It's like crack in book form.
03 May 2011
I am not enjoying it at all, but for some reason, I cannot stop reading The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels: A Love Story.
Except now, about fifty pages from the end, I am MAKING myself stop. Unlike with the two baskets of Easter candy I received (well, CRjr received, but he has no teeth, so I took matters into my own hands), I am going to exert some self-control and put the book down.
It all started when I saw a cookbook titled The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl on the bestseller lists, and because I have been on the hunt for new recipes, I checked it out. I haven't made anything out of it yet, but some of it does look good, and each recipe is illustrated with numerous step-by-step photographs, which is kind of a nice touch. The cookbook is based on Drummond's blog, The Pioneer Woman, and evidently those photographs are a big part of what has made the blog hugely popular. Periodically in the cookbook there are photographs of Drummond's husband (referred to as "Marlboro Man") and her kids, as well as stories about how she, a city girl, met and fell in love with her husband and moved to the ranch.
The cookbook was published first; Black Heels... came out in February of this year. This one is pure memoir, in which Drummond relates the story of her love affair with Marlboro Man, how they got married, and the birth of their first child. And, let's face it, it's cheesy. There's lots of stories about how the MM's sexy gravelly voice makes the Pioneer Woman go weak in the knees, how they spent all sorts of time making out, and how she gave up her dream of moving to Chicago to stay near and eventually marry the MM. Consider this story, about her reaction to becoming engaged:
"Then my whole body relaxed in a mushy, contented heap as I remembered all the times I'd walked back into that very room after being with Marlboro Man, my cowboy, my savior. I remembered all the times I'd fallen onto my bed in a fizzy state of euphoria, sighing and smelling my shirt to try to get one last whiff. All the times I'd picked up the phone early in the morning and heard his sexy voice on the other end. All the times I'd longed to see him again, two minutes after he'd dropped me off. This was right, this was oh, so right. If I couldn't go a day without seeing him, I certainly couldn't go a lifetime..." (p. 131.)
There's a LOT of that type of thing in this book. And yet I still read to page 158. I don't know why, really. Perhaps because none of the other nonfiction I have in the house is turning me on. But this is it. I'm putting this book back in the library bag, because I can't quite believe I've already read this much of it. Ever read a book like that? One you can't stop reading even though you know you should, that there's a ton of way better books out there?