read three more books, go freaking me.

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Here's the way you enjoy this book: watch the movie "Simon Birch" first. Then, when you read it you can remember all the really sweet moments from the movie as you read them, and it tricks you brain into forgetting all the boring and tedious and sometimes gross parts.

Miss Invisible, by Laura Jensen Walker

Christian fiction, but it's not "IN YOUR FACE" Christian fiction, and it's not about a schoolteacher in in the 1920s who falls in love with the town doctor or some other boring-ass shit. It's fluff, but after Owen Meany I think I needed fluff. It is also not hard to make your brain ignore the author's amateurish writing style. In this book a fat chick meets a fatter chick who teaches her to be comfortable with herself and to actually live life, instead of hiding away, ashamed about her looks. My only problem is the fact that the girl meets two guys who happen to love inner beauty (puke) at pretty much the same time and there's sort of a competition at one point, and I found it a little hard to believe that suddenly she's miss irresistible when the character admits to spending the last few years completely and totally dateless.

Canned, by Alex Shearer

Weird little kid's book about a boy who collects unlabelled cans. He finds a finger in one, then meets a girl who also collects cans and who also has found body parts in the unlabelled ones. They try to solve the mystery, and of course they succeed. There was a strange point near the end where the girl is poking around a farm and keeps reciting "The Listeners", a poem about a Traveller who knocks upon the door of a house where no one's home, but he still feels like someone or some entity is listening. It was just a weird little turn in the story to throw that in there for no reason. Maybe the author was trying to create a little atmosphere? ALSO: forgot the title to this one and was too lazy to get the book out of the living room, so I thought I'd google it: trying googling "can book" and see how THAT DOES NOT HELP YOU AT ALL.

I now have a choice: start reading the next book club book, which looks freaking boring, or read another christian fiction, this one a murder mystery. I've already figured something out in that one, I think: the killer drops his victims' bodies off at a lake, after the "angels" descend--and in the very next chapter they mention a group of swans. I'm betting he's sacrificing those women to swans. I just need to know why.....but I'm not sure the book is worth finishing. Again, it's amateurish. It sounds like the horrible stories I used to write for the paper in high school. I am totally regretting skipping the library today.