Saturday, February 5, 2011

"L" is for Loos

So my "L" book was "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" from which the famous Marilyn Monroe movie was based. I never actually watched the movie, but I thought reading the book it was based on might be fun.

How wrong I was.

I couldn't even make it through the first chapter.

The book is the diary of a "lady in society" published in the 1920s. Basically, she's a kept woman - and thats what the first 12 pages of the book were about. I get it that this was culturally acceptable at the time, but I couldn't take it. All the "oh well, since a man is paying for a woman's education for some reason I suppose I should quit the job he doesn't like" was just more than I could take. I've read plenty of books where the women had to conform to rules I didn't like, or acted and thought in ways I didn't agree with, but rarely has it annoyed me so much, I had to stop reading. Usually I can deal, people are shaped by the times right? Sometimes they are conscious of the forces shaping their lives, sometimes not but this book was too much.

So thats the end of my "L" book.

It did have cool illustrations.