We started out our week getting our historical thrillers fix with a girl on 8th Avenue carrying a copy of The Alienist poking out of her bag and The Foreign Correspondent on our way onto the 1 train. Then things did a 180. Given the upcoming movie adaptation, it was almost inevitable that we were going to see I Love You, Beth Cooper (P.S.) , although from what we hear, this teen comedy is actually worth the read. We reserve judgment on the film.
In the wake of our recent evening with Amy Tan at The Rumpus’s event we were excited to see The Joy Luck Club turn up twice, along with a brand new read from Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan . This one is called Shanghai Girls and is set in 1930’s LA, as opposed to 19th-century China.
Speaking of new, in paperback at least, David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames was also in the mix, surprising since it’s been out less than a week.
We had to restrain ourselves from talking to the hipster couple on the F train as the guy read The Omnivore’s Dilemma while his girlfriend poured over In Defense of Food . Apparently Pollan is pretty engrossing since the reading almost made them miss their stop — we’ve been there.
We’ll finish it off with the vampires. In the elevator of our building we saw another newbie, Dead and Gone — the latest addition to the Sookie Stackhouse series, just in time for the True Blood premiere. And, though as book snobs we are loathe to say it, we have to give our props to the Twilight series which showed up no less than eight times this week. We give it up to Meyer for at least getting people to read. Now if we can just get them to read really good stuff!