Meh. The movie is better. The main character is a little whiny. On no, I'm underappreciated, my job is hard bleh bleh bleh...whatevs. At least the movie has Stanley Tucci and nice clothes to look at. ( )

After thoroughly enjoying the movie, I decided to pick this book up over the summer. I barely managed to finish it, and only because I don't like abandoning books halfway through. Andrea was terrible! When I read, I like to be able to sympathize with the main character - if your main character is a serial killer, let us find SOME way to connect with him. I hated Andrea for the entire book. Leaving her family, her (amazing!) boyfriend, and her best friend in the dust for a terrible boss who makes outrageous demands, just so that she has a shot at a better job in the future is not okay!

The book was insanely repetitive. Chapter after chapter we see:
1) Boss makes crazy demand
2) Andrea ditches her family/friends to do it
3) Andrea fails, boss threatens to fire her
4) Repeat.

Where is the pleasure in that? ( )

Since the movie was so popular, I probably don't need to mention that this is the story of recent college graduate Andrea Sachs and her year of servitude to Runway Magazine editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly. As her time under the thumb of this self-possessed, uber-demanding witch continues, Andrea finds all the things she used to cherish - her family, boyfriend, and best friend - slipping away from her. It definitely had its funny moments, but all in all I wasn't too impressed with Andrea. She was snobbish and I was simply not convinced that she or anyone else believed her constant torment as Junior Assistant was really worth a vague possibility that Miranda could get her any job she wished at the end of it (her dream is to work at The New Yorker). I found myself repeatedly wondering why she didn't just quit already. Still, it was a decently light and fun way to pass an otherwise intolerably long commute. But the movie was better. ( )

Andy is a recent college graduate, ready to find her first real job after a year of travelling around the world. Her dream is to write for the New Yorker, but she ends up getting a job at Runway, a fashion magazine, as junior assistant to the editor, a notoriously hard woman to work for. The job is hell, but if she makes it through a year, she's practically guaranteed a job anywhere she chooses, and she's hoping that will be the New Yorker.

I have to say, I don't understand at all why anyone likes this book. Seriously.

The writing was...not horrible, but not great. Way more focused on describing clothing and dropping names than getting on with the story. The ending was pat and left threads hanging. I found the entire cast unlikable, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to. Obviously Miranda is horrible, but even Andy and her friends got on my nerves.

I guess part of the appeal was getting a glimpse of the glamorous life of the rich and famous, but it was not cool or exciting to me. It just made me disgusted. I already hated rich people to begin with and pretty much the only way for this to have been a satisfying read is if Miranda had lost her job and all her money and not had a penny to her name. ( )

This was on loan from my Mum. I’m not into ‘chick-lit’ anyway, but I’d heard it was meant to be quite funny so thought I’d give it a try (if only for a lack of anything else to read).

However, from the first chapter I disliked the main character. it starts with her having been asked to go and collect her boss’s car from the garage, which is a “stick-shift,” and having always driven an automatic, she’s struggling with it. I suppose I could ignore how American that is, if it wasn’t for the fact that she seemed to find the task of driving a car for ten minutes so stressful. And being that you have to use two hands for “stick-shift” cars, and she was struggling anyway, why then light a cigarette, when you know you won’t be able to smoke it? I personally had no sympathy at all when onoes, she’d burnt her leather trousers with it. It was her own silly fault.

And really, I felt that way throughout the book. Only sometimes did I think her boss was behaving out of line, but then, with such an incompetent assistant, who could blame her for getting exasperated? When you have employed a woman in a job (that, as she quite rightly says, a million girls would die for), it would rather annoy you when your new employee then sighed and muttered to herself whenever you asked her to do a simple enough task, like getting breakfast or getting a coffee from the Starbucks across the street. And she would always chat on her phone, taking 30mins to do a simple, five minute job – no wonder she’d then get nagging phone calls asking where she’s got to, or told to get another because it’s now too cold! I wouldn’t be happy with that either. And the amount of money she wasted on supposed ‘expenses!’ Hardly a star employee.

Once I had begun to dislike the character, it was difficult to really gain any sympathy or enjoy reading it, other than to laugh at the idiocy of her behaviour. I don’t know how she thought she’d be able to handle a high-class journalism job, full of deadlines and pressure to do well, if she can’t manage simple tasks like getting a coffee. As the book progressed, she grew more annoying, becoming obsessed with her job and answering her stupid mobile phone – to the point where her best friend is in a coma, possibly dying, and she goes to a fashion show instead. No wonder her boyfriend dumped her for it; I don’t blame him.

Overall – avoid, avoid, avoid! Apparently the film is better, but it’s not like it could have gotten a whole lot worse! I’m giving it 2/5 because it was quite a page-turner, so obviously the writer did something right to keep me gripped for that long. ( )