Thursday, September 2, 2010

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner

Light-hearted, hilarious, old-fashioned yet witty, this book is so much fun!  My grandma gave me her copy when I was in high school, and I have read it a few times whenever I needed a "'tweener"--something to read between hefty or intense novels.  More a travelogue than a story, it's the cheery tale of two 19-year-old girls on their first "independent" tour of Europe.  They encounter one mishap after another, from a shipwreck to spending a night (unwittingly) in a brothel--and it's all true!  I think it's the way Skinner puts things that makes it so entertaining.  (It reminds me of The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald, another delightful autobiography of sorts.) There is no underlying plot or "the moral of the story is . . ." but everyone once in a while it's nice to have a book like that, you know?

My copy looks like this (c. 1942):
. . . but apparently the newest version on Amazon (used for $7.50) is more like this.  Worth looking into!

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