PS- I scored the bridesmaid by Paul Howard

I have finished reading the second book.yay! This book had me at the title and I could not put it down. The suspense at the end left me wanting more too.  I read it in the toilet, in the matatu and even at the bank queue. It follows the style of “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Catcher in the Rye” whereby a young man is struggling to make a transition from being a boy into a man. The story follows the fictional character Ross journey as he prepares to marry his sweetheart Sorcha and struggles with making major decisions.

I always knew men were naughty but this book scared the shite out of me. You wouldn’t believe the mischief this husband-to-be and his best men are up to -sort of like in the movie “Hangover”. Like they have this thing where they sleep with many women and steal CD’s from their bedrooms. They call it the “Petty Pilfering championship” whereby the winner has to collect 50CD’s (they call it the P.P. collection) and choose one for the looser who is supposed to perform (karaoke) while standing in a bar.LOL

They actually judge women by the kind of music they listen to. Wow I didn’t know that some men do that! Sorcha, his girl friend even says she has been a little b*tchy lately which she blames on listening to a lot of Mary J. Blige OUCH! Ross reckons that the lady she stole from the Jessica Simpsons- in my skin CD has shite taste in music and shite taste in men. They can also tell the age of women by the kind of CD they listen to, like one of the best men stole “Elvis Presley gospel songs” from a 46 yr old woman hahaha. Apparently they do not discriminate. This gets Ross in trouble when one of the ladies he stole from put two and two together to blow their cover and goes onto rally up all the women to go to his house to collect their CD’s. It even gets funnier when one of the ladies slept with both Ross and his best man and she doesn’t know who stole which CD. Ross says it’s her fault for putting it out too much- WOIYE!

But at least a learnt of some artists whose music am not familiar with that I plan on checking out later and they include Michelle Shocked, Garth Brooks, The Nolans, Mary Chapin carpenter, Mark Owen, Danni Minogue, the lighthouse family,  and Ennio Morricone. See the great thing about books is that you learn from other cultures, talk about travelling around the world without a visa.

They pour liquor into the ATM machine; Ross even kills one of his lady friend’s pet and even try some spiritual stuff - am talking Ouija boards and communicating with the dead stuff. He tries to make a porno movie and even tries surfing yet he doesn’t even know how to swim and many dangerous stunts that readers should be advised not to try at home. On the advice of his girlfriend he gets on an Atkins diet and over indulges then ends up being unable to go for number two #icant.

The only issue I have with the book is that they use a lot of jargon that is familiar to the writer which one reviewer says only people from Dublin can understand. Like the word “Gaff” to mean house, million sheets for money, playing kool and the gang for being calm, scoops for liquor, seriously lost the plot for being crazy, top tens for breast and some acronyms like OTT, SP and PTS. 

They also break a lot of grammar rules that will drive the grammar nazis insane like writing words exactly how they pronounce it like goys for guys, porty for party, roysh for right, cor for car, orse for a**.I guess publishers are now flexible enough to allows some writers to be liberal with their language use. But the great thing is that one can easily infer from the story to get the meaning for words.

I would really recommend this book to any man who intends to get married and see what grooms go through during the planning of the wedding from bridezilla’s, getting money, proposing and letting go of the old bachelor life. I wish it could be adapted into a movie because it really is hilarious, I kept on laughing in the matatu that the passengers thought I had lost the plot (you know I had to use this here.lol)