Rachel’s Comments (group member since Jan 02, 2019)

Rachel’s comments from the Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge group.

In fact, there are more books about hen parties than I realised!

The Stag and Hen Weekend
Don't Mention The Hen Weekend
The Hen Weekend (part of a series)
The One With The Hen Weekend (part of a series)
Tales from a Hen Weekend
The Old Ducks' Hen Do
The One That Got Away (the first in a series called Hen Night Prophecies)

A search for “hen party” gave me this book, which sounds fun and is highly-rated (4.03 stars): Five French Hens

The best days of your life might be still to come…
When 73 year old Jen announces that she is going to marry Eddie, a man she met just a few months previously on a beach on Boxing Day, her four best friends from aqua aerobics are flabbergasted.

The wedding is booked and, when the groom decides to have a stag trip to Las Vegas, the ladies arrange a hen party to beat all others -a week in the city of love, Paris.

From misadventures at the Louvre, outrageous Parisian cabarets, to drinking champagne with a dashing millionaire at the casino, Paris lives up to all their hopes and dreams. But a week can change everything, and the women that come home have very different dreams from the ones who got on the plane just days ago.

In The Wives (alternative title, When Life Gives You Lululemons) by Lauren Weisberger, a chapter begins with two characters just leaving a Pilates class. I don’t think it’s crucial to the plot, but it’s good enough for me!

If you’re looking for non-fiction, Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut by the Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti could be a good choice. Also, she’s chosen to donate all proceeds from the book to UNICEF.

Girl on the Run by Jane Costello just popped up in a list of Apple Books recommendations:

Abby Rogers has been on health kicks before - they involve eating one blueberry muffin for breakfast instead of two. But since starting her own business, after watching one too many episodes of The Apprentice , the 28-year-old's waistline has taken even more of a back seat than her long-neglected love life.

When Abby is encouraged to join her sporty best friend's running club - by none other than its gorgeous new captain - she finds a mysterious compulsion to exercise.

Sadly, her first session doesn't go to plan. Between the obscenely unflattering pink leggings, and the fact that her lungs feel as though they've been set on fire, she vows never to return.

Then her colleague Heidi turns up at work and makes a devastating announcement, one that will change her life - and Abby's - forever.

I’ve just finished the audiobook of The Great Witches Baking Show by Nancy Warren, and can confirm that Poppy, the protagonist, is happily single throughout.

I’ve looked at the Goodreads synopsis for the other books in the series (9 in total): it seems like a secret admirer makes an appearance in book 6, and then there’s a very slow burn romance after that. So books 1-5 would definitely fit this prompt, for anyone who likes cosy mysteries and the Great British Bake Off.

Lisa Marie wrote: "I didn't realize I had so many books on my TBR bookshelf that are rated less than three stars on Goodreads....here are a few from that list:

*Prospect Park West by Amy Sohn”

I read A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham, (current rating 2.97).

It was pretty bad, but sadly not in a “so bad it’s funny” way. Some of the low ratings seem to be from people who expected the same style as her later Sophie Kinsella books. There is a note at the beginning explaining that the Madeleine Wickham novels have quite a different tone, but it’s still hard not to compare them: all her best-known books start with either a dramatic event that really pulls you in, or the introduction of a character you want to read more about, while this one… 30 pages of a couple complaining about their mortgage, followed by 10 pages of a college staff meeting… not exactly gripping stuff! The characters are almost all very unlikeable, and/or one-dimensional, and the ending is a let-down.
So, after that description, I’m sure you’ll all be rushing out to find a copy! On the other hand, it’s a quick and very easy read which doesn’t require much concentration, so you could get through it one day at the beach without any trouble.

Probably a lot of people here have already read it, but I just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which would definitely fit here.

I think I’ll read the manga Run on Your New Legs, Vol. 1:

Shouta Kikuzato’s hopes of starting on his school’s prestigious soccer team are derailed when a terrible incident costs him his leg. Now in his first year of high school (again), Kikuzato has resigned himself to never reaching his athletic dreams. But when Chidori, a passing prosthetist, notices Kikuzato’s artificial limb- and speed-as he races through the train station, the specialist proposes a Chidori will build Kikuzato a brand-new leg designed solely for speed. All Kikuzato has to do is run!

It sounds like volume 1 may be mostly setting the scene, but the blurb for volume 2 mentions the main character joining the school track and field club (so I’ll probably carry on reading the series!)

Just last week I was reading a short account of the lives of Abelard and Heloise, who would fit this prompt. Here’s a Book Riot article about them: https://bookriot.com/abelard-and-helo... and an excerpt from the article, for anyone who hasn’t heard their story….

“Abelard, the scholar; Heloise, the noble maiden, his student, raised in her uncle’s household. Abelard was hired to be her tutor because she quickly outpaced her Latin education, wanting more Greek and even Hebrew. Heloise was a precocious and highly intelligent young woman, and her uncle saw to it that she had an excellent education. She had some highly advanced, feminist ideas, radical for medieval times (and even for today, depending on how progressive one is). Heloise often said that marriage was contractual prostitution and that a person intent on studying philosophy wouldn’t be able to bear the crying and squalor of babies. She openly preferred “love to marriage, freedom to a bond.”
And of course Abelard and Heloise fell in love. But because they are human, they managed to fuck things up but good. Heloise got pregnant (she had a boy whom she named Astrolabe. No joke), her uncle had a fit, and Abelard sent Heloise to the cloisters where she had been raised as a girl to keep her safe from the fury of her uncle. He then eventually talked her into marrying him, though given her above-mentioned views on marriage, he must have had a hell of a time of it. She only consented to marrying in secret because a public marriage would have been bad for his academic career. Her uncle was appeased and made the announcement of the marriage to save his family and Heloise’s good reputation. However, Heloise denied the marriage, attempting to help secure Abelard’s career. I still cannot understand that. And I am right, because that turned out to be a Very Bad Idea. Her uncle thought that Abelard had discarded her and forced her into a nunnery, so he sent some thugs to Abelard’s room where they proceeded to castrate him. There went Abelard’s other future children, along with any thoughts he may have harbored of ever becoming Pope, because the Pope has to be in possession of at least one testicle, even if it’s in his pocket.”

For anyone who’s not keen on this prompt but wants to complete the challenge, children’s books could be a good (and quick) solution: there are read-aloud YouTube videos of Field Trip to the Moon and Franklin and Luna Go to the Moon (and many others, I’m sure!)

I’m thinking about The Idiot by Elif Batuman and The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

This might be a stretch, as it’s about a track team rather than a running club, but The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State sounds fascinating: it’s the story of the 1960 Tennessee State University’s all-Black women’s track team, which won 23 medals at the Rome Olympics.

This book list, from Runner’s World, could also be helpful here… https://www.runnersworld.com/gear/a20...

What do you all think about interpreting the prompt in terms of a movie, or celebrity, with a “cult following”? Or leaders around whom a “cult of personality” develops (like Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos… which would mean I could read Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, which is on my TBR!)

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes would fit here. It’s part of her series about the Walsh family, and focuses on Anna, who’s 48 and going through perimenopause (while moving back home to Ireland from New York, starting a new job and dealing with an old flame).

I’m reading a poetry collection by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner for the “collection of more than 24 poems” prompt, and to really understand the poems I’ve been finding out about the culture and history of the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. As I hadn’t chosen a book for this prompt yet, I thought I’d look for something from the same region of the Pacific, and found No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay by the Chamorro human rights lawyer and organiser Julian Aguon, about issues facing the island of Guam.

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

It’s been fun trying to think of something for this prompt! I’m going for the play Pygmalion. I knew it was the basis for the musical/film My Fair Lady, but had no idea what the title referred to (although I do now!)

Just discovered a short story by Poe called “X-ing a Paragrab”. Unlike almost all his other work, it’s not scary at all, but a “satire of dueling editors, commercial printers, and corrupted texts.“

It’s free to read online, here: https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2023/0...

Another non-fiction option could be to read a biography/autobiography of an author who explored magical realism in their work.