Bi-Curious Booklog
May. 21st, 2008 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneI've decided I'm not going to get on my own case about how frequently I do this, as long as I do it eventually. So:
71. Remember Me?, Sophie Kinsella — This would usually be the time when I would ask the largely rhetorical and semi-pathetic question, “Why do I keep reading Sophie Kinsella books?” Well, this time the answer is blatantly obvious—the plot of this one involves amnesia, yo, and I can never resist amnesia—and the question is kind of unfair. Because this wasn’t so bad—far less annoying than the last few Shopaholic books. Kinsella’s strength has always been her ability to create an amusing, fast-paced narrative, and coupled with the amnesia plot, I really didn’t want to put this book down. However, it also shares many of the same irritating traits as Kinsella’s other novels. The protagonist is once again a flighty, shallow woman who spends most of the book flailing and helpless, wriggling out of scrapes mostly through luck and/or the help of a strong, powerful man. Also, Kinsella really has no idea what it means to be poor. Not only are these novels full of rich people, the “poor” characters still have large country houses (but they smell kind of funny!) or can afford their own flats in London. Uh-huh. I wish I had your problems, ladies.
For what this was, it was fun enough. Actually, in some ways it’s becoming funnier in retrospect, because I’m realizing what the plot reminded me of. In Remember Me?, 24-year-old Lexi wakes up after receiving a bump on the head to discover that she’s actually a very different and successful 28-year-old version of herself who’s lost four years of her memory after a car accident. Which brings to mind a book I read as a teenager, The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon, in which 13-year-old Stacy wakes up after a four-year coma to solve a murder and embark on a vaguely squicky romance with a 23-year-old. Mostly I remember the latter book due to its having one of the most unintentionally hilarious last paragraphs ever: “My cheek glows from the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and I can hear the steady beat of his heart. I put my arms around him. I’m Stacy McAdams. I’m seventeen. And I’m definitely in the right body!” Ahahahahaha. I guess we should all be glad that in Remember Me?, Lexi merely engages in some rather embarrassing activities involving muffins.
Since this review has clearly descended into tangent city, I’d also like to call attention to something that was in no way Kinsella’s fault, but which made me want to laugh/cry almost as much as Stacy’s self-affirmations. Dear American publishers of English novels: We, your readers, are not idiots. We can figure out that, if a novel is set in London, “football” means the sport with the round ball and “crisps” are not some unfathomable food, even more impossible to decode than this “Philosopher’s Stone” I’ve heard stories about. We might, in fact, be reading this book set in London in part to soak up the English atmosphere and indulge our Anglophilia. So you are in fact helping no one when you take a manuscript from across the pond and do a find/replace on all the “British” terms, leaving you with a long scene that involves your heroine making repeated and unintentionally comic reference to a “packet of chips.” Yes, thank you for clarifying that the characters did not just purchase a plastic bag of French fries from a gas station; however, you’ve now got them sounding like poor confused souls with horrible mid-Atlantic accents. NO ONE SAYS PACKET OF CHIPS. Americans say bag of chips. English people say packet of crisps. Please choose one or, better yet, LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE. Next thing you know all novels will take place in North Generica, because god forbid readers be exposed to something unfamiliar or spend half a second feeling CONFUSED.
[/rant]
So annnnnnnyway…like I said, way way back in my first paragraph, this was actually pretty fun and diverting. Much better than the later Shopaholic books, and a perfectly decent beach or plane read. Or in my case, couch and bathtub read. If you’re in need of some froth, you could do a lot worse. After all, this is froth WITH BONUS AMNESIA.
72. Rant, Chuck Palahniuk — Yeah, I just read a Chuck Palahniuk book; I feel like I’m back in high school and should begin loudly listening to Garbage CDs and writing “I <3 Spike” all over my notebook any second now. In fairness, Palahniuk does finally seem to be breaking out of his mold at least a little; I skipped reading Haunted because I wasn’t in the mood to be squicked, but what had been irritating me about all his previous books were that they all seemed the same. They all utilized a near-identical style of narration, just with different “choruses” thrown in. And I say this as someone who was totally obsessed with Fight Club (though more the film than the book) and still gets gleeful amusement out of her memories of Invisible Monsters. (Which was also the book that introduced me to the concept of “felching”! Chuck, you and Lauren Groff need to have a word.)
Rant, presented in the style of an oral history, is not only quite different in its telling from Palahniuk’s previous books, it’s different from anything I’ve read in a long while. The myriad POVs are cool in that I always like to see characters through a variety of different perspectives. However, the character of Buster Casey, a.k.a. Rant, remains frustratingly obtuse. Palahniuk spends quite some time on his childhood, in which we are treated to lengthy descriptions of menstrual blood stains (mental category: did not need), and strangely less on his adulthood, though we do get lengthy descriptions of his ability to tell what his girlfriend last ate by licking her pussy (mental category: REALLY DID NOT NEED). Palahniuk certainly never runs out of new ways to shock and horrify. Unfortunately, that kind of thing was rather more tantalizing to me when I was in high school.
However, like I said, I really did feel like Palahniuk was stretching himself a bit here; he’s got a sort of interesting time travel plot going on, and I actually really liked the characters of Shot and Echo, and the idea of the dystopian Daytimer/Nighttimer future society. So I guess where I think this book really suffers is in the simple fact that there’s just too much going on. I mean, just on the most basic level there’s: 1) Rant’s fucked up childhood, 2) rabies outbreak, 3) party crashing, 4) future dystopia, and 5) time travel—and these never stop being rather disparate things. Worse, as I mentioned before, Rant remains a total cypher. I think this book would have worked a thousand times better if he’d felt like a real, vibrant anti-hero. Instead, we get pages and pages of Rant the cunning linguist. (Seriously, WTF? Was that supposed to be sexy? Echo seemed to think it was sexy, and otherwise, she seemed almost sensible. I have some weird kinks myself, but OMG NO.) I loved the idea Palahniuk almost seemed to be reaching for toward the end, about the ways Echo and Shot and the other party crashers would remake the world, but it’s surrounded by so much muddle. Ultimately, this felt like the first draft of what could have been a legitimately incredible novel; as-is, it’s just kind of…confusing.
73. Kafka’s Soup, Mark Crick — Recipes written in the style of famous authors, from Jane Austen to Raymond Chandler, Gabriel García Márquez to the Marquis de Sade. I read it more for the literary humor than the cooking advice, as I am a miserable chef. Even discounting that, I think it would be a bit of a challenge to reproduce some of these recipes, as you’d have to pick the instructions out of, say, complicated passages of Borgesian prose; I have trouble following normal cookbook instructions. Crick’s pastiches are sort of gently amusing, however—he captures the variety of styles fairly well, and the little foodie adventures are not lacking entertainment value in their own right. Crick’s illustrations are quite fun, too. A good gift-type book.
74. Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, Ann Herendeen — Andrew, proud member of the Brotherhood of Philander, a private London society for men who enjoy the company of other men (*wink wink, nudge nudge*) decides it’s time to do his duty and provide an heir, so he enters into a marriage of convenience with Phyllida, a poor country virgin (and anonymous writer of gothic romances). They both agree to conduct the marriage on terms of absolute honesty—so Phyllida knows that Andrew likes the manmeat, and Andrew knows that Phyllida’s joy in life has so far been the pen rather than the penis. However, attraction blooms, scandal looms, and really lame-ass spies abound.
I’ve spent quite a while trying to figure out how to explain why this book didn’t work for me. I think I’m gonna just go with a list:
1. I didn’t believe it. The Regency England Herendeen creates never felt real to me. It was like a copy of a copy of a copy—like she’d read a lot of other Regency romances and tried to recreate them, rather than the actual period. The characters’ reactions and decision-making seemed bizarre to me, too—like she was trying to make them (especially Andrew) seem incredibly clever and devious, Dangerous Liaisons-style. Instead they just seemed kind of thick. And weird.
Which brings me to:
2. I didn’t like any of the characters. They’re all kind of whiny. Or dickish. Or whiny dicks. I never really cared what happened to them; instead, I kept reading out of a vague desire to discover which way their private parts would ultimately end up aligned.
3. It’s incredibly insular. Herendeen tries to stretch the plot beyond the bedroom by including all these spy shenanigans that are also, apparently, supposed to tie in in some way with the Napoleonic wars; however, it’s more complicated and confusing than suspenseful. The same can be said of the supposed danger Andrew faces of being exposed, or disgraced among the ton; since almost all the characters we meet are in some way associated with the Brotherhood, it never feels like what Andrew and Phyllida are up to is all that unusual. In Herendeen’s Regency England, everyone, it would seem, is either a) gay, b) related to a gay person and cool with it, c) married to a gay person and cool with it. I don’t buy that much grooviness in the 19th Century; I almost doubt that you’d find it today. Andrew and Phyllida are even introduced to another long-term triumvirate: husband, wife, and husband (and wife’s!) live-in lover. What’s so special or exciting about what the protagonists are doing, then? Herendeen takes all the excitement out of her premise by making it seem ordinary.
4. It’s just not that funny. For example, there’s a long sequence in which Andrew becomes convinced that his wife is actually the author of Sense and Sensibility instead of the gothic bodice-ripper she’s actually responsible for. Along with not helping to cure me of the notion that Andrew is a MORON, this subplot wasn’t amusing so much as embarrassing and cringe-worthy.
5. It ain’t all that sexy, either. There were weeping cocks. And also a lot of Andrew calling Phyllida a slut, which I guess could be construed as hot dirty talk in certain contexts, but not when he actually seems to mean it—when he’s previously insinuated that he thinks her mother is a dirty whore. And to top it all off, the husband/wife/husband’s lover threesome I was hoping for never materialized. The final arrangement seems like a sweet deal for Andrew, but not so much for his partners. Pooh.
I think I’m learning that the things I get from fanfic—notably, quality boysex—are not things I can expect to find in published, acceptable-to-read-on-the-bus books. Why? I have no idea. However, the publication of Phyllida—regardless of how little I liked it—does seem like a good sign in terms of publishers realizing that there is a market for this sort of thing. Now, if only some of my favorite fic authors could write it!
75. Therapy, David Lodge — I’m running out of new ways to talk about how much I enjoy David Lodge. This is another funny, bitter, hopeful book, told with some interesting stylistic/narrative choices, which is typical of Lodge. The stuff about the British television industry was especially a treat. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Paradise News or the Changing Places trilogy, but that doesn’t mean I still didn’t enjoy it a lot.
76. Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield, Ed. by David Nadelberg — More hilarious and cringe-worthy excerpts from teenage diaries, letters, poetry, etc. This collection was released around Valentine’s Day and is romance-themed, which in my option makes it more monotonous and slightly less fun than the last one—whither the Duran Duran self-insertion NC-17 fanfiction? It’s still full of painful/funny gems, however, such as:
Declarations of love!
You are my rose…(rose as in a beautiful flower and also rose as in Rose from Titanic)
Declarations of celebrity love—in verse!
My love for him will surely last forever more,
He starred on Star Trek beside Shatner (who’s a bore).
Deep political analysis!
Eric is dating Marsela, one of the girls from the barrio. I think these Nicaraguans should set some standards for themselves.
Screenplays that contain stage directions such as:
They totally have sex.
And dialogue including:
Lisa: You’re my first lover. I’ll never forget it. It was so hot—I had so many orgasms.
Relationship problems!
Ohh, I love Missy. I mean there’s certain things which I hate about her. Her refusal to see Star Wars, Batman and other movies. Her hatred for cheese.
(That last one, by the way, is what’s almost torn Siria and myself apart.)
As you can see, the book is highly quotable. If you like reading badfic or are fond of Schadenfreude, then you will be in heaven. If you have a bad embarrassment squick, on the other hand…not so much.
77. Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell — This is all Philip Glenister’s fault. I watched the miniseries because he was in it, and the miniseries reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read more Gaskell ever since I read North and South while at Trinity. Then it turned out that Glenister’s character isn’t even in this volume, the first in a loose series about the fictional town of Cranford. “Loose” is a good word to describe the book as a whole: it was written in installments (Gaskell was a friend of Charles Dickens and wrote for various publications he edited), and despite some narrative through-threads, it remains mostly a series of vignettes. It’s very funny, though, in that wry, satirical, Victorian way. At the same time, it’s quite sad: full of lost chances at love, which seem especially awful in an era when there were so few opportunities for women outside of marriage. Now, a large part of what Gaskell seems to be arguing is that the women of Cranford do just fine for themselves without any men, and it is indeed the friendship between them that comes to the rescue when one of them encounters trouble. (Well, that and a father swooping in to help and a brother coming home—it’s almost her message, okay?) It just seems, I don’t know, like such a small, lonely life. My modern sensibilities, can I show you them?
ANYWAY, I quite enjoyed reading this, though not as much as North and South, which benefits from social strife, culture clash, and a romance—a real plot, in other words. I may try Cousin Phillis (one of the other Cranford novels) or Mary Barton next. Anyone familiar with Gaskell have any thoughts?
78. Conservatize Me, John Moe — Inspired by Super Size Me, liberal Seattleite John Moe endeavors to discover if a month of nothing but conservative books, movies, music, TV, and radio—along with trips to places like a college Young Republicans conference—can make him “become a Righty.” Fairly obviously, this doesn’t work—at best (okay, in my mind, worst), Moe contemplates Libertarianism (and ends up with a strange little man-crush on Richard Nixon—in light of the last seven years, I do have to say, the man is looking better and better). Moe’s a very, very funny writer—a frequent McSweeney’s contributor, his sense of humor meshes really well with mine, so I had a blast reading this. I wish Moe had spent some more time on the conclusion—the final thesis seems a little shallow. He’s much nicer to the Right than I would be, though. I’ve broken up with a guy after one date because he revealed he voted for Bush. (He also was in favor of arriving late to the movie theater so we “wouldn’t have to sit through the trailers”—WTF is that?) I suppose it fits with the tenets of the Left to be compassionate and try to understand the Right, but I find it virtually impossible to do, especially in the current political climate. So kudos to John Moe for doing it for us. He’s a better man than me.
79. Used and Rare, Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone — Nonfiction account of a Massachusetts couple’s sort of backward stumble into—and subsequent growing obsession with—rare book collecting. It’s well-written and covers many of the things that make a bibliophile like me drool—along with many of the things that drive me crazy. We’re talking books selling for $50,000 and more, and all the reasons why I will never, ever be able to own a nice, original hardcover of The Great Gatsby. The Goldstones seem rather baffled and appalled by this, too; however, they do spend $800 on a first edition Dickens without much of a fuss. Dude, that’s like a month’s rent for me. There’s only so much casual privilege I can take before I start getting annoyed.
Still, parts of the book are really delightful, even if they’re worlds away from my puttering around on BookMooch and thumbing through the shelves of the dollar bookstore in Burbank. Just make sure the green-eyed monster is securely locked away before you start reading.
80. Strangers, Gardner Dozois — Your typical “boy meets alien, boy has himself genetically altered to mate with alien, bad shit happens” narrative. I liked the first half of this better than the second. The opening is full of lots of interesting world-building and humans making a mess of dealing with alien cultures, all told in a frank, honest way that I wish would crop up on Stargate once in a while. The second half falls back on a much more ordinary “creepy aliens are creepy” plot, though, and also relies on the protagonist being really dumb and inobservant. Dozois also does something truly bizarre with the narrative: toward the beginning, he has several passages written as if from the perspective of an academic paper attempting to illuminate known historic events; he then abandons this device completely. Wuh…? Still, the book as a whole is more interesting and culturally sensitive than most of the other ’70s sci-fi I’ve read. Given my reaction to a lot of the genre’s “classics,” I suppose that’s not saying much, but it’s something, anyway.
Total Books: 80
71. Remember Me?, Sophie Kinsella — This would usually be the time when I would ask the largely rhetorical and semi-pathetic question, “Why do I keep reading Sophie Kinsella books?” Well, this time the answer is blatantly obvious—the plot of this one involves amnesia, yo, and I can never resist amnesia—and the question is kind of unfair. Because this wasn’t so bad—far less annoying than the last few Shopaholic books. Kinsella’s strength has always been her ability to create an amusing, fast-paced narrative, and coupled with the amnesia plot, I really didn’t want to put this book down. However, it also shares many of the same irritating traits as Kinsella’s other novels. The protagonist is once again a flighty, shallow woman who spends most of the book flailing and helpless, wriggling out of scrapes mostly through luck and/or the help of a strong, powerful man. Also, Kinsella really has no idea what it means to be poor. Not only are these novels full of rich people, the “poor” characters still have large country houses (but they smell kind of funny!) or can afford their own flats in London. Uh-huh. I wish I had your problems, ladies.
For what this was, it was fun enough. Actually, in some ways it’s becoming funnier in retrospect, because I’m realizing what the plot reminded me of. In Remember Me?, 24-year-old Lexi wakes up after receiving a bump on the head to discover that she’s actually a very different and successful 28-year-old version of herself who’s lost four years of her memory after a car accident. Which brings to mind a book I read as a teenager, The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon, in which 13-year-old Stacy wakes up after a four-year coma to solve a murder and embark on a vaguely squicky romance with a 23-year-old. Mostly I remember the latter book due to its having one of the most unintentionally hilarious last paragraphs ever: “My cheek glows from the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and I can hear the steady beat of his heart. I put my arms around him. I’m Stacy McAdams. I’m seventeen. And I’m definitely in the right body!” Ahahahahaha. I guess we should all be glad that in Remember Me?, Lexi merely engages in some rather embarrassing activities involving muffins.
Since this review has clearly descended into tangent city, I’d also like to call attention to something that was in no way Kinsella’s fault, but which made me want to laugh/cry almost as much as Stacy’s self-affirmations. Dear American publishers of English novels: We, your readers, are not idiots. We can figure out that, if a novel is set in London, “football” means the sport with the round ball and “crisps” are not some unfathomable food, even more impossible to decode than this “Philosopher’s Stone” I’ve heard stories about. We might, in fact, be reading this book set in London in part to soak up the English atmosphere and indulge our Anglophilia. So you are in fact helping no one when you take a manuscript from across the pond and do a find/replace on all the “British” terms, leaving you with a long scene that involves your heroine making repeated and unintentionally comic reference to a “packet of chips.” Yes, thank you for clarifying that the characters did not just purchase a plastic bag of French fries from a gas station; however, you’ve now got them sounding like poor confused souls with horrible mid-Atlantic accents. NO ONE SAYS PACKET OF CHIPS. Americans say bag of chips. English people say packet of crisps. Please choose one or, better yet, LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE. Next thing you know all novels will take place in North Generica, because god forbid readers be exposed to something unfamiliar or spend half a second feeling CONFUSED.
[/rant]
So annnnnnnyway…like I said, way way back in my first paragraph, this was actually pretty fun and diverting. Much better than the later Shopaholic books, and a perfectly decent beach or plane read. Or in my case, couch and bathtub read. If you’re in need of some froth, you could do a lot worse. After all, this is froth WITH BONUS AMNESIA.
72. Rant, Chuck Palahniuk — Yeah, I just read a Chuck Palahniuk book; I feel like I’m back in high school and should begin loudly listening to Garbage CDs and writing “I <3 Spike” all over my notebook any second now. In fairness, Palahniuk does finally seem to be breaking out of his mold at least a little; I skipped reading Haunted because I wasn’t in the mood to be squicked, but what had been irritating me about all his previous books were that they all seemed the same. They all utilized a near-identical style of narration, just with different “choruses” thrown in. And I say this as someone who was totally obsessed with Fight Club (though more the film than the book) and still gets gleeful amusement out of her memories of Invisible Monsters. (Which was also the book that introduced me to the concept of “felching”! Chuck, you and Lauren Groff need to have a word.)
Rant, presented in the style of an oral history, is not only quite different in its telling from Palahniuk’s previous books, it’s different from anything I’ve read in a long while. The myriad POVs are cool in that I always like to see characters through a variety of different perspectives. However, the character of Buster Casey, a.k.a. Rant, remains frustratingly obtuse. Palahniuk spends quite some time on his childhood, in which we are treated to lengthy descriptions of menstrual blood stains (mental category: did not need), and strangely less on his adulthood, though we do get lengthy descriptions of his ability to tell what his girlfriend last ate by licking her pussy (mental category: REALLY DID NOT NEED). Palahniuk certainly never runs out of new ways to shock and horrify. Unfortunately, that kind of thing was rather more tantalizing to me when I was in high school.
However, like I said, I really did feel like Palahniuk was stretching himself a bit here; he’s got a sort of interesting time travel plot going on, and I actually really liked the characters of Shot and Echo, and the idea of the dystopian Daytimer/Nighttimer future society. So I guess where I think this book really suffers is in the simple fact that there’s just too much going on. I mean, just on the most basic level there’s: 1) Rant’s fucked up childhood, 2) rabies outbreak, 3) party crashing, 4) future dystopia, and 5) time travel—and these never stop being rather disparate things. Worse, as I mentioned before, Rant remains a total cypher. I think this book would have worked a thousand times better if he’d felt like a real, vibrant anti-hero. Instead, we get pages and pages of Rant the cunning linguist. (Seriously, WTF? Was that supposed to be sexy? Echo seemed to think it was sexy, and otherwise, she seemed almost sensible. I have some weird kinks myself, but OMG NO.) I loved the idea Palahniuk almost seemed to be reaching for toward the end, about the ways Echo and Shot and the other party crashers would remake the world, but it’s surrounded by so much muddle. Ultimately, this felt like the first draft of what could have been a legitimately incredible novel; as-is, it’s just kind of…confusing.
73. Kafka’s Soup, Mark Crick — Recipes written in the style of famous authors, from Jane Austen to Raymond Chandler, Gabriel García Márquez to the Marquis de Sade. I read it more for the literary humor than the cooking advice, as I am a miserable chef. Even discounting that, I think it would be a bit of a challenge to reproduce some of these recipes, as you’d have to pick the instructions out of, say, complicated passages of Borgesian prose; I have trouble following normal cookbook instructions. Crick’s pastiches are sort of gently amusing, however—he captures the variety of styles fairly well, and the little foodie adventures are not lacking entertainment value in their own right. Crick’s illustrations are quite fun, too. A good gift-type book.
74. Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, Ann Herendeen — Andrew, proud member of the Brotherhood of Philander, a private London society for men who enjoy the company of other men (*wink wink, nudge nudge*) decides it’s time to do his duty and provide an heir, so he enters into a marriage of convenience with Phyllida, a poor country virgin (and anonymous writer of gothic romances). They both agree to conduct the marriage on terms of absolute honesty—so Phyllida knows that Andrew likes the manmeat, and Andrew knows that Phyllida’s joy in life has so far been the pen rather than the penis. However, attraction blooms, scandal looms, and really lame-ass spies abound.
I’ve spent quite a while trying to figure out how to explain why this book didn’t work for me. I think I’m gonna just go with a list:
1. I didn’t believe it. The Regency England Herendeen creates never felt real to me. It was like a copy of a copy of a copy—like she’d read a lot of other Regency romances and tried to recreate them, rather than the actual period. The characters’ reactions and decision-making seemed bizarre to me, too—like she was trying to make them (especially Andrew) seem incredibly clever and devious, Dangerous Liaisons-style. Instead they just seemed kind of thick. And weird.
Which brings me to:
2. I didn’t like any of the characters. They’re all kind of whiny. Or dickish. Or whiny dicks. I never really cared what happened to them; instead, I kept reading out of a vague desire to discover which way their private parts would ultimately end up aligned.
3. It’s incredibly insular. Herendeen tries to stretch the plot beyond the bedroom by including all these spy shenanigans that are also, apparently, supposed to tie in in some way with the Napoleonic wars; however, it’s more complicated and confusing than suspenseful. The same can be said of the supposed danger Andrew faces of being exposed, or disgraced among the ton; since almost all the characters we meet are in some way associated with the Brotherhood, it never feels like what Andrew and Phyllida are up to is all that unusual. In Herendeen’s Regency England, everyone, it would seem, is either a) gay, b) related to a gay person and cool with it, c) married to a gay person and cool with it. I don’t buy that much grooviness in the 19th Century; I almost doubt that you’d find it today. Andrew and Phyllida are even introduced to another long-term triumvirate: husband, wife, and husband (and wife’s!) live-in lover. What’s so special or exciting about what the protagonists are doing, then? Herendeen takes all the excitement out of her premise by making it seem ordinary.
4. It’s just not that funny. For example, there’s a long sequence in which Andrew becomes convinced that his wife is actually the author of Sense and Sensibility instead of the gothic bodice-ripper she’s actually responsible for. Along with not helping to cure me of the notion that Andrew is a MORON, this subplot wasn’t amusing so much as embarrassing and cringe-worthy.
5. It ain’t all that sexy, either. There were weeping cocks. And also a lot of Andrew calling Phyllida a slut, which I guess could be construed as hot dirty talk in certain contexts, but not when he actually seems to mean it—when he’s previously insinuated that he thinks her mother is a dirty whore. And to top it all off, the husband/wife/husband’s lover threesome I was hoping for never materialized. The final arrangement seems like a sweet deal for Andrew, but not so much for his partners. Pooh.
I think I’m learning that the things I get from fanfic—notably, quality boysex—are not things I can expect to find in published, acceptable-to-read-on-the-bus books. Why? I have no idea. However, the publication of Phyllida—regardless of how little I liked it—does seem like a good sign in terms of publishers realizing that there is a market for this sort of thing. Now, if only some of my favorite fic authors could write it!
75. Therapy, David Lodge — I’m running out of new ways to talk about how much I enjoy David Lodge. This is another funny, bitter, hopeful book, told with some interesting stylistic/narrative choices, which is typical of Lodge. The stuff about the British television industry was especially a treat. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Paradise News or the Changing Places trilogy, but that doesn’t mean I still didn’t enjoy it a lot.
76. Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield, Ed. by David Nadelberg — More hilarious and cringe-worthy excerpts from teenage diaries, letters, poetry, etc. This collection was released around Valentine’s Day and is romance-themed, which in my option makes it more monotonous and slightly less fun than the last one—whither the Duran Duran self-insertion NC-17 fanfiction? It’s still full of painful/funny gems, however, such as:
Declarations of love!
You are my rose…(rose as in a beautiful flower and also rose as in Rose from Titanic)
Declarations of celebrity love—in verse!
My love for him will surely last forever more,
He starred on Star Trek beside Shatner (who’s a bore).
Deep political analysis!
Eric is dating Marsela, one of the girls from the barrio. I think these Nicaraguans should set some standards for themselves.
Screenplays that contain stage directions such as:
They totally have sex.
And dialogue including:
Lisa: You’re my first lover. I’ll never forget it. It was so hot—I had so many orgasms.
Relationship problems!
Ohh, I love Missy. I mean there’s certain things which I hate about her. Her refusal to see Star Wars, Batman and other movies. Her hatred for cheese.
(That last one, by the way, is what’s almost torn Siria and myself apart.)
As you can see, the book is highly quotable. If you like reading badfic or are fond of Schadenfreude, then you will be in heaven. If you have a bad embarrassment squick, on the other hand…not so much.
77. Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell — This is all Philip Glenister’s fault. I watched the miniseries because he was in it, and the miniseries reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read more Gaskell ever since I read North and South while at Trinity. Then it turned out that Glenister’s character isn’t even in this volume, the first in a loose series about the fictional town of Cranford. “Loose” is a good word to describe the book as a whole: it was written in installments (Gaskell was a friend of Charles Dickens and wrote for various publications he edited), and despite some narrative through-threads, it remains mostly a series of vignettes. It’s very funny, though, in that wry, satirical, Victorian way. At the same time, it’s quite sad: full of lost chances at love, which seem especially awful in an era when there were so few opportunities for women outside of marriage. Now, a large part of what Gaskell seems to be arguing is that the women of Cranford do just fine for themselves without any men, and it is indeed the friendship between them that comes to the rescue when one of them encounters trouble. (Well, that and a father swooping in to help and a brother coming home—it’s almost her message, okay?) It just seems, I don’t know, like such a small, lonely life. My modern sensibilities, can I show you them?
ANYWAY, I quite enjoyed reading this, though not as much as North and South, which benefits from social strife, culture clash, and a romance—a real plot, in other words. I may try Cousin Phillis (one of the other Cranford novels) or Mary Barton next. Anyone familiar with Gaskell have any thoughts?
78. Conservatize Me, John Moe — Inspired by Super Size Me, liberal Seattleite John Moe endeavors to discover if a month of nothing but conservative books, movies, music, TV, and radio—along with trips to places like a college Young Republicans conference—can make him “become a Righty.” Fairly obviously, this doesn’t work—at best (okay, in my mind, worst), Moe contemplates Libertarianism (and ends up with a strange little man-crush on Richard Nixon—in light of the last seven years, I do have to say, the man is looking better and better). Moe’s a very, very funny writer—a frequent McSweeney’s contributor, his sense of humor meshes really well with mine, so I had a blast reading this. I wish Moe had spent some more time on the conclusion—the final thesis seems a little shallow. He’s much nicer to the Right than I would be, though. I’ve broken up with a guy after one date because he revealed he voted for Bush. (He also was in favor of arriving late to the movie theater so we “wouldn’t have to sit through the trailers”—WTF is that?) I suppose it fits with the tenets of the Left to be compassionate and try to understand the Right, but I find it virtually impossible to do, especially in the current political climate. So kudos to John Moe for doing it for us. He’s a better man than me.
79. Used and Rare, Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone — Nonfiction account of a Massachusetts couple’s sort of backward stumble into—and subsequent growing obsession with—rare book collecting. It’s well-written and covers many of the things that make a bibliophile like me drool—along with many of the things that drive me crazy. We’re talking books selling for $50,000 and more, and all the reasons why I will never, ever be able to own a nice, original hardcover of The Great Gatsby. The Goldstones seem rather baffled and appalled by this, too; however, they do spend $800 on a first edition Dickens without much of a fuss. Dude, that’s like a month’s rent for me. There’s only so much casual privilege I can take before I start getting annoyed.
Still, parts of the book are really delightful, even if they’re worlds away from my puttering around on BookMooch and thumbing through the shelves of the dollar bookstore in Burbank. Just make sure the green-eyed monster is securely locked away before you start reading.
80. Strangers, Gardner Dozois — Your typical “boy meets alien, boy has himself genetically altered to mate with alien, bad shit happens” narrative. I liked the first half of this better than the second. The opening is full of lots of interesting world-building and humans making a mess of dealing with alien cultures, all told in a frank, honest way that I wish would crop up on Stargate once in a while. The second half falls back on a much more ordinary “creepy aliens are creepy” plot, though, and also relies on the protagonist being really dumb and inobservant. Dozois also does something truly bizarre with the narrative: toward the beginning, he has several passages written as if from the perspective of an academic paper attempting to illuminate known historic events; he then abandons this device completely. Wuh…? Still, the book as a whole is more interesting and culturally sensitive than most of the other ’70s sci-fi I’ve read. Given my reaction to a lot of the genre’s “classics,” I suppose that’s not saying much, but it’s something, anyway.
Total Books: 80
