The Tasteful Truth

Coming across the “tasteful truth” in-line so frequently exposed in book synopsis, is starting to raise my brows. Reminds me of a quote I once heard. “Soon as someone tells you, ‘this is the truth,’ you can best believe you’re about to get a lie.” Therefore, by adding in the ‘tasteful’ part, would this then mean we'll be reading…what…a tasteful lie?

Two-stepping back, I am the queen of heralding ‘this is the truth’. Of course however, I probably don’t add on the tasteful part, and am usually giggling in any event. And hang on, it’s not because I’m about to, or in fact am telling a ‘tactless’ lie. Quite to the contrary. I’m usually about to get so bold that I start visualizing a brick wall falling from the sky, slamming to earth, forever separating me from my audience…or that sole inheritor who happened to catch me when I was about to expel one of my ‘unadorned’ truths.

At any rate, digressing here, my reading has picked up…some. I just finished reading How I Planned Your Wedding by Susan Wiggs and Elizabeth Maas. This book is what I would call the ‘tasteful truth’, though nowhere in the synopsis is this spelled out. Mother and daughter just wrote a tastefully, truthful book about planning a wedding and I fell for it. I am the biggest sucker for tasteful romance stories like this. Makes me want to go out and buy all of the Harlequin writer’s romance books.

I also just finished reading The Gifted Ones, another ‘tasteful truth’ by debut author Lisa Vaughn, a self-proclaimed ‘hippie chick’ who voluminously writes about 'falling in love with her best friend during a time when same gender intimate relationships weren't the social lure of conversation.' A very absorbing read that now has spiced up my reading. 

Within reach I'm looking forward to Waiter Rant by Steve Dublancia (I’m guessing this one will give my taste-buds a workout); Interpreter of the Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (can’t even begin speculating on how tasteful this one will be); along with The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (where I have no good guess what to expect here either). The Smartest Guy in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (ooo…for some reason I’m anxious to read this one); among quite a few others. My only quest is that the writer(s) have told their truth. Like asparagus versus collard greens, I suppose I’ll have to decide whether it is actually tasteful or not, albeit the nutrient concentration likely being equivalent.