The Friday Night Knitting Club

Ah, chicklit.  So comforting and familiar.
This book was recommended to me by one Karen Eng (aka my sister-in-law).  It is a nice, simple story about interesting characters.  After I Know This Much is True, it feels like a vacation.  No characters with mental disorders, yay!
The book follows the exploits of Georgia Walker and the ladies who come into her knitting shop on Friday nights to do pretty much everything but knit.  I, of course, like Darwin Chiu, the snotty academic who has problems with social graces and thinks knitting is a form of submitting to "The Patriarchy."  There are many other characters, some of whom feel like the standard stock characters of chick-lit, but some who are interesting in their own right.  Georgia has a biracial daughter, Dakota, whose father reappears for the obligatory love story.  The book skates around the idea of race and mentions it frankly a few times, but Kate Jacobs doesn't really explore the issue.
The book has a tragic "twist" at the end.  Of course, since I read spoilers for just about everything, I knew this was coming.  The twist did make it less like very traditional chick-lit, which is all sunshine and roses... but who wants a character to die?  Really?!
Overall, the book wasn't the best thing I ever read, but it was enjoyable.  It worked very well as an audiobook to listen to while working, since it kept me entertained without requiring too much concentration.
In comparison to all other literature, I give it a 6 out of 10.  In the chicklit category, I'd give it an 8.

I am still slogging through the Rosalind Franklin biography.  Honestly, it is one of the worst-written books I have read in a very long time.  It seems like it was written without a copy editor.  Some sentences are only fragments while others run on and on.  And the author pays a lot of attention to the fact that Dr. Franklin was Jewish, even though she herself seems rather disinterested in religion.  The author points out every other character who is Jewish and makes some rather sweeping generalizations about supposedly Jewish traits that Dr. Franklin possesses.  I thought attributing character traits to religion and race went out with the last millenium, but apparently not.  Oh well, I keep plugging along because I do really want to know about Rosalind Franklin... but I may run out of patience before I run out of pages.