Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi

So TY dm's me all, You need to read this book because it is SO LAUGHABLY BAD and I am like, Well, you know, just had a baby, no free time and all that and TY is like, I present to you the following: 'My jaw fell out of my mouth,' and I am like I CANNOT RESIST THE SIREN SONG OF A SENTENCE THAT TERRIBLE.

So. It is the future and things are bad and Juliette is locked in a cell because she is a MONSTER and you will hear a lot about this, about how much she sucks, because it is the overarching theme of the book. (Spoiler: she kills people with her touch, and once accidentally killed a toddler [whose mother was the baddest, laziest mother in the world which is why Juliette had to help the toddler up {thereby killing him}so you could argue that it was the bad, lazy mother's fault he died {incidentally, Juliette's mother is also the baddest. Everyone in this book is either the MOST EVILEST or Shining Perfection With Hot Abs Also}].)

I have totally lost my train of...oh right. So suddenly a BOY gets locked in her cell with her and they are both like *snarl but then swoony like woah, accelerating the plot of 50% of novels by about a thousand* and it turns out that he is her childhood defender, except they haven't seen each other in three years and they both are like MAYBE S/HE DOESN'T RECOGNIZE ME and I am like, Three years is not that long, compadres. You don't totally face-morph between fourteen and seventeen.

Anybarf, the one boy who was kind to her as a child and whose arms she finds swoony is also her own special snowflake who can touch her without DYING in AGONY. Unless we mean the sexxxxxual kind, because they do a lot of agonized touching. Sets the skin on fire, ignites the bones. YOU KNOW THE KIND.

So they make secret googly eyes, but then it turns out that he's a foot soldier for the Big Baddie (what's a FutureBadTimes novel without a Big Baddie, I ask you) who is only 19 and also warm for Juliette's form. And she is all like WHY IS EVERYONE SO IN LOVE WITH ME I AM A MONSTER WHO HASN'T LOOKED IN A MIRROR IN THREE YEARS and then she DOES and is like, Ugh, 'my lips are too pink' and 'my teeth are unusually straight.' She's probably too tall and too thin with eyes some hideous shade of aqua-marine as well.

And after the obligatory You betrayed me by pretending to be not a foot soldier argument, Juliette agrees to run away with the foot soldier (whom we will start calling Adam, since that is his name) and they continue to sneak canoodles and belabour the merits of their relationship. And every time she is like But how could you possibly care about me? I hear echoes of But why male models? and this is one of my many (MANY) beefs with instalove, that one of the characters is always like, But how could you come to love worthless nothing me? and I am like YES, HOW? Because you are both sort of the worst.

And then they run away and escape to the secret underground where other people with Super! Powers! like Juliette's are staging a resistance to the Big Baddie and His Hoard, and, as though they could hear me shouting, one of them is all IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT ADAM CAN TOUCH YOU WITHOUT DYING NO COINCIDENCE AT ALL and I am like, Good, but I will not be reading the next book to find out the Reason, because this is where Shatter Me ends, with Juliette finding acceptance at last. OUR BODIES, OURSELVES!

So there's that. But there is also the writing oh my god the writing. It needs to be pared down. And not pared down like Hemmingway, but pared down like look at your sentences in the mirror before you leave the house and take off one redundant description of self-loathing. And then maybe like five adjectives.

Some ejemplos: 'His eyes scanned the silhouette of my structure.' You mean, like, your body, right? Thesaurusii are a double-edged sword. (This is before I realized that she refers to her body as her 'sillouette' only when she's not referring to it as her 'structure' or her 'frame' and I am like YARRRRGH.) 'I hate the lackadaisical ennui of a sun too preoccupied with itself to notice the infinite hours we spend in its presence.' Wait, what? 'An ache mars the features of his finely chiseled face.' I think we have had QUITE ENOUGH of finely-chiseled faces. Also crooked grins. I call for a moratorium on crooked grins.

And this is all from the first fifteen pages or so and I'm thinking, Man, it goes on and on like this, and it took me probably seven chapters to realize that these sorts of verbal shenanigans didn't crop up frequently on the page, they WERE the page. It's like when you make chocolate-chip cookies but with just enough cookie to kind of hold the chocolate chips together so that they're BASICALLY cookie-shaped slabs of chocolate. But if chocolate were overwrought, overladen text, and not really tasty.

And that's before she's all, 'The natural elements were at war with each other because we abused our ecosystem. Abused our atmosphere. Abused our animals. Abused our fellow man.' It's at this point that I dm'd TY all, Shatter Me is trying to make me feel bad about not recycling.

And at some point a guy says something and she is like Touché, and he is like, Oh, you're French? And this question has NO BEARING on the conversation and is never referred to again, it's just a weird, incomprehensible exchange to fill space.

I'm not even going to touch on the crossed-out bits of text, except to say that they  have the effect of being like MOAR ANGST MOAR ANGST MOAR ANGST. Like, I am trying to restrain myself but the ANGST IT ESCAPES ANYWAY.

In short,

 

*flail*

I went for a RUN like a GROWN-UP PERSON who has HEALTHY HABITS and then came home to THIS:

which I have been coveting from afar but didn't want to ask for because I live in fear of being a greedy grabby blogger,

and then also THESE:

which are the size of my HAND.

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

(I would like to thank my mother, Margo, and Alice for making that screech of delight possible.)

Sunday Dithers

Sunday, I have nothing to offer you other than this pile of kleenex I am too internet-conscious to post a photo of. Trust me that it is LOOMING and GROSS.

I don't even know why I'm posting today.

Very well, Walrus. I'm leaving. The fetus and I will go sloth on the couch now and complain to each other.

Wednesday PSA and bonus dithers!

You guys, I am the worst. All the times I remind you to back up your blogs? I only do so myself like half of those times. This will not be one of those times because my external hard drive is WAY OVER THERE. And it has to be PLUGGED IN because it is a shitty piece of garbage because we are useless at buying things.

BUT! That does not preclude me from reminding YOU and saving YOUR blog from Unexplained Blog Disappearance. The internets is like that sniper from the second episode of Alcatraz, and chooses its victims according to its own inscrutable logic that stems from its dysfunctional childhood. PROTECT YOURSELF!

Blogger bloggers, go to Settings → Basic → Export Blog and toss it on your nearest external hard drive. Wordpressers, go to Dashboard → Tools → Export. Self-hosteds, you rogues are on your own (as usual).

In other news. So, sometimes (often) I'll think of a line for a review and then KILL MYSELF LAUGHING AT IT because no one thinks I am as funny as *I* think I am funny. (I slay me. I get how egocentric this is and I don't care.) And then someone in the comments will be like, I lolled at X line and if it is my favorite line that MAKES MY DAY. That happened TWICE the other day and it made me want to kiss you, collectively.

In keeping with me wanting to kiss you, something tickles me deep inside when a commenter is just DISGUSTED with a book. I love for people to feel strongly because *I* feel strongly (obviously. I mean, look at all my capslock) and Joel (not my Joel. Some other Joel) made a comment on my review of The Future of Us that is both observant and annoyed as hell. I don't sanction random hate-bombs or blithering anonymous youtube-comment-style tirades, but an astute piece of irritation makes me laugh no end. I refuse to think about what this says about me as a person.

You may return now to your Wednesday.

The Call - Yannick Murphy

What the nuts?  I forgot to review this.

where 'you' = 'me'

Surriously, you guys need to read this.  It was a DELIGHT.  It made me lul and then it made sad and you know how I enjoy that.  Sadness-lulz are my favorite plaid.

Ok so I'm not sure the protagonist has a name, because this is basically his diary and who writes their name in their diary? Fucking no one. And I'm too lazy to hunt through the non-dialogue to see if anyone addresses him by name. Let's call him Larry.

So Larry is a veterinarian. He goes to farms, checks on people's horses, gives sheeps their shots, etc. And you are like, That is a boring book. And it would be, but the format is darling. I don't really know how to explain it without quoting MASSIVE CHUNKS, but ok it's like a chart? It's all:

Call: Castrate draft horse.

Action: Pulled out emasculators, castrated draft horse.

Result: Draft horse bled buckets. Pooled around his hooves. Owner said she had never seen so much blood. It's ok, he's got a lot of blood, I said. She nodded. She braided the fringe on her poncho, watching the blood.

Thoughts on drive home: What's the point of a poncho if it doesn't cover your arms?

What the wife cooked for dinner: Nut loaf.

What I ate for dinner: Not nut loaf.

And that's the deal. But the entries get more and more involved, with entries such as What the house said at night and What we watch on video that we borrowed from the library, now that we don't spend money at the video store and it will either GRATE YOUR CHEESE or it will win your little heart.

And so I would probably have read it if it just kept on in this vein, because Larry is amusingly contemplative and I like being in his brain-room. But then his son gets SHOT out of a TREE (they were hunting) and falls and hits his head and peaces out, coma-style. So, drama.

Also, there is a spaceship (what? [exactly.]). Also, more drama later. But its all in this mild, charty tone. I can't...you guys. I am sucking at this. Jenn reviewed it better. For real, though, it's short! Get on it.

Eight and a half caterpillars.

Sunday Dithers

Holy shit, Sundays. You just keep coming hard and fast. I tried so desperately hard to finish Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw yesterday so I could SAY SO, but alas. And now I have the final three episodes of last season's Project Runway to get through today (not All Stars, but the one before it with Anya, who I'm convinced is going to win. I will cut a bitch who spoilers me, though), so.

It's been a busy week. Eleanor came with me to my Forever YA book club, where she comported herself placidly.

You'd think she never pitches screaming, murderous fits with a Buddha face like that. I'd like to thank my book club members for holding her and not really minding (or not giving away that you minded) when she inevitably spit up on you, and for making eye contact with me while I was breastfeeding. Talking to someone who is being suckled is awkward, I know.

We'd read The Scorpio Races, so all of our snacks were Scorpio-themed, from cinnamon twists and shepherd's pie to NOVEMBER CAKES.

As recipe'd by The Stiefvater herself. I'd make two amendations to the recipe, though: firstly, not to bother with the orange extract or to put hella more in, because in its current iteration it can't be tasted, and secondly, to let the caramel cool a bit before spooning it over the buns so that it STAYS ON instead of pooling on the counter (alternately, spoon over right away, wait ten minutes, scrape off of counter and spoon over again).

In other news, we saw Mission: Impossible 5 (right? Or 4? I'm not sure I saw 2 or 3, so) and it was Bad Ass.

In conclusion, baby feets.

The Future of Us - Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

I have been avoiding this because I hated Asher's Th1rteen R3asons Why SO HARD.  (At the time I hated it for being a blamey piece of blamey garbage, and I failed to even NOTICE how very stupid it is to have numbers in your title.  Did 'Sk8er Boi' teach us nothing?)  But then People On The Internet kept being all, This is fairly good.  And 'fairly good' is sort of all I ask of things right now.

So.  It's fairly good!  And no one blames anyone else for making them commit suicide, which is a PLUS, because that is a jackassy thing to do (still paddling my rage-canoe about that book).

Right.  It is 1997 and Emma gets The Internet and her neighbor-and-former-best-friend-before-he-ill-advisedly-tried-to-kiss-her-that-time Josh lends her an AOL Online CD-ROM (HA!  Remember THAT?  This will be the only 'remember that' I employ in this review, otherwise the thing would be RIDDLED and you would all wander off to feed your Tamagotchis [remember THOSE?]).

And they get online and what is this FACEBOOK business?  It must be a website from the future (← an obvious conclusion, obviously) and Emma's future sucks but Josh's is surprisingly marriedtoahotwife and livingonthelake so he is like, Rad.  And then Emma figures out that by changing things in the present she can change her future but Josh is like NO DON'T and Emma's future keeps coming back craptastic ANYWAY, leading her to conclude that she is fundamentally an unhappy person.

Meanwhile there is angst vis-a-vis Emma and Josh's non-relationship.  And it's not PAINFULLY angsty, but there's no real sexual tension either.

and no...er...chess

It's pretty Ho ho, the 90s, where people had BEEPERS and THE GAYS, they could not marry, and while a large part of me is like, AH YES, *wink* another, more specific part of me is like, A running mix full of 1997-era Dave Matthews and Pearl Jam is a shitty running mix, yo.  And writing things set in the past that access the future (where The Future Is Now) is always difficult, because you get characters being all Hurrr, what is a status update? and it starts to sound like one of those novels narrated by a dog.

But on the whole it's completely fine.  It'll do!  Somebody pass me my flannel shirt.  (Oh yes!  Also, Emma has a papasan chair in her room and which of us didn't, but every time they referred to the chair they referred to the papasan chair and after a while it was like they were saying, I sat on Emma's 90s-specific chair because this is the 90s.  Which, eventually you just start calling it a chair, right?  Anywert.)

Six and a half caterpillars!