A Week at the Lake; Laughter in the Dark; The Orange County Fair: A History of Celebration

I'm not a huge chick-lit fan, but I like Wendy Wax, I've read others by her. This one was pretty good: after a five year estrangement from her best friends Serena and Mackenzie, Emma is finally ready to come clean about her long held secret that could rip the three of them apart for good. She invites them to spend a week at her family's lake house, a tradition they've had for years. On the day they're supposed to leave, however, Emma is struck by a car and ends up in the hospital in a coma. Mackenzie and Serena stay with her, taking care of her and her teenage daughter, Zoe. Emma finally emerges from her coma and once she's well enough to leave the hospital, the four of them travel to the lake house so Emma can recuperate (a side note: how nice would it be to have the type of job where you can just take a month off to help your sick friend recover? Who has a job like that?). While at the lake house old wounds finally begin to heal and secrets are of course revealed. I saw the major secret coming a mile away (yay me!) but it was still a good journey to get there.

I love, love, love Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita", and while rewatching the movie (the good one, with Jeremy Irons) a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that "Lolita" is the only book of his I've ever read. So I picked up "Laughter in the Dark". It was pretty good: Albert is a middle aged man with a mousy wife and a daughter. He's pretty mousy himself, until he starts an affair with a much younger woman. He ruins his happy family life by moving in with this girl, who quickly tires of her much older lover and takes a young boyfriend on the side, staying with Albert for his money. While on a trip Albert is in a car accident and blinded. Margot takes him to a secluded cabin in Switzerland to help him recover, and her boyfriend Rex also moves in. The two of them have much fun at the poor blind man's expense. I loved the tragic ending, it was so fitting.

I love the Orange County fair and the L.A. County fair. I just think fairs are so much fun. I enjoyed this brief history of the 125 years of the Orange County fair by Chris Epting. It had some great pictures from fairs of the past (historical photos are always so much fun to look at, I think) and told about how the fair started and how it's evolved over the years to the three week celebration it is today.