books i done read

The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall

2012-03-07T06:00:00.001-08:00

This review is from EEEEEGES ago. Thanks, drafts folder. You always have my back.

So I read Forgotten and then I read Before I Go To Sleep and then I crack open The Raw Shark Texts and the dude is like, I HAVE NO MEMORY OF WHO I AM OR WHAT I'M DOING HERE and I am like *Groundhog Day moment* but whereas those two are straight-up thrillers, this is way more Stuff You Enjoy The Shit Out Of While In College And Probably While Super-High.

Because, ok, there's a conceptual shark? And it's eating his memories? And he defends himself by creating a perpetual feedback loop in a vortex of dictaphones, and then standing in the center...I know. My theory class full of adorable hipsters would have gone wild for this shit.

And, ok, I ENJOYED it. I know. I was in a weird headspace. But he keeps having dream-flashbacks to or finding journals from before he lost his memories, when he and his girlfriend (NOW ACCIDENTALLY DEAD, because you need some sort of trauma to lose all those memories) were shucking around Greece like a pair of hedonists, and I found them oddly compelling.

And, alright, I'm not sure how you guys feel about sharks? Probably you are terrified, because deep water IN ITSELF is terrifying, and also frequently full of sharks.

Suffice it to say that I get very Sumfing Brushed My Leg around sharks (or the idea of sharks [conceptual sharks DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE]) and the number of Scary Ocean Macros floating around the webz suggests I am not the only one.

So it has that going for it. And then there are whole long bits where the text is arranged to look like a shark which was probably super-cutting edge in 2007, and the dude keeps finding clues, some of which have been left by his former, memory-having self, and some of which smack of magical realism in that they DINNA MAKE SENSE, and then there are allegedly an equivalent number of so-called 'negative chapters' floating around the internet that make up an INTEGRAL PART OF THE BOOK but y'all, I am too square to even care about that shit.

I can't even recommend this, you guys, because it'd be like introducing your friends to a guy who you know is a whackjob but whom you happen to find kind of endearing FOR REASONS THAT ESCAPE YOU, and then they're like The hell? and all you can do is shrug and be like, I know. I don't know what to tell you.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

2012-03-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Tublenetz. Do any of you live in Calgary? Because I AM MOVING THERE and I will need friends. FRIENDS!

or at least join your book club

I am excited to meet you, Calgary. I hear you are replete with cows. Cattle? Beeves? I'm so citified.

Sunday Dithers

2012-03-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

Word, internets. It is still Sunday, I can still dither. I can still POST PICTURES OF MY BRUNCH TO JEALOUS UP YOUR FACES.

Sea Hearts - Margo Lanagan

2012-03-02T06:00:00.003-08:00

So I read Tender Morsels back when, and while I didn't want to MARRY it, I DID want to take it on a sexy date. And then I read Black Juice and was all, THIS IS GOLDEN MASTERY and then read Yellowcake and was all THIS IS ALSO EXCEEDINGLY GOOD.

And then Margo Lanagan is all, I am writing a book about selkies, and I am all, *sits on hands, waiting* and this is the part where I tell you that Margo and I are Friends On The Internet and that I got this book for free, so that you may weigh the sincerity of the subsequent gushing. Because oh, I shall enthuse.

I'm like a bear with a barrel of...wait, is that cocaine?

So the childrens are collecting sea-hearts on the beach (for eatings) and they see the old witch knitting up a blanket out of the seaweed, and you are like Well that is weird, but witches do as they do, and then suddenly it is The Past and we are to find out why the witch does.

Because the women! They come out of seals when the witch calls them! And the men marry them and hide their skins and then the women can never return to the sea. Alas for them! Hear their sad seal songs!

Parts of it are delightful and REVENGEY, and parts are so lovely and sad that they will kill you dead. And then, and this surprised me, there is one sweet, soft, sentimental bit. Where did you come from, darling happy piece? You shine there, all unexpected.

There were some gripes on the nettletubes about the REVENGEFULNESS taken in Tender Morsels, but I like a little witchy vengeance, me. And surface-wise, Sea Hearts is All Vengeance, All The Time. A fat, sealish girl is scorned and mistreated and grows up to be all, LO, MENFOLK, how you like some seal-wives? With a side of BROKEN HEARTS FOREVAR? And ladies, how you like no men to ever marry you, because dayum seal wives is fine?

And usually I don't give a fig for your structure. Give me snappy writing or give me juicy plot and to hell with the rest. But when the structure is fucking perfect it's difficult to ignore. Because I feel like multiple POVs are usually so that you can See All The Angles, Leaving Nothing To The Imagination. But HERE the POVs serve to only show you this bit here, or this craggy facet, and it's only just enough for you to assemble the picture yourself.

And the picture turns out to be less about revenge, and more about personal responsibility, the lazy shirking of same, and the stupid reprehensibility of shifting the blame to enchantment, which makes me think scathingly of all those novels where the dude is all I had to have you I could not help it you have bewitched me etc. Which, I'm sure we'll all agree, is a crock. And there's this one scene where a dude is THOROUGHLY CHASTISED for being a faithless choad, and he's all 'I couldn't help it' and 'I never intended for this to happen' and all that garbage, and the Abandoned Girl is basically like, I don't give a shit for your intentions, and it is splendid.

And I feel this way about books sometimes, like I feel about pie, like I want to eat it in teeny bits but I also want to eat it whole. I want to be eating it and to have eaten it all at once. I guess that's the beauty of re-reading, and I will be re-reading this one on the regular. Because I know I made fun of Shatter Me for its POETIC STYLINGS (sarcasm-font, where are you when I need you?), but I actually quite like pretty writings. Por ejemplo:

I closed my eyes and they all melted into the sea-smell: Geedre flat as a sleeping fish on the other side of that wall; Dad and Mam either side of the table, which was like a slab of rock or the side of a sunken ship; Nase and his girl there like two twined strands of sea-ribbon, tilted in the flow.

In sum, this was so good I could PUNCH someone.

Nine and a half caterpillars.

Ed. Also, it is called Brides of Rollrock Island in not-Australia and comes out in September in North America. I KNOW. I'm sorry. I will remind you then that you want it.

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think - Brian Wansink, Ph D

2012-02-28T06:00:00.002-08:00

In her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, Mindy Kaling is all, I love diet books, and I am like WOMAN I HEAR YOU. There's something about them. I mean, I love gratuitous eating, but I also love rigidity and structure and being told what to do. Diet books are like EAT THIS and I am like OKAY and then two weeks later I'm back in the King Dongs and I like being this way. Don't judge me.

Anywert, this is not a diet book. This is about the psychology of eating ('psychology of anything' being my other favorite topic), and about how to eat only what you WANT to eat, and I strongly approve this message. Because I don't like the idea that packaging and lighting can trick me into eating more gas station hand pies than I plan to. I'm totally fine with eating six as long as I WANTED to eat six.

Science likes to tell us how often we do things, like swallow spiders in our sleep, and according to Science, we make 200ish food decisions a day, which is a lot, so mostly we automate those decisions and thanks to our cavemen-brains our autodecisions are calculated to see us through the sort of calorie-deficient winter we are unlikely to bump up against ('we' being us first-worldians. All my third-world readers, eat whatever youalls can get your hands on and hey, good work on having the internet!). Even in this, the Land Of Plentiful Fats, the lizard-brain says MOAR FATS, and the mouth is like WORD.

And the real danger isn't in the turkey dinner, because we look at our ruined plate and think, I may have over-done it, I will now eat a salad. The danger lies in the mindless margin, those extra fifteen chips, that extra cookie, the extra eighteen handfuls of popcorn we didn't realize we were eating because the size of our popcorn bag and the sounds of popcorn around us and the fact that we're at a movie all says to us, Eat thusly, and thusly we eat.

The book is full of Experiments (as Science is wont to be) and the basic theme running through the Experiments is that we think we eat what we eat in the amounts that we eat ON PURPOSE, but that given a tall glass and a short glass, we will all pour more calorific beverage into a short glass because our brains our defective like that. Therefore we should replace all the short glasses in our houses with tall glasses. Automatic less-juice-drinking with no effort! Because the easiest diet to follow is the one you don't know you're on.

And the brain is a tricksy beast that cares not for nutritional information and serving sizes. Wansink asks, 'When you go to a "healthy" restaurant, do you pay attention to what you eat, or do you eat with abandon because you think it's generally healthy' and yes, when I go to Subway (which I STILL DO despite how off-putting those $5 footlong commercials are) I'm all, Subway = fresh veggies and Jared and therefore HEALTH so I will have the WHATEVER and I will have CHEESE MELTED ON IT POR FAVOR. This is why I don't bring low-fat or sugar-free anything into my house, both because LIFE IS TOO SHORT and because I will see those and think, These fat-free cookies are ~~less bad~~ actively good for me. It's a sick mind that sees 'low-fat' and thinks 'therefore some sort of vegetable' and that mind lives in my head-case.

And Wansink is no Mary Roach or Bill Bryson, but non-fic doesn't always have to be SOOER AMUSING to crank my chain. In fact, the few times Wansink goes for the hilarious! joke! it falls supah-flat. But the rest is delightfully informal and readable as hayull. Each chapter is A Way In Which Environment And Habit And Things Trump Willpower, and then an Action Step to deploy that in your healtheating favor. So even if reorganizing your eating habits isn't on your to-do, this is still fascinating shit.

Also, by the end of the book, when a study's subject is all, Of course I judge when to stop eating by my level of fullness, you can be all HO HO NO YOU DO NOT and you can feel so very smug. And then eat a sleeve of Thin Mints right through to the end because I Have Reached The End Of The Sleeve is a more assertive force than I Am Sated.

Fascinating and also practical! I dig. Eight and a half caterpillars.

Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi

2012-02-23T07:27:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

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!

2012-02-15T15:04:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-12T17:34:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

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!

Sunday Dithers

2012-02-05T11:23:00.000-08:00

Sunny Sunday! I have knocked the infant out (with a bludgeon! [Ha ha, just jokes. With a boob.]) and am making a bacon-cheddar-ranch pull-apart for today's Eat Fest.

this thing. I will let you know how it goes

I believe there is also some sort of sporting to accompany said fest?

I kid. I enjoy football and I know what a down is and have a vague comprehension of how pass interference works. My favorite thing about football (besides the high ration of fried things to not-fried things) is when a quarterback is sacked, as though he were, like, Rome or something.

In other news, the fetus learned to take a bottle yesterday! Now I can leave the house, LIKE A BOSS. (Bosses leave the house sans enfant, just so we're clear on the definition of 'boss.') The other day I had gone to aqua-fit and left Eleanor with my mom and she woke up HANGRY before I got home. There is no consoling her when she is hangry. My mom let her talk to Siri and I got a text that just read 'OR OR OR OR OR OR,' which is how Siri interprets Furious Infant.

Oh, and in case you don't read my other blog, I present for you a case study in The Effect of Relentless Eating On A Pair of Legs.

four-day-old legs

month-old legs

Chubberlets!

On the book front, I think I've been reading Will Ferguson's Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw all week. We've been hella social, and the time we don't spend visiting we spend napping or eating (see: above).

If you'll excuse me, I need to go paw through the fridge to hold up my end of the eating bargain. Sunday forth, whether you Superbowl or no.

Hark! A Vagrant! - Kate Beaton

2012-02-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

Har! Comics. How droll. Comics about HISTORY and LITERATURE. I feel both educated and amused. (You can find Kate's comics online here. This review is per the book.)

Comics are hit and miss. Even, like, xkcd has an off-day every couple of years. And with the smarter comics, your mileage always varies depending on your familiarity with the material (and, let's face it, the inherent hilarity of the comic). So if you are like, Anne of Green who? then you will not think the comic 'Anne of Sleeves' is funny (it is).

And most of the comics have a bit of sub-text (like, actual text underneath. LITERAL sub-text), like little editorials that very subtly explain wtf so that you feel smart (Rosalind Franklin did what now?), but that also continue the lulz. Like the one under a moderately hilarious Jane Eyre comic that goes 'What the heck is happening out on the moors? Is it like when you're out in your boat for too long and you start to lose it, and you think you see a beautiful mermaid, but it's really a manatee? Then you've made out with it and you don't know why? We only want Jane to be happy though, because she had a pretty rough go in life and she's a smart cookie. We'll let her have Mr Rochester because she loves him, even though he might be a manatee.'

I feel the need to start a new paragraph because that one was so long. But SEE? I mean, I think. It might only tickle my goat because it combines my two great loves, Jane Eyre and manatees.

not appropriate in this context, but too good to not use

Beaton has A Smart, and her topics run from the sexification of history (she's looking at you, The Tudors), to Every Lady Scientist Who Ever Did Anything Till Now, and these (with the possible exception of historical figures who are not Nicola Tesla) are my jam. And some ventures, like where she takes a cover illustration by Edward Gorey and guesses what the story consists of based on the cover, are splendid in both idea and execution, which is a rare fish.

And then Kate is Canadian, so there's a weird amount of Canadiana in here. Not buckets, but some. And it's all about how polite we are, and how annoyed we get when anyone points out how polite we are, and how any country that gets annoyed when anyone points out how polite they are should probably get its priorities in order.

One more subtext, for the road! 'There's an idea out there that Aquaman is lame as far as superheroes go, but I'm not sure. I read a bit about Aquaman growing a beard and having a harpoon hand and living in a cave and talking to spirits or something, and thought, "How can anyone not like this guy? This crazy dude, living under the water?" Anyway, that is the only version of Aquaman that I know, but I am really into it.'

I think my preference for the subtexts over the comics proper means that I would like Beaton to write a book. WRITE ME A BOOK, VAGRANT! I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. The drawings are pretty good.

Seven and a half caterpillars!

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

2012-02-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-29T09:20:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-24T17:04:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Thursday Dithers

2012-01-19T12:06:00.000-08:00

Tublenets! Remember how it took me, like, three weeks to read Lady Audley's Secret?

Well now I am reading The Scorpio Races AND The Fault In Our Stars AT THE SAME TIME and I am LITERALLY beside myself. No, not literally. If I were, I could be reading both books at the same time quandry unquandered! But alas, I have to divide my time evenly between them and then this infant thing is all like, Hello? It has been twelve minutes since I fed, and I would like to feed again. And when I say 'feed' I mean 'distractedly gnaw on you so that you have to keep poking me to redirect my attention. Good luck reading while I do that.'

Ok so that's great. In other news, TELL me you have seen these:

Don't ever eat fruit. That shit is so bad for you.

I guess that's it for now. Happy Thursday?

SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

I'm not savvy enough to black out my site or redirect it or whatever but SOPA! I am opposed. So pretend you have been redirected here.

Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

YOU GUIIIIIISE I FINISHED A BOOK! *high-fives everyone within fiving distance* Trashy Victorian novels, you are my only.

So. Lady Audley, formerly A Poor Governess (aren't they all), has a Secret, and you will figure out at least part of it because SEEMINGLY UNRELATEDLY George Tallboys returns from Australia to hear that his much-beloved wife is dead and buried and you are not an idiot, you have read Victorian novels before. But the particular ins and outs of this secret you will maybe not guess.

Lazy, amiable Robert Audley certainly doesn't guess them, but when his bosom friend George Tallboys goes TRAGICALLY MISSING Robert has some sleuthing to do. Nothing draws a young man out of himself like a good sleuthing (not a euphemism but ALSO TRUE IF READ AS A EUPHEMISM! Just not for this book).

And I don't know if it's my fondness for Victorian WIT or if it's a literary carryover of whatever that factor is that makes everything British people say eleventy times more hilarious, but when Robert, musing on the long odds of finding a good marriage mate, asks 'Who shall decide from the first aspect of the slimy creature, which is to be the one eel out of the colossal bag of snakes?' I am like LOLWHAT? I am guessing that the well-suited spouse is the eel...

There will be those who disagree, but Victorian novels are perfect for my post-partum brain because people are always saying things like, I will leave these incidental letters out because they may be useful in future, and you are like, Note: remember these letters. Or bottles are labelled 'Opium - poison' just in case you've forgotten how opium rolls. And though occasionally a trope will teeter on the edge of being overthrown, and a WOMAN will be all, Perhaps I shall unjustly commit this MAN to a madhouse, and your Inner Subverter is like, *baited breath,* ultimately you know that tradition will win out, and that if anyone is going to the madhouse it'll be the one with the ladyparts. And while somehow in modern novels I'm like, Predictability, bleugh! in VicFic I am very like Hullo, old tropes. Let us have tea.

They are also plotty. When they suggest that someone is about to be burnt alive in their bed, there is usually an ATTEMPT made to lock them in their bedrooms and set fire to the house (yet despite my love of Books Where People Actually Die, the attempt is rarely successful. Fictional Victorians only murder people Accidentally, Indirectly Via Societal Neglect, or Offstage With Poison Or Maybe Hired Goons).

There was a particularly alarming moment when, with thirty-odd pages to go, it looked like the only action remaining was to genteely retire the guilty parties to the correctional facility of choice and then resolve an affection or two. But NAY, there were MOAR REVELATIONS. Which, phew, because not even for YOU, Victorian Novel, will I read thirty pages of denouement.

A book! I have read one!

I don't even...like...eight caterpillars, or whatever. Now on to something with wizards in it, maybe.

Sunday Dithers

2012-01-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday again, hey? They just keep coming.

Things are still pretty narrow-minded here at the Done Read household. His Royal Tallness turned 30, Her Majesty The Small One continues to serve as a prop for hilarity, I finished a book.

you have spectacles coming at you from all your gene pools, fetus. Brace yo'self

In other, wider news, apparently more shit went down vis-a-vis YA authors lashing out against negative reviews? Seriously people, the fire is hot. DO NOT TOUCH THE FIRE for it is hot. Watch as others touch the fire and are burnt. Do not thou touch the fire.

Less angstily, blogger has introduced threaded comments! Or so go the rumors. But you have to have embedded comments, is this true? This is a stupid true, if so. Embedded comments are the worst. VIVE LE POP-UPS!! I will be making out with said threaded comments as soon as ever I can figure this out, and then YOU AND I SHALL HAVE CONVERSATIONS.

If you'll excuse me, my tiny boss summons me. For the bored and/or interested, I blog more about her unreasonable demands here. I will be back this week DURING THE WEEK NO LESS with thoughts on Lady Audley and her Secret (it's a good one).

Sunday on!

Sunday Dithers

2012-01-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday is it? Mon dieu. I have done nothing this week besides learn how to feed and water a Human. It is Serious Business.

Jeeves? This boob you brought me has malfunctioned. Fetch me another.

Things I am boss at: reading blogs at 2 am (write moar post, people), playing Words With Friends at 4 am, laughing at the fetus, eating.

Things I am terrible at: typing with one hand, reading actual books (still chomping at Lady Audley's Secret), sleeping.

I will come back to you, internet.

In which I finally join the new year.

2012-01-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

You guys! Happy 2012! I am doing amazingly on my New Years Resolutions, and I've already lost 15 lbs! Although I suppose this particular 6 lbs and 9 oz doesn't really count towards the new year, having been born on Dec 31st.

Ladies and gents, Eleanor Constance Loretta, named for both her grandmas and then for, I don't know, Eleanor Roosevelt, or the smart one from Sense and Sensibility (variant spelling).

Likes include being held by literally anyone, putting up her dukes, and looking snooty about things.

indeed

Dislikes include sitting in her poops for half an hour because her parents are like, Well of the three things that could possibly be wrong with a baby, she's not hungry or sleepy so...*stumped*

For real, though, she's pretty rad.

Still dithering.

2011-12-30T22:31:00.000-08:00

You guys are aces with your camera app recs. But BECAUSE of you and your awesome recs, you will now be forced to endure a long and insufferable period in which I think I am the first person to discover Arty Photos, and in which all my photos are modified to hell.

Por ejemplo this, the Traditional Post Of Christmas Braggery.

So my sister bought me the Entire Jane Austen Canon. It is massive and purple. The enormous gold armlet is for scale. The book is, I tell you, huge.

She also got me this card

which I think you will enjoy.

My brother and sister-in-law got me this excellently scary knife, made of folded steel like a very tiny, very fancy sword.

Watch your backs, butternut squashes.

And my other sister-in-law got me THIS wondrous beast, which needs no photo editing due to being inherently great:

Right? That's going in the baby's room, as soon as the baby has a room.

And then we spent the Unborn Child's Christmas money on one of these inglorious basterds, rationalizing that it will make us better parents.

I thoroughly apologize for the entirety of this post. I am reading Lady Audley's Secret and it is JUICY and I promise Thoughts And Feelings Thereon for you soon(ish).

Thursday Dithers! Because we care not for what day it is during holiday season.

2011-12-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

'Lo, egglings. This is just a dithery update to inform you that I am still fat and babyless, but in an effort to not be sitting here tearing out my hair I have been fat and babyless and BUSY. Which is why no posts.

I hope all your festival seasons were festive! We rounded out the family gatherings last night with my extendeds, where the white elephant gift stealing reached new heights of ruthlessness (the Tall One and I continued our record of going home with one thing we At Least Sort Of Wanted and one thing we were Actively Trying to Get).

Before that, we gathered with the Tall Extendeds (they are all Very Tall) and sang things in German, including Ring, Little Bell, Ring, which I don't even know in English (the English translation ran something along the lines of: Here are some gifts, you should enjoy them. Typical Germans).

Before that we had eggs benedict and prezzents with each of our families, because eggs benedict is the great uniter of persons. Hollandaise sauce for everyone!

On that note, hey we got new iph0nes! It's a long story, but our new plan is BETTER than our Regular Joe Phone Plan and hopefully this shiny white box won't turn off at random like my old phone does, which is particularly grating when ~~my sister~~ people are trying to phone because if they don't hear from me every two hours they assume I've gone into labor EVEN THOUGH I'VE TOLD THEM I WILL TEXT THEM ON MY WAY IN.

*hem*

So I'm sort of bragging, but also I want to know what the good camera apps are. I am going to become a serious hipster and post stylized photos of food all over my facebook until I am unfriended by EVERYONE!

So that is my question to you, ducklets. GOOD CAMERA APPS, AND ALSO OTHER APPS TO THAT YOU LIKE, PREFERABLY FREE ONES. Commence.

Allow this defaced sign to convey my deepest sentiments.

2011-12-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

I love your faces so much I can hardly STAND it.

The Doll - Daphne du Maurier

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

I was talking to...probably Alice...about Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca and how excellent it is and how excellent My Cousin Rachel is also, and Alice was like, But didn't you write a Thing on her and aren't you maybe a bit biased? And I was like, Yes to that first bit and possibly yes to that second bit, although I will be the first to admit that her early stuff can be Kind Of Terrible.

Which brings us to The Doll! (Segues!) Because these are all early short stories, either Not Previously Published or Not Easily Findable. And they are kind of terrible, but here's the thing (and this may be Raych's Bias talking): even when Daphne is terrible, she is also atmospheric and cynical and sort of bitchy, so I secretly love it (secretly here on my blog on the internet).

So even though most of these stories are bad, they are campily, juicily, childishly bad. And she doesn't have to sustain them for more than a few pages, so she can throw all of her energy and cheerful horror into a packet. And the first one begins on an island where 'the people had degenerated into a quiet, listless folk, the inevitable result of intermarriage.' And then a bunch of randy pirates pull in and shake things up.

There are a particular few good gems in here (ok, there is at least one solidly gemmy gem). The Happy Valley freaked my shit, and the ending is an open door into WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON? But then there are others, like Nothing Hurts for Long, where a gal spends long, lovely hours primping for her man's return from Berlin after three years, but is interrupted by a desperate phone call from a friend whose man has left her after returning from a long absence because, as the friend says, 'going away does make a difference to a man.' And then?

you'll never guess

The first gal's man comes home from Berlin and is, you know, cold and stuff.

So her moral is sometimes tedious (what's this, you say? There are members of the clergy who look only to advance their own place in society, and care not for the poor, weak and weary? How shocking). And an ending that may have been fresh and daring in the 30s smacks of Obvious Juice now, like when the recently-blossomed young school girl returns home and her mother is like *jealous bitch-face* and her mother's secret long-time lover is like *leer*

But! This is probably my bias chirping in again, but the stories themselves are delightful and engrossing and cleverly-drawn. They is UNROMANTICAL IN THE EXTREME, but almost amusedly so. Like, isn't it hilarious how much we all hate each other?

Not your best, DdM, but certainly better than some other bests. Seven caterpillars.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from TLC Tours. I know! I hate book tours. But I love du Maurier. Paradox.

Sunday Dithers

2011-12-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

Welcome! Bienvenue! Step ye, step ye, right on up to this, my 1000th post!

*glitter, fanfare, at least one lady swooning*

If I were On The Ball I would have giveaways and cake and things, but instead I have NEW MONSTERS! (The only reason I have new monsters is because my sister [of the art] had something else she was supposed to be doing and in a fit of procrastinatory pique she was like, I'm sick of your monsters, I'm making you new ones.)

New monsters! In my banner! Click over, feed readers mine, and check them out. One of them looks very concerned about what's in his friend's book.

Now that I have distracted you with new monsters (new!), pay no attention as I slip into holiday programming (i.e. instead of posting frice-weekly, I'll be posting whenever I think of it. This level of high-quality scheduling will probably continue into the new year because, I don't know if you've heard, I'm going to Have A Person. I hear they are a lot of work, Persons).

See you at irregular intervals, holiday fish! Sunday forward.

Tooth and Claw - Jo Walton

2011-12-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

You guys know I love Victorian novels, right? How can you not know this about me. I love them, almost uncritically. Even the bad ones. Let's face it, Tess of D'urbervilles is kind of terrible, but even then I'm like, Indeed? Moar? Ok and then to a lesser extent, fantasy novels. I'd rather read a semi-lame fantasy novel than some highly-acclaimed white-class ennui bad sex balding crisis novels.

It stands to reason, then, that my major beef with Victorian novels is the lack therein of dragons.

But then here we are! A Victorian novel full of undesirable marriage proposals and daughters cast upon the mercy of relatives due to an indulgent father's unclear will and untimely death all sprinkled with musings on the plight of the servant class AND DRAGONS. And not just, And also there are dragons, but everyone is dragons. The unwanted marriage proposals are made BY DRAGONS, TO DRAGONS.

You get it, there are dragons. You are unsure why I am still talking. Me too!

Ok so, Bon Agornin dies and (as is the custom) his family gathers to EAT him, only his eldest daughter's husband eats more than his allocated share and his youngest son, who could have really used that dragon flesh and so extended his ~~wealth~~ girth, as well as his youngest daughters, who are now to be foisted on the mercy of relatives, they all SUE the eldest daughter's husband (except the one youngest daughter, who is being foisted on them, because suing people upon whom you are dependent is simultaneously awkward and bad form).

And when Everyone Is Dragons, social mores become biological imperatives, and the metaphorical is made super-literal. The lords and ladies ACTUALLY EAT the ailing children of the lower classes (because dragonflesh is the most fortifying of the fleshes, and to do so is for the good of all [except the ailing children, natch]). And this wouldn't be a Victorian novel unless romantical elements were involved, but a young female dragon who is placed (however unwillingly) in a compromising position is STAINED a SHAMEFUL PINK. You are your OWN scarlet letter, bitch.

And I hesitate (except in the most Daddy Long-Legs of scenarios) to be like You will dig or You will not dig. But here I am EXCEEDINGLY uncertain, because unless Victorian novels are your sprinkler system, I'm not sure you'll enjoy playing in their pool of tropes?

But I did. Eight and a half caterpillars.

Lord of the Ring-a-thon-along

2011-12-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

YES, still. Except now over several weeks instead of in one glorious day.

(Everyone in these books is always either feasting or on short rations, but either way I'm like YES, FOOD WOULD BE GOOD.)

Anymoot. The Ents get warmed up and flood the shit out of Isengard and God I love Treebeard. Hrrrm hoom, let us not be hasty, and then he stands there 'pull[ing] down a bit more of the walls, in a leisurely sort of way, just to amuse himself.' That line slays me, every time.

Mordor already? Damn. I thought that wasn't until Return. This is where I start to question my commitment to the cause, because this whole section is so ghastly. So Frodo and Sam in Mordor, and then also Gollum, and Sam and Gollum are aggressively antagonistic and it's sort of amusing but maybe because everything else is relentlessly oppressive, and I can only stand it for so long. I always laugh at the part where Gollum is talking himself into stealing the Ring and refers to his future powerful self as The Gollum, even though the whole scene and the way his twisted mind talks itself out of keeping his word is insanely tragic.

And then Faramir shows up and proves that he is a Better Man than Boromir and that second sons are sometimes worth keeping around and I start to get all weepy in advance about how Denethor loses his mind later and tries to set them both on fire. I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF.

I'm starting to see how deliberate these moments of sunlight are, like when Sam stews the brace of coneys, because without them this trudge would be almost unbearable. But then ugh, Cirith Ungol and Shelob's Lair and Frodo is attacked and Sam has to go on alone and HERE is your Patrick-Nessian cliffhanger: 'Sam hurled himself against the bolted brazen plates and fell senseless to the ground. He was out in the darkness. Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.' HERE ENDS THE SECOND PART!

Modelland - Tyra Banks

2011-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

This is getting ridiculous. Modelland is now so overdue that I got a threatening letter from the library because I can't bring myself to review it because it is So Dumb. And I always wonder about Tyra, whether she knows and is just having fun. Like, jumpsuits. Does she actually think they're bangin' or does she know she looks ridiculous and she's still like, Fuck yeah jumpsuits?

I clearly can't cajole myself into a coherent review. I do, however, have Thoughts. Brace yo'self.

(I suppose we should talk for a second about plot. Tookie de la Creme is a 'hideous' Forgett-a-girl with a high forehead and long limbs...no, that sounds too sexy. Skinny, bean-pole limbs. Basically, she is Tyra, who is always trying to convince you that she used to be uggs WE HAVE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF TO THE CONTRARY TYRA YOU USED TO BE A MODEL. Anywert, she gets taken up into Modelland where young girls go to try to become ~~America's Next Top Model~~ an Intoxibella.)

I've watched enough Top Model to suspect that Ty-Ty wrote this herself, ghostwriterless. She is a hyperbolic hot mess. When everything is 'the most delicious butter-pecan gelato you've ever tasted' or 'grander than every global holiday combined' I stop listening. It's like speaking in italicized all-caps all the time, and when you need to EMPHASIZE you have nowhere to go.

And your 'dangerous Diabolical Divide always end[ing] in dismembering death' or your girls who 'deviated from dashing dress design decisions.' YOU CANNOT RESIST THE ALLITERATION!

Anywert, all Tookie wants is for someone to notice her so she lies on the floor of her high school, 'noticing' apparently including accidentally stepping on her or dropping a book on her, neither of which is 'noticing' so much as it is 'being inconvenienced or clumsy.'

The Intoxibellas appear to have Pokemon powers? Like, the first one has the power of Chameeleoné, which means she can change her hair color and body shape and whatlike, prompting one fine fellow to holler 'If I had her, I'd have a different girl every night!...I could stop cheating!' *pummels face with fists* And ok, Chameeleoné is a harmless (if shallow) power. But the other girls' powers are along the lines of being able to make anyone want to sexxxor you, or never ageing past 30 (when she hits 29 she re-ups to 17 and starts over). These are super-valuable powers for humanity.

Ok, so here's something Tyra doesn't understand about alternate universes: you can't just be like, This is different than the regular universe in this way. If Intoxibellas are the only famous people who exist in the world, you have to find some other way of conveying this new, myopic view of fame than just being like, The Intoxibellas! The ONLY FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO EXIST IN THE WORLD.

So now Tookie is in Modelland, and must survive THE CHALLENGES. Such as Thigh-High Boot Camp, where they endure make-over torture and learn such valuable lessons as Don't share your make-up (you will get face-diseases) and Don't buy knock-offs (you will make designers cry, and also your accessories will try to murder you) before being allowed into the eatery, where they are given a lazy nod towards the Perils of Not Eating (because Tyra has a social conscience).

Yet more evidence that Tookie = Tyra. A range of obelisks her mother thinks is 'ugly-ass' Tookie finds 'architecturally interesting. Unique. A mystery.' I can HEAR you talking about your appreciation for uncommon beauty, Tyra.

So, in Modelland, the bad models go to Catwalk Corridor, which pops up randomly, sort of like the Room of Requirement only instead of being full of awesome things it's full of bitchy cats. OBVIOUSLY.

I don't have world enough or time to get into Tookie's weird, relentlessly self-deprecating relationship with Bravo (a Bestostero [what?] from the male model camp), except that their meet-cute and subsequent flirting was written by a nine-year-old, and that at one point when he's brushing splinters off her face his thumb ends up in her mouth and STAYS THERE and they are both sort of like, How did this happen? And then I am like No really, HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? Because that doesn't happen.

While in Modelland Tookie makes friends with the other misfits, enemies with the pretty girl, allies of the staff, and I'm sure if there had been talking mice or dwarves or some other Disney shit she would have won them over with her constant talk about how ugly and forgettable she is. Even though boys check her out all the time oh and also she is in Modelland where only pretty girls go. She almost out-Bella-Swans Bella Swan.

She makes it to the final round of...something, and they're watching the other competitors go at it (they have to charge at each other across a plank and then...touch hands? And not fall off? I don't totally understand) except the girl currently competing cheats, and when she 'was five feet in front of the boy, she grabbed Alexander and gave him a big, wet, sloppy kiss on the lips and pushed him off the plank.' THAT GIRL HAS FIVE-FOOT-LONG ARMS AND ALSO LIPS. Now THAT is unconventional beauty, and probably she should get that checked out.

There are, besides the Intoxibella competition, like thirty plot lines I can't be bothered to get into, since half of them are dropped anyways, but one of them is Tookie's mother, who hates her and treats her like shit and then is accidentally STABBED at the end (!) and as she's dying, 'all the negativity [Tookie]'d felt about her mother was instantly replaced by a fervent, protective love.' FERVENT! PROTECTIVE! And then her mother says something dismissive with her dying breath because that makes a point about something. I am confused by this novel.

In sum, it is awful. But exuberant! But legitimately bad, and kind of long. I imagine this is what watching Jersey Shore is like, where you just have to shut your brain off to the things that don't make sense or that make you want to END YOURSELF, and just ride out the crazy.

Two caterpillars.

Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage - Joe, Alina, Vicky, and Valerie Darger

2011-12-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

I don't watch Big Love (which is loosely-based on [in that they stole several life-events from] the Dargers) because I am lazy and can only handle half-hour tv shows (minus commercials. I have a 22-minute attention HEY LOOK BROWNIES) AND while I agree that there are things about polygamy that weird me, I've always thought it might be kind of awesome to have sister-wives. Especially if you got to PICK them.

Which apparently some do! And I think it's important to separate polygamists into Nutter Butters Who Make Good News Headlines And Books By Jon Krakauer, and People Who Marry More Than One Other Person NBD. So, let's do that. But this is a book review! Of this book! Which I read!

So. The Dargers. Joe Darger is a dude. Alina and Vicki (who are cousins!) are both like, I am into that dude. Joe's mom is like, Why don't you BOTH be into that dude? So they buddy up and become besties and then Joe dates them both. And while they are very, It was difficult because Alina was very pretty, or, It was jealousy-making because Vicki was good at stuff, or, It was hard to be Not A Dick About Things, they are all writing this book together and they will all read it AND their friends and mothers will read it, so you can see them antsing carefully around things. It is honest without being juicy, to my Victorian-novel-loving disappointment.

Oh and then later, Vicki's twin sister Valerie (who married One Of Those Shitty Polygamists Because Really, Assholes Are Everywhere) leaves her hideous marriage and returns home to heal and then Vicki and Alina are like, We dig you and you should join our marriage. So she does!

And the revolving-door storytelling means that you get to hear all sides, but it also means that you have to hear ALL SIDES. Of EVERY EVENT. But the mechanics of a healthy, functioning polygamous marriage are actually super-interesting, and they are exceedingly open about the necessity of being Grown-Ass Adults About Things (as well as The Repercussions Of Being Childish and Negatively Impacting Not Only Your Spouse But Your Spouse's Spouses and All The Childrens Thereof). Val remarks on the necessity for sister-wives to develop a level of independence from their husbands that many solo-wives would probably do well to cultivate. Be yo' own woman!

And I feel shame-faced even admitting earlier that polygamy pokes my button in some ways, because as they point out in the introduction, '[e]very day, people make bonds and blend relationships in ways that are redefining what it means to be "family"' and while I would never be like, Two ladies? That's gross, somehow being like Two ladies and a dude? DISCOMFORTABLE! doesn't seem as politically incorrect. My mental bully is still apparently ok with picking on polygamists, and she needs to be punched (or to have the universal humanity of humankind gently explained to her).

So! Not amazing in parts, keeping from the depths of the Saccharine Tar Pits in other parts only by a narrow margin, but ILLUMINATING.

Seven caterpillars.

The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well - Deborah Needleman

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's BECAUSE I'm not living in my own space or cooking my own meals that I've developed this penchant for books on cooking and decorating.

So. The Perfectly Imperfect Home is about making your home a reflection of yourself, something that looks like YOU live in it. And I am down with that, but then the first chapter is on lighting and I am *le snore* (except that she uses 'sconce' as an adjective. SCONCEY. I support this manoeuvre). But then she gets around to things I dig, like Rugs: The Laying Down Thereof, and Armchairs, Incl.The Optimum Height For Your Armchair's Side-Table And Reading Lamp, Which Are Both Higher and Lower Than You Would Think.

And it's all very If you're doing this, think of this. Maybe give this a try, and see how you like. And the illustrations are illustrations, not photos. Even the examples of ACTUAL PLACES THAT EXIST are hand-drawn illustrations, which works well in that it suggests a basket like this, a lamp like this, not This Particular And Identifiable End-Table From Wherever People Buy Their Furniture From That Is Not Ikea.

There are ideas, both specific and general, that I love. Specifically, I am now obsessed with the idea of a bench in the bathroom. You can put your CLOTHES on it, instead of on the counter (which is always lamentably wet) or on the floor (which is gross), and you can stack towels on it and you can SIT ON IT. Generally: JOLLIFYERS! These are things that jolly up your home. Things that you look at and are like, Awww, that. Like a skeleton that you keep on an armchair in the front room and dress up for holidays.

werd

In a box in the garage, but not forgotten, Sam Skellington. You will live to jollify another day.

It's all a delightful blend of suggestion and strong suggestion (put Big! Splashy! Wallpapers! in rooms that you maybe don't spend all day in; if you're going to mix patterns go for a large floral and a thin stripe, or a small floral and a fat check), and she says things like 'The thought of arranging flowers can unhinge even the most stylish people. The secret to "doing flowers" is not to be intimidated. You are the boss of them!' She is like the Julia Child of decorating instructions.

Pleasant and amiable, but with sense. I will probably give this another read-through when I can finally 'decorate' rather than just 'cram all my furniture into two rooms.'

Eight caterpillars!

Lord of the Ring-a-thon, which I am still doing.

2011-12-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

By popular demand (predominately mine), I am going to keep chatter-blogging through my re-read-ring-a-thon. Previous posts can be found here. Spoilers abound (obviously).

So Gimli and Aragorn and Legolas find no hobbits, but RELIEVEDLY discover that the hobbits are not dead, and ALSO SPOILER SPOILER OH MY GOD SERIOUS SPOILER HERE, Gandalf is not dead either. And honestly the first time I read this I was so relieved but as I get older and begin to really appreciate Main Characters Legitimately Dying, I'm like Fehh. This is where the Harry Potter series beat out LOTR for so long (until Harry fake-died).

But this is one of my favorite aspects of these books, how it's just one damn thing after another. If it's not Ents its Horsemen. Our intrepid questers run into the Rohirrim and I am like, PRRROWWWWRL because there's something about a man on a horse.

look at my horse, my horse is amazing

Theoden is a hateful old wretch and is all *snarrrrl* get off my lawn, and I always thought this part took longer but Gandalf just HAZAAMs his wormy counsellor and is all, Come into the sunlight and air, my king. And he does! And is hearty and hale again, ready to ride to war. *bugle*

TO HELM'S DEEP! You guys, I had forgotten this entire battle! The dwarf and the elf are both all zingy with their one-liners. It's like a Will Smith movie, with bows and axes. Oh but I'd forgotten how long it goes on for, and how dark it is the whole time. Mercy me, even reading about fighting at night is disheartening.

Ooh, and then the woods show up, Macbeth-style, and eat all the orcs. I had forgotten this, too. Even though I maybe like The Two Towers best (Fellowship just has SO MUCH THINGS ahead of it and Return is all gloomy Mordor and giant spiders and weighty burdens), I apparently can't keep it in my brain.

Smugglivus!

2011-12-05T07:47:00.000-08:00

Beloved bacon bits mine! I am not here. This is just a hologram that I left here, of myself, to guide you over to The Book Smugglers, where I am celebrating Smugglivus by handing out my Very Specific Awards of 2011. Click and be merry!

Sunday Dithers

2011-12-04T11:41:00.000-08:00

Oh you guys! Yesterday's Lord of the Ring-a-thon was delightful. Thanks for dropping by and saying things, and thanks to Amanda and Brittney for doing such a slack-ass job of hosting (I mean that in the most complimentary fashion. Slack-ass hosting is conducive to slack-ass participation, which is my favorite kind).

Ok and in other news, one of my long-term projects ('long-term' because it is SO BORING and is taking SUCH A LONG TIME) is to build a list of titles and authors reviewed so that you can browse by those things, instead of just by Authors Whose Last Names Start With M, or something. I do this because PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME TO DO THIS (I seriously get a weird amount of emails about this), and I am nothing if not biddable. It is over on the right, go check it out (it is obviously incomplete because I started at the back and am working my way thisward and am only at around early 2009. I need another Storage Wars marathon to pull me through so I can sit there hating Dave and tagging things. MAN I hate Dave, and I'm starting to hate Darrell too).

(Oh, and also, there are genre-ish categories, but they are things like 'Here be dragons' [so, fantasy] and 'The butler did it' [mystery]. You'll figure it out, you're smart people.)

Speaking of being biddable, I am probably going to keep live-blogging the rest of The Lord of the Rings as I read it, both because people have been like MORE THIS and because I LIKE it. That is a fine intersection to be at.

When I'm not reading Tolkien, I'm reading Stephen King's 11/22/63, which My Tall One is ALSO reading, and we are both reading them ON OUR EREADERS. Even though he is miles and miles away. *hums Somewhere Out There, gazing moonily out the window/at ereader* 700-page books are the reason I got my nook in the first place.

In news that is neither book- nor blog-related, I crossed 'eat a wild animal' off my life list this week. It's been a while since I've checked anything off that list, and it was SATISFYING. Both the crossing off and the delicious elk, I mean.

On that note, I'mma go eat too many grapes and see what the Ents are up to. Sunday onwards!

Lord of the Ring-a-thon, in which I take several breaks.

2011-12-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten the Balrog! We cannot get out. This part is so tense.

And then, of course, the bridge and the flames and the Balrog and Gandalf all You cannot pass and you only get to read this part and be Incredibly Devastated ONCE, but that one time, oh man. I first read LOTR when I was sixteen and I WEPT LIKE AN INFANT. It is sad as hayull.

Lothlorien! This part is a bit snoozy, though I love how Galadriel is clearly Queen B. Celeborn is like, One might almost say Gandalf was rash, and Galadriel is all, One would be a fool who did. *cut-eye* And then, like in any good RPG, the travellers are given gifts that will aid them in their journey. And I, despite my hours of snacking, need some Proper Dinner to aid me on mine.

Jalapeno-cheese smokie! Doused in Frank's. I am going to regret this later. Back to the Fellowship, which is nearly done.

But oh noes! I'd forgotten this part was still in this book. Boromir, you greedy thief! Boromir terrifies Frodo into Doing the Right Thing, i.e. walking into Mordor alone (avec Sam, who cannot be left behind despite one's BEST EFFORTS). Thus ends The Fellowship, though if it'd gone on for maybe ten more pages it would have ended in an unbearable, Patrick-Ness-esque cliff-hanger!

So. The Two Towers. It feels good to move on to The Next Book, and I will celebrate with grapes.

Seriously, if Boromir being slain and Merry and Pippin hobbit-napped had been at the end of the LAST book, I would have died (and then picked up the next book, which I have easily to hand). But I love this, with Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli tracking Merry and Pippin to the bitter end, all noble and shit. Pursue them to the end of your strength!

And this is where I took a break and did some yoga, and had a shower, and now I am going to go watch some Parks & Rec with my parents (we are badass like that, on a Saturday night) and eat a creamsicle. Amanda and Alice seem to have gone to bed, lousy east-coasters, but I'll probably cram in a few more hours after my tv break. The Ents are coming, after all.

Lord of the Ring-a-thon temporarily waylaid by critters.

2011-12-03T16:34:00.001-08:00

Surprise visit from my brother and his lovely wife and their furry children.

Such an ear on that one. I have relocated to the bed, due to a pinched nerve in the back and the necessity therefore to recline flatly. Apparently most of the things that are PHYSICALLY WRONG WITH ME will be cured by having this baby. I am enthused.

Still in the House of Elrond! I love how Strider's nobility is slowly revealed. Like, not only Strider, and a ranger, but Aragorn (whoever that is), and The Dúnedan (whatever that is), who goes about clad in elven-mail when he isn't skulking in corners. And then later *spoiler* WHAM-O! A king with magical healing powers.

I enjoy this bit at the council, even if it is fairly info-dumpy, because it ties all the threads together and catches everyone up. Previously, on Gandalf's Adventures, and so forth. Although I have a lot of trouble taking Legolas seriously, NOT because of Orlando Bloom's portrayal thereof in the films (which I found uncomfortably alluring) but because of Orlando Bloom's EVERYTHING ELSE SINCE THEN.

Now leaving the House of Elrond to tackle Caradhras, though Gandalf has his misgivings. Gimli's litany of the mountains and their names in Dwarvish AND Elvish AND the language of men is difficult for even me to stomach without giggling, and I like this shit.

UNHOLY SNOW STORM! Back down Caradhras and under, through the Mines of Moria instead. Gandalf is very 'it is as I feared' and 'I suspected it would come to this' and 'if I'd had my way' throughout this bit. Dude, you need to be more advice-givey before the fact.

All this sitting about and feasting, followed by tramping and short rations, has made me snacky. And lo, behold what I have found in the back of a cupboard!

It wouldn't be any sort of readathon without you, my cheddary fiends. And then I popped the tabs on Joel's and my advent calendars (I am eating his for him while he is out of town)

and the delicious waxy chocolates set me a-craving, so I rousted out some cookies from the drawer. I'm usually pretty snooty about store-bought cookies, but these have CARAMEL in the middle. They are basically a round Twix, and I dig a Twix.

And then I felt gross about my life and my choices and made myself a vegetaplatter.

Onward to Moria! Where Something Very Bad Indeed is going to happen. Drums in the deep, egads!

Lord of the Ring-a-thon goes ever on and on.

2011-12-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

Oh Prancing Pony, you are full of dangers (and remind me how much I prefer the books to the movies; both the scene in the common room where Frodo disappears and the scene where the Black Riders STAB the hobbit-beds are melodramatic and terrible in the films).

I haven't read these books for years, but I used to read them all the time so I have Deep, Vague Impressions of things. When Strider suggests going to Weathertop something in my gut-brain says Don't do it, kids. And I am RIGHT, because thar be Ringwraiths. And a stabbing.

Speaking of Strider, I know he is Eventual King but he gets pretty braggy in bits. 'I found this plant at a distance in the dark by the scent of its leaves I AM WOODSMAN WITHOUT PEER!' It makes me re-consider my enormous crush on him sometimes.

I also love the little bits of LORE scattered throughout - Gil-Galad and Amon Sul and all that jazz. I DIG IT.

Ok so now we are in the House of Elrond, and I am stoked. No more accidental stabbings for a bit. Although sometimes (usually around the elves) Tolkien gets very 'so like was she in form of womanhood to Elrond' that I can't help but laugh. Oh J R R. I love your loquaciousness (though I must admit to skipping over all the songs).

And since the House of Elrond (and accompanying FEASTING) always makes me hongry, behold! Shepherd's pie, which is not very elven but which I love for being mostly-potato-based.

Also, since I cannot get full, I have been eating my weight in dried figs. They seem very epic-journey-ish and also I ~~have~~ had a pack of them near at hand.

Onward.

Lord of the Ring-a-thon, continues.

2011-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

I have reached page 200, and that seems as good a time as any to pause.

I love how these books gently ease you into the Dangers. The Black Riders pop up from time to time, and the Old Forest is full of shifting paths and unfriendly trees, AND OK FINE, a willow tree eats Pippin. But then Tom Bombadil bounds over the vale and everything is peaches!

Oh, but I had forgotten the barrow-weight, and the severed hand, 'wriggling still, like a wounded spider.' But again! Tom Bombadil. Peaches.

Now we leave the Old Forest and enter Bree and The Prancing Pony, where I distinctly remember some Bad Things Happening. Excitements!

Also, coffee.

And now lunch.

Belated Readathon

2011-12-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

Two hours into my own delightful slog, who knows how many hours into the Actual Thing because the co-hosts have wandered off for lunch. It's only 10 am here, but I've gotten very hobbit-like in my eating habits and might go poking for second-breakfast soon.

I almost started The Fellowship of the Ring last night but I got as far as 'Three rings for the Elven-kings' on the first page and passed out. But now I am AWAKE and FED and rolling around in Hobbiton. Heigh-ho, there'll be spoilers below.

Ok so. I love how Tolkien is like, you want to read my THOUSAND+ PAGE EPIC? Let's start off with a 10-grade-social-studies treatise on hobbits. Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people etc. oh and here is an entire chapter concerning pipeweed AND IT IS THE SECOND CHAPTER. How did anyone ever make it past page 50 before they knew about the good stuff later? (To be fair, this is all in the prologue, and therefore easily skippable, but I like prologues even if they spend several pages on The Ordering of the Shire.)

But then Bilbo throws a party and vanishes in a puff of smoke, and Gandalf shows up all The One Ring. Ruling power! MORDOR! Ominous. And then Merry! Pippen! This first bit is so much fun, being largely parties and woodsy jaunts, with the occasional Black Rider for foreshadowing.

In other news, you all know I love to start a readathon off with a saucy bowl of bran flakes, but we are OUT of MILK. I know. More importantly (and INFURIATINGLY), we are out of milk because last night at, like, eleven, I needed a bowl of cereal. NEEDED. So I had cereal and finished the milk and here I am, eating oatmeal like a chump.

Also, I am 112 pages in, F everyone's I.

Bonus-a-thon!

2011-12-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

It is Saturday! Amanda from Dead White Guys is hosting a belate-a-thon! Since I was present and able for the actual-a-thon in October, this is a bonus for me.

How will this differ from a regular-a-thon? For startsies, I slept until I was awake. Amanda &co started at 7am their time, which is WHO CARES I'm here now.

Also, I have not accumulated my weight in snacks and will just be eating Things I Find Around The House (with pictures).

ALSO also, rather than cannonball through a stack of YA, I am going to read The Lord of the Rings at a leisurely pace and I am going to LIKE IT. (That isn't sarcasm. I'm super looking forward to it.)

Finalmente, I might only update every few hours, or only stick them all on one post, or some like such as. My conscience is very stern about spamming your feed readers more than twice a year.

Obligatory photo!

The Borrower - Rebecca Makkai

2011-12-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

I ALMOST PUT YOU DOWN THIRTY PAGES IN, weird little novel. But then.

Ok so, Lucy is a young librarian with sort of nothing going on in her life and then she steals a child. It's sort of more complicated than that, because she secretly suspects his parents of various forms of abuse, including sending him to be de-gayed, but mostly she does it because really, what else is she doing.

And I almost put it down when the narrator implies she's going to be Nabakovian because she wants to rip him off and doesn't want you to call her on it. And then she feels free to litter her book with adjectives and evocations. Observe, oh reader, and things of that ilk. But then she either forgot she was doing that or I stopped noticing and started to enjoy her prose despite myself. It's LISTY in parts!

And then I almost put it down again because I am tired of a lot of tropes. Obviously not ALL tropes, since I still love a good Victorian novel and those are usually trope salads. But when Lorraine the Librarian's first act on stage is to assert (with implied frown) that Ian is A Gay, and I recognize that I am to take from this that she is A Villain, I am tired. I get it, homophobes are often bad people and bad people are often homophobes, but those aren't really the most dangerous ones because no one likes them anyways. (The interesting and effective villains are the otherwise likeable homophobes, due to their insidiousness.)

I'm tired of the Disagrees With Right-Thinking People On Topic Of Current Interest as a stand-in for character development (the same thing happens a few pages later when Ian's mother waltzes in, being both opposed to Harry Potter and attractive [and later thin and it is revealed that she works out a lot, that bitch], ALL OF WHICH lazily signals *baddie*). It's like making your villain a Nazi and being like There! Automatic loathability!

Not that homophobes and the religious intolerant shouldn't be soundly kicked (metaphorically, in literature, I mean), it's just...it's the easiest, most accessible way to put a black hat on someone. It's like using red to symbolize love and birds for freedom and Joseph Gordon Levitt for reasons 3-piece suits are great. You're making a distinction that no rational person would disagree with, and English 101 will tell you that that's not a strong thesis.

Ok and then Lucy's best friend is a man in a wheelchair, in order to illustrate how tolerant and non-judgmental she is. And it's not that you can't have characters in wheelchairs without them serving some ulterior purpose. QUITE THE OPPOSITE (authors, please start and/or continue doing this). But when the first thing you say about him is that other people (who aren't tolerant you) are always surprised by how articulately he can speak, I begin to suspect your motives.

Which is all too bad, because I feel like The Borrower is saying something clever about the Inherent Wrongness of Imposing Your Views. Lucy believes that Ian's parents are wrong in stealing his gay, and she Imposes Her View by stealing their child. And her wavering connection to the RIGHTNESS of her actions is both subtle and brilliant. Also, the book is all over splattered with You Don't Know People's Shit and isn't that the trick Lolita pulls off? Sympathy for someone who, as a side-character in some other novel, we would describe as Clearly Horrible?

So maybe the dumb stereotypes in this book are a way of highlighting what Judgy McJudgerfaces we all are, but since they are never redeemed...* scepticism* But also ok, dumb stereotypes aside, The Borrowers is SUPER-GOOD. I know this review is mostly just a rant, but sometimes my button gets stuck, you know? So let me take these last few moments to say that it is ENGROSSING and KIND OF HILARIOUS and has HEARTFELT MOMENTS.

We cool?

Eight and a half caterpillars, with one and a half detracted for a moment of laziness.

The Prestige - Christopher Priest

2011-11-28T06:00:00.001-08:00

I saw this movie years ago, which I think actually contributed to my enjoyment of the book, because I'd MOSTLY forgotten the End Game but I remembered enough to be like, The horror! (PS: The Revelation of Secrets in the film is way more EGADS and I heartily approve. The book seems like weak soup in comparison.)

So. A dude is duped into a meeting with a lady who wants to tell him a story about his past, in the hopes that it will illumine a GLORIOUS FEUD between their magician-ancestors, and this part is tedious. The movie cuts it out for good reason, since it contributes nothing to the plot, and then also the writing is very bad. There's this incredibly hackneyed chapter where Kate (the lady) recounts an event from her childhood (when she was, like, five), and her memory is excellent enough that she can not only recount bits verbatim but SPECULATE on what was discussed while she and her sister played upstairs, but then faulty enough that she forgets the content of an argument that she WITNESSED, all of which is a ham-handed way for Priest to control what his audience sees.

But the rest is all magician-journals and like such as, with two magicians FEUDING (again, why is that not more this:

)

and devising tricksier tricks and then sabotaging each other and swearing up and down NEVER TO FORGIVE and to AVENGE ALL WRONG-DOINGS and freaking Nicola Tesla gets involved (and if you haven't seen the Tesla episode of Drunk History then you are MISSING OUT. 'I am inventing electricity, and you look like an asshole.') and he makes science-magic, and even though the journals are very Ye Olde 1800s the writing manages to be WAAAAY BETTER and less hideously stilted. Mysterious.

But then we are briefly back to the dude and the lady again and you should probably just watch the movie instead. It has Hugh Jackman in it.

Six caterpillars.

The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

I FEEL STRONGLY, YOU GUYS. The Slap has left me OPINIONATED.

Ok so. Aisha and Hector are having a bbq. ENTER ENORMOUS CAST OF CHARACTERS, STAGE RIGHT. And this and that happens, and guests mingle, and children run around being children, and then ONE child gets ROWDY and a man who is NOT THAT CHILD'S FATHER goes and SMACKS HIM.

And it’s particularly affecting because the kid who is smacked is SUCH a little SHIT. A whiny, entitled, indulged shit. Oh, and he threatens another kid, albeit one older than him, DOUBLE ALBIET NO TAG-BACKS with a cricket bat. And To Smack Or To Not Smack your own kid is a discussion I will not have here, but to smack someone else’s kid is always taboo. So on the one hand, Do not smack that kid. But on the other hand, OOOOOOH he is a miniature douche WITH A CRICKET BAT. The whole thing makes me stabby and conflicted.

And the Dude Who Smacked is the cousin of the BBQ Host, but the Mother Of The Smacked is the BFF of the BBQ Hostess. And you currently habitate in the head-space of the Host, so you are like Obviously that kid needed smacking. But the shifting POV won’t let you get your hate train moving, because everyone has differing perspectives on this and there are things you do not know about people that maybe change the way you view their actions. It is a LESSON IN OTHER-SHOE-WALKING. Even when it gets to the mother of the spoiled shit child! Even she is rendered, if not sympathetic, at least comprehensible. I AM NOT EATING HER SUPPER but I can see why she cooks it.

And the thing is, despite the various POVs, you will hate some people. Who you hate depends on who you are, but you will hate them sincerely and aggressively. And, much as I like to sob over fictional time-travel novels but not actual human tragedy, I don’t particularly like hating things. I mean, clearly I like to hate ON things, and I like to argue impassionedly on subjects that I’m not deeply invested in, I like to roll my eyes at the Jersey Shores among us and talk about how the Edward Cullen archetype is ruining a generation of girls, but I find FEELING actual contempt and loathing exhausting.

What I'm saying is, it's super well-done, and it will make you feel. Not like good YA makes you feel, but like Lionel Shriver makes you feel. Which is to say, awful. Still, surprisingly ripping read despite the ROAWWRs.

Eight and a half caterpillars.

Sunday Dithers

2011-11-27T08:39:00.000-08:00

You GUYS. I am restless. I have a case of The Ants. It rained all day yesterday and I spent half of it reading a book I wasn't terribly enjoying. I CLEANED MY OFFICE to try to make myself feel productive (Joel goes out of town and suddenly every pair of boots I own is in the middle of the floor. I haven't even worn my yellow boots yet this year, but lo! There they are).

So I threw in the towel and read The Hobbit, because I've decided to re-read The Lord of the Rings next weekend for the Belated Readathon. I used to re-read it every year, firstly because book blogging wasn't a thing and I had nothing else to read, and secondly because IT'S HELLA GOOD.

Then the films came along and sort of ruined the books for me. Not because they super-imposed Viggo Mortensen over the lean wolf Aragorn in my mind, but because they turned something Iconic and Triumphant into Just Another Thing. Saying you liked The Lord of the Rings used to MEAN something. If nothing else, that you at least read shit. Now it means you have fairly generic taste in movies.

Anywert, I am going to reclaim it for myself. I am going to READ IT AGAIN, even though every time I do I always get to about page 30 and am like, Oh god, we're not even at Rivendell yet and we still have to go all the way to Mordor. There are SO MANY PERSONAL FAILINGS AND ORCS to be overcome between now and then.

It's raining again today, but I have a coffee date and then a football date, so I should be able to keep the bats at bay (for now). What do you do when you've agitated yourself into an unhappy froth, my potato chips?

Ragnarok - A S Byatt

2011-11-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

'Ragnarök' is particularly satisfying to say. As is 'götterdämmerung.' 'The end of the gods' is pretty insipid in comparison. English, you need more umlauts.

So. A S Byatt wants to write a myth, but without giving the gods personalities and psyches and peeves (as is now trendy to do). So she hands Asgard and the Gods to a 'thin child in wartime' (so, mini-Byatt, then) and has done.

And we end up with a sort of primer on the Norse gods, mediated through the thin child. Myth's usual habits are interrogated. A giant finds (where?) a giantess, the first gods tear the giant Ymir open - 'with fingernails, with teeth, with scythes, with hooks, with what?' Oh child-brain, you want to know All The Things.

The thin child tries to reconcile Asgard with the gentle-Jesus-wartime-in-the-country religion of her family and people, the British Airmen with Odin's Wild Hunt, the kind German editor who compiled these stories with the helmeted Nazis she dreams lurk under her bed.

And Byatt + myth = those parts of Lord of the Rings that I always skim, i.e. PAGES AND PAGES OF SCENERY. 'The fields were full of sipping, humming bees...Thrushes banged snails against stones and left a crackling carpet of empty shells.' Is that stunning and poetic? Sure. Is poetry for People Who Are Not Me? Betcha.

I always say that Byatt appeals to the kind of reader who likes Byatt, which is a sort of circular way of saying DINNA BLAME ME IF YOU HATE IT because there's a strong chance you might. But I am the sort of person who (poetic trees aside) likes Byatt, so I tend to find her to be the sort of thing I like. No breezy, beachy read, this, but a good rainy, hunkering, thinky bit.

Is it terrible that some of this made sense and stuck only because I've just seen Thor? Which I shamefully enjoyed, despite the presence of Natalie Portman WHO I AM DONE WITH, THANKS.

much as Thor is done with his coffee

Oh and but also, it's only 171 pages, so it lacks the prohibitive length of a Possession or A Children's Book while it manages to retain their gratifying heft. Maybe because the tales all seem to lead up to the TOTAL WASTE AND DESTRUCTION at the end, which I find terribly satisfying. Ragnarök indeed.

Eight caterpillars, mileage will most certainly vary.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from publisher.

::crickets::

2011-11-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

Stop having holidays without me, large-portion-of-my-internet.

For real, though, happy Thanksgiving to my 'Murricans who are off eating turkey reluctantly and side dishes enthusiastically. And to everyone else, I always liked you better anyway (jokes! Just jokes. I'm mostly just jealous of the side dishes).

The Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

This is a good one. I mean, EVENTUALLY I'll hit a Christie that isn't, but this is a particularly good one (I have an exceedingly spoiler-happy Christiography sitting on my shelf, and I like to read them not knowing whodunnit because I always think I've guessed and half the time I am like, Oh you clever bird, and half the time I am like, LAME, but all of the time I am wrong. AND I LIKE IT. Anyway, I'm trying to Eat All The Christies before I spoil my metaphorical dinner with the biography. So brace yourselfs).

So a cantankerous old man is murdered at the vicarage *title bomb!* and the vicar is like, what ho, this is unexpected. And then a young artist (who was recently tossed out, Jazzy-Jeff-style, for painting the old man's daughter [in her bathing dress, couldn't you just die]) confesses to the crime and everyone is like *gasp and scandalized chatter over tea*

But very quickly the confession is revealed to be Not At All True and the hunt for the real killer is ON! CLUES ABOUND! MISDIRECTIONS PROLIFERATE! Privacy is still a thing and you can tell a detective that what you were doing at the time of the murder is none of his damn business as long as you can assure him that you weren't murdering.

Meanwhile, Miss Marple is pottering around her garden noticing things. And I love that the Miss Marple mysteries are narrated by Someone Else (right? They all are, not just this one?) because we get to hang out in the vicar's head and he's sort of hilarious and Miss Marple gets to retain her sense of mystery AND to realize something very suddenly and shoot off without telling us what it is, which is difficult to do when you are the novel's primary focalization.

All of this is compounded by my misplaced nostalgia for a time when a 'ribald rhyme' went something like 'Miss Cram doesn't give a damn' and for when ladies presided over tea and YET people still had Stealthy Sexy Times in other people's gardening sheds.

I also have a penchant for brisk character summarization, a practice which today either morphs into the 'I gaze into the mirror at my ash-blonde hair and greenish eyes' or the extremely round-about info-doling, as though talking about how a character LOOKED were a crime. I prefer to meet Colonel Melchett as he is, 'a dapper little man with a habit of snorting suddenly and unexpectedly. He has red hair and rather keen, bright blue eyes.' Aaaand, done! I love eet.

Eight caterpillars.

Before I Go To Sleep - S J Watson

2011-11-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

OH MY. I have been THRILL-RIDDEN.

Ahem. It's almost impossible not to compare Before I Go To Sleep with ~~That Other Book Where The Girl's Memory Re-Sets While She's Sleeping~~ Forgotten, but whereas that one had Secrets and Lies of the parental and romantical sort (I don't want to say YA-level secrets because WE ALL KNOW YA DEALS WITH REAL SHITS SOMETIMES so let's say cliché-YA-level secrets), this one has Surrious Danger Lurking.

Ok so Christine's memory re-sets while she's sleeping, but unlike in Forgotten she doesn't ~~see~~ 'remember' the future either, so she wakes up every morning all WHERE AM I WHOSE BED IS THIS WHO IS THIS MAN HOW ARE MY HANDS SO OLD and her husband Ben has to be all like, I'm Ben and we're married and in our mid-forties and you were hit by a car and have The Amnesia and here are photos of us and here's what a cell phone is and now I have to go to work so try not to wander off.

Ok but then she gets a phone call from a dude who's all, I'm your neuro-doctor and your husband doesn't know you see me and here's the journal he doesn't know you keep that you gave me to read, and then you (and Christine) read the journal to figure out what our life is in this memory-less state and how we got here and what we do now and Something is Not Right. Starting with the scrawl at the beginning that's all, Don't trust Ben.

And I was super-concerned at SEVERAL POINTS that the Ominous Tone was going to lead to Insipid Revelations, because I am a MAJOR FAN of Ominous Tone, but it needs to be justified. If it's not a severed head, I'm going to be very upset. And Christine keeps 'figuring out' what's 'going on' and I am like, LAME, but then *twist* and new evidence surfaces and I am like, ZOMG TELL ME MORE.

the cat, in this metaphor, represents the plot points I did not see coming

Also there are some intelligent muse-y bits about who and what we are if not aggregations of memory, etc etc etc HEART-POUNDING ACTION.

Eight and a half caterpillars.

Sunday Dithers

2011-11-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

WEEP FOR ME, oh Children of the Internets, for my Tall One is gone for four weeks and I am (semi)alone. I will spend this month sending peaceful, resting thoughts to my Womb Region because I am DUE in five and a half weeks. DO NOT COME EARLY INTO THIS GOOD NIGHT, baby chicken, or you will make everything harder than it has to be. (Do also not come on time, or you will be born horribly close to Christmas. Come five days late.)

In other news. His Tallness and I went to the Poutine Festival yesterday for a Last Date, but they somehow expected only around 500 people to show up for FRIES and GRAVY and CHEESE CURDS, instead of 1500 in the first two hours.

Long story short, they ran out of poutine and we were turned away HANGRY but found a Memphis Blues, whose pulled pork poutine is like salty, porky nectar.

And then we came home and watched movies, including Thor which has a brief scene near the end in a diner and the camera pans past a pie so we paused the movie to go get a pie and before you are like PREGNANT PERSON, this is sort of just how we do. We have paused many a movie and abandoned many a tv show because 'that burger in the commercial looked good.'

Despite the fact that the pie made us both slightly nauseated afterwards, I'm still looking at it this morning like, I will probably eat some more of that later.

ANYwert, this is just me rambling because my house is empty. Luckily I have a birthday party for a Very Small Person (she's, like, one. The party is mostly an excuse for her parents' friends to get together, and also maybe to buy tiny-person-clothes because EEEEEEE) to go to this afternoon, so I won't be moping around like the dog.

Sunday on, pretty darlings.

Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

2011-11-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

I was going to cram this in the reviewathon pile, but then I realized how long the gibbet I wanted to type out was and how UNWIELDY it made that post, so here we are. I am semi-opposed to this reviewing style, though I tend to like it in practice when other people do it because I like to stick my finger in a pie before I commit.

Premise: email exchange between two co-workers, creeped on (startlingly uncreepily) by a third co-worker whose job it is to security-check emails to make sure no one is personal-emailing on company time (which these two obviously are):

Jennifer to Beth: Would it kill you to get here before noon? I'm sitting here among the shards of my life as I know it, and you...if I know you, you just woke up. You're probably eating oatmeal and watching Sally Jessy Raphael. Email me when you get in, before you do anything else. Don't even read the comics.

Beth to Jennifer: Ok, I'm putting you before the comics, but make it quick. I've got an ongoing argument with Derek about whether For Better or Worse is set in Canada, and today might be the day they prove me right.

Jennifer to Beth: I think I'm pregnant.

Beth to Jennifer: What? Why do you think you're pregnant?

Jennifer to Beth: I had three drinks last Saturday.

Beth to Jennifer: I think we need to have a little talk about the birds and the bees. That's not exactly how it happens.

Jennifer to Beth: Whenever I have too much to drink, I start to feel pregnant. I think it's because I never drink, and it would just figure that the one time I decide to loosen up, I get pregnant. Three hours of weakness, and now I'm going to spend the rest of my life wrestling with the special needs of a fetal alcoholic.

Beth to Jennifer: I don't think they call them that.

Jennifer to Beth: Its little eyes will be too far apart, and everyone will look at me in the grocery store and whisper, "Look at that horrible lush. She couldn't part with her Zima for nine months. It's tragic."

Beth to Jennifer: You drink Zima?

Jennifer to Beth: It's really quite refreshing.

Beth to Jennifer: You're not pregnant.

Jennifer to Beth: I am. Normally, two days before my period, my face is broken out, and I get pre-cramps cramping. But my skin is as clear as a baby's bottom. And instead of cramps, I feel this strangeness in my womb region. Almost a presence.

Beth to Jennifer: I dare you to call Ask-A-Nurse and tell them that you've got a presence in your womb region.

Ok me again. And if you are like WHAT HILARITY, then dive in because things continue in this vein. And if you are like, Scoff, then we can agree to disagree and also that you are a humorless husk and what are you even doing here (I kid [mostly]).

And Jennifer and Beth continue to email each other and Lincoln (the security-email-guard-checker) continues to creep on them, even after he starts to feel bad about it, and I should be like GROSS! UN~~HAND~~EYE THESE WOMEN WITH YOUR MALE GAZE but it's surprisingly Not Like That, and there's so rarely such a heavy focus on a genuine female friendship and yes, Jennifer and Beth spend a lot of time discussing their respective man-friends so I am sorry, Bechdel test, you do not pass go, but they also talk about their OTHER SHIT and also I badly want to be their friend, so for me the whole Romance angle seemed almost incidental (except for being the reason Lincoln keeps reading the emails and therefore the MacGuffin for You The Reader to be reading their emails) and also you know I will forgive ALMOST ANYTHING when the lols are this relentless.

As has been happening to me with frustrating regularity, Attachments is Rowell's debut novel and so have no backlist to plunder. WRITE ON, Rowell. You have whetted my appetite, and I will be sated.

Nine caterpillars.

Reviewathon!

2011-11-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

As per usual, because I charge through my readathon books with one eye on the clock and no attempt at note-taking, here are my brief and shouty responses to three of my four readathon reads.

Replay - Sharon Creech

Oh, I love me a Sharon Creech. She is a DELIGHT. And her books are always Good For The Childrens without being Too Dumb For The Adults, and they come with a Moral That Is Not Schlocky. A rare unicorn, those.

So. Leo has many siblings and his family is LOUD and ITALIAN (probably?) and everyone is always DOING things and COMPLAINING about things and Leo is day-dreamy and curious and also cast as the Old Crone in the school play (how mortifying). Anywert, one day Leo finds his dad's old diary and who is this person who had all these dreams and why is he such a sad, grumpy sack now and so Leo learns a Valuable Lesson about How Shit Changes People and Why Old Folks Are That Way and it is heartwarming.

Eight caterpillars.

Forgotten - Cat Patrick

EXCELLENT PREMISE, moderately successful execution. So London has this brain thing where she remembers in reverse...like, she remembers tomorrow but not yesterday? So she leaves herself sticky notes saying This is what I did today and also I wore the pink sweater so don't wear it tomorrow, which gives her interesting opportunities to do things like lie to herself about a boy who broke her heart, say, so that she forgets they ever dated while HE has to live with their break-up, YA BURNT! It also means that OTHER people can lie their fool heads off, and she'd never know until about two-thirds of the way through the novel when THE SEEKRITS, THEY EMERGE. So that bit's terribly exciting.

And ok, I've previously expressed my displeasure with romances inserted by sticky-toddler-hands (this one needs to go right HERE and that one goes over THERE) so I won't go on about that, and sometimes the conceit doesn't hang together (like when she's all, Huh, I must have flat-ironed my hair last night because I sure didn't this morning, and I am like, No, your brain re-sets at some ungodly hour in the a.m. so unless you neglected to look in the mirror this morning, Sometime In The Afternoon is too late to be making this realization) and I don't really like how the affliction is presented as A Neuro-Sciencey Brain Thing, NBD, when it means she can see into the future and that is semi-voodoo shit. But ZOMBG SEEKRITS will always trump minor quibbles, especially when the writing is competent.

Seven and a half caterpillars.

Just Listen - Sarah Dessen

Sarah Dessen! You are so great. I just want you to tell me stories all day. Particularly because your protagonists tend to have Normal, Actual Problems and not either Lame First-World Romantical Problems or Post-Apocalyptic Survival Problems (the latter I have no problem with. It's just, we're not always fighting off the zombie horde, ya dig?).

So Annabel's problems include an EXTREMELY ANGRY former best friend, a Terrible Seekrit (which you will guess from page one because you have read YA novels before) upon which that best friend's ANGER is contingent, an older sister with an eating disorder, an oldest sister who has scuttled irresponsibly off to New York, parents who do not Discuss Things, a mother who is WAY too invested in her daughters' modelling careers, a decided lack of interest in said modelling career, and then obviously a BOY.

And none of those are very exotic ingredients, but they are carefully measured and not over-blended and this is a cake I would eat often, even though it is slathered in metaphor (music! But also silence! And honesty! And listening to what people are saying! And what they're not saying! And so forth). And the banter wasn't as banty as The Truth About Forever, which I loved into waffley pieces, but not everything is about the lulz (but yes it is. Why else are you here?).

Eight caterpillars.

PSA Tuesday

2011-11-15T09:27:00.000-08:00

Friend! Roman! Internet co-habitator! Brace your face for my neon badge!

I am good at making shit

It has been far too long since I reminded you that the internet is a GAPING MAW, and wants nothing more than to CHOMP your blog. Random Blog Disappearance is no respecter of persons, and all your painstakingly-wrought reviews and salons and sundry memes could VANISH IN AN INSTANT.

Blogger bloggers, go to Settings > Basic > Export Blog and toss it on your nearest hard drive. Wordpressers, go to Dashboard > Tools > Export (someone let me know if this is still how the WP gets things done). Self-hosteds, you rogues are on your own (as usual).

Wild Seed - Octavia E. Butler

2011-11-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

Ok so Doro is this immortal mutant thing who takes it upon himself to breed other witchy mutant things together to see what kind of witchmutant hybrids he can produce, sort of a Charles Xaviar meets Gregor Mendel. Apparently there is a book before this in which he presumably does a lot of that. At any rate, in Wild Seed he meets Anyanwu, who is also undying but who can meddle with her body on a molecular level, allowing her to shape-shift and heal herself at will. He is like, Sweet, I will breed this one with some of my finest studs and also MYSELF and perhaps we will create a race of undying things and it will be awesome.

But because Anyanwu spent her first couplahundred years NOT under Doro's sway, she is a WILD SEED!

Being a WILD SEED she is difficult to tame and this whole bit made me feel kind of squicky. The whole book, actually, I found super off-putting. People love Butler, so I'm willing to give her another crack, but statements like '[s]he could finally be worthy of her husband and of her own womanhood; she could become pregnant' send my ralph-o-meter through the roof.

But ok. So Doro takes Anyanwu to The America so he can BREED her (ugh) and they have rompy immortal sex and many childrens and then a buncha stuff happens (like, he marries her off to his best son, which, it's your best son, so props for effort, but it's your best son, so poorly done on not being gross) and she decides she haaaaaaaates him and they are mortal enemies but also she keeps trying to protect her many childrens from him (being immortal and excessively breedy = many offsprings) and they make truces and break them and LOADS of people are dead in the crossfire and I guess in the end Anyanwu gets to assert her selfhood and etc but it's uneasily done and I mostly like books that leave me WONDERING but this one just left me confused about my own feelings, which I like less.

As I say, I'll take another kick at the Butler can (people seem to like Kindred), but this book gave me the frownies.

Five caterpillars.

Sunday Dithers

2011-11-13T17:36:00.000-08:00

I am reading Agatha Christie's Murder At the Vicarage and LOVING IT.

You?

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

2011-11-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

That title is my biggest fear, and the sole reason I joined twitter (because if you aren't on twitter, then yes. Yes they are).

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? takes a valuable lesson from my 8th grade English class on writing essays: you put your best bit at the end, your second-best bit at the beginning, and then you sort of heap the rest in the middle, higgle-piggle.

Because the intro is herlarious. It's all questions about the book, but questions along the lines of 'I don't know. I have a lot of books already. I wanted to finish those Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books before the movies come out' (to which Kaling responds, 'This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It's mostly pink. If you're reading this book every night for months, something is not right.').

So that's fun. And is followed by a list of alternate titles for the book (e.g. 'When Your Boyfriend Fits Into Your Jeans and Other Atrocities' or 'There Has Ceased To Be a Difference Between My Awake Clothes and My Asleep Clothes' or 'I Don't Know How She Does It, But I Suspect She Gets Help From Illegal Immigrants'), and then the book proper starts.

And the rest is all childhood stories and stories of when she first moved to New York to be Famous and roommate stories and really, it's like being trapped in an elevator with someone who is good at stories and also has done shit. Which is where this differs from, say, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop which I started and did not finish because dude seems to think that I care about his carefully-delineated life when, unless you are a good friend OR good at stories, I do not. HE, in turn, reminded me of those people who are forever posting 'Roast chicken in the oven, glass of wine in hand, rainy day out and puppy at my feet...SO GOOD' as their facebook statuses UGH BE MORE INTERESTING PEOPLE I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR MANUFACTURED PERFECTION, all of which to say there is very little 'piping hot coffee' and 'crisp fall air' and 'perfectly-worn book covers' up in heah.

Hem. But there are back-stage stories re: working on The Office and there's a page-long chapter on how she thinks celebrity roasts are mean-spirited and horrible and there is some VERY INSIGHTFUL STUFF on achieving your dreams and one of the most rational attitudes about being a chubby person that I've ever seen. In a bit about how stylists try to dress you when you are 'that nebulous "normal American woman" size', Kaling speculates that most stylists 'hate that size, because I think, to them, it shows that I lack the discipline to be an ascetic or the confident sassy abandon to be a total fatty hedonist. They're like: pick a lane!' And then she lists the things stylists make you wear when you are normal-sized (like navy. And cap sleeves. And ponchos).

And it's no Tina Fey, a point which Mindy addresses early on (it being apparently very difficult to lure Tina 'into a Freaky Friday-type situation'), but it's ONLY JUST not Tina Fey, and I've already read Bossypants so this is an excellent follow-upper.

Eight caterpillars!

Requisite ass-covering: book received from publisher.

Don't Breathe a Word - Jennifer McMahon

2011-11-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Look at you, creeptastic cover! You win at that. Let's go on, then, to discuss some of the ways in which you do not win.

So. It is Now and Phoebe is dating Sam, who is Rugged and Awesome (until later, when he suddenly and inexplicably Sucks) and whose little sister Lisa ran away to be with the fairies (or something not as fantastic [THAT IS THE MYSTERY PART SO I CAN'T TELL YOU]), and now it is The Past and Lisa is about to run away with the fairies (or etc). Chapter with Phoebe and Sam, in which they meet up with Sam's cousin Evie to discuss freaky phone calls from long-lost Lisa and then some super-weird shit happens (kudos for getting into the super-weird shit super-early! You also super-win at that), chapter with Young Sam and Young Lisa and Young Evie first discovering the fairy hole.

So there's Then and Now, a construct which I enjoy for SUSPENSE PURPOSES, but then there's the literary digression that I sort of can't stand. It's the next worse thing to outright telling. Like, instead of the author being all, Little Bill was a good kid, she's like, Little Bill was a good kid, digression into story about Bill being good that exists solely to demonstrate Bill's goodness. Little Bill liked school, digression into story which illustrates that Bill likes school. And I'm fine with backstory, but I want it to flow. I don't want it doled out to me in purposeful, exemplary pieces.

(This sort of Forced Exposition carries WELL into the novel. Like, 311 pages in, when we have met Hazel a majillion times, she 'grab[s] her bulky purse, crammed full of [such character-defining elements as] tissues, romance novels, and expired coupons.' Yes! We get it. Hazel is soppy and low-class and poor. We have known this for some 250 pages.)

But ok. Weirdness happens vis a vis Lisa's disappearance, Sam is (unsurprisingly) reticent about things, Phoebe does some sleuthing on her own and ALSO gets knocked up (which I sort of thought was a stupid plot point shoe-horned in so that, when Phoebe pulls Dangerous Stunts, McMahon can be all like, 'It wasn't just her life she was putting in danger. What kind of mother-to-be made choices like that?' Double your tension, double your fun! But then it ends up being important and relevant later) and there's this hilarious moment when she's buying a pregnancy test, and the woman behind the counter is like, Aren't you Sam's girlfriend? And Phoebe is like, Ack! I mean, no? And the woman's like, Ok. Well here's a TON OF INFORMATION about that family and their cursed past, which I will give to you even though you are edging out the door. It's basically this:

So, that.

And, ok. I AM AWARE that this bothers me and, like, nine other people, that I am being a fucking princess and this is my literary pea. But on one page, a string of seven paragraphs each begin thusly:
'Phoebe nodded,'
Sentence that has nothing to do with heads,
'Phoebe shook her head,'
Sentence that has nothing to do with heads,
'Phoebe nodded,'
'Franny shook her head,'
'Phoebe nodded.'

Also, Phoebe answers a question that does not appear to have been asked. Also, at one point Sam claims that the furniture in his mom's house has been there 'since he'd been alive' which implies that he is now dead (which *spoiler* is not one of the freaky things, although THAT would have been a PLOT DEVELOPMENT). These sorts of things make me claw my eyes, and I will need them later.

So the writing made me crazy. And the characterization, because everyone is drawn directly from central casting. Oooh, and when Sam starts getting very Withdrawn and Mysterious and Phoebe has to be like, THIS IS VERY UNLIKE HIM because somehow McMahon forgot to plot Sam's not being sort of a secretive douche into the early pages (except for maybe the first two, but that is limited to Phoebe being like, This is my boyfriend Sam and he is Rugged and Awesome). BUT! It's very good with creepy bits, like old ladies showing up in your room in the middle of the night and then running off into the woods, turning into beautiful co-eds as you chase them. And then the Ultimate Business is unsettling, especially if you read it in the dark.

I am le torn. While I enjoyed the suspense, I sort of hated the way the suspense was gone about. And while I tend to be way more YAY PLOT than yay theme or yay incisive depiction of the human condition, I am ultimately mostly YAY WRITING (see: Venetia, which is basically plotless and which I LOVED IN THE FACE). Which is to say, six caterpillars.

Going Bovine - Libba Bray

2011-11-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

I read A Great and Terrible Beauty and was like, *non-committal face, wanders off to find chips* so nothing really URGED me to pick up Going Bovine until Beauty Queens came out and everyone was like, This is sort of not so good, Going Bovine was much better. And I am nothing if not suggestible.

Remember mad-cow disease, you guys? That was a thing we all thought we were going to get. (Also anthrax. Also West Nile. The early-to-mid-aughts were a fear-mongery time.) Except Cameron actually does get it, so hypochondriacs beware.

And THAT sucks. But also filed under 'sucks' are his parents' unravelling marriage, his twin sister's new-found popularity, and his own no-one-likes-him-much-able-ness. Except that once you have mad cow, everyone is like POOR YOU, except that also you have mad cow. OH AND a super-hot (punk-style, because in YA to be traditionally hot is to be shallow and bitchy) angel shows up like, You need to save the world and here's how and take that little person with you.

So Cameron escapes from the hospital with Gonzo, the aformentioned little person (Dwarf? Hypochondriac, anyways), and they go to find Dr X who accidentally let some dark matter into the universe and INCIDENTALLY can cure Cameron as well so there's your carrot, and along the way they acquire a talking garden gnome who is also a Norse god and they end up temporarily part of a cult and on a game show for a bit and one of them is accidentally turned into a snow globe and it is WACKY. Obviously.

And it's meant to be a bit starker-nuts, like magical realism with a sense of humor, which I digged. I enjoy knowing any old thing can happen, it leaves your Anticipation Gates wide open. And the writing is 90% Invisible Prose, 5% Actually Hilarious Jokes, and 5% Jokes That Make An Effort And Really That's What Counts (No It Isn't). And that particular blend isn't one that I rush to the store for, but I will drink it if it's placed in my hand.

Did I mention there was a moral to the story? And that I didn't hate it, even though it showed up in a sandwich board and carrying tracts, just in case I missed it? I can't be mad at you, Obvious Moral, when you are something awesome like CARPE DIEM and VIVE LE RESISTANCE, which are things that I shout on a regular basis.

So this was fine, but has sort of reinforced my non-need to read Beauty Queens. The next thing Bray comes out with that is touted as being EVEN BETTER than Going Bovine, I will consider. She's hilarious on The Twitters, anyway (and the acknowledgements in GB are to DIE for).

Seven caterpillars!

Sunday Dithers

2011-11-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday, breakfastlings! This was the last daylight savings where I get to sleep in, at least until the fetus (and all future fetusii) is a teenager and understands the concept of ANOTHER HOUR! OF SLEEP! Because I hear that they're noisier once they're out of the womb?

So, my internet was down for a day and a half this week. I know. It was hellish. Because something could have been going ON and I would have MISSED it. You know how I feel about internet-dramz (I am fully aware that I should be above them, but whenever someone on the twitter is all, I can't believe THIS is happening again, I am always like *buts in* TELL ME MORE).

And, ok, a lot of the time when I find a funny .gif or photo on the tubes, I save it so I can use it in a review later. But then I found THIS and laughed for an HOUR and I can foresee no way of ever using this in a review and more than that, I just wanted to SHARE WITH YOU.

OH MAN. I might change my rating system to 'amazing hats' and then just post this at the end of every review. I will eventually be sued, I'm sure.

I really have nothing to say that can top that. Sunday hats, puppies!

The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy: Or Everything your Doctor Won't Tell You - Vicki Iovine

2011-11-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

You guys! I'm gestating. You may recall. And also I read books? So sometimes I read books on pregnancy? But not often, surprisingly. I know, I thought I'd be way more Dewey Decimal System Section 618, but there's teh internetz, right? Dear Google, why do I have fat feet now, how do I stop this heartburn shiz, etc.

And this was recommended to me as a lollarious romp, which it is in parts. But you know how I feel about lollarity (reluctant, and highly critical), so allow me to lower your expectations: this is less The Bloggess (i.e. all amusements, all the time) and more your average, chatty blogger who has a few winning moments. Maybe it was funnier back in 1995?

Because there may be an updated version, but my library's copy is from my 7th grade year. And there are THINGS she says about, say, maternity fashion that may not be true today. And then there are other things she says, like the entire chapter on exercise (which boils down to Don't Do It Because You're Going To Get Fat Anyway And It Doesn't Help Anything So Why Bother And Also What If Something Happens And You Miscarry You Will Always Blame Yourself, the last part of which is totally true but if I miscarry, I am totally going to blame having slept on my back or having eaten spicy eggs, WHAT I'M SAYING IS I cannot let that fear dictate my actions), which I and the modern medical community violently disagree with.

(At one point in the chapter on fashion she's like, You will eventually outgrow even your husband's clothes and probably weigh more than him at some point. And, ok, maybe her husband is really little, I don't know her life. There are some dudes wandering around town with enviable hips and lovely lady legs, don't think I'm not coveting your calves, whom I probably weighed more than to start with. But for me to outweigh my own personal Dude, I would have to put on sixty MORE pounds. [I have already put on a healthy serving of pounds. It is weird, after 29 years of life, to be like, Hello weight gain. You are totally welcome here.] And weight and sundries are VERY STICKY SUBJECTS with women, both fetus-filled and non, so I'm not going to say that her stance on exercise and her tendency to weigh more than her husband are LINKED, I'm just going to eat a bag of chips and then go for a walk, because adding sixty more pounds to the front of my angry back is terrifying to me.)

But (we are now going back to the topic of this book being Supah-Old) a surprising amount of pregnancy, and the dealing with thereof, has remained the same (like, a weird amount. She's all, Dude, yes to breast pumps and my bff the other day was all like, Breast pumps indeed so apparently breast pumps are a go [come at me, spammers]). And though it feels like We, the Modern Woman are super-educated about everything to do with our bodies, it's nice to have everything sort of laid out by sub-heading because I'm not always going to be Googling ahead.

On the whole, it is very sane and relaxed, and if Iovine glosses over some things or has a few wacky opinions, we still have the internetz (where all opinions are Reasoned and Footnoted). She tells you straight out the gate that any real medical information passed on is 'largely accidental,' and is very like ALSO TALK TO YOUR DOCTORS. Which is sage advice.

Seven caterpillars (with swollen ankles).

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

2011-11-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I started reading this and was enjoying it muchly and then the twitternets went all squirrelly with the BEST BOOK EVAR and CHANGED MY LIFE and BOOK CURES CANCER and I was internally like, Dudes! You must mellow the hype. Because The Night Circus is excellent and great and good (and yes, has stripey end papers) but it will not bring your blood sugars down to an acceptable level or make you attractive to the sex of your choice.

And I don't want to damn with faint praise, but if you go into The Night Circus believing all the hype, you will be disappoint. SUCH IS THE NATURE OF THE HYPE-MACHINE. If you pick it up because it came for you in the mail and you sort of hadn't noticed that it was a book, you will probably dig its jive.

You probably know the plottery gist by now: two attractive young people locked into a magician's duel, which in my mind should involve a bit of this:

and quite a lot of this:

There is, tragically, little of either. It is a very civilized duel (and then on another level, an exceedingly barbaric one, since neither dualant entered voluntarily, either through slapping of faces with gauntlets or otherwise).

The boxing ring (so to speak) is a circus, and it is VIBRANT and MYSTICAL and literally the best part of the book. Because each contributant contributes elements to it in an attempt to out-wizard each other and there ends up being shit like an ice garden (made of ice!) and a floating carousel and it's way more rad than I'm making it sound.

Young, attractive people being what they are, the dualants eventually fall in love which complicates the duel (did I mention they are irrevocably bound? Rough luck, that) and then a pair of red-headed twins (obviously) with magical powers is born into the circus and ALSO there's a boy named Bailey who is Not Magical In Any Way and I am RUNNING OUT OF STEAM for this book.

I'm sorry, The Night Circus. You deserve better than I am giving you, but I take comfort in the fact that you've GOTTEN it. Downgrade your expectations, oh ye readers, and then pick this up when you've forgotten how practically perfect it's supposed to be. Because it's seriously very good.

Eight and a half caterpillars.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from publisher.

Cannot avoid eating candy, willpower busy elsewhere.

2011-10-31T15:07:00.000-07:00

Must...finish...re-reading...Middlesex...for book club...Wednesday. Mustn't...pick up...newly acquired...How To Save A Life...despite...advertised...excellent weepy times.

Taken Away - Celine Kiernan

2011-10-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

VERY LOUD DISCLAIMER: Celine and I are bffs-on-the-internet and she sent this to me in the mail and I think she is super-great. That being said, I have her express assurance that she never reads reviews of her work, which probably keeps her sane and which means I can say WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT.

Ok and apparently Things are Mine For the Summoning these days, because I have been asking the Universe for more this (where 'this' = smashing opening lines, and 'Call me Ishmael' doesn't count because THAT IS ACTUALLY A SHITTY OPENING LINE, it just happens to be the opening line of a Very Famous Book). 'We were watching telly the night Nan burnt the house down' is very, you know, away we go.

So Nan burns down the house and Mam and Dad and baby Dee and Dom and Pat (WHO ARE TWINS) all move to a temporary house in the country, and that is where it all begins *high-pitched violins* And OBVIOUSLY twins are the creepiest thing going. Look at that cover. There are more than enough faces in the world, why can you not get your own? But Dom and Pat are like sweet, rowly puppies (with twinface). Y'anyways.

Dom and Pat start having fuhreaky dreams, and then a tiny child-boy with white lips and black teeth who glares at you malevolently starts having nighttime conversations with Dom about the 'bad man' and Pat is like, This is horrifying, and you are like, TOO RIGHT, and this is the bit that I read during the daytime and I still made Joel come sit in the room with me.

And more spooky doings are to come, but they are chased with difficult deeds and tragic realizations and heroic undertakings. So it's Eerie with an aftertaste of Desperately Sad, which I quite like. Make me weep, damn you! But be subtle about it. None of this wantonly killing off the dog business (unless you are Patrick Ness, in which case, kill away!).

Mancheeeeeeeeeeeee!

What were we? Right. Thar be sadness here, but no dogs are harmed in the making of this novel.

And this exactly is what I want to put my eyes on right now. I've been feeling at loose ends about books lately because I want sharp and clever and unusual writing that knows when to reign itself in and when to EXULT IN A WELL-PLACED ADJECTIVE, but I also want punches and plot. I want Nan to burn down the house, is what I'm saying, but I also want the room to have 'that aquarium feel to it that things get when you're very tired.' I AM SO GREEDY with my wants!

Anywert. This was all the things I wanted AND an excellent R.I.P. read. It's called Into the Grey on this side of the water and is sort of hard to find? But if you do, THERE WILL BE GHOSTIES.

Nine caterpillars.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from author.

Sunday Dithers

2011-10-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Halloweeeeve! And it's so grey and rainy! Which is fine for me, because I'm not trick-or-treating, and don't have any kids to drag me into inclement weather (YET!).

Speaking of kids, the belly bean is big enough now that her butt gets up under my ribs and she'll stick a foot or whatever into my side sometimes and this means she has LIMBS and PARTS and I can FEEL THEM AUGH SHE IS A PROPER PERSON IN THERE and that's frightening enough for any Halloween.

Other news. Alita and I went and saw Maureen Johnson yesterday and she is AMUSING and FLAILY and so basically like she is on twitter, but with fewer hashtags. She brought YA Saves t-shirts and magnets and we, in turn, brought her Nanaimo bars (not me, because I didn't know her grandpa was from Nanaimo and so did not get the joke, but I did get a Nanaimo bar from a sweet girl). The crowd made us feel very old, especially when this one pack went on about a show that was on in the early 90s and we're like, Were you children even alive in the early 90s?

And then we had coffee with Caitlin and Lindsay who were awesome and who PROVE MY THEORY that there are other Vancouver-based book bloggers who are either keeping exceedingly mum or who do not read my shit (probably more the latter, because these two were very YA-CENTRIC and I am very...not as much that).

And then I went to a BC Lions game which is football which made me feel like a well-rounded person because SEE ME SPORT!

Ok, that's His Tallness. But I was also there I took the picture I have interests! And earlier this year I went to a Whitecaps game which is SOCCER. I'm practically a jock.

Tonight we carve pumpkins and tomorrow I eat All The Candies while I wait for the childrens to come save me from myself. SUNDAY ONWARDS!

The Lantern - Deborah Lawrenson

2011-10-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

I AM FULL OF DISAPPOINT. I wrote my honors thesis on Rebecca, you may recall, which is really just a boasty way of saying I have read Rebecca alotta times. ALOTTA. So when I come across books that are billed as 'reminiscent of Rebecca' and that get good reviews, I am very like, Give over. *grabs*

But, y'arrrr. Welcome to your Friday morning, in which Raych Reads Half Of The Lantern In Real Time, And Then Sums Up Where The Rest Went Wrong, So As To Avoid Spoilers For People Who Still Insist On Reading It Instead Of Just Picking Up, Say, Rebecca, Which For Real Just Do That Instead.

*cracks spine, reads several pages* The Lantern isn't just reminiscent of Rebecca. This book borrows Rebecca's wig and prances around in her plot points and tries to steal her ~~husband~~ fan base. Flowery, self-indulgent prologue? Check. Narrative beginning at the end, with discontented couple in vaguely European exile? Check. Desperate attempts not to think of ~~Manderley~~ Les Genévriers? Hello.

And now we're back to the beginning (chronologically), with our young and naive protagonist (will she remain nameless? WE SHALL SEE.) Oh, hello, suave and mysterious Much Older Gentleman. Not married, are we? What ~~wives~~ secrets do we have hidden in our closets?

Dom and our nameless protagonist (whom he calls 'Eve,' even though that isn't her real name, thereby giving a nod to du Maurier's nameless lady while CIRCUMVRENTING the inconvenience of having an unnamed protagonist. Let's also call her 'Eve,' because that will make my life easier) move to a manor house in France. There is much picnicking and playing of the piano, but then also some heavily-manufactured Suspense. Dom walks away at weird moments, or is unnecessarily anguished, and instead of being like Dude, seriously, what, Eve is all Ah me, my rising sense of unease. We'll put that aside and let it foment for a while and I will garden and snoop.

'It was too good to be true' is not very compelling DRAMATIC FORESHADOWING, though. I need more, like, 'We could not have known what fresh hell awaited us,' or whatever. And then I need some actual fresh hell.

Oh Lord, his ex-wife's name is Rachel, which is basically the same name as Rebecca. I know this because my sister's name is Rebekah, and we both answer to either.

Oh ho! 'It was not as if I had moved into the house they shared. I was not living surrounded by her old belongings, or even their shared household items.' Subtext: unlike some other book which I am ripping off but trying to distance myself from!

Ok so there's this completely irrelevant side-plot about an old woman with a blind sister who makes perfumes and sometimes it's in first person and sometimes in third and it'll probably match up with the Dom-Eve plot later and STOP rhapsodizing about scents. It's like Perfume all over again. I feel about people talking about scents much like I feel about people talking about wine, that is to say, ANNOYED AND SLIGHTLY INCREDULOUS. 'Vanilla with rose and the heart of ripe melons, held up by something sterner, a leather maybe, with a hint of wood smoke' my ass.

Ooooh! Another woman! Whom Dom affects not to know, and who knew Rachel! Except...she's less a character and more an Information Repository. Who will, for no real reason except that THERE HAS TO BE SUSPENSE SOMEWHERE, dole out her informational tidbits incrementally.

Ok so now we are about halfway through. Dom continues to act Generally Mysterious, Eve continues to fret and pine over the loss of this relationship I don't really care about yet and am not convinced is disintegrating ANYways because he still composes songs in her name, kisses her lightly on the eyes, etc, the other woman continues to show up from time to time like a bit player in an RPG.

And everyone behaves as if they know the final outcome. DO NOT MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS SUSPICIOUS, authors, unless you have given them REASON. Eve overreacts to everything and speculates like a madman.

And I don't even know why I'm saving the end for you, because it's a big fat nyerrrrrp and then a bunch of lesser explanations are explanated and there's entirely too much narrative after the Big Reveal and not nearly enough Manor House Conflagration.

Also it's super-wordy and could have been a third as long if some bold-hearted editor had just taken out all the unnecessary adjectives (lyrical writing, I hate you so much [said editor would have warmed my cockles by also shifting around the misplaced modifiers]), and I guess technically you can be told a lie of omission, but to me the phrase has always meant Keeping Mum On Something Rather Vital so to tell someone that you 'didn't want to hear any more lies of omission' sounds bizarre, and if you've just been detailing conversational evenings between two people you can't end with 'Throughout all those evenings, he never said a word' because YES HE DID. I was there. On this page. About four lines ago, when it was evening, and he was like 'It just feels right, doesn't it?' I think what you mean is that he never said a word about HIS MANY SECRETS, and you are trying to be MYSTERIOUS by not actually SAYING 'his secrets,' but you see where this has led us?

There's a fine line between homage to and slightly shittier version of. The Lantern is on the wrong side of that line. I didn't need it to BE Rebecca, but tried so hard to, and also not to, and I am like DUDE JUST PICK ONE.

Five caterpillars. This book R.I.P.s it up, for effort.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

2011-10-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

I can't decide which is worse: everyone who has been telling me, Just you wait until you're more pregnant/you have that baby/that baby is a teenager and hates you, OR people who find out that I don't like Neil Gaiman and are like, Oh yes but have you read X. Because I probably have, yes, and I was underwhelmed. I mean, there are dozens of authors whom I have not given a fair shake, but because youse guys LOVE THE GAIMAN so much, I keep trying, and I have read Neverwhere and American Gods and Anansi Boys and Coraline (which I liked, but mostly for the drawings) and Good Omens (which I loved, but I blame Terry Pratchett for that) so I think I have sampled all the necessary Gaimans, and I have never been buzzed.

The fact that The Graveyard Book rang my ghostly bell does not weigh against this. It maybe SHOULD, but whatever, because I have liked salmon exactly once and hated it almost all of the times and this does not make me a person who likes salmon. I am talking way too much about this but I am sick of being told that I'm wrong. I AM WRONG ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS like where Kuwait is on a map and how many litres are in a mile but I know whether I like a thing or not.

SO! A man breaks into a house and slaughters a family except for the one wee baby, which seems negligent since it was the baby he was sent to slaughter in the first place. But whatever, the baby wanders off and is adopted by some ghosts, who name him Bod ('Nobody') and raise him up good. He meets a girl, they investigate crypts and have rambly good times about the graveyard. It's very Slice Of Life, Avec Ghosts.

But eventually the negligent murdery-man comes a-knockin once more and Bod's taciturn guardian Silas is off doing mysterious doings and Bod has to do some brave and bold things and Scarlett (aforementioned girl) must do likewise and then MORE murdery men come 'round and it's all very exciting.

And I like it because it's sly and irreverent and a bit goofy, and don't tell me that American Gods is sly and irreverent because I've read it. Stop trying to make me like things I don't like, interwebz. You're so pushy that way. (I clearly need counselling about this.)

As is the trend these days, there are pictures. Which I am decidedly feh about. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just not automatically going to die with delight because you doodled in your margins (God, that sounds dirty).

dear boy, there is a worm on your chin

I know I'm being super-surly about a book that I actually liked, and that is stupid of me. So RAH, Graveyard Book! I really enjoyed your face. Eight caterpillars to you.

This book R.I.P.s it up, on account of the ghosts and the delightful murdery times.

Ashes - Ilsa J Bick

2011-10-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

BE YE WARNED, oh thou who liketh thy books to end and thy plotlines to be wrapped up between but two covers: this is a trilogy. And I realize that complaining about this is like coming out of the last Harry Potter and being like, You guuuuise, that movie was soooo looooong. Young adult post-apocalyptic/dystopia/thefutureisbadsomehow is going to = trilogy for the foreseeable future, and I'm clearly just going to have to lump it.

So. Alex has a brain tumor and also her parents are dead and you are surprisingly like, Ok, because she isn't very WOE about it, and then also the Zap happens super-quick so you barely have time to register that she's skipping town and her next chemo to go dump her parents' ashes in Lake Lakerson (too lazy to look up actual lake).

So she's in the middle of nowhere and something zaps, driving the animals mental and killing an oldster she'd just run into, but leaving his granddaughter and the granddaughter's dead dad's army service dog Mina alive (soooo many dead dads). Oh and also everything electronic doesn't work now.

AND ALSO THERE ARE CANNIBALS. Because for some reason, the zap turned everyone in their teens and 20s into slavering people-eaters, only not everyone, because Alex has no desire to eat anyone, and she and the granddaughter soon run into a foxy young war vet (you know where this is going) and HE doesn't try to nom their faces (except for when it goes where you knew it was going, and he and Alex metaphorically nom face).

And because it's a trilogy I have to cut it slack for not EXPLAINING SOME SHIT, like why certain people zombify and other ones don't (though I swear to God, if 'Oh, you know *vague hand-wave* hormones' is the sole and ultimate reason provided, I will cut a bitch), but it ends on a fairly gripping Semi-Mystery Explained With Horrifying Answer Tune In Next Week.

Which, fine, probably I will. This is why YA BadFutures get me, because even when they aren't terribly good I am still curious. And Ashes didn't blow me away with any one of the plot/characterization/writing trifecta, but none of it was inexcusably bad. There are some weird constructs. Like, people keep letting go of screams. She let go of a scream, he let go of a scream, the dog, I think, lets go of a scream. And I get that we release and unleash screams and that that doesn't sound terribly weird, but 'let go of' does, and it never gets less hinky.

And I'm not a fan of Romances In Books That Have Other Things Going On (see: That time I read Divergent and thought it would have been ACES if not for the awkwardly-drawn-out attempt at sexual tension), because it's so hard to keep coming up with reasons why these two people can't be together, and because too often authors rely on Female Confusion And Naivety, which is my least-favorite trope. I mean, freaking nine-year-olds usually know that when they get that squirmy feeling it's because maybe they like a boy. So STOP having your female heroines be like, Why is my heart racing? I must have the flu. We may be confused re: our deeper emotions and intentions, but we are all familiar with crushes by seventeen and we know what they feel like (ok so most of that was directed at Divergent, which got very Why does he treat me like a kid sister he has to protect, when I am all NO HE HAS ALREADY STROKED YOUR CHEEK SEVERAL TIMES WE ARE BEYOND THIS SISTER BUSINESS YOU NEED TO CONTRIVE NEW REASONS FOR THEM NOT TO BE MAKING OUT ALREADY. But Ashes does it a bit too, and it turns out I was too lazy to review Divergent. Sorry you got caught in the review-splatter, Ashes).

Because on the whole, Ashes is sort of good. Which is damning with faint praise, but sometimes you just need to kill an afternoon and better this than accidentally reading Elixir because you think it'll be a romp. Alex is gritty and determined, even if she does break into valley girl every so often. 'Yeah, like, fail.' I concur, Alex. Like, fail indeed. Ellie, the granddaughter, is whiny and insufferable, as an abandoned eight-year-old SHOULD be, and if she talks like a fourteen-year-old, what do I know about children anyway (although I bet Ellie would know if she had a crush on a boy).

Seven caterpillars!

This book R.I.P.s it up, on account of the cannibazombies. Zombibals? Undead people-eaters.

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

2011-10-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

I only just now realized that Halloween is this coming weekend, so brace yourself for ALL MY R.I.P. READS at once. Knowing what the date is is not my forte.

Other Agathas I've read have been pleasant and plucky, with a mystery to be solved here or there, but this one is less Adventurous Scrapes and more Freaky Shit. Everyone is trapped on an ISLAND and people keep DYING in accordance with a NURSERY RHYME (nursery rhymes are second only to clowns on the Childhood Hauntery Scale).

Ok so. Don't read the Cast of Characters at the beginning, because it's a bit spoilery. DO read the Cast of Characters: Extended Version, i.e. Chapter One, where EVERYONE is introduced with, like, three paragraphs each. And there are ten everyones, and you are like, Crap, because it all seems SO IMPORTANT and Vera, for example, will suddenly have a flashback of young Cyril sinking between the waves, and then is all But I won't think of that now! And you are like, That is a CLUE. Remember that. But don't, ok? Just dog-ear the chapter, and then return to it when Blore says something like, Mustn't appear shifty now, and then flip back and be all Ah yes, because he is some manner of spy.

But with this and that, through forged invite and advertised job position, all the everyones end up on Indian Island in a drafty old house and their hosts have just stepped off for a mo and then, over drinks, a DISEMBODIED VOICE accuses each everyone of having gotten away with muhhhhduhhh. *audible gasp, dropping of tea tray (because the two house-servants are likewise accused)*

And then characters drop like ~~flies~~ ~~little Indians~~ let's go with flies (ok, this book is from back when you could say 'Indians' and was initially titled Ten Little Indians because the poem 'Ten Little Indians' hangs in each character's bedroom AND lists how they are all going to die ['One choked his little self and then there were nine' eg] but even typing the word 'Indians' this many times has made me feel EXTREMELY DODGY AND COLONIAL).

And no one can get off the island (lousy weather, treacherous rocks, boatlessness) and eventually they figure out that they are each going to be popped off by some mysterious vigilante who is probably also ONE OF THEM and at this point my power went out (which, fine, it was the middle of the day. But power outages are always sort of unsettling and you have to go around and turn all the switches and radios off because the moment when the power comes back on and everything in your house starts whirring again is the stuff of terror) and the whole thing is so masterfully RELENTLESS and TENSE because I had no idea who was doing the killings.

As Amanda so angrily points out, however, the last page has every idea, and IN BOLD, so do not casually flip to the end because the mystery will be spoilt for you. IN BOLD.

Best Christie I've read so far. This one R.I.P.s it up (on account of the systematic nursery rhyme killings eaeuuuugh).

Eight and a half caterpillars.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School - Kathleen Flinn

2011-10-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Remember that time I read The Kitchen Counter Cooking School and loved the SHIT out of it? And immediately went out and read this, even though I knew I'd love it less? I loved it less (I am a fucking psychic).

It is STILL a fun read. This whole review is probably going to be comparison-soup, but if I had read Knife first I would have liked it lots. K-Finn goes to FRANCE to study COOKING and there is food and descriptions of food (crispy duck! creamy potatoes!) and also drama and back-stabbery and people hoarding the extra game hens (those whores).

So that's fun. But there's also a lot of schlock (she meets her husband-to-be shortly before the book starts, and then loses her job, and he is all You should go to Paris and study cooking like you one time told me was your dream, and also I will come with you, and all that is very sweet but results in too much talk of learning the geography of your own heart). So it's more sentimental and memoiry than Kitchen Counter, which is dryer and wryer and more salt-and-peppered to my taste.

And then, ok, the two books have contradicting theses. Kitchen Counter is all Cooking is easy! and Knife is all Cooking is hella hard! Which, fine, both are true. Making raw ingredients into edible tasties is less difficult than you'd think, but making same into precisely-turned French delicacies which will stand up to the scrutiny of dour French chefs is murderous. I just...the recipes in KC are all 'Lazy Meal You Can Make With Cheap Meats and Whatever Vegetables You Have Handy' whereas Knife is full of 'Fancy Meat Type Stuffed With Something French and Cooked in a Complicated Fashion That Probably Involves Wine.'

So one is Practical and Interesting while the other is just Interesting, and I think you know which I prefer, BUT. Severe French Chefs and Hilarious Misendeavors and PARIS, you guys, with wineries and cheeseries and baguetteries around every corner!

On the whole, it ain't no slouch.

Seven caterpillars.

I swear this is the last post about the readathon.

2011-10-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

Except for the one where I reviewathon all the books I read. Shut up, you love it.

END OF EVENT MEME!

1. Which hour was most daunting for you?

The first one, because I had only been asleep for three hours. So I ignored it and pretended the thon started an hour later.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?

Someone needs to run this poll about two weeks BEFORE the next thon so's we can all dip into the pool. But I read Attachments by Rainbow Rowell and it was STELLAR, and in previous years I have read The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and they are both SHORT and CREEPY.

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

For real, I would like someone to compile a pool of good thon reads. Like, SPECIFIC ones, not just 'short' and 'YA' and 'graphic novels.' Maybe I will do this thing.

Also, people, POST PICTURES OF YOUR SNACKS. Stop saying things like 'sesame beef stir-fry' and 'maple fudge' without letting me EAT IT WITH MY EYES.

What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?

I love that it has its own site, and I love having various host(esse)s.

How many books did you read?

Four!

What were the names of the books you read?

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Half of Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Which book did you enjoy most?

Attachments, for sure.

Which did you enjoy least?

Forgotten, but only by default, because everything else was so BRILLIANT and Forgotten is just really quite good.

If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?

I was not, and I love the cheerleaders and am so grateful that they put in the time, but can I say? Don't just say 'happy reading' or 'great job.' I would rather have fewer comments that actually comment, ya dig?

How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?

I will have an infant by then (RIGHT, INFANT? Please don't be four months overdue), but OTHER people with infants were all up on this, so YES I WILL. I will be a reader again, because I am a selfish bitch. But I will come back and comment on all your readathon posts AFTER, especially if there are pictures of food. I take my food pr0n very seriously.

Speaking of pictures. Going away for a readathon sort of blows because you have to plan and pack and prepare so many things, but it is TOTALLY WORTH IT if you are going to the Magical Cabin on the Lake. Here is where my sister and I spent most of our time:

And this is where Jane sat when she was trying not to sleep, and where we stored our unread books:

And this is the couch where Jane sat when she gave into the inevitable and napped:

And this is the kitchen where we stored snacks, and prepped the ones that needed prepping (of the throwing-in-the-oven sort, which is the only acceptable prep):

And this...ok, no one really hung out here, due to lack of couches. But there is a seekrit passage behind that bookshelf in the back SEEEEEKRIT PASSAGE WHAT?

So. Thanks so much, Jane, for offering up your cabin, and thanks, boo, for coming out with us and for making the devil's shortbread, and thanks to the cheerleaders for the pep talks, and to the hostesses for hostessing and posting lollarious videos, and thanks most of all to Dewey for dreaming the whole mess up in the first place. Dewey, we miss your face.

#readathon Hour the Eighteenth!

2011-10-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

Stilllllllll awaaaaaaaaaaaaaake! Sarah Dessen, you win at life.

I'mma probably zonk now.

#readathon Hour the Seventeenth!

2011-10-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

I am going to wander up to bed, WITH my book AND my laptop, but if you don't hear from me in an hour it's because I'm passed out and drooling.

Currently reading: Just Listen

How's that working out for you? Perfectly! At this stage I just want frenemy drama, boy issues, and befuddled but well-meaning parents.

Pages read this hour: 75

Pages read thus far: 1105

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Etc?

I have returned to the bean dip well, which you have already seen, so accept instead this photo of my friend Sam and I doing wizard-battle at HP 7.2.

#readathon Hour the Sixteenth

2011-10-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

Youse guys, I am getting a-sleepy. Five hours sleep plus a fragmented nap does not a cheerful body make. It's 9 pm here, and if I can make it to midnight then I win.

Currently reading: Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

How's that working out for you? This is going to sound terrible but I didn't want anything really thinky? And Sarah Dessen is snappy and sweet and even though there's a Horrible Secret I'm pretty sure I know what it is? So it's working out well, is what I'm saying

Pages read this hour: 70

Pages read thus far: 1030

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Etc? We met Sarah Dessen at BEA (but without knowing it, because she was just One Of The Girls At The Whoopie Pie Truck Handing Out Whoopie Pies), and she will forever be associated in my mind with sweet treats.

There were actually six cookies, but I ate three before I could take the picture. You know how it is.

#readathon Hour the Fifteenth

2011-10-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

This is the part of the day where I start to feel like I have bedsores. How do the perpetually ill do it? Does your body just adapt to being immobile? I'm not trying to be snide, I'm really curious. And slightly antsy.

Currently reading: Nothing! Just finished Oranges, must go pore over the pile.

How's that working out for you? The pile is over there, and I am over here, so not well. But there are COOKIES on the way to the pile, so it'll be doubly worth my while.

Pages read this hour: 55

Pages read thus far: 960

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Etc? No snacks this hour *pause for gasp* so I got you this instead:

Oh Wesley, why the face? People are going to think you don't like being pink.

#readathon Hour the Fourteenth!

2011-10-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

It's full dark here now. I may have to forage for something skeeery to read, especially since I have companions to help ward off any ghosts.

Currently reading: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

How's that working out for you? Still so great. It is smart and tender and amusing in that way that excellent wordsmiths can be without really trying.

Pages read this hour: 47

Pages read thus far: 905. I will break 1000 yet!

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Etc? It's evening-time and that = proper food time, no matter how many crispy carbs I've tossed down the gullet.

Co-readathonning is aces because someone brings shortbread and someone else brings lasagna and all I have to do is bean the dip.

#readathon Hour the Thirteenth!

2011-10-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

Update time again, hey? My nap from the last hour sort of bled over into this one, so I feel like I was just here.

Currently reading: Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

How's that working out for you? Still so good. And dreamily short. But actually literary and fantastic, instead of my usual whiz-bang-YA-dystopias.

Pages read this hour: 42 (see above re: nap)

Pages read thus far: 858

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Etc? So now that it's way too late and cold to wander down to the lake, the rain lifts.

I'd be bummed if rainy days weren't my best days for reading. Sunny days always shame me into leaving the house, whereas rainy ones are like, No no, stay inside where it's blankety. I'll just sit out here and mizzle.

#readathon Hour the Twelfth!

2011-10-22T17:16:00.000-07:00

Obligatory comment on the number of consecutive consonants in 'twelfth'!

Currently reading: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Someday I will do a single-word-titles-only readathon, but that is not this day.

How's that working out for you? ALSO GREAT. I am having a winner of a thon.

Pages read this hour: 46, and then I napped.

Pages read thus far: 816

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Etc?

I napped and I knew I was going to nap and I napped anyway and IT WAS DELIGHTFUL.

Also, not to be too on the nose, but I et a few oranges.

#readathon Hour the Eleventh!

2011-10-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

It looks like it'll be dark in the next eight minutes, but it has looked like that for the last three hours, so.

Currently reading: Attachments

How's that working out for you? I am LOVING IT. It has been (I may have mentioned) sharp and clever and ZINGY, but it has become heartfelt and layered in addition. IN. ADDITION.

Pages read this hour: 70

Pages read thus far: 770!

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Etc? I was eating All The Cinnamon Buns and needed to put something else in my mouth to stop the carnage, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted and when that's the problem the answer is usually rice crisps.

Oh you neon cheddar babies! There's no way you aren't mutating my genes right now.

Hey, look over there!

Oh my.

#readathon Hour the Tenth!

2011-10-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

Mum stopped by for a visit because she was 'in the area' (those aren't sarcastiquotes, she was actually just passing by, which is both hilarious and fortuitous), making us all feel a little uncombed, but the best kind of slothful.

Currently reading: Attachments!

How's that working out for you? Still great! Thanks, unexpectedly long book, for continuing to be great. I am loving the FEMALE FRIENDSHIP in this book, which I usually don't, because it is usually either competitive or back-stabby. Well done, Rainbow.

Pages read this hour: 78. I forgot to read up to 80, and NOW look at my math.

Pages read thus far: 700. Oh wait, that's even more awesome. WELL DONE, SUBCONSCIOUS MIND (this post is full of unexpected accolades).

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Etc? Cinnamon buns! Since I don't have a Dunkin Donuts nearby (or even in the country).

I'm only going to have two or twelve. I mean, look at them. They're like little vitamins. The cabin smells like an expensive candle now.

#readathon Hour the Ninth

2011-10-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

It's 2:00 which is officially afternoon, so I finally got dressed (by which I mean I changed out of the tank top I slept in into a clean tank top, and brushed my teefs [the freshifying effect of which I promptly ruined: see below]).

Currently reading: Attachments

How's that working out for you? Satisfaction remains high. Romantical developments not causing me to roll eyes. Banter still banty.

Pages read this hour: 55

Pages read thus far: 622

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Etc? Continued case of shortbread-gut cured with liberal dose of carrots and roasted-garlic-hummus.

Lesson re: excessive sweets not learned. Conversation with @bonjourcass re: donuts = throwing some cinnamon buns in the oven RFN.

#readathon Hour the Eighth!

2011-10-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

I complain about the consonants in 'eighth' every year, and I will complain about the ones in 'twelfth' in about four hours. BRACE YOURSELVES.

Currently reading: Attachments

How's that working out for you? Hilarity remains high, dialogue remains snappy. BOOK SATISFACTION: HIGH.

Pages read this hour: 70. I like to read up to a round number and then pause.

Pages read thus far: 567

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Etc? Here is my cosy nest:

and here is my sister in her cosy nest:

and there are several other cosy nests about to which I may migrate. Like those chairs that are basically a wicker bowl full of cushion? One of those.

Jane has wandered down from her impromptu nap (never lay down your head, oh reader) and joined the snack parade. I'm still feeling the effects of my ill-judged shortbread fiesta.

#readathon Hour the Seventh!

2011-10-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Really? Seventh? Oh time, you fly.

Currently reading: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

How's that working out for you? AMAZINGLY. The opening gambit was UNDULY HILARIOUS, and the ensuing 30 pages seem to carry on similarly veined. Remind me to type up a bit of it for you sometime.

Pages read this hour: 35. I got waylaid scoping out prizes from the prize page.

Pages read thus far: 497!

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Etc? My sister made shortbread (ok, shortbread dough, lightly baked and barely solidified) and I have eaten maybe thirty stamp-sized pieces.

I am going to feel terrible for the next hour, and then forget this very valuable lesson when I suddenly remember that I have cookies.

#readathon Hour the Sixth!

2011-10-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

I WON A PRIZE! Best readathon hour yet (THAT'S RIGHT, bean dip. I said it. Where are you now, with your guacamole and more sour cream than is advisable? Still in the fridge? Carry on).

Currently reading: Forgotten

How's that working out for you? There are too few pages left for this to resolve satisfactorily. I am seriously, like, nine from the end, and I HAVE QUESTIONS. If you info-dump me, Patrick, I will end you.

Pages read this hour: 122! I AM A BOSS.

Pages read thus far: 462

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Etc? Feeling the burn from that salsa. Will probably try to tamp it down with some shortbread in a few. In the meantime, enjoy this sexy photo of me with an Olde-Timey Car.

#readathon Hour the Fifth!

2011-10-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

HOW AM I EVEN STOPPING FOR THIS UPDATE SOMETHING DRAMATIC HAS JUST HAPPENED! Oh my, reverse-memory, how you do facilitate being lied to.

Currently reading: Forgotten

How's that working out for you? Only just fine until about THREE SENTENCES AGO, when some SHIT WENT DOWN. Said shit will help me to ignore slight plot holes, like, I get that you remember in reverse but you remember each day sequentially so I don't see how you can be startled by your flat-ironed hair unless you don't look in the mirror before you leave the house. I'm saying.

Pages read this hour: 65

Pages read thus far: 340

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Etc? The hour of the thon in which I succumb to the bean dip's siren song gets earlier each year (it's not quite 10 am where I sit. And THIS year I didn't even have first-breakfast until after 7!) Whatever, the baby was asking for it.

I won't regret that salsa in an hour, but I will be paying for it. For this I also blame the baby.

#readathon Hour the Fourth!

2011-10-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

My sister has emerged from her lair, and is reading The Hunger Games. Excitements!

Currently reading: Forgotten

How's that working out for you? The premise is soooooer interesting (it's the one about the girl who remembers backwards) but the romance is a little jack-in-the-box (i.e. sudden, and not entirely to my taste), plus the cover is a damned dirty liar (see below).

Pages read this hour: 80

Pages read thus far: 275

Books completed thus far:

Replay by Sharon Creech

Etc? Ok so I picked Forgotten out of my stack because an hour ago you could just start to see the lake out the window, and it was MISTY and SPOOKY but morning-spook is less terrifying than evening (AND IMMINENT NIGHT HIDE THE CHILDRENS) spook, and I was in the mood for a slightly unsettling read and Don't Breathe A Word is almost 400 pages with tiny font (readathon kryptonite, that tiny font!) and Forgotten looks...I mean, look at it!

Right? That should be at least a LITTLE creepity, right? But a third of the way in it's just Reasonably Tough-Minded Heroine Has Interesting Medical Condition; Meets Boy. Still great (if baffling), but I call false advertising on that cover.

books i done read

The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Sunday Dithers

Sea Hearts - Margo Lanagan

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think - Brian Wansink, Ph D

Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi

*flail*

Sunday Dithers

Wednesday PSA and bonus dithers!

The Call - Yannick Murphy

Sunday Dithers

The Future of Us - Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Sunday Dithers

Hark! A Vagrant! - Kate Beaton

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

The Other Girl - Sarah Miller

Sunday Dithers

The Fault in our Stars - John Green

Embedded comments

The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater

Sunday Dithers

Thursday Dithers

SOPA and PIPA

Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Sunday Dithers

Sunday Dithers

In which I finally join the new year.

Still dithering.

Thursday Dithers! Because we care not for what day it is during holiday season.

Allow this defaced sign to convey my deepest sentiments.

The Doll - Daphne du Maurier

Sunday Dithers

Tooth and Claw - Jo Walton

Lord of the Ring-a-thon-along

Modelland - Tyra Banks

Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage - Joe, Alina, Vicky, and Valerie Darger

The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well - Deborah Needleman

Lord of the Ring-a-thon, which I am still doing.

Smugglivus!

Sunday Dithers

Lord of the Ring-a-thon, in which I take several breaks.

Lord of the Ring-a-thon temporarily waylaid by critters.

Lord of the Ring-a-thon goes ever on and on.

Lord of the Ring-a-thon, continues.

Belated Readathon

Bonus-a-thon!

The Borrower - Rebecca Makkai

The Prestige - Christopher Priest

The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas

Sunday Dithers

Ragnarok - A S Byatt

::crickets::

The Murder at the Vicarage - Agatha Christie

Before I Go To Sleep - S J Watson

Sunday Dithers

Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

Reviewathon!

PSA Tuesday

Wild Seed - Octavia E. Butler

Sunday Dithers

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

Don't Breathe a Word - Jennifer McMahon

Going Bovine - Libba Bray

Sunday Dithers

The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy: Or Everything your Doctor Won't Tell You - Vicki Iovine

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

Cannot avoid eating candy, willpower busy elsewhere.

Taken Away - Celine Kiernan

Sunday Dithers

The Lantern - Deborah Lawrenson

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

Ashes - Ilsa J Bick

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School - Kathleen Flinn

I swear this is the last post about the readathon.

#readathon Hour the Eighteenth!

#readathon Hour the Seventeenth!

#readathon Hour the Sixteenth

#readathon Hour the Fifteenth

flail