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Rebecca M. Harrington

Author of Penelope

4 Works 330 Members 27 Reviews

Works by Rebecca M. Harrington

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Frankly, “Meh”. This should be a young adult book. The plot was like a skipped stone on a lake - only surface.
 
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schoenbc70 | 11 other reviews | Sep 2, 2023 |
I'm not sure why I finished this book; I think it was to see if it was written tongue-in-cheek or with a real intent to portray these 20-something characters as truly superficial and selfish. Because that's what they were. The conversations were stilted, some of the plotlines were dropped (she had $40 dollars but could afford to move? She struggled with her new job but then was apparently successful?), and motivations were not clear. I hope this was written to exaggerate what some young people go through to live in New York City because it didn't sound very fun to me.… (more)
½
 
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Bookbets50 | 11 other reviews | Jan 8, 2023 |
In this fun little book (easily read in one sitting if you feel like it), New York journalist Rebecca Harrington tries out the diets of the rich and famous to see if they are really sustainable and if they actually work. The full list of celebrity diets she follows is:

Gwyneth Paltrow; Liz Taylor; Karl Lagerfeld; Marilyn Monroe; Cameron Diaz; Madonna; Greta Garbo; Victoria Beckham; Beyonce; Jackie Kennedy; Sophia Loren; Pippa Middleton; Carmelo Anthony; Dolly Parton; Miranda Kerr; Elizabeth Hurley.

Make no mistake – this is not intended to be a serious examination of how dieting works. Most diets are tried for only a few days (some of which I don’t know how anyone could actually do for more than a couple of days without passing out anyway). Each chapter focuses on a new celebrity diet, and they are choppy and short chapters, which make for a quick read.

I really enjoyed this book actually. Harrington is self-deprecating, witty and engaging. The book had me giggling to myself several times and I would certainly read more by this author.

However, it did make me think about celebrity diets and how they are sold to the gullible public – if I thought about it very deeply I would actually get quite angry. Most of the diets feature famous faces with no qualifications in nutrition whatsoever, peddling their wares to their fans and making money off people’s desire to be thinner. Miranda Kerr might be a lovely person but my goodness her lifestyle regime sounds utterly pretentious and completely unrealistic for those of us with actual jobs, budgets and time constraints. Victoria Beckham’s diet was inspired by the diet Tom Hanks followed to lose a ton of weight when filming Cast Away. In other words, she followed the diet that he used to make himself look starved! What kind of messed up is this?!

However, as mentioned above this book is not a commentary on the morality or otherwise of celebrities making money from their diets, but basically an undemanding fun read and a nice way to round off my reading for 2022.
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Ruth72 | 6 other reviews | Dec 30, 2022 |
Rating: 1 1/2 stars

Oh Penelope… I tried to like you, I did. Really, I swear. It’s just, Penelope is boring. Both the book and the character. Nothing happens. Nothing changes. Nothing improves or gets worse. Never have I read a book so full of nothing in such stilted language.

I kept on trying to get to know Penelope though, hoping beyond hope that she might miraculously show me that college age literature stood a fighting chance. I’ve been hoping for the past 10 years (since I started visiting to colleges) that there were more authors out there like Diana Peterfreund who could write about coeds with convincing sass and likeability. But the only other books I’ve been able to find that have even piqued my interest have left me feeling like my generation was getting smacked in the face. Nope, sorry, you don’t deserve good literature, you’ll have to continue to be stuck with the awkwardness of reading YA or trying to understand the challenges of the thirty something housewife in most adult fiction or, and possibly even worse, be stuck with the new “new adult” label that simply just seems to give the author free reign to insert gratuitous graphic sex scenes into what were formerly YA domains as far as content and plot goes. I don’t read romance, don’t try to trick me and get me excited by calling it “new adult”. I feel like my generation is being neglected by literature, and unfortunately my attitude towards Penelope really echoed that sentiment.

Penelope plods along through her freshman year at Harvard trying to fit in and tamper her socially awkward tendencies. I grew up with a kid like Penelope and even he learned faster than she did when to just shut up and move on. When to just walk away when you get a bunch of confused and withering stares from the WASPs of your Ivy League halls. While not Ivy educated myself (though not for lack of trying), the sociologist in me was always enthralled by the social stratification of elite private schools. The students of such schools seemed to fall into three categories: those who attended because mommy or daddy had lots of money (or were famous), those who had the brains and would invariably do something great after graduating (most likely to have super scholarships and therefore no crippling loans so they could go right into being awesome after graduating), and those who had the brains but really cared about the name on their diploma when they graduated and didn’t care if there was a better program at a public institution.

Penelope encounters primarily the first group of students and she doesn’t understand them, and truth be told, it’s hard to if you didn’t grow up in that culture. But she just kind of exists without interacting fully with any of the other characters. Does she care? What does she like? What does she really want out of life? Why did she bother going to Harvard? Alas, none of these questions are answered and Penelope remains an uninteresting conundrum throughout the entire book.
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smorton11 | 7 other reviews | Oct 29, 2022 |

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Works
4
Members
330
Popularity
#71,937
Rating
2.9
Reviews
27
ISBNs
20
Languages
1

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