Weekend update

Am so far behind on my "book reports" - 1) Haunting Bombay, by Shilpa Agarwal, was really quite good.  A little uneven; parts were fantastic, parts not so much - the big surprises were not really that surprising, and the author and/or editors seem to not be quite sure what to do with the "Indian" stuff - ie, which words are italicized, which not, which need to be explained, which not, and that can get a little bumpy.  Ha - they did NOT choose to translate "benchot," but now I know how to spell my favorite Hindi swear, good times.  Over all, I really liked it, though, and I would definitely recommend it (with reservations, to the right people) and look for other books by the same author.  OH MY GOD, MIGHT TAKE THAT BACK.  Just googled Agarwal, and went to her website to see if she had any other books - and there is a TRAILER for the NOVEL.  WTF?  It is the most cheesy, ridiculous thing I have ever seen - ye olde exotic India.  Bah.  But...the book was good, so I guess I should let it go.  There's a reading guide on the website (haven't looked at it), but I think that makes sense - as I read the book I was thinking this would be a good novel for a book club to take on, because there's lots of room for interpretation and debate.  
After Haunting Bombay I read The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti which I just loved, loved,  loved.  I finished it on the T, and I was trying to hard not to cry at points, and not many books make me tear up, but it was touching and sweet, along with moments of finely delineated cruelty and ugliness and more than a few hilarious lines and scenes.  There were also a few words I had to go and look up, which I always appreciate in a book.  My only issue with the book was that I was never totally clear on when in time it was happening; I was thinking early nineteenth century at first, but then I was thinking maybe just before the Civil War?  A copy of James Fennimore Cooper's The Deerslayer plays a role in the book, and when I checked on the publication date, I knew we had to be talking post-1841.  Additionally, there was a lot of talk of older orphan boys being drafted into the army - but there was no mention of the war (that I recall), and they seem to have been mostly used out in the West, so maybe the Mexican-American War (late 1840s)?  That might make sense: the army needed free boys, but wasn't drafting - because there were all sorts of men wandering aimlessly around, so it DEFINITELY wasn't during the Civil War.  Ultimately it didn't really matter to me that I didn't have a firm idea of "when" we were in time, with the story,  but it was a minor, nagging issue.  Oddly enough, I am experiencing the same unsettlement with the book I'm reading right now, East of the Sun (or something like that), which is about English girls in India in the late 1940s (or 50s?), but the whole thing where the random white girls are swanning around being all memsahib-y while their husbands play polo with their regiments through simmering unrest is so totally classic English-in-India that it could be the 1840s or 50s and I keep forgetting when, exactly, we're supposed to be, until there's a mention of, say, Gandhi, rather than the sepoys.  In any case, more about that book later, when I have finished it.  Finally, we have
Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered, Smart-Ass, or why you should never carry  Prada Bag to the unemployment office, by Jen Lancaster.  I am not sure now, but I think I requested this book from deposit after reading that Lauren Willig was reading/liked it (or the author?), figuring that since I like LW's books, I might like what she likes.  That said, at first I HATED it.  I mean, seriously, Lancaster comes across as a raging b*tch, for real.  And I know that "raging b*tch" is a way over-used phrase, but "shrieking, insensitive, self-centered harpy" doesn't begin to describe it.  I almost put the book down after the first few pages because I hated the narrator so much, but I was stuck on the T (it didn't help that I was still trying to blink away tears from finishing The Good Thief) so I kept reading.  And I guess I'm glad I did.  Lancaster is definitely funny, and sloooooowly some evidence of nice character traits started to emerge.  The book is a memoir of sorts that takes us through Lancaster being laid off, and her increasingly desperate search for work, including the blog she starts chronicling her life, the job hunt, and the job rejections and pitfalls.  And the time she brought the Prada bag to the unemployment office.  Eventually the blog gets her noticed by a literary agent, and she gets a book deal (for Bitter), but not before hitting some really rough times with her boyfriend/husband.  It's a pretty predictable progression - she gets nicer as life gets harder - but it works.  I think we were supposed to find her initial horridness funny, but it was just too over the top for me (honestly, I was baffled for most of the book by why her boyfriend was even with her), but by the second half of the book I was laughing more, maybe because then she seemed more like a real person and less like a caricature.  Finished the book Friday night (3-4 days ago), and not sure how I feel.  Liked parts, hated parts, not sure if I loved any parts.  Don't feel like it was a waste of time, but not sure if I would read more by her...maybe.  Jury's out.