All posts in: books

18 Apr 2013

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Have I ever told you about this book? One of my all-time favorite books? This book I once tried to read while driving 70 mph up US-127 North? No? Yes? Either way, consider this an ode to The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart.

Frankie is a sophomore at an academically elite boarding school. She is a normal girl – smart and ambitious compared to some of her schoolmates, but normal. Over the summer, puberty arrives and she becomes a fairly hot girl. When she returns to Alabaster, her new-found hotness lures in Matthew Livingston – senior BMOC (do people still use this acronym/phrase?) – who finds her sexy, adorable, and good company. Life would be good for Frankie, but when Matthew ditches her to partake in purposely vague activities with his group of guy friends – guy friends who she likes and who like her – she can’t help but feel jealous. And suspicious. And curious. One night she follows Matthew and finds out they are part of a longstanding, all-male society.

Frankie can’t figure out why her chromosomes prevent her from joining the group, but they won’t even talk about it, much less let her in. So why not just infiltrate their ranks from afar and trick the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds into perpetrating acts of art-protest-chaos across Alabaster’s conservative campus?

Why not, Frankie? Why not.

I suspect that a plot summary alone might be enough to convince you to read. This is an incredible concept for a work of contemporary young adult realism – (Traditional boarding school tale + urban exploration + secret societies) to the power of (the patriarchy + social philosophy). Oh, and in case that’s not enough, there’s the Frankie and Matthew romance, which is actually an incredibly subtle love triangle. This is a tightly written, quick-paced romp of a story that somehow captures everything else I just mentioned. A work of literary genius, basically.

But that is not why I have an undying love for this book, why it’s one of my favorite books of all time, why I could read it over and over and over again without questioning my judgement for a moment.

I love this book because it’s a book about a teenage girl who cares about boys and clothes and friends, but she also does stuff.

E. Lockhart has a way with this kind of character. I said it twice already – Frankie is normal – but in the world of teen girls in YA novels, she’s unique in that she’s not quite so interested whether she’s getting along with her mom/brother/boyfriend/crush/best friend. She does care about that stuff, but there are bigger questions going on in Frankie’s head. If she has a weird interaction with her sister on the phone, she doesn’t spend a chapter stewing over their relationship, she hangs up the phone and rolls her eyes and gets on with her life. When Matthew doesn’t let her touch his china Basset Hound and gets weird about it, she doesn’t start a fight or mope or have internal debates about their relationship: she makes an assessment and uses that information to better understand how power works in his secret society. Frankie is practical. She makes things happen. It’s a refreshing thing to read.

I love this book because Ms. Lockhart’s writing is a thing to behold.

I appreciate her skill more with every re-read. This most recent read, The Boy sat with me on the couch while I was reading. I asked him if he wanted me to read a little to him and he humored me. It was the scene with Porter and Frankie at the snack shack, where Frankie verbally abuses Porter because, well, he is her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her and deserves some retroactive verbal abuse. Anyway, the scene was 100% dialogue, and I was reading both parts aloud.

It started off awkward, but after a few paragraphs it was like, the words carried me into some kind of High School Theater Flashback – there were intonations and gestures and I think The Boy got a phone call in the middle of the scene so I stopped but then picked right back up once he hung up because the tension between Frankie and Porter was just in my apartment at that point. We had to finish it up.

That is some damn good dialogue. Just saying.

I love this book because the final scene between Matthew and Frankie? Kills me.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so stop reading now if you are super-concerned… but the place that Frankie and Matthew end up at the end of the story is just this raw, awful moment when you realize that the person who you thought knew you the best has no idea – no idea – what you are, who you are, how you are. And never has. You’ve been alone the whole time. God. It’s an intense scene and Lockhart nails it.

And most of all, I love this book because Frankie is an anti-heroine. A fifteen-year-old girl bad-ass anti-heroine.

I’ve been reading the first few chapters of John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, which is all about developing ideas into stories. The starting place is your protagonist. According to Truby, what makes a story a story is your heroine’s weakness. She needs to make certain changes in her life in order to overcome this weakness – changes that are internal are psychological needs, changes that have to do with how your heroine treats others are moral needs. All of this adds up to a problem that the heroine faces that drives the rest of the story. Once the heroine addresses her weakness through her psychological and moral needs, then she can solve the problem and the story’s end is satisfying.

I’ve tried to apply this model to Frankie and it just doesn’t fit. Frankie isn’t without faults – she’s pushy, she’s not always a good friend, she’s obsessive, she’s manipulative. Some of those could be psychological and moral needs… but the story doesn’t end with Frankie learning to treat others better. In fact, Lockhart does this genius thing where you are pretty sure that all of Frankie’s faults would be strengths if she was a boy, and that her problems aren’t really her problems, but side effects of the patriarchal power structures in the way men treat women, in her boarding school, and in the world.

Frankie isn’t trying to conquer her own demons. She’s trying to SAVE THE WORLD! THROUGH FEMINISM! AND DEFYING THE PANOPTICON! AND HANGING BRAS ON PORTRAITS OF OLD MEN!

Well, now you all think I’m crazy. But you know what? Everyone thought Frankie was crazy, too. Just read the book already, okay??

books

17 Apr 2013

first quarter results

I read 34 books between January 1st and March 31st. The first quarter of 2013 is over, and I’m pleased with my reading progress. If I keep this up for the rest of the year, I will be extra pleased. I feel like I’m reading a lot and liking a lot of what I read.

For fun, here is a list of my 2013 Q1 reading sorted by my Goodreads ranking. I reserve the right to change my mind about any ratings at any moment, since I sometimes hate a book one week and love it the next. Or give a book 5 stars in 2008 and then change it to 2 stars in 2013. Or give 4 stars in 2008 to a book that, in 2013, you realize you never actually finish reading *cough* Great Gatsby *cough*.

(Speaking of Gatsby, I am actually reading it, and actually enjoying it.)

(At least I was, until I stopped reading books for the week)

(What is wrong with me?)

(Also, if you are wondering what bizarre activities remain if you cut out reading/TV/blogs/podcasts, you are about to find out…)

Two Stars

34 Pieces of You by Carmen Rodrigues

Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill

Three Stars

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell

Dead Cat Bounce by Nic Bennett

The Dinner by Herman Koch

S. E. C. R. E T. by L. Marie Adeline

Monkey Mind by Daniel B. Smith

The Story of X by A. J. Molloy

Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler

The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham

Four Stars

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz [review here]

The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman [review here]

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell [review here]

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

You’re Not Doing It Right by Michael Ian Black

The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

Marbles by Ellen Forney

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones [review here]

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith [review here]

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Sat Sugar Fat by Michael Moss [review here]

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Always Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

Ask the Passengers by A. S. King [review here]

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

Five Stars

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed [review here]

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

books

16 Apr 2013

reading deprivation

I am four weeks into Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way program.

This feels like a confession, a dirty secret, something embarrassingly woo-woo and desperate. Something that normal people don’t do, normal people don’t need, and especially not a person like myself!

But four weeks ago I was just at a loss, so here I am, writing morning pages again, taking myself on Artist Dates, and repeating affirmations. Yes, affirmations.

It has been good, though. I am not a particularly spiritual-woo-woo-creative-muse-come-to-me kind of person, but I AM a person who likes a plan. A program. A syllabus. Doing my weekly reading, my daily writing, my creative exercises has been satisfying. I have gamely completed a number of silly exercises as Ms. Cameron has presented them to me.

Until last night, when I read my marching orders for the upcoming week and halfway through the chapter Ms. Cameron presented a thing called reading deprivation. Just don’t read. Anything. For a week.

The following negative emotions coursed through me: fear, panic, disgust, anxiety, horror, incredulity, disdain. Me, not read? Well, that’s just not an option. Reading is my self-assigned job, my livelihood, my world. And did you know, Ms. Cameron, that I am on a book review deadline right now? Simply impossible.

Of course, Ms. Cameron responded with this, the next line in the chapter:

At least one student always explains to me – pointedly, in no uncertain terms – that he or she is a very important and busy person with duties and obligations that include reading. […] When the rage has been vented, when all the assigned reading for college courses and jobs has been mentioned, I point out that […] in my experience I had many times wriggled out of reading for a week due to procrastination. […] I ask my class to turn their creativity into wriggling into not reading.

Ahem.

And although I am skeptical, anxious, cynical and horrified, I also believe fairly firmly that the things I try the hardest to avoid doing are exactly the things I should be doing. When I start to do mental back-flips to get out of a task, when I have 100 excuses at the ready, then I take that as a sign that I should just do that thing.

Dammit.

And it gets worse. Ms. Cameron equates television with reading, which is understandable and not too hard for me to handle – I could go a week without TV, easy. But that means no movies, either, which is something that The Boy and I enjoy every week or two, and he’s home for Spring Break. I may need to fend him off. Okay. I can do that too.

But what will I do instead of read or watch TV or watch a movie? I could just read more things on the Internet! But that seems the opposite of what I’m supposed to be doing. Or I could run more, or do more spring cleaning… while I listen to my audiobook? No, no books. While I listen to a podcast? That seems strangely similar to an audiobook. So, what exactly IS this? Reading deprivation, or media deprivation, or self-torture??

[Insert a thousand excuses here]

[Insert Jessica’s Better Self. Even if Her Better Self is a bit woo-woo sometimes]

So I’m doing it, with one small reservation: I need to write these damn reviews and I can’t take a week off. So, today is the first of seven days with

no books (except for the three specific titles I must read)
no television
no movies
no audiobooks
no podcasts
no blogs
no Twitter or Facebook
no mindless internet reading
no magazines
no news

I think it’s actually the last one that makes me feel better about this. Given the circumstances of my poor city, I could do without news for a little while.

Since this is a blog that is mostly about books, it seems like I should say “sayonara!” for the week… but if I’m not reading, I will probably have time to write here MORE often. Funny how that works. I’m nervous about this, yes, but also kind of excited to see what I end up doing with my time. Finish learning how to knit? Fold origami? Do a thousand crossword puzzles? Have a clean kitchen every day for seven days? Get into unnecessary arguments with The Boy to kill time? Sleep more? Drink more? Plan the rest of my wedding in a seven day marathon? WHO KNOWS!? It’s a great mystery! I just hope that I won’t come back next week a changed woman, enthusiastic about her life without books, because then I might have a bigger identity problem to tend to…

book reviews

11 Apr 2013

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss

Michael Moss’s Sugar Fat Salt: How the Food Giants Hooked Us is an important book. A really important book. Keeping my ranting and ramblings down to a readable word count is going to be a Herculean task, so I will attempt to focus myself as such.

Part 1: The book as a book
Part 2: The information contained in said book
Part 3: Why I wish I had read this book when I was 9 years old, even though it is 500 pages long and not part of the Babysitters Club Series, which means I never would have read it

Part I: The Book as a Book

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a good food-based nonfiction book. Ever since I first encountered Mr. Michael Pollan’s work, my American-Diet-Food-Mind was blown open and I was ready for all sorts of other food-books. Sugar Salt Fat serves the same function as Pollan’s (and others’) work: to help you, the consumer and eater, see food beyond the scope of your own dinner plate, and therefore see how outside cultures, longstanding mythology, and corporate interests are shaping the way you eat.

With a title like Sugar Salt Fat, I expected an examination of how each of these three ingredients ravage your body and contribute to the obesity epidemic and basically are ruining America. Not the case. Moss’s work is all business – the business of making and marketing processed foods, that is – and this book explores on how sugar, salt and fat affect the bottom line of giant food manufacturers like General Mills, Kraft, Coke, and many others. It’s a corporate expose, not a nutrition manual.

Moss’s book is hefty, but the chapters are short, the prose readable, and the stories intriguing. Each chapter reads like an article – complete within itself – but the secrets of corporate food culture were so alluring that I couldn’t put it down.

Part II: The Information Contained in Said Book

Like I said, this is a really important book – another food manifesto for the 21st century that I hope many, many people read.

This is going to be poorly worded, but Moss’s thesis is this:

You, the consumer, the every day eater, have been convinced that processed food – anything in a crinkly plastic bag and a list of ingredients longer than 1 – is food. But it’s probably not. Once these companies tamper with these foods to A) make them last on the shelf without disgusting you B) make them completely irresistible to the American palate, these foods have so much sugar, fat, and salt, that your body doesn’t know what to do with them anymore. These added ingredients are making you sick.

The second half of the thesis:

These giant food corporations are in such heavy competition for the inherently limited amount of “shelf space” and “stomach share” available, they have zero qualms about adding more, more, and more of these ingredients in order to make their products more irresistible than the junk of their competitors.

So there’s a lie – that the processed food you eat every day is good for your body – and then corporate disregard for how their main business strategy contributes directly to obesity and illness.

Mind. Blown.

Don’t worry, there are plenty of little tidbits I’m not revealing here – the habits of food company CEOs, how Dr. Pepper became Dr. Pepper, why the fad school-lunch du jour of my elementary years – the Lunchable – was a significant “culinary” and marketing achievement for shoving processed foods down the throats of children…

I’m not bitter, I promise.

Part III: Why I Wish I’d Read This Book When I was 9-Years-Old

Oh wait, yes I am. I am bitter because I was a normal-sized little girl when I was a nine year old, a ten year old. I was taller than almost everyone in my class, though, so when we all had to stand on a scale in the nurse’s office in front of our classmates, I knew that I weighed more than almost everyone in my class. Certainly all the girls.

That wasn’t good knowledge to have as a little girl, but that’s not why I’m bitter. I’m bitter because around that same time, I remember a Saturday morning when I first felt shame about food. A box of Dunkin’ Donuts on the table, and I knew it was okay to eat 2 donuts. But the third donut, I probably shouldn’t have eaten. At the third donut I started making promises to myself, that I would never eat more than two again, that I shouldn’t have any snacks for the rest of the day, that I would maybe just stop eating donuts forever.

With the fourth donut came the self loathing. It was an awful feeling, to keep eating after I’d decided with my little-girl brain that I’d already crossed the line. And although I am not pinning my personal issues those box of fateful donuts, it was, in part, an awful feeling because these donuts were so delicious that I couldn’t say no. I wasn’t strong enough to resist. Good girls had more willpower – I must not be good.

It pisses me off to know that some middle aged men are sitting in laboratories, chemically engineering donuts to hit that “bliss point,” the point where your tastebuds take over, where you can’t say no – designing foods so insidiously so little girls can have breakfast and when they are done hate themselves and their bodies for years and years and years. I can’t help but wonder what effect a childhood grown on whole, unprocessed foods might have on eating disorders, food issues, the general female-body condition.

So read this book and then go to the market, cook yourself some dinner, give your kid a carrot, or whatever else you can do to step outside of the Corporate Food Cycle. If you don’t have time to read this book, read this article – it hits a lot of the high points. Please and thanks.

books

09 Apr 2013

my many numbered days

It’s been a month since I started reading 168 Hours, and I wish I could have a nice review for you here. I can’t, because I told this guy I live with that he would like it and while I was busy working on my Dream List, he stole it from me. And took it to work with him every day to read on the train. And then it went overdue and days passed and eventually it turned up in some the car of a guy named Josh. Such is life.

Instead of reading 168 Hours, I downloaded a 168 Hours app and started conducting my own time survey, or whatever Vanderkam calls it, I can’t remember because I haven’t set eyes on the book for weeks. It’s not a good app – it’s clunky and easy to click on the wrong thing and I’m not sure what happens to your data once a week resets on Sundays – buuuuuut it’s fun. High strung Type-A fun, but judge lest ye judged.

Right now it’s 9:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. I can tell you with certainty that in the past 72 hours, I have designated my time as such:

1 hour and 19 minutes cleaning my apartment. It was pretty filthy.
40 minutes running errands not related to groceries.
29 minutes buying groceries.
29 minutes preparing dinner (thank you crock pot!!)
1 hour and seven minutes eating dinner (we were watching the end of The Descendants on Sunday night, so I couldn’t eat very fast because I was crying. That isn’t even a joke)
1 hour and 18 minutes eating lunch
1 hour and 43 minutes watching the season premiere of Mad Men
38 minutes showering, recovering from shower, and blow drying hair
25 minutes “puttering around the house”
1 hour and 26 minutes “getting out the door”
21 minutes waking up
16 minutes preparing for bed
23 minutes running
3 hours and 17 minutes commuting (most of which time was spent also reading)
2 hours and 34 minutes just plain reading (most of time spend on The Tragedy Paper)
2 hours and 50 minutes on creative writing pursuits
3 hours and 34 minutes working on The Artist’s Way tasks
13 hours and 10 minutes working
1 hour and 48 minutes at the dentist
2 hours and 20 minutes sitting on an “alumni panel” of a program that I am not an alumni of…
24 hours and 35 minutes sleeping
And, 26 minutes blogging. Sorry guys.

It was probably not fun to read those numbers, but it is fun to know those numbers, to look at them, to cringe and feel proud as such. I think keeping a Time Diary is similar to keeping a Food Diary – the act of recording makes you more aware of how you spend your time, which makes you improve the way you spend your time. 25 minutes “puttering around”? That means that I actually could not think of a single category of thing that I wanted to do, that I should do. But how many more minutes would I have if I didn’t have my silly little app on the back of my mind, encouraging me to do something more… uh… categorizable? Thinking of how to categorize your time also a valuable task: like this librarian learned in cataloging class, how you sort data implies a value system. How you sort YOUR data implies YOUR value system.

The moral of this story is: who needs to read the book? Just download the app instead!

That was a joke. But seriously, where is that book???

books

06 Apr 2013

next in line

I am keeping QUITE the tight reading ship lately – books come in, books go out. Not reading six books at once, nothing lingering on for weeks. Very unlike me.

This post was fun – I read Someday, Someday Maybe and I decided to speed read The Tragedy Paper this weekend since it’s ah… umm.. overdue. Ivan had to go back, but we will meet again.

So once I’m done with Tim & Duncan, what’s next?

I have very distinct high school memories involving The Great Gatsby, memories of typical English class disappointment. In this Sad English Saga, we were assigned one or two chapters a week. I couldn’t keep up because I was SO busy, what with all my AP courses – two science classes, can you believe it! – and taking music lessons and my overflowing social life… oh wait, that’s a lie, I just couldn’t be bothered to read anything I didn’t want to read in high school. Anywaaaay, the ending to this story is, I was taking our weekly reading quiz over the chapters I hadn’t read that week, and found out that a main character died and I was simply too shocked to pass the quiz! Anyway… so the only reason I want to re-read this dreadful book is because A) there is a movie coming out I’d like to see and B) oh, it’s an American classic that everyone says you should actually read and it’s not even that long. My copy came in this week, and if I read 1-2 chapter a week, maybe I can pass my quiz. I mean, finish before the movie comes out.

Hey, remember when I said I was going to read five romances? Well, that was three months ago now, and I’m stalled on four. Love and Other Perishable Items is still here, waiting for me, on my damn bookshelf…

…unless of course there is a shiny brand new book in the house. After Visiting Friends showed up all unread and lovely on my hold shelf this afternoon. It might be a hopeless fight.

Or maybe I don’t want to read about a dead [insert main character here] or a dead father or… a romance. Maybe I want to read something unusual? I acquired Oleander Girl recently – it looks like it would be up my alley, and a blurb from Junot Diaz means a lot to me.

…. I may have already made my decision, and it might be After Visiting Friends and I might have already read 100 pages. And I’m already sucked in.

Dorothy. Betsy. Harry Potter.

books

02 Apr 2013

a book i can’t put down

I did not mean to come home from work today and sit on the couch and read all night. It must be fate. I went to use the bathroom at work today and the toilet wouldn’t flush. Then I tried to wash my hands and no water came out of the faucet. Thirty minutes later, I was on my way home – broken water main, building closing, come back tomorrow. I left in such a hurry (an excited, yay-we-are-leaving-at-3 hurry, not a “my library is filling with water” hurry) that I forgot the book I was reading. So when I got home and my apartment was sunny and it was only 3:30, I had to read the OTHER book I was reading. First-world-nerd problems, I know.

But then I couldn’t stop reading. Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins was all over the Best of 2012 lists, but in case you missed it, add it to your TBR. Unless the last forty pages go completely awry, this is a damn good read. Maybe I’ll let you know tomorrow – I’m doubting my ability not to stay up past my 9 o’clock bedtime to finish off the rest.

book reviews

31 Mar 2013

reading for fun

I have had some trouble figuring out what to write about here: what do I want to write, like to write, what should I be writing, what should I not be writing, etc. Just another regularly scheduled what-am-i-doing-with-my-life-what-does-it-all-mean?? crisis, I won’t bore you with the details.

But as I gazed vacantly into yet another empty white post box, I also realized that I haven’t been reading much that I want to tell y’all about. I’ve been reading, yes, reading quite a bit. A few books I’ve had strong feelings about, yes, but those strong feelings were… complicated. And the rest? Good fun, but nothing worth writing home about.

So here’s what I’ve been up to:

Reading Nonfiction

I went from The Happiness Project to Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat… from a straightforward, easy to read, but ultimately feel-goody memoir to a straightforward, easy to read, but ultimately depressing corporate exposé. I have said pretty much everything I could say about The Happiness Project, but I might need to write more about Salt Sugar Fat at some point. However, it’s one of those books that I could ramble on and on and on about until everyone who doesn’t have my food fixation falls down dead, so I need some time to stew on it. In the meantime, I suggest you don’t buy any Twinkies, Lunchables, Coke, sweetened yogurt, or anything with an ingredients label. You’ll be happy about it later.

Digital Books

Did I tell you my mama got me a Kindle Fire for my birthday? Well she did, and I’ve found the Kindle format much more compatible with Netgalley and Edelweiss than reading ePubs on my borrowed Nook. I’ve been trying to remember that reading advanced copies is not just a hobby & sport, but a way to get a feel for where trends are going, to dip into books I might not otherwise want to spend the time on. Nantucket Blue is one such ARC: it didn’t look great, but it looked readable. Aaaaand I found it readable, satisfyingly beachy, but not great. And of course my better nature is squashed when I spot THE LAST ALICE BOOK ON ~~NETGALLEY~~ (Edelweiss, my badddd). Holy cats… as promised, Always Alice (or Now I’ll Tell You Everything?? Why does this book have two titles?) takes Alice from college all the way through age 60, in 400 pages or less. In other words – it was a hot, hot mess, but a mess you couldn’t pay me to put down. I have so many emotions about this series. So. So. So many.

Filthy Books

So if it is a weekend day when you have nothing much to do except lay around in bed and read and nap, sometimes it is difficult to resist reading a book that is just a super-duper tawdry 50-Shades knock-off romance. That is happening. I read these two, and no I am not going to tell you what I thought about them.

Listening to Books

Ever since I made my “audiobooks inside the house” rule, I’ve really been digging on audiobooks again. Go figure. Monkey Mind was a good listen, although I’m not sure I would have had to patience to read through someone’s neuroses in such excruciating detail if I was reading in on paper. Where’d You Go, Bernadette was super fun and surprisingly easy to follow given it is mostly told in letters and emails and such. I was sad when it ended.

I may or may not have purchased little running belt with a pocket with not only running, but audiobook listening in mind.

But if you aren’t running, then it’s just a fanny pack. Guys, I bought a fanny pack, to serve my audiobook habit. I don’t know what this means, but it can’t be good.

assorted media

29 Mar 2013

seven things for a friday

1. I got to leave my windowless office today to visit a branch library. It was the cutest little branch by the beach, and such a nice little children’s space – nice collection, nice layout, very neat and well-kept and inviting. A nice way to spend a Friday.

2. This morning I was 10 pages away from finishing The Dinner and 3 tracks away from finishing the last disc of Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Both of these books are the kind of books where there are unreliable narrators and zillions of secrets being revealed in every chapter… so, I was feeling a little reading-tense. I finished The Dinner and found the concluding pages to be decidedly creepy but without any major additional surprises. I’ll let you know how Bernadette goes once I need to do the dishes or fold my laundry.

3. I think my next-up audio is Wonder. I’ve heard OMG BEST BOOK and eh, not that great, so I’m curious.

4. A few days before Google Reader got axed, I deleted my massive stockpile of blog bookmarks. They were feeling oppressive, and I figured the ones I really wanted to read, I would remember. I added 15 back to my list so far. I’m happy with my decision.

5. I have 10 days to watch 30 episodes of Mad Men. Sooooo… I am watching a lot of Mad Men. I am thinking about Don and why he has so many girlfriends. Seriously, dude. Don’t you get exhausted? Don’t you want a break? You have a high-powered job and a steady-lady… you have children. Don’t you want to come home and like… lie down? Not pretend like you are in love with another lady, like a new vagina will save you from your internal pain? Come on, Don. I hope this series ends with Don at like, 80. I would like to see an 80-year-old Don.

6. If you are a fiction writer-type, you should check out John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. I’m only a few chapters in, but it’s pretty much what I’ve been looking for lately – straightforward but flexible instructions on building stories in an organic way. Much different than the other writing craft books on my shelf.

7. This is my second list-based post of the month. My apologies.

books

25 Mar 2013

home is where the rodents live

Me: This is getting ridiculous…

Him: I know. I had trouble crafting an adequate text message to [name of the Slum Lord to whom we sign away our rent money redacted]. How can you say, in a text message, that there hasn’t been a problem the whole time we’ve lived here, it’s just that for the last two weeks it’s been like, a freaking mouse circus in here.

Me: Um. You mean mouse circus like the upstairs neighbor from Coraline?

Him: Of COURSE! That is EXACTLY what I mean!

I’m just going to let y’all pretend like the mice in my apartment are as creepily hypnotizing as Mr. Bobo’s. Yes, yes, my place is just full of adorably jumping mice! It’s extra adorable when Peach catches them in her little mouth and carries them over to me to put on a little private jumping dance. Just darling. Pest control will be here on Tuesday; I will be so sorry to see them go.