#31 Reading

I haven't sat down with a book in a while, sticking mostly to magazines and working my way slowly through a book of short stories. But, I did just finish February's book club selection, Children of God Go Bowling, by Shannon Olson. Apparently this is a sequel to another book, but I haven't read the other one and didn't feel like I had missed anything in a previous story.

This book is a good example of one of the things I like about my book club: we usually choose books that I wouldn't immediately select on my own. I almost never read chick lit. I thought the story might end differently than it did, and I am glad the ending wasn't what I expected. It was a quick read. The main character irritated me a little bit, but I thought her personality and actions rang true. It takes place in MN, which made me think of a good friend who lives there (and whose wedding I was in this past summer), and was a good reminder that I want to be in touch with her more often.

Here's the (long) review from Publisher's Weekly:

Chick lit? More like curmudgeon lit-and it couldn't be funnier in this wry, quirky sequel to Welcome to My Planet (Where English Is Sometimes Spoken). Thirty-something Shannon Olson, who shares her name with the author, is napping her way through life in her native Minneapolis, kvetching with her equally stymied friends and dabbling in group therapy. She envies her married-and-settled siblings and longs to break away from her parents-but how to develop her own identity when she's still doing laundry at her folks' and sharing every detail of her life with her mother, the indomitable Flo? Her romantic prospects look bleak, too: "I had been living in the dating world's version of the Old Country Buffet.... The tepid, lamp-warmed, greasy, convenient, heartburn-inducing singles buffet." With so few possibilities, her dearest friend from college, Adam, starts to look less like her favorite couch potato companion and more like the love of her life-or is it only boredom drawing her to him? This is no paint-by-numbers tale of woe; while Shannon herself shies from action, the plot is one twist after another, and the humor (especially the group therapy scenes) is hilarious. Eschewing much of the chirpiness and lagging introspection of many of its sisters, Olson's novel explores deeper questions of why many young adults find themselves acting like adolescents into their 30s and offers an insightful examination of friendship and family. Strong, ironic and characteristically cranky prose keeps the pages turning, and Shannon's commentary on being a round peg in a square world-guiltily Catholic in a world of cheery Lutherans, grumpy and single in a city clogged with strollers and Midwestern cheer-rings true.