Stepford Wives...on holiday

Ahhh... I don't have to go to work for 11 whole days.

The happiness this is causing is immense. Even though I'm not strictly speaking 'going on holiday'.

No. Instead, while temperatures outside have reached 21 degrees, I am inside on the Intermanet, composing a video review of the Chronicles of the Kencyrath and freaking out about wasps.

Also, I read The Stepford Wives. I love how it's short. It seems like nobody is allowed to publish short novels any more. Everything has to be at least 80,000 words or more. Still, it's a pretty good book.

OK, the prose is...spartan, which probably explains the word count, but it's genuinely pretty creepy. Even for someone who has watched the film (the one with Nicole Kidman...yeah. It wasn't awesome, but I did like the twist ending) and figured that the original ending probably wasn't so happy-clappy.

The heroine in the book is also a lot more likeable than Kidman's character, who's a really nasty, grasping career woman (symbolised by wearing *gasp* black clothing; seriously, what's unusual about that?) and generally being an unlikeable jerk. Book!Joanna is a semi-professional photographer, and actually a pretty nice, normal, generally unthreatening soul. She is, in fact, not the sort of person you'd want to replace with a robot, because...

OK, I get that the robot wives are totally perfect and whatever, but...she's great. Kind, a good mother, a hard worker... she's not a Mary Sue or anything, but she's a decent sort. As is her friend Mrs Markowe, who gets turned into a robot and, in the book, is Joanna's murderer.

I know. Downer. But you're allowed Downer Endings in books. And I kind of liked it. And because it's short it doesn't have those random treks into Whateverville that 1984 had. (History of the nations, anyone?)

Anyway, outside is nice, so maybe I'll go out there for a while.