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Category: books

Confessions of a Shopaholic (plus other notable works of literature)

My freetime over the last two weeks has been filled with pieces of entertainment. These pieces of entertainment have taken literary and movie-form. The literary piece, also known as the book I am reading, is Julie and Julia, which I picked up at one of the Dutch bookstores, near me on Breestraat. Why did I pick it up? Well, there were two pictures of two American actresses on the front, and the publisher (Penguin) advertized that it was at last ‘a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.’ Also, the book revolved around a no-name becoming famous by starting a blog about cooking. Oh, and I read about the movie in the New Yorker not to long ago. Ok, great. Score. Cooking + the New Yorker plus female roles in a story that was entertaining enough to become a major motion picture.

All of the qualities in this book that I recognized at the bookstore proved to be enough for me to want to sit down and read the thing. For as many times that I sit down and look at the cover, I wonder if Amy Adams is the girl in Wedding Crashers or the girl who just looks like her, the one from Enchanted. Scary that people just become people who look like other people.

It turns out that all of my wondering made me just buckle down and finally rent the movie with the girl from Wedding Crashers in it, Confessions of a Shopaholic. iTunes magically advertized the movie as being a top rental in the iTunes Store during the same week that I had been wondering about the duality of the long-haired, red-headed, obscure-but-becoming-mainstream American actresses. So, I rented and consequently purchased the movie on iTunes. God bless it (iTunes).

The movie coincidentally fits the same criteria as the book, while substituting the cooking for shopping.

What does this all mean? It disturbs me somewhat that I no long find satisfaction in reading a novel from the literary canon nor do I make it a point to follow post-avant-garde directors in the movie biz. Blah.

Photo courtesy of lovelifestyles.wordpress.com

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The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada/ew.com

My current leisure reading book-of-choice is The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. I am surpised to say that I am disappointed in the intellectual level of this book. So far, I have read about eight months of some girl’s experience at “a job that a million girls would die for”. I think the only reason I am finishing the book is that I have some pathos for the main character, since she was, after all, played by Anne Hathaway in the theaters. My next book choice will definitely be Bill Clinton’s memoire, My Life. I am very fascinated by our former president, for whatever reason. I read a feature article on him in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, and I was instantly compelled to buy his book. I would prefer a paperback, if those are even made for presidential memoires. I just looked on Amazon. They do, and it costs $12.11. This is great.

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