The Guernsey Literary and Inglourious Basterds Society

Oddly enough, I spent much of this weekend thinking about WWII. I picked up the much-discussed book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society early last week (by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows), and the novel was just what I thought it would be.

It’s the epistolary story of a writer who corresponds with a bunch of folks on an island in the English Channel just after the Nazi occupation of their territory ended. When some residents of the island were caught out after curfew by Nazis, they pretended they started an impromptu book club to cover up the fact that they were having a pig roast. The Nazis, to prove themselves to be model occupiers, were amenable to the idea of a reading group. Some even joined.

And though I haven’t finished it yet, it’s pretty much a brilliant book in terms of marketing (though I don’t think the authors thought of it that way). First off, it’s a book about a reading club (instant best-seller material there). Second, not only is it about a book club-but it’s not just any book club. It’s a book club formed to resist the Nazis. It’s such a great premise. Why didn’t I think of that?

Anyway–to further cement its popularity–there are quotes in the book that readers will just eat up. Here’s a few:

“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.”

“It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don’t really know what they’re after–they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher’s blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?”

Anyway, The Guernsey Potato Peel and Literary Society–or is it The Literary Potato and Guernsey Society (I can never get it straight)--is a very quiet and almost self-conscious feeling look at Nazi occupation.

You can imagine what a shock it was when–in the middle of this book–I went out to see Inglourious Basterds (which, if you don’t know, is the new Tarantino with Brad Pitt). If there was ever an opposite of Guernsey, it’s this movie. Yes, there’s gore and wild excess and frippery and operatic acting. (I enjoyed it a lot). It’s also an alternative history–so big, ballsy, and hideous. Really, everything that Guernsey is, Inglourious Basterds is not (and vice versa).

So where is the real WWII in all of this?

Somewhere in the middle, I suspect. And far less hyped.

LOVE TO READERS: What WWII books and movies have you read? And–if you’re a romance reader–do you go for the whole WWII subgenre (which I admit to not knowing much about)?

Thanks for the book recommendations: Sherry Thomas’s Private Arrangements

Last night (which was Friday) started out as a not very good night. You see, my fiancé is gone (away at training camp) for the rest of the month, and since he works in football as a scout, he’s pretty much going to be eating, drinking, and breathing football seven-days-a-week until next March.

I LOVE how passionate he is (he’s the only guy I’ve ever met whose passion for what he does equals my passion for what I do). But sometimes it’s a bummer too.  Plus, to top off the lonely week, the transmission on my car died, which meant I couldn’t go see my friends who were in NJ from Baltimore this weekend. Yup, pretty glum.

Finally, I kicked myself in the butt and decided to do something besides wallow in the sludge of my own self-pity. Earlier that day, I’d gone to the library with all your wonderful book recommendations and I ended up bringing home Private Arrangements, by Sherry Thomas, partly because I’d read her book Delicious before and I’d liked it.

Private Arrangements was recommend to me by cheryl c. Cheryl, I know you said not to enter you in the contest, dear. But I really think it was fated to be (since this was the only book that the library had in stock of all the books that were recommended!). This book changed my whole evening. Let me explain.  

I started reading (in my chocolate- and carb-induced psychosis) at around ten o’clock at night, and when I looked up at the clock again, it was two a.m.! That’s when you know you’ve stumbled across something really special.

Without giving away too much, here’s what Private Arrangements is about. Gigi is on the hunt for a title–she’ll be a duchess if it kills her. But hers is no schoolgirl’s fantasy. She ruthlessly finds a way to make a duke marry her. Then, when the duke dies and his title passes to another, she gets a new quary, Tremaine, in her sights.  For three weeks they are wildly in love.

Flash forward. Gigi, who has not seen her husband in ten years ,wants a divorce so she can marry another. But Tremaine–who hates her, despises her to the point of revulsion–says, no way. Not ’til you grant me an heir. The sex scenes are complicated and interesting–which is super happy for me, since I tend not to like them to be too rote.

As the narrative moves forward, it feels like reading two amazing stories at the same time–it’s really an unusual plot structure for the genre, and in Sherry Thomas’s hands, it works beautifully. We’ve got the one plot (where Gigi and Tremaine are falling in love for the first time) moving forward at the same time as the present-day plot (where they both seem to truly hate each other-having somehow ruined each other’s lives).

I got so caught up in that central myster–how on earth did these two crazy kids in love begin to revile each other? What could have gone so terribly wrong to turn them both into such black-hearted and bitter people?

And–thanks to this book recommendation–my self-pity party bit the dust.

This morning, I got up, went for a walk to have a light lunch by the river, jotted down some notes about what I liked about this book (goals for my own writing, of course), then-buoyed up by this very smart, fascinating, and super sexy book-got to my own writing (which, once the pity party had ebbed, moved along extremely well [I've got some mysteries of my own planned for my next book!]) 

Thanks so much to EVERYONE who recommended a book to me! I’ve ordered some that you recommended via interlibrary loan (it may take a little while, but I am absolutely going to read some of the other books that you so generously recommended).

I also got on the waiting list for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (did I get that right?) AND I picked up a Georgette Heyer novel (never read her before!), and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

You guys have really kick-started my reading again, and I can’t think you enough. As always, stay in touch and let me know what you’re reading. If you read Private Arrangements, let me know! I’d love to hear your thoughts.

LOVE TO READERS: What do you do to cure a black mood? (I’m taking notes to stave off future attacks). Are you a candy-eater? A reader? A get-in-the-PJs-and-watch-a-movie-er? Let me know!