Juicy in New Jersey

Besides wearing and buying lots of Juicy Couture, one of my other favorite hobbies is to read anything and everything. This has been the case since I was just a mini Juicy girl in my crib- my mom loves to tell the story of how I wouldn't go to sleep unless I had exactly three books with me. This being said, i ALWAYS have a book that I am reading, even in the middle of the school year when I should be reading my textbooks and those silly course packets.

Right now I am reading a book called This Charming Man by Marian Keyes. Marian Keyes is an Irish author who I really fell in love with when I studied abroad in Florence last spring. That was the first time I had been out of the country and while I had a great time, the homesickness was really hard for me. The one thing that never failed to comfort me was buying a book from Martelli, the international book store. I don't remember what made me pick up my first Marian Keyes book, but I spent the rest of the semester plowing through her whole collection. So I was ecstatic when I went to Barnes and Noble the other day and saw that she had a new book out. I bought it for the ride to Pittsburgh but didn't really get into it until yesterday. Since then I haven't been able to put it down.

This Charming Man employs one of my favorite Marian Keyes techniques- the stories of multiple women are told separately and then are (eventually) weaved together in a creative way to show how their lives intersect. This book focuses on four Irish ladies who are all connected in some way to the biggest politician in Ireland, Paddy deCourcy. I am only about 200 pages in (the book is about 600 pages!) but so far I am completely hooked on these four women. I especially love Lola, whose story is told like a diary entry and everything is abbreviated.

Today Keenan told me about a story on that he saw in The Daily News about the way that Marian Keyes manages to inject dark topics into a genre that can only be called "chick lit". I wasn't aware of this, but this largely comes about due to Marian's past struggles with alcoholism. It was really great to learn some more about my favorite author: check it out.