Hi,

Things are still quite weird around here but it’s getting better. There’s lots of work that needs my attention and still, I do have a review for you. 🙂 (I also haven’t forgotten about those Frankfurt articles, but they take time to compile and write and I have to sort out other matters right now, so please be patient. Thanks 🙂 )

A few weeks ago, I received an awesome Bridget Jones Blogger Package from Random House UK and Lovelybooks. I’ve already told you how much I love their cooperations! The package included a signed hardcover copy of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (published by Jonathan Cape), tissues, Galaxy chocolate (that one was super yummy), tea (I love tea!), a scented candle, a facial mask and a Bridget Jones t-shirt! Now ain’t that great? The perfect equipment for a perfect weekend full of Bridget Jones. (We were supposed to read the book in a Lovelybooks reading group on one weekend) Well, thanks to our postal services it wasn’t really a weekend because the package arrived on Tuesday as far as I remember. Too late for the weekend. The chocolate was gone by then ;). Nevertheless, I’m still super happy about this lovely package. Thanks again. And here’s what I think about Fielding’s third installment in the Bridget Jones series.

Summary quoted from Random House UK¹:

What do you do when a girlfriend’s 60th birthday party is the same day as your boyfriend’s 30th?
Is it wrong to lie about your age when online dating?
Is it morally wrong to have a blow-dry when one of your children has head lice?
Does the Dalai Lama actually tweet or is it his assistant?
Is technology now the fifth element? Or is that wood?
Is sleeping with someone after 2 dates and 6 weeks of texting the same as getting married after 2 meetings and 6 months of letter writing in Jane Austen’s day?
Pondering these, and other modern dilemmas, Bridget Jones stumbles through the challenges of single-motherhood, tweeting, texting and redisovering her sexuality in what SOME people rudely and outdatedly call ‘middle age’.

My Thoughts:

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is set in present-day London but this book really isn’t much about the setting.

The main character in Bridget Jones is, of course, Bridget Jones. In this book she is just over 50 and she still is rather clumsy and awfully fun. As by reading this book, you also read Bridget’s diary, you’ll always know what’s going on inside her head. Although there were some people in the Lovelybooks book group that thought Bridget acted quite immature for a 50+-year-old, I think it’s still her and as this is her diary, we get to know all her thoughts and this is not necessarily what the people around her get to see. So why can’t people over 50 have crazy thoughts? I think this made her likable.

The plot is based on changes that happened in the past 15 years of Bridget’s life. I think that the story was nice. I wish I knew how people of Bridget’s age would see this. I’m far younger, but I can imagine women acting just as Bridget does. Her problems seem very realistic to me. Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy also contains many fun passages but you got to have a special kind of humor to find jokes about farts and things like that funny. I think they were hilarious :D. Other members of the book group were bothered by these passages.

Overall, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy was a light and fun read, but I can understand why it might upset hardcore Bridget Jones fans.

¹http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/bridget-jones-3/9780224098090