The Girl Booker

The Girl Booker

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Sometimes I Judge A Book By Its Cover

I looked forward to reading The Signature Of All Things, I think mostly because I am a sucker for a gorgeous cover. I read it a few weeks ago and originally wasn't going to blog about it, but I changed my mind.

I don't tend to post about books unless I really liked them, and my feelings towards this book changed a number of times. I never disliked it, but it was a question of whether or not I liked it enough to blog about. In the days after having read it, I began to retrospectively enjoy it more and more. In many ways it is a quiet book, and it took a little space for me to fully appreciate that.

Elizabeth Gilbert has been branded, for better or worse, as the author of Eat, Pray Love. I am sure there are plenty of people out there who will snobbishly never read this book because of that fact. And I am almost as sure that those same people would be horrified to hear that Gilbert's writing  reminded me of A. S. Byatt at times. It was a lighter read than Byatt,  but the sense of the world created, the pace of that world and the people who populate it was similar to The Children's Book or Morpho Eugenia. It was really nice to sink into that world each time I opened up the book.

I thought this was a really lovely book. It said some things about women and society and ideas in a subtle way which I liked, and overall it was a nice read. It was uite well paced and skillfully written, and has a beautiful cover.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like it would be a nice holiday read - not too taxing, but a lovely world to dip in and out as you dozed on a poolside lounge ?

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