"had on"??? what's happened to "was wearing"?

I'm reading a novel by Anita Shreve, really good stuff but there's one thing that keeps bugging me in this book and it's the way she describes what people are wearing. Again and again I find myself accosted by sentences such as:

"Margaret had on jeans and a long-sleeved blouse."

Is it just me, or this is a weird and clumsy alternative to the perfectly normal "Margaret was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved blouse"?

I'm pretty sure I've never come across this sort of thing before. Perhaps this is the latest, most modern way, and I'm just (as usual) behind the times?

Your thoughts please, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

"If you like"

Grrrrr...

Got an email from Shelfari with book recommendations. Nice of them, you might say. It would be if they had actually used the information they hold to provide me with relevant recommendations - like when I log onto Amazon I get recommendations based on books I've bought, said I own, showed an interest in... that makes sense. But Shelfari, who have records of books I own, books I've read, books I've marked as favourites, books I've given x number of stars to, etc... Shelfari don't seem to have made any attempt to access that information and use it. So their email lists a whole load of books I've never heard of by authors I've never heard of, each under the heading of "if you like XYZ, you might also like: ................." when XYZ is a book I've mostly never heard of...

oh, there's one exception, it's the bit where they say "if you liked Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, you might also like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee," which is interesting as (a) I really don't remember if I liked Catcher in the Rye and even if I did like it when I read it probably about three decades ago, I have absolutely no idea if I'd like it now; but, more importantly, (b) To Kill a Mockingbird is a book I've actually listed on Shelfari as a book I've read! (and that book I actually remember liking very much)

So, big brother ain't doing all that well :)

How could they do this to me?!

There seems to be a new trend in the world of book publishing. Am I the only one who finds it excruciatingly irritating?

You start reading a novel. You get into the plot, you feel for the characters, you really care about what's going on and how it's going to end.

Then suddenly, when you think you've still got a good twenty pages to go, without any warning whatsoever, the story ends.

Why? Because they've decided to give you a taster of the next novel in the series, so the last chunk of the book is actually not part of the novel you were reading - it's the first chapter of a different story.

I've sort of managed to get used to it with the Alexander McCall Smith books - once bitten etc. And anyway those aren't the sort of novels that get you too emotionally involved, they're more light entertainment, though very good light entertainment.

But last night I went to bed with The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks - unusual in that it is a really good love story written by a man - and I thought I knew where I was because I'd actually noticed when buying the book that there was one of these tasters at the end, and had taken the precaution of marking the page where that bit started so that I would know how long till the end. But no, they had fooled me! Because this turned out to be a special book club edition with a whole section of author's Q&A, plus suggested questions for discussion. So about forty pages out of the book are actually not part of the novel.

I was stunned when this happened. There I was, looking forward to a good chunk of reading, and suddenly - THE END! I think they should put a warning on the first page of such books: the novel part of this book ends on page 283.

I mean, it was a lovely ending, but I just wasn't emotionally ready for it.

Is it just me?

Happy ending?

Have just finished reading a really nice novel (The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes) and I find myself thinking:

When did this happen?

At what point in the history of modern fiction did leaving your husband for someone else become a nice happy ending for a novel?

I feel like going in search of the main character, Suzannah, and saying: Excuse me, but what exactly did you think when you said all that stuff about "till death do us part"? Did you have your fingers crossed behind your back as you stood there in your beautiful wedding dress, thinking, "Yes well... of course what I really mean is until I have some sort of midlife identity crisis and ditch you for someone with more fire in his blood"?

How annoying that not one of the characters voices the view - is it really considered so outdated?! - that following your emotions is not necessarily the best course of action, that marriage is something to work at! Sorry, no, I now realise that there was one person who voiced that opinion - her poor husband when she told him she was leaving him. I wouldn't be so annoyed if he had been an awful husband, but his only fault seems to be his ability to remain content in the face of all the turbulence that life and his wife were dishing out to him. So he puts up with his wife binge-shopping them into debt, he puts up with his wife being moody and impossible when she's setting up in business, he puts up with her changing her mind about having children with him, he puts up with her general spoilt brat mentality throughout, all because presumably he actually took seriously those vows they made when they got married, but then his wife just suddenly says she's leaving, and that's that. End of marriage.

Okay, I've got that off my chest now.