Dinah Lee Küng

London librarian Jane is aware that her life is falling apart. Enrolling in a course for repairing marriage or deciding on divorce, Jane accidentally walks into Professor Baldwin's course on The Art of War for management class instead. However, Baldwin convinces Jane that Sun Tzu may hold better advice for working to save Jane's relationship and gets her to stay. Learning the thirty-six stratagems, Jane suddenly finds herself applying the ancient Chinese battle wisdom to her career in a small branch library as well as her relationship with Joe, their daughter, Sammie, and Jane's retired actress mother, Lorraine.

This is a cute novel filled with small family drama, plenty of insights from Sun Tzu, and a great deal of character growth. While Jane is a bit too much of a stereotypical librarian to begin with (her abhorrence of any tech in her local library strikes me as a bit behind the times), her work plights are highly realistic for a British librarian. A delightful cast of characters are developed throughout the novel between Jane's home life and the small group in her class with Professor Baldwin. Charming and reminded me a bit of Sophie Kinsella novels.… (mer)

An ER that I've owed a review for a while on. It took a few false starts with me before I could really get into it. It's a humourous modern romance with a somewhat neglected wife, Jane the librarian, taking an evening class for advice on mending her marriage and getting mistakenly put into a history class reviewing Sun Tzu's Art of War methods. She works in media/ TV and is also not in the right job which gets resolved over the course of the book, with learnings from the course. There is another student working in a family firm and being beaten down by a more successful cousin. It's funny and contains lots of well written phrases. It has very well rounded characters and family and friends all have a lot of facets to their lives which makes for a good backdrops/ details.… (mer)