for once, i rooted for the cheaters

And this is the book that made me do it.

Anticipating a long wait at my dentist's office, I brought along Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. I figured getting absorbed in chick lit would be better than falling asleep in public, as I had done the last time. It was just supposed to be a way for me to pass the time, and I didn't really intend on spending the rest of my Saturday night reading.

But that's exactly what I did. After waiting for an hour and a half, I was so drawn in by this book that I couldn't put it down. I stayed up until 12:30pm, reading it until the very end. Even after reading, I found myself still thinking about it.

What does this have to do with cheaters, you ask? Well, the protagonist is goody-two-shoes Rachel, who has always played second fiddle to her best friend Darcy. Okay, fine, maybe I identify with Rachel because we're both rule players and seek approval from almost everybody, but I really hated Darcy-- selfish, "It's always about me" Darcy, who always screwed over Rachel and always made her feel bad. She stole Rachel's first love. She lied about her SAT scores just so she could be ten points higher than Rachel. She made Rachel believe that she had gotten into Notre Dame --Rachel's dream college-- when Rachel didn't. She led a glamorous life while Rachel was stuck hating her job. And most importantly, she got the guy that Rachel always thought was out of her league: Dex, who Rachel met in law school. After convincing herself that he wouldn't go for a girl like her, she promptly introduced him to Darcy. The pair is engaged, and Rachel is set to be the maid of honor in their wedding.

I hate Darcy so much that when a drunken Rachel and Dex sleep together on the night of her thirtieth birthday, I find myself hoping that Rachel gets her chance to screw over Darcy. That this time, she comes out on top, even if she is the maid of honor screwing her best friend's fiance. I hate cheaters because I always wonder about the girlfriend who is clueless about all these things happening behind her back. But here, I cannot bring myself to sympathize with Darcy as the clueless girlfriend. For me, it serves her right for being a terrible friend to Rachel.

Of course, this isn't an open and shut case. Dex loves Darcy. Rachel loves Darcy and values their 20-year friendship. Will they realize that Darcy is too important for them both to lose, or is what they have much more precious than they think? For chick lit critics, this isn't as brainless as one would think. I truly enjoyed this book from cover to cover, and find myself wanting to reread it on a lazy afternoon.

And a quick mention on the latest additions to my reading list:

I mentioned this book a long time ago on my Plurk, and I can't even remember how I found out about it. All I know is I was intrigued by the anecdote that gives birth to the title. The subtitle "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" has caused friends to say, "This book is so you!" I kept it at the back of my mind, yet found myself always returning to the English Reference section of the bookstore in our neighborhood mall, checking to see if the lone copy had disappeared.

Finding an open copy in another bookstore sealed its fate for me. The introduction spoke to me by giving an example of a badly-punctuated poster, followed by the statement, "If this didn't bother you, put down this book right now." I wanted to raise my hand and say, "Me, me, it bothered ME!!!" I put it back down, couldn't stop thinking about it for days, and finally put the lone copy out of its misery by buying it from said bookstore.

To be fair to the other books that made it to my Reading List first, I have not gone past the first chapter, which I read while having dinner alone immediately after buying it. Hey, I needed to pass the time!

I admit: this was an impulse buy. But in my defense, when you pick up a book with a boring title like Raising the Peaceable Kingdom, you don't expect it to be about an interesting experiment: what happens when you put a baby chick, a puppy, a kitten, a baby rabbit, and a baby rat all together? Do they end up hating each other, or do they live together peacefully even if they're completely different species?

I found myself reading the first chapter while standing next to the Sale Books bin, and I realized that I really wanted to find out the results of this experiment. Wouldn't the puppy and kitten be at each other's throats immediately? After all, the idiom "fighting like cats and dogs" had to come from somewhere. Wouldn't the kitten eat the rat, just like Tom always chases after Jerry (then again, I think Jerry is a mouse, not a rat, but still)? And the kitten might eat the baby chick, just as Sylvester always lusts after Tweety Bird. I couldn't resist not knowing, so it's a good thing that it would only cost me P65 to find out.

And so my current reading list reads:

The 2009 Reading List

1. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
2. The Smart One and the Pretty One by Claire LaZebnik
3. Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin --I boycotted this one.
4. A Place Called Here by Cecelia Ahern
5. If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern
6. Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
7. Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done by David Allen
8. The Amber Room by Steve Berry
9. Doctors by Erich Segal
10. Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
11. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
12. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
13. Prizes by Erich Segal

14. Live a Little by Kim Green

15. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

16. Raising the Peaceable Kingdom by Jeffrey Maoussaieff Mason

Hey, 5 out of 16 books, that's not so bad! It means I'm one-third down my reading list, as long as I don't add to it! Maybe I'll read Like Water for Chocolate next.

Happy Sunday, everyone!