REVIEW: Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Well, I didn't have this finished by the 10th, so I didn't get to pass it on to one of the persons I was initially considering. However, I was reading it this weekend when I had a friend from NY here visiting and she mentioned she wanted to read it so I plan to pass it along to her next.

In any case, I really enjoyed this book. Having seen the movie first, which is one of my favorites by the way, I found a number of differences, mostly just things that made the action happen faster, but some scenes were added even to the movie, such as the fight between Daniel and Mark. Unlike the movie, Bridget wasn't under the impression that Mark stole Daniel's fiance as happened in the movie. I was trying to figure out why this difference, but I guess it made a strong case for the dislike between the two guys very obvious. So even though the movie wasn't true to the book on a few issues, and there were some scenes in the movie that never occurred in the book, I still like them both equally. Besides, seeing the movie first, and picturing Hugh Grant (YUMMY!) in my mind whenever there was talk of Daniel, well I kinda liked that.

As I was reading, I found myself continually pointing out all the things Bridget was doing wrong with regards to dieting, time management, and so on... all the things she kept saying she was going to work on. For instance, she'd often count calories without any consideration for the food content itself. She's very disorganized and though the author claims that the reader will often think they see themselves in Bridget, I didn't find this to be the case at all with me. Instead, I found myself thinking of her as an unenlightened soul, whom as a friend, I wanted desperately to help to set her on the right path by pointing out to her all the little things she's doing wrong. Hehe.

This book was a very quick read. I got it read pretty much over a long weekend, even though we had friends from out of town staying at our house. It was just that easy to read in bed and not want to put down. :) I'm looking forward to the 2nd book in this series, which is coming to me in a bookring. However, I may decide to see the movie first for that one too.

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