secret women's writing

I read a book that I would have never read unless I was about to finish a book and wanted an easy read for the upcoming winter break. I would have never picked it up from the Barnes&Noble '3 For 2' section because it was sandwiched inbetween 'The Devil Wears Prada Part Nine' and the newest Mitch Albom book. And it didn't have a very good cover. And its title was 'The History of Love,' which, being the fictional romantic nut that I am, would have touched the sentimental string but I would have never picked it up and read the back because I figured it was a scam. An Anne Tyler with a new cover designer. In fact, it was a really good book.

So the book I read before this was 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,' a prime example of stupid book titles. My aunt and Jackie both read it in their book club and Jackie told me to read it because then we could talk about the meaning of friendship and blah blah so I read it. I learned a lot about footbinding. I even looked up images of how the toes crunch up into the ball of the foot so the girl essentially ends up with a foot resembling a fist. But the writing was boring and she narrator of the story kept referring to 'sex' as 'bed business' and that got really annoying. I understand that these are 18th century Chinese women but you can't refer to it as 'bed business' in every single context of life. You're not going to call it 'bed business' when you're talking about your wedding night to your lao tong (old same!). I know now that the Chinese language is a whole lot simpler in terms of its vocabulary than English (none of that synonym stuff) so this author pretending that they might use another phrase in place of 'sex' is just a fanciful orientalist dream. I guess at one point the narrator said 'make love' but that's just another cop out.

But 'The History of Love' was good. Really good. I wish the author on the back didn't have such a glamour shot photo because I thought that she was a chick lit writer and she's clearly not, even though she looks like one.

Although I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with my author photo because it will be so hot that you'd think you were reading a Danielle Steel or Jackie Collins.