review
When Maggie loses her job at a major Silicon Valley firm, her world falls apart. She fears moving back in with her mother, which is her worst nightmare. Looking for a new job, she spends her days at the Dragonfly, a dingy used book shop. She makes a discovery. The book Lady Chatterley’s Lover contains romantic notes by a certain Catherine and Henry. The discovery of this book will change her life forever.
The reading tip: the book
Maggie is fired from ArGoNet in Silicon Valley. Her boyfriend just dumped her too. Maggie fears being forced to go back to live with her mom. She’s not really looking forward to that. To pass the time, she goes to read books in a dingy secondhand bookshop, The Dragonfly. Books are mixed up in great heaps. But it is cozy and relaxed. The boss of the Dragonfly, Hugo, is also her landlord and lives next door. One day Maggie makes a find. The book Lady Chatterley’s Lover contains notes by a certain Henry and a certain Catherine. A kind of flirtation through the book. The notes intrigue Maggie. Then her best friend Dizzy invites her to a night at a fancy reading club. The animator, Avi, has quite a bit of influence and Dizzy and Maggie hope that Avi can help them find a job again. So they have to put their best foot forward. The book being discussed that night is … Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Maggie accidentally takes the thumbed copy instead of a new and clean version of the book. Thanks to her creative approach, she knows how to charm the ladies of the reading club.
Hugo offers her a partnership in the Dragonfly. Maggie accepts the offer, but without much enthusiasm. With the book’s notes, she begins to advertise the onerous bookstore. She also makes a modern website. Suddenly the bookshop becomes hip.
Does Maggie still want to get back into computer science? Will she find out who Catherine and Henry are? And will the beautiful Rahjit manage to conquer her heart?
Shelly King
The reading tip is Shelly King’s debut novel. This woman was born in Jackson, Tennessee in the United States. Shelly King also works in Silicon Valley, in computer science, for a large software company. She lives in Santa Cruz with her husband, two large dogs and a cat.
Technical data De Leestip
- Title: The reading tip
- Original Title: The Moment of Everything
- Author: Shelly King
- Date of issue of the Dutch version: February 2015
- Dutch translation: Annet Mons
- Publisher: Meulenhoff Boekerij bv, Amsterdam
- ISBN: 978-90-225-7038-8
- 284 pages + two pages of questions about the book (useful for class or reading club)
Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover: The Book
The book Lady Chatterley’s Lover was written by the English DH Lawrence. It appeared in Florence in 1928. In the United Kingdom, the book was not published until 1960. Before that it was very progressive and daring. People spoke to shame about the explicit lovemaking described in the book and the relationship of an aristocratic woman and a game warden. A censored version was even released. A brief content of the book then. Beware: spoilers! Constance is married to Mr. Chatterley. He comes back wounded from the Great War. However, she remains a good wife and takes care of her husband. He’s not really grateful for that and treats his wife like a maid. He no longer looks after her. Constance continues to walk more and more in their domain to change her mind. One day she meets the new gamekeeper on the estate. They fall in love and a number of heavy lovemaking ensues. Eventually Constance will leave her husband and start a new life with the forest ranger.
Own opinion
For book lovers, this is a book that you cannot put away anymore. The atmosphere in the bookshop is fantastically well displayed, you can even almost smell the musty smell of books that have passed through different hands. You feel like cleaning up and classifying the piles of books, to sit and read in the cozy sofa.
The characters are all very lovingly described, each with their little edges and tricks. You have no difficulty in empathizing with each character. The atmosphere in Silicon Valley is perfectly captured. Shelly King herself works here, so she knows better than anyone how all these computer nerds work. The amateurs of historical and fantastic role plays are also very well described. It is a book in which different worlds are intertwined, but they are all described very accurately and truthfully. No element dominates in the book, everything is perfectly balanced. There is just enough romance and enough business. The search for Henry and Catherine is not brought to a head, but it does have a surprising outcome.
Perhaps something more could have been referred to the book Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We do talk about it, but we don’t really know much about the actual content of the book. So I was not really triggered to search and read the book. Maybe a minus.
