Cleanse Your Book Palate

After my recent Gillian Flynn bender (Gone Girl was so nuts, I had to see what else she could come up with) that led to several rough nights of sleep caused by dreams about teeth (Sharp Objects is for real, y’all), I had to read a book palate cleanser.

Usually, I will grab something terribly boring (nerdy non-fiction), give it 30 pages, drool all over it because I fell asleep while reading it, and stick it back on the shelf in my living room where my “real” books go. The books that I am too embarrassed to showcase find a home in my bedroom, and books I’m too embarrassed to admit to owning at all end up left around town for people to find and take home. There is a happy woman somewhere in Tupelo with a free copy of 50 Shades of Grey that she found in the Wal-Mart parking lot on West Main Street.A ride on the Presidential Biography Express wasn’t going to help after I finished Dark Places, so I went for a different genre of book palate cleansing: a good old-fashioned chick book.I know, right?I should have known better. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes is one of those books where the main character says dumb stuff, is quirky, and British. Louisa has just lost her job at a coffee shop (more like a tea cafe) and heads to the British version of the unemployment office. After a miserable stint at a chicken packaging plant (oh, the horror!), she accepts a position as a caretaker for Will, a hot paraplegic guy. Of course they fall in love, and of course the ending is HORRIBLE (not really), and you cry like someone just ran over your dog. It’s good.

My book palate cleanser needed a book palate cleanser, so I picked up Davy Rothbart’s My Heart is an Idiot. Um, yeah. It’s really funny. Davy shares stories from his failed love life, which are so unbelievable they’re incredibly believable. He got catfished way before Te’o did by a lady who randomly called his hotel room in the middle of the night. And they had a relationship. And he believed it. And they met. And she was a he.

If you can’t wait until April for David Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, pick up Davy’s book.

My palate has been cleansed, and I am once again able to read. I will start Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove this week (happy Valentine’s to me!) and I will continue my search for a new book to showcase in the living room.