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A review by jasminenoack
London Is the Best City in America by Laura Dave
5.0
Hey look I read a totally chicklitty book and liked it. Actually I don't really know what chick lit is but I am worried this might be it. I mean it is clearly a book for women... but lets pretend I'm not embarrassed to have read it.
100... Yay 100... I can calm down I am not a failure.
Okay I liked this book. I as a general rule like any book about relationships in which the resolution is fuzzy at best and everyone is constantly making the wrong decision.
I think that this really comes down to the fact that I really experience those types of books that I really battle with those issues on a day to day basis. I wrote once in another review: "a relationship of love can never be quite as perfect as a relationship of compromise." I'm sure at the time I was talking about the book and it was relevant, but I think it is also a statement about myself.
These days we all grow up in a world where people are constantly getting divorced and changing their minds and falling out of love. I mean did our great grandparents go around falling out of love? it doesn't seem like it. The entire foundation of relationships it just seems shakey. and there isn't much that's worse than standing on shakey ground.
There is a quote I have remembered since high school although I forgot the author long ago that goes something like "tread lightly the crust is thin." For years the world has really felt this way for me. Like If I tried to hard, if I really wanted the world was going to break. So I stayed quiet and I waited and I hoped that everything would turn out on its own.
This book is about that. It is about not wanting to make decisions. Wanting to be in love, wanting to end up in the right, wanting everything to work out, but not being willing to shake the boat to make that happen. It's about how you get what you want without stepping on someone else to get it.
I have this guy, who for years I've had some kind of a thing with. And in reality that thing is nothing. I've dated over the top of it, he's considered dating although I don't think it's worked out. We've gone through long periods of not speaking. There is a funny point in this book where Laura says 75% of relationships are ended by women, it might be the man's fault but he waits for the woman to actually end it. This book is really about that waiting. It's about how nothing will ever be over till you say it's over. It's about the fact that sooner or later someone has to say "put up or shut up" and without that, the thing, that background of I'll always love you it kinda haunts you.
I like this book because I relate to that. I know what it's like to try to move on with your life while you are dealing with a ghost like that. I know that it's impossible. For me a book like this isn't about me wanting what's best for the character it's about the book being a lens to see myself. I don't cheer for the guy proposing at the... okay that movie it was some sports game... I wonder what would I do? It's a book that for me at least I think made me think. It didn't make me change, I won't leave this review and go tell him to "put up or shut up". But I'll have a better idea what is happening for me, and maybe for him to.
This book begins with the quote:
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. -oscar wilde
I think that contradiction really catches the problem the book is grappling with, the problem so many of us are grappling with. Do we? can we? wait.
100... Yay 100... I can calm down I am not a failure.
Okay I liked this book. I as a general rule like any book about relationships in which the resolution is fuzzy at best and everyone is constantly making the wrong decision.
I think that this really comes down to the fact that I really experience those types of books that I really battle with those issues on a day to day basis. I wrote once in another review: "a relationship of love can never be quite as perfect as a relationship of compromise." I'm sure at the time I was talking about the book and it was relevant, but I think it is also a statement about myself.
These days we all grow up in a world where people are constantly getting divorced and changing their minds and falling out of love. I mean did our great grandparents go around falling out of love? it doesn't seem like it. The entire foundation of relationships it just seems shakey. and there isn't much that's worse than standing on shakey ground.
There is a quote I have remembered since high school although I forgot the author long ago that goes something like "tread lightly the crust is thin." For years the world has really felt this way for me. Like If I tried to hard, if I really wanted the world was going to break. So I stayed quiet and I waited and I hoped that everything would turn out on its own.
This book is about that. It is about not wanting to make decisions. Wanting to be in love, wanting to end up in the right, wanting everything to work out, but not being willing to shake the boat to make that happen. It's about how you get what you want without stepping on someone else to get it.
I have this guy, who for years I've had some kind of a thing with. And in reality that thing is nothing. I've dated over the top of it, he's considered dating although I don't think it's worked out. We've gone through long periods of not speaking. There is a funny point in this book where Laura says 75% of relationships are ended by women, it might be the man's fault but he waits for the woman to actually end it. This book is really about that waiting. It's about how nothing will ever be over till you say it's over. It's about the fact that sooner or later someone has to say "put up or shut up" and without that, the thing, that background of I'll always love you it kinda haunts you.
I like this book because I relate to that. I know what it's like to try to move on with your life while you are dealing with a ghost like that. I know that it's impossible. For me a book like this isn't about me wanting what's best for the character it's about the book being a lens to see myself. I don't cheer for the guy proposing at the... okay that movie it was some sports game... I wonder what would I do? It's a book that for me at least I think made me think. It didn't make me change, I won't leave this review and go tell him to "put up or shut up". But I'll have a better idea what is happening for me, and maybe for him to.
This book begins with the quote:
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. -oscar wilde
I think that contradiction really catches the problem the book is grappling with, the problem so many of us are grappling with. Do we? can we? wait.