tension.

Now normally I hate the epistolary style (I have more than once not read a book because it's written in letters) but this one is done so well it doesn't matter.   First of all, I love the writing - the whole time I was reading I was thinking that I really model my blog style after it to some extent - and then I realized why.  Because it's entirely conversational - the whole book is just Judy talking on and on about her life, thoughts, experiences, whatever - kind of rambling where her mind takes her - just like my blog :)  And even though that kind of thing is not guaranteed to be good reading, like I said, it's done really well.   And then there's the other objection to letter writing novels and that is *nothing from the guy's POV*! Which I must admit would be a huge objection in almost any other book, but here I guess there are two saving graces. 1) I know the book so well I can pretty much make up the other side 2) (this is actually the third saving grace I just thought of) Judy writes the letters to another man, not to the guy so that we get a lot more of her feelings and especially an entirely ingenuous account of Master Jervie - which connects back to point #1, which is that is it *tons* of fun to imagine Master Jervie's perspective when reading the letters and 3) she (Jean Webster) manages to put in romantic moments even within this format.  Chiefly, the ever increasing Christmas gifts the more he falls in love with her (silly grin here :)) But also how he visits Julia just to see her, how he invites her to NY to see Hamlet after she reads it (just picked up on that this time actually).  And then there's the *fantastic angst* (how horrible am I that I describe it that way) every time she mentions Jimmy McBride (actually that's more #2 - we get that extra perpective b/c she's writing to someone else) Okay, whatever this book is AMAZING!!!

Oh and back to the fairy tale thing - so I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it before, but part of what makes a fairy tale in my book is that there's no internal growth for the main character - she's kind of perfect and just waiting for her prince.  Judy doesn't really have any big faults or anything huge missing in her life.  She just wants some family - preferably in the form of a wise and handsome rich man to whisk her away from all cares and go gallivanting about with her ;)  And that's just great, because I'd rather read about all Judy's fun college life and not worry about anything marring that beautiful romance.

Verdict: Do you even have to ask? :)  5/5
Food: well pick a food, any food... pizza, macaroni and cheese, hamburgers with mayo, peanut butter, ice cream... I'll just go with pizza (only because haagen dasz is being reserved for another very special book in my reading pile :))

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