I only just realized the potential 'hump day' puns now, and I'm not going to make them.

You guys. It has come to my attention that I have never shared this video with you. And I know I've posted the occasional video being all, You need to watch this, but I'm serious this time. You cannot go to your grave without having seen this camel run. Camels were, apparently, not built for running. And yet they do it, all the same!




And to that I say, lol.

The Other Girl - Sarah Miller

I read an article by Sarah Miller somewheres on the interlings and was like, LULZ and also Yes, quite. It was enough that I library-holded one of her novels, anyway.  And now I can't rememberfind the article, which is too bad because after reading The Other Girl I am like, what.

Ok so apparently the book before this is called Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn?  And then in this one, the protagonist Molly is LITERALLY INSIDE THE MIND OF GIDEON RAYBURN, so I don't see how they are different books.  But so Molly is inside Gideon's head and also they are dating and that's how she won him, by knowing what things he dug on account of being inside his head.  Also, they are both at prep school.

And then at some point Molly ends up in this girl Pilar's head, OH NO WAIT I forgot a thing.  Ok so Molly is all Gideon and I are SOUL MATES and we will love each other ALWAYS and me being inside his head is in no way weird or an invasion of privacy and now we will have SEX and then have sex AGAIN, but to rile himself up for Round II Gideon conjures up Pilar in a bikini because Pilar is some otherworldly kind of hot. Molly is outraged and dumps him on the spot.  It is...abrupt.

And then Molly ends up in Pilar's head?  You get half an explanation-ass later about Molly having thought the same things Gideon and Pilar thought, respectively, and thereby jumping into their consciousness.  IRRELEVANT.  Because now Gideon and Pilar start semi-dating and Molly is stuck in Pilar's head and how awkward.

(Tiny quibble, because what do I know about the ins and outs of shared consciousness, but at one point Gideon and Pilar are reminiscing about a particular snuggly conversation and Pilar thinks, I remember that you had a boner the whole time, and Molly [who is in Pilar's head] is all, I was in Gideon's head that night, but I didn't know that.  And I am like, Are you in his head but also under a rock in that head?  Because that seems like a thing you would know, whether you wanted to or not.)

And Pilar is a spoilt, shallow-but-secretly-kind-of-smart-and-also-she-has-a-demanding-and-critical-mother-OBVIOUSLY-which-explains-why-she-is-like-she-is paper doll who says 'totally' and 'so' (as in, I so hate when authors do this) way more than anyone actually does in real life, but for that matter Molly does too.  Molly is supposed to be sassy?  People laugh at her jokes a lot, but I am not those people.

And maybe if I'd read Inside the Mind I'd have a stronger bite on Gideon and Molly's relationship and would give a shit when they WHAM! break up, but being able to predict what a guy will think is sexy so that you can immediately do that thing does not a love match make.  Their whole relationship can be summed up in Molly's late-novel thoughts: 'Some people you can try to hate, and they might even deserve it.  But if you think someone's hot, you're probably just not going to keep hating him for very long.'  Hot people: hard to hate, even when being A-holes.

And, I don't know, I tend to read only YA recommended by Smart and Critical Internet Peoples and rarely wander off into the angsty woods on my own, so I guess I thought we were past using 'he looked like a gay hedgehog' as a derogator and referring to an interest in fitness and ageing as 'amusingly female.'  I mean, I get that teens still say that shit, I just, we don't have to endorse it, you know?  Without problematizing it a little bit?  I live in a marshmallow world, obviously.

And then because people need something to do while roaming around in each other's minds, there's this sub-plot about an academic competition and Molly needs to win for the scholarship because she is Poor but a nasty headmaster is out to bust some chops and who gives?  Not I.

Underwhelmed, yo.  Five caterpillars.

Sunday Dithers

What ho, Sundaylets?

So. How're things? Oh hey, so you know Pinterest? (That question is rhetorical.) I signed up for Pinterest MONTHS ago, but then I was like, This is stupid and I don't need more time-vacuums.

Except only NOW I need nothing BUT time-vacuums, preferably ones that I can steer with one hand (starting yet another blog is therefore out. Typing one-handed, you guys...I can't even. *stabs something [one-handed!]*).

So I have been Pinteresting with a vengeance, is sort of the bullet point of this conversation. Go follow me (Rachel Krueger [the pregnant one in the red tank top riding the carousel bear {I know}]) so I can follow you back and stuff.* We can pin each other! And then go steady! (Right? Somebody much older than me let me know if I've got the terminology correct.)

In otherly news, threaded comments are working out STELLAR for me. How are they for you? Seriously, tweet or email me if they render you uncommentable. Inquiring minds want to know.

And then, OH HEY LOOK A BABAY!

Sunday forth.

*Ok so earlier in the week I got a tweet that was all, Following! Follow me back! Thanks! Which, I will follow back who I damn well please, but then I clicked on that person's stream and it was NOTHING BUT requests to be followed back. DUDE YOUR FEED IS SO BORING. This is why I am not following you (that and inherent contrariness).

The Fault in our Stars - John Green

If you haunt the twitter AT ALL you are aware that all tweets vis-a-vis TFioS are something along the lines of THIS BOOK RUINED ME. The cake is not, in this case, a lie. This book ruined me.

Ok so remember that time I had thyroid cancer and I was all, Be cool, internets, it's not the kind that kills you? 16-year-old Hazel has the kind that kills you (by jaunting off to and camping out in your lungs), and through a medical miracle it is only killing her rather than having killed. That is to say, she is not dead YET.

And then she meets Augustus Waters, who had osteosarcoma and is now short a leg but long on HANDSOMENESS and WIT. And there is much banter.


It's hard to say what the plot is, really. Hazel and Augustus read this book about a girl with cancer and it ends mid-sentence and they are PISSED to the point of wasting Augustus' Make-a-Wish wish on travelling to Amsterdam to find the reclusive author to ask him what happens to all the other characters and I feel you on this one, guys, because I used to read a lot of Margaret Atwood and there was no one quite like MargAt for leaving you hanging. But at A Certain Point in Fault you realize that ending mid-sentence is maybe the more merciful route, because to go on is unmercifully hard. The bit after The Thing happens feels interminable, but obviously it terminates, and I can't stop making terminal puns because I am so sad. I refuse to look up any synonyms and will just keep saying 'sad' a lot.


I love this book for the reasons I loved 50/50, for the amusements. People are Distinctly And Understandably Uncomfortable making the cancer jokes, and yet! Someone needs to say things like 'Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest.' Firstly because cancer jokes are HILARIOUS and secondly because they Help You Deal (ok, they help ME deal. And even *I* feel uncomfortable making them because I don't know your life and what if your mom has, like, pancreatic cancer? That is way less funny than my franken-neck). But lulz with a sprinkle of weepies are the salted caramel of the literary world, in that I will NEVER GET TIRED OF IT even as the world moves on to, like, mini pies. Make me laugh and then CRUSH MY HEART and I will kiss your ring forever.



And it's real and not-real in all the best ways.  The dialogue and the interactions are too clever and sharp to be realistic, because who wants book-people to talk like actual people?  Actual people are boring as hayul, especially if you just sort of follow them around for several months.  But the PULSING HEART is real, the tone is real, the timidity and the anger and the hope and the SADNESS, they are so real.

And then, this will sound bats, but there are some crazily romantic moments. Not the grand gesturey ones, but the 'It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you' ones. And then there are the moments when someone is quoting Shakespeare, all 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves' where it all comes home to you how hopelessly fucking sad it all is. And that is when you cry, even though it's still the middle of the book and nothing (comparatively) tragic has happened yet (except for all the teenage-cancer-having).

And, as Ana points out, this isn't a Cancer Book so much as a Book About People Who Have Cancer But Also Other Character Points. In fact, it is deliberately ABOUT those other points, about what it means to have cancer but not let that define you. Also, it is hilarious? Also sad. I am a broken record. John Green, you have LOOKING FOR ALASKA'd me all over again, only more so!

wherein bambi = my heart and the killer whale = this book

Nine and a half caterpillars. Hot cancery damn.

Embedded comments

You guys, I have changed my comments to 'embedded' to see if that enables the threaded comments feature. Seriously, though, tell me if it sucks. I'd rather not have replyable options than have everyone be like, Ugh, embedded comments.

Also, someone say something so I can reply to it.

The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater

I read this because the internet RAVES about it, and I can never say no to you guys. And also because it's the Forever YA Book Club pick for this month. And also because TY and I read Stiefvater's paranormal wolfmance Shiver for the Horrible Dare Challenge a few years back and it was disappointing in lack of horribleness (i.e. Kind Of Good). Oh and also because CARNIVOROUS WATER HORSES.

(This is, according to Stiefvater's own definition, a reaction rather than a review, as it is largely about my FEELINGS, which I convey through allcaps and sweary macros.  [For the record, I am not at all bothered my Stiefvater's distinctions, because I am ridiculous and should not be taken seriously.  This is not sarcasm, I am in earnest.  I am here to lol and get shouty about things.  You are here because you like this about me.  Carrying on.])

So. The capall uisce are carnivorous water horses. They live in the water, and you catch them, and then once a year you race them and try not to get eaten. They are supahfast. Racing the carnivorous water horses is pretty much the only thing the island on which our novel is set has going for it, since it seems in all other respects to be a shitty rock to live on. So shitty, in fact, that Puck Connolly's older brother is like, Everyone? I'm out. Oh and also, we're losing the house. (And oh yes, their parents are dead, having been eaten by carnivorous water horses.)

So Puck is like, Damn, maybe I had better compete in the races and win some moneys. Also competing for The Moneys is Sean, who wins the races most of the time, which should be awesome except that Sean is a horse-whispering worker-lackey and his boss is a choad who won't sell him Corr, his horse-soul-mate, for any moneys. (Sean is also an orphan. This book is positively lousy with orphans.)

And so the island gears up for the races and everyone practices their shit on the beach which is DANGEROUS both because the sea is full of carnivorous water horses, and because the carnivorous water horse on which you ride is always trying to FLING itself into the breach, dear friends. But the race is run on the beach, for Extra Danger. And then Puck shows up at the beach on her non-carnivorous regularhorse and everyone is like:

because she is YOUNG and a GIRL and also...regularhorse. But she rides to save her house! And Sean rides to win his horse-mate! And they are both like *eyes at each other* but it's not soppy, it's STARK and SPARE, sort of like the book.

I mean, mostly. There are lollarious lines herein, like 'Dory is what Mum used to call a "strong-looking woman," which means that, from the back, she looked like a man, and, from the front, you preferred the back' and then there are lines like 'She's my mare and my best friend, and I keep waiting for something bad to happen to her, because I love her too much' which I find EMOTIONALLY WRECKING. This book made me FEEL in my HEART-SPACE.

And whenever you start to settle into the story, Stiefvater kills something off just to remind you that she's serious. (It is usually a sheep, but sheep can be Very Dead.) The carnivorous water horse race is suitably dramatic, and the ending only cops out the least little bit.

Well done, Stiefvater! I will stop thinking of you as One Of Those PNR Writers Who Sucks (which I'm sure is very relieving to you).

Eight caterpillars.

Sunday Dithers

Sunday ho, you guys! Not much has changed since I dithered on Thursday. Still reading A Fault in Our Stars and The Scorpio Races and the latter is starting to suffer in light of the former because NO ONE BANTERS like a John Green banters. Although Scorpio has carnivorous horses, so.

The only reason I'm back on here is because I keep forgetting to tell you that I HAVE STARTED WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY and by 'started' I mean my folks and I watched Season One this week, and how much do I want to punch Thomas? SO MUCH, RIGHT?

And then I was talking to Alice after Season One and I was like, If Bates remains chivalrously silent to his own detriment ONE MORE TIME I am going to have to PUNCH HIM TOO. And then Season Two Episode One and now it looks like I'm going to have to put my punching gloves on.

Maybe I'll just punch Thomas twice.

so punchable

That's all, Intertubes. I just wanted to get all flaily with you. Sunday onwards.