Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club

Hello!
It is Friday and Once again I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde for Book Club!




This week I read 2 totally different books - one total waste of brain space and one a bit of brain food.

First I read "Here I go Again" by Jen Lancaster -

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com:
"Twenty years after ruling the halls of her suburban Chicago high school, Lissy Ryder doesn't understand why her glory days ended. Back then, she was worshipped...beloved...feared. Present day, not so much. She's been pink-slipped from her high-paying job, dumped by her husband, and kicked out of her condo. Now, at thirty-seven, she's struggling to start a business out of her parents' garage and sleeping under the hair-band posters in her old bedroom.

Lissy finally realizes karma is the only bitch bigger than she was. Her present is miserable because of her past. But it's not like she can go back in time and change who she was...or can she?" 

My thoughts: I usually love Jen Lancaster's work - because usually it is autobiographical.  This is her 2nd attempt at fiction and it's just like all the worst chick lit and 80's movie drivel smushed together (I like these things separately). The main character was so mean but in the end she becomes a whole new person via some new age magic.  I don't usually have such a bad "reaction" to light reading but this was just trite.

Now on to the next book -

"Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson

Here's the Goodreads synopsis: "On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.

Wildly inventive, darkly comic, startlingly poignant — this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best, playing with time and history, telling a story that is breathtaking for both its audacity and its endless satisfactions."
 
My thoughts: This was a really interesting premise - Ursula will live her life and die again and again and be reborn until she gets it "right".  You get to "see" the "butterfly effect" on life and how many ways it could go - I really am not sure which life was "right".  But it's a really interesting read and a bit of insight into War time England and what the "Blitzes" were like...

And as always if you want to "friend" me on Goodreads.com I'm Southern Flower :)

Jasmine