I'm about 70 pages in to Got Game? and am totally loving it. As always, I can't be content with just enjoying a book. I have to try to figure out why I like it and how the author did what s/he did.
It's probably not the milieu of the story. I don't golf. I live with a golfer which means that I deal with him being gone for hours and hours over the weekend, with him getting up stupid early to get to the golf course, with listening to him obsess about various statistics. I'm happy he has a passion, but seriously, I'm not in love with golf.
It's not the setting. Right now, the heroine is in Nebraska. I grew up in Nebraska. I haven't been back for a very long time. There's a reason.
I'm pretty sure it comes down to Steph's heroines. I'm completely loving Reilly. She's awesome. She's so smart and talented and driven. I want to be like her. But she's vulnerable, too. She's not perfect. Part of what makes her not perfect is the drive and ambition that make her so cool. To make your heroine's vulnerability also be her strength takes a writerly awesomeness that I have to bow down to.
This isn't the first time Steph has done this either. She did it with her book that came out last year. Camille in The Doctor's Deadly Affair? Same dealio. The very thing that makes her a kick ass awesome surgeon is what turns around and bites her squarely in the ass when it comes to her personal life.
Steph did it in the very first book I read by her, too. Talia in The Contestant might actually die because of her fabulous competitive drive, but that's what makes her so completely fabulous.
I'm pretty sure I posted a couple of weeks ago about needing to like someone in a book or a movie or a TV show to want to stick with it. Steph knows how to do that in spades.
I really wanted to come up with a golf metaphor for that last sentence, but hitting a hole in one didn't sound right. Who's got a good golf metaphor for knocking it out of the park?
6 comments:
Eileen - thanks. That just made my day... and I can tell already it's going to be a rough one.
But can I also add how jealous I am you can ride on an eliptical and read at the same time! I can't do that on my treadmill - too bouncy.
Must get elipitcal for 2012!
ellipticals now come in a package wtih e-readers....
It's the e-reader. I haven't been able to read magazines on the elliptical before. I wasn't exactly pushing it either, though.
Hope your day is smoother than you expect!
I totally agree, Eileen! Stephanie writes strong women who know what they want and go after it.
I've read my e-reader on a recumbent bike, but not the elliptical. Must attempt this. :)
The ellipticals at our gym have a little ledge where you can rest something, but they're way too narrow for any book I'm reading. They are, however, perfect for an e-reader. Also, the page turning issue . . . It's easy to reach out and click a button, not so easy to actually turn a page and resettle a book. I'm telling you it was awesome.
Plus the book is just great. It's got such great humor and heart. I'm loving it.
Love that post and I feel the same way, Steph's heroines are always relatable, but in a "I want to be more like them" way,
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