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Rating:
The paragraph that follows is in the style of Gossip Girl. Yes, I am mocking the novel.

—SIGHTINGS
K hiding behind a huge pair of Chanel’s in Holly’s Coffee sipping an espresso macchiato and reading Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl. Let’s hope that she doesn’t lose any brain cells, a side effect of reading anything by von Ziegesar—but GG is so worth the risk! Let’s also hope that K is able to fit into her skimpy Pucci numbers after that macchiato. L informs me that a quick trip to the bathroom—if you know what I mean—will keep K from getting fat. Good. No one likes a fatty. ♥

So goes the novel… Gossip Girl revolves around the lives of privileged teens living in New York City’s Upper East Side. The vast majority of GG’s protagonists are spiteful and superficial: they are as deep as the ink on paper after a girl signs her name with a Montblanc fountain pen. In the GG world, how does one react to someone saying, first, that her best friend snorts Comet (a cleaner) and, second, that her best friend was late to school because she got pregnant and had to have an abortion that morning? With a smile. XD

Oddly, Gossip Girl’s annoying and despicable characters make the novel interesting. They create drama… Drama is entertaining. Cecily von Ziegesar’s writing style isn’t bad, either. It’s chic. Gossip Girl also wins in the field of boredom. It may annoy you; it may insult you; it may you make feel dumber; but, bore you? It won’t bore you.

Also, if you read Gossip Girl, you may

• learn that peregrine falcons aren’t like woodpeckers
• feel as though your IQ has plummeted
• increase your knowledge of high-end fashion brands (Fendi, Pucci, &c.—this is a pleasant counter to the above, no?)

If you read Gossip Girl, you may will notice its incessant name-dropping. Gauloises? Check. Gucci? Check. Prada? Check … Is Gossip Girl some sort of secret advert for cigarette companies and fashion designers? If the constant barrage of labels added to the novel’s descriptions, it would be understandable. But it doesn’t. It’s just irritating and makes Gossip Girl even more ridiculous.

Blair had tucked the postcard into her old Fendi shoe box with all the other mementos from their friendship.

Who keeps mementos in an old Fendi shoe box? Rich, snotty, label-obsessed people do not keep precious mementos in old shoe boxes, Fendi or not. Storing things in shoe boxes is an obvious faux pas (for snotty people). Mementos belong in designer boxes—not shoe boxes!, but memento boxes—especially made for keeping mementos. There’s no need to point out that Blair has a Fendi shoe box, unless she’s going to do the right thing with it…

Anyway, I recommend Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl to those who don’t give a toss about realism and who just want to read something quick, fun, and dramatic. However, if you happen to live in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, if you’re a student who does a lot of charity work, if you’re a student enrolled in AP classes, or if you attend(ed) an Ivy League university, beware! Because you may find Gossip Girl offensive.

On a random final note, Gossip Girl would be really good—potentially—if it was written as a satire. Don’t you think?

Rating:

Congratulations, Susan Elizabeth Phillips (author of Match Me If You Can). In my twenty-two years of life, your book is the first non-historical romance novel that I’ve managed to read, all the way through. You have no idea how big of a deal that is—I, despite being a great respecter of books, end up hurling most of these romance things across the room before I finish five pages. The airhead-ness of the women and the smuttiness of these sorts of novels are just too much for me to bear. But I finished your work of 388 pages in two days, and enjoyed every minute of it.

However, make no mistake, Match Me If You Can is not trash-free. The thought this book is trash popped into my head before I reached page 10. The bit that made me think such a dubious thing follows:

“Do you want me to call security?” the receptionist asked.

He turned his predator’s eyes on her, leaving Annabelle at the receiving end of another of those knockout punches. Despite the effort he’d taken to polish all those rough edges, the bar brawler still showed. “I think I can handle her.”

A jolt of sexual awareness shot through her—so inappropriate, so unwelcome, so totally out of place that she bumped into one of the side chairs.

That is as bad as Match Me If You Can gets. The novel as whole is witty and fun.The protagonist is charming. The other characters are fabulous and ooze personality. Who cares if there are small and random bouts of fan service? The quips, the characters, the storyline— everything else makes up for it.

So what is Match Me If You Can all about? It’s a modern day fairy-tale about matchmakers, football players, and football agents. It sounds strange, but it’s great stuff. It reminds me of the film Hitch, except Match Me If You Can’s plot is completely different and its protagonist is a woman. Annabelle, the protagonist, is a matchmaker. She’s intelligent; she’s sweet; she’s hilarious; she’s young-ish; she’s pretty-ish. But her over-achieving family views her as a failure. Annabelle hopes to prove herself to them (and to everyone else) by turning her matchmaking business into a swirling success—she has underdog written on her forehead. Heath, the beau, is Annabelle’s star client. Even though he has an interesting personality and flaws coming out of the woodwork, he’s completely love-able: he’s hot; he’s smart; he’s rich. As for the minor characters, they’re so much fun. I love them almost as much as I love Heath and Annabelle. There’s this one hotshot named Dean Robillard. I adore him; he’s my age. He and his friends remind me of people in my life: twenty-two year old college hotties who know they’re hot and who have the sweetest of personalities but who do things that make you think, “Where is his brain? (What?! Why in the hell did he eat plant food?)” If you read Match Me If You Can, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Phillip’s novel is highly amusing. I really enjoyed it, and that’s kind of shocking. I normally don’t go for romance novels but, hey! If you’re looking for a light-hearted fairy-tale-ish novel to read, pick up a copy of Match Me If You Can. You won’t regret it.

Rating:

Geraldine Brooks’ March is a poignant novel saturated with beautiful words. If you were to read it and 9,999 other books during your lifetime and if you were only able to remember 100 of them well—March would be among the one percent that you didn’t forget. It sticks with its readers: it seeps into their bones and sporadically hijacks their thoughts.

March is about a Northern idealist, a father, who goes south to serve as a chaplain during the Civil War. It’s one of my favorite novels; I love it to death. It’s brilliant. I’m recommending it to everyone. Historians and lovers of literature will cherish March the most but, everyone reading this review should read March.

Unfortunately, March is not perfect. I would hate for someone to read it on my recommendation and then become disappointed because I went on about it like some sort of rabid fan. So, right now – I’m saying, don’t get your hopes up. Just read it and give it a chance. Remember, it’s not that great but, it’s definitely a novel that you should check out.

Less than pleasant things about March:

1. March is fan-fiction.
2. The protagonist is a man of character, a role model. He’s almost perfect. He’s a Mary Sue.
3. March is a little preachy.

Also, despite its pretty words and beautifully crafted sentences, the first chapter is dull. However, the second was moving and I had leaky eyes before it ended.

Now, let’s get serious. March was awarded the Pulitzer. It’s more than just a good book. The three things listed above as faults are completely understandable and not truly faults because, the protagonist was modeled after a real person. But if you read March without knowing that and without knowing the history behind the novel, the story feels kind of weird. It’s like, Who is this person and what is he doing in the 19th century? He doesn’t belong. This is insanity and incredibly unrealistic! To those screaming about it being unrealistic, I say: it’s not. It’s just atypical; it’s a story about a radical.

Interestingly enough, historical figures—radicals, of course—appear as characters in March. Emerson, Thoreau, John Brown, and Gerrit Smith are mentioned in the novel. Their presence is pleasant but it’s also a little strange.

A randomly chosen paragraph to give you a feeling for the novel’s language:

The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother- “Come back with your shield or on it,” she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat.

In conclusion and in a word, March is inspiring. Give it a chance; read it.