I’m looking for trashy, relaxing reading as I’m recovering from a major cold. There was a cute discussion of a novel titled Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant on NPR today. Has anybody read it? Is it good? I need something that I can snooze through in front of a fireplace. Ideally, no intellectual capacity will be strained in the process of reading this book.
10 responses to “Trashy Reading”
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I have read it and liked it fine, but it didn’t stick with me enough to recommend. I prescribe a course of Laurie Colwin if you can get access to it. Home Cooking and More Home Cooking are lovely books to snuggle up with. My favorites of her fiction are the linked story collection Another Marvelous Thing and the novel Happy All the Time.
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Laurie Colwin sounds great. But if I start reading about cooking, oy vey. That will not be good. 🙂 I will blow up like a balloon.
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Here’s your light reading:
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I will renew my suggestion of some time ago that you read Jitterbug Perfume
by Tom Robbins.LikeLike
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My mother is now reading Lytton family trilogy by Penny Vincenzi. The books are very thick, as you like.
\\ From Publishers Weekly
Bestselling British author Vincenzi follows the tumultuous lives of London’s Lytton family through the early 20th century in her first novel to be published in the U.S. At the story’s center is Lady Celia Beckenham, a strong-willed, blue-blooded beauty who forces her parents to bless her marriage to the lower-ranking Oliver Lytton, employed in the “rough world of publishing,” by getting pregnant. Taking her maternal duties in stride (her ugly baby, Giles, is initially “something of a disappointment”), Celia talks her way into an editorial position at Lyttons Publishing House, and quickly proves herself a fast learner with a head full of successful ideas. As years pass and more children arrive, Celia becomes known for her editorial skills and her familial devotion. But when Oliver returns after four years of fighting in WWI, her perfect world begins to crumble he is dismayed by the books Lyttons has published under Celia’s and his sister LM’s guidance, and he has lost all desire for his wife. Celia seeks comfort in the arms of a handsome new author, and as she falls into an all-consuming affair, she begins to contemplate leaving Oliver: “She would have to go; go with Sebastian. Anything else was madness. She explored the decision for a few minutes, waiting for uncertainty to return. It didn’t.” But as Celia struggles to make her life-altering decision, events around her cause her to see herself and her family in a new light and to ponder what her life would be like if she weren’t a Lytton. Through life and death, exuberance and sorrow, honor and disgrace, Vincenzi perfectly captures the intricacies of her characters and creates plots captivating enough to keep readers eyes’ glued to this long and hearty saga.LikeLike
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You realise that Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice” is being made into a movie …
Why judge the book by its eventual movie? 🙂
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The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is entertaining fluff.
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I endorse both Laurie Colwin’s books (all of them) and “Homesick Restaurant.”
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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