Month: September 2012

book reviews
04 Sep 2012

Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard

E-books. Let’s skip the “Is Print Dead?” and “Are Publishers Evil to Libraries?” debate and just talk about reading for a minute.

Do you think you read differently on your electronic reader of choice than you do a print book? I’ve found my eBooks pile up, unread, faster than my print books do (which is saying something, let me tell you…), maybe because eBooks don’t make an actual pile per se. They stay tucked away in their little digital home, minding their own business.

Unless, I’ve recently learned, they are un-put-downable.

Jenny Hubbard’s Paper Covers Rock was one such book. Alex is a sixteen-year-old student at an all-male boarding school. One of Alex’s best friends – Thomas – has just drowned after the boys jumped from a rock into the river, and in order to process, to distract, and to confess his own implication, Alex begins this, his “novel.” Short chapters jump quickly back and forth in time as Alex remembers good and bad times with Thomas and their friend Glenn and recalls the moments leading up to the accident, but like all teenagers (all people?), Alex gets distracted from literary re-tellings by moments in his present-day life. An intense and possibly reciprocated crush on his young English teacher – who may know more than she’s letting on about the accident – pervades Alex’s life, and the novels and poems of the classical canon she loves pervades Alex’s writing – the book is full of quotations, allusions, and general old-book-talk. As their relationship grows and Alex begins to reveal details from Thomas’s death and Glenn starts to act completely crazy, the tension lured me back to that silver eReader and away from my other reading.

I will say that when I’m reading an un-put-downable eBook, I start to click that little forward arrow faster than my eyes can probably be necessary. And reading this book so quickly and on an electronic device felt extra strange because A) this is a significantly literary-type book, one that could afford a little slow-reading, B) it is chock-FULL of bits of even MORE literary-type works (Moby Dick, Thoreau, lots of poetry) and C) it is set in the 80’s, when books were still made of paper.

The premise might seem to you more seasoned YA fans to be a direct rip-off of A Separate Peace, but it’s more like a variation on a theme, an deeper exploration of character,  a satisfying companion. Whatever your choice of mediums, I would recommend Paper Covers Rock wholeheartedly.

boston
03 Sep 2012

2012: week thirty-five

August 26 – September 1

I have landed.

Not feeling quite as shell-shocked, but still surprised about how terrible terrible TERRIBLE moving in is. There’s the exhaustion of packing, the guilt that you even own all of this shit, the disruption of your schedules and habits, followed by social awkwardness of having to convince friends to help you move and/or the endless small and large expenditures associated with moving, and then, if you are young and dumb, a day of hell when you move all your furniture and boxes down 3 flights of stairs and then up 3 flights of stairs. The next day, you wake up in a pile of garbage, every muscle in your body is screaming at you, and you must call Comcast 6 or 8 times in one day.

This is depression-causing mayhem. I hate everything about this place, other than the increased square footage. It is crazy old, not well kept up, lacking in simple comforts such as Machines That Wash Things and everyone I talk who has lived in the neighborhood their whole lives say things like “You guys are living WHERE? Text me when you get home, let me know if you made it,” even though we live .3 miles from our old apartment.

So I hate it, but really I just hate all that stuff in the first paragraph and I am taking it out on my poor, crappy apartment. And I will live here for at least a year, after which I will either have grown accustomed to my apartment’s quirks and become comfortable with the neighborhood, or I will leave for greener pastures.

After that point, I will either start the cycle again or hire someone to conduct said moving.

I think I will start saving my pennies either way, just in case.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Podcast intake is spiraling completely out of control… I won’t even try to chronicle what I have been listening to, because both content and quantity might shock your system.
  • Whilst packing, I inflicted a number of Broadway musicals upon Lance, including Fiddler on the Roof!
  • Whilst assembling some sanity at my new favorite coffee shop (because it is so close by), I listened to the soothing tones of Honeyhoney and Skrillex.