Reading matter: the good, the bad and Bridget Jones 3

Today I read on the BBC website that Helen Fielding was writing new weekly Bridget Jones columns in the Independent, starting today. So I looked up the Independent's website only to discover that I could buy the right to read the column for a quid. (That's the per article cost - pretty steep when the whole paper costs 65p!) So I bought a paper copy at Westminster tube station and abandoned it, disgusted, at West Hampstead. With any luck someone else who was intending to buy a copy will find it and the Independent will lose a sale.

Let me just say - I think the original Bridget Jones is a work of comic genius. The sequel wasn't quite as good but still enjoyable. But this new column has completely lost the plot. For a start, it reads as if she's parodying her own style. A few abbreviations like 'v. g' and leaving out the 'I' at the start of sentences makes the original seem like a real diary, but you can take this too far. Nobody would actually write "if see what mean", and you certainly wouldn't have seen Bridget do it in book 1.

Secondly, the review on BBC said how lovely it was that the column showed Bridget commenting on current affairs again, which she doesn't do in the movies. I don't think the reviewer was trying to be funny, but in this case it is literally a hastily cobbled-together comment on the nation's current affair, that of Jude Law and his children's nanny. It's not particularly witty or insightful, or even to the point. "Oh dear - do want a little baby to love. Though not ex-husband to shag the nanny. If had ex-husband." etc. From vaguely wanting a baby to thinking about non-existent ex-husbands shagging the non-existent nanny is a leap too far for me.

Thirdly, you get sick of a character who never learns anything and never grows up. Each of the books had Bridget reaching an epiphany of some sort (invariably Mark Darcy-related) but now here she is, back to square one despite being ten years older now if we're going to be literal about it, shagging both Mr Darcy and Daniel Cleaver in a drunken haze without really meaning to sleep with either of them. Surely there are more men in the world than just these two?

Also, now she talks about being a "career woman", without irony. I liked her better when she despised her job and did as little work as possible.

And finally, you can't just recycle content you've used before. I do not wish to hear about how having a baby is something you always intend to do in about three years time - have heard it all before in book two, in exactly those words.

On a positive note, I've read some fantastic books lately. I can wholeheartedly recommend, in no particular order:
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. A great book for a long-haul flight with a gripping plot about a 13-year-old girl who was selected as an embryo to be a donor for her sister who has leukemia. Initially, the idea was that she would only need to donate some material from her umbilical cord but as time passes and her sister gets sicker, her parents demand more and more medical procedures. When they ask for a kidney, she hires a lawyer.

The Queen and I and Number 10 by Sue Townsend. Both role-reversal comedies. In The Queen and I, a republican government sends the royal family to live on a housing estate. The star of the show is Harris, the Queen's corgi, whose point of view on his new life in the estate's canine underworld is very entertaining. Number 10 sees a thinly-disguised Tony Blair dress up in drag (which he finds disturbingly enjoyable) and embark on a tour of Britain with the policeman who guards the front door of Number 10, to get back in touch with the people.

The Kiss by Joan Lingard. Inspired by the author's passion for the artist Gwen John. An Edinburgh art teacher in his 40s is a sculptor with a passion for Rodin. His best pupil is a 15-year-old girl who becomes obsessed with Gwen John, who was Rodin's lover. Naturally, she soon becomes infatuated with the teacher and there is a school trip to Paris where all hell breaks loose. I sympathised with his predicament but I liked Elspeth Sandys' Finding Out better, for its treatment of a teacher/student relationship. Still a great read though.

I also enjoyed Love Me by Garrison Keillor, although it peters out towards the end. A witty and entertaining read about a guy who writes for the New Yorker and realises it is run by the mafia. Great comments about writers noone knew were Italian e.g. E.B. Blanco who wrote about Carlotta the spider and Stuart Piccolo!

And finally, the piece de resistance: The Future Homemakers of America by Laurie Graham. I would put this in a "if you liked Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" category. Six women and four decades of friendship, all underscored by the consequences of an event that happens early on slowly playing themselves out years later. It has really short chapters and a narrator who has plenty of spark and gets straight to the point:
"Ed was always tinkering with their car. First time I noticed she had sump oil the same place as her bruises was the day I realised how things stood between Betty and Ed."

Could not stop reading.