Let's Talk About Book Radio!!!!

SiriusXM Book Radio is like my best friend. It's always there for me. Sometimes it annoys me, but sometimes it brings me so much entertainment I can pretty much forgive it.

I think I missed the actual ending of Cujo, but I'm not bothered by that because the last passage I heard was awesome and the very last line of it was "and with that, Cujo was gone, too". That's all I need. It's perfect.

Know what else is perfect? Lorna Raver's performance. I love this woman and I want her to read more of my books. Her voices are absolutely superb! She had me near to tears at the end.

Now on to something completely different: The Christmas Train by David Baldacci. I've never read Baldacci, and if this book is any indication of his talents, I NEVER WILL. Every character we've met so far is a hokey cliche and it makes me seethe just to listen to it! The narrator is awful. I just found out that it's Tim Matheson, and now I'm horribly disappointed in Tim Matheson. Go study under Lorna Raver, Tim. You need some tips.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE EYRE AFFAIR!!!

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

This is supposedly Fforde's first book, which I find suspect because it's astoundingly entertaining and so ambitious as the boggle your mind. Fforde rewrites history! He creates an alternate universe from scratch and it's just so great I can barely put it into words, but I'm going to try, because I'm home sick and I have nothing better to do in between sinus headaches and hacking up disgusting things.

Okay, first things first: it's set in 1985. The Crimean War has gone on for 130 years. For those Americans who pay no attention to other countries' history, the Crimean War was apparently fought between the English and the Russians over some land that both claimed they had a right to. So, yeah. War. The government is a little Orwellian. There are werewolves and vampires that just exist and Fforde sort of mentions them in a backhanded way BECAUSE GUESS WHAT THEY ARE NOT REALLY IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT. I love that, that he's just like OH HEY VAMPIRES but guess what, we're going to talk about Shakespeare for a few more chapters because vampires are just sort of blase here. Because there are supernatural elements about, the governments have created a special police/military force (I'm not sure which best describes them) to keep the order somewhat. These are called "Special Operations". There are 32 levels of SpecOps (pronounced speshops). 32 is the lowest and deals with horticulture. 27 deals with literature-related crimes. 12 or 14 deals with time-related crimes (called the ChronoGuard). Anything less than 12 is sort of a mystery, except for level 1--they police the SpecOps themselves. I forgot to mention the biggest thing of all here: books are king in this universe. People still watch tv, but I don't think movies are mentioned. People would rather go to plays. There are machines on street corners that play snippets of Shakespeare.

What's strange about the book-love in this book is that people are all up in old authors works, but there's little mention of new books, aside from the main character's old flame--he writes books, and is apparently doing well at it, but in a world where some written works are that revered it makes you wonder about new authors, and Fforde sort of doesn't mention that. It's like he couldn't satisfactorily explain it to himself, so he just decided to ignore it.

LIST OF CHARACTERS:
Thursday Next--SpecOps 27, known as the Literotec division (literary detectives). She's the main character. She's awesome, she's everything you wish you were: brave, smart, witty, and capable of mistakes but in a way that makes it impossible to fault her.

Other assorted people who's names I can't remember. There's Acheron Hades, the villain. He's the third most evil man on the planet, and he absolutely relishes that title. He's got some nice mystical tricks up his sleeve, but my favorite thing about him is how much he enjoys being evil, just for the sake of being evil. He makes it look civilized. He's not angry, or petulant about it. Here's who I think should play him in a movie: Ed Quinn. Seriously, put that guy in a top hat and he's perfect. (They never said that Hades wore a top hat, but in my imagination he did. Read the book and tell me I'm wrong!!!) OOOH, Mycroft, Thursday's uncle, is wonderful! He's such a brilliant and adorable character. It's hard not to like him. Mycroft plays a very important role: he invents a device to allow you to step in to any book! And Hades finds out and kidnaps him and uses the device for some evil-doings, culminating in stealing Miss Jane Eyre from her own book. Don't worry, Thursday finds a way to save everything. She's awesome like that.

Ok, let's talk about the names. I love them. There's a guy named Braxton Hicks. There's a Bowden Cable. There's Thursday Next! Acheron Hades is pretty clever. So is his brother, Styx. Victor Analogy, another good one. The bestest, though? Jack Schitt. And in the sequel that I am currently reading? Turns out Schitt had a half-brother, and his name is Schitt-Hawse. I FREAKING LOVE IT. And the love interest: Landon Parke-Laine, I can't remember exactly, but I think Mycroft makes fun of his name, says something like it sounds like a bloody hotel. Well, guess what London Park Lane is????

Another thing I like! Fforde mentions things in this book--things set in the future--but by the end doesn't wrap them up. That means he's going to visit them in later books. So, this is his first novel, and he's already setting up jokes and plot points for later works? Ballsy! But, obviously it worked out for him, seeing as how I have in my possession every book mentioning Thursday Next I could find on Amazon that one night a very long ago.

I have to give SiriusXM's book radio props for introducing me to the Eyre Affair. Listening to that wonderful woman read these words made it all the more imperative that I buy them.

Holy geeze I might have a fever.

Book Radio has brought me "Cujo" by Stephen King, and I've noticed something

Stephen King characters never just pick up a pen. It's always a brand name. And because I don't pay attention to anything beyond "Bic" I can only assume that he's mentioning cool pens. (Why would he mention them if they were crap?)

This observation serves no purpose, it's just something I started thinking about yesterday when Vic pulled out his [insert name here] pen to jot down some notes in a coffee shop. Nobody in the King universe just picks up a random ballpoint. It's little things like this that make me (erroneously, I'm sure) assume things about King himself. In my world, King has a pen fetish. And he chewed Excedrin at some point, also, because I've noticed a few of his characters doing that as well. Have you ever tried to chew any type of medicine not meant to be chewed? It's awful. 

Mile 81, by Stephen King

Technically, this is a "kindle single" but I read it so I'm going to mention it.

It begins with Pete, a young kid looking to have a little adventure and to show his big brother that he's not as lame as his friends think. He decides to go check out the closed-down rest stop, where all the bigger kids sometimes hang out, and see what he can see. While there, he finds a bottle of vodka, proceeds to get drunk on two sips, and passes out. While asleep, a mysterious car with no driver coasts up to the rest stop and proceeds to eat people.

The story than switches to the point of view of the subsequent victims, and I like the little peek into their lives even though their lives soon end. I like how King gives even the smallest characters a story.

He only let me down with the car itself. We know these great little details about everyone else, but all we know about this car is that it's not a car, and it's not of this world. I would LOVE it if he just threw in a tiny detail that I could tie into his other works.

But, that aside, it's a great little story, I enjoyed it.

Also, I'd like to endorse the shit out of amazon right now--I ordered this online and had it sent immediately to my phone and OH MY GOD I LOVE TECHNOLOGY WE LIVE IN A GREAT WORLD, YOU GUYS.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

Linky link!!!  First of all, author used a bunch of "found" images to illustrate the book, and that was a fantastic choice! It added a bit of fun to it, and it needed that bit of fun, because otherwise it was a tad weak. Seriously. I tried really hard to make this my new Harry Potter, or Hunger Games, but no dice. It's not a bad book, it's just not the greatest young adult book ever written.

Here's a bit about it:

Main character: Jacob. Jacob's grandfather used to tell him these fantastic stories about his life in an orphanage/children's home, with all these special children who could do extraordinary things. As Jacob grew up, he believed these stories less. Then, grandfather dies. Jacob sees the thing that killed him, and decides he needs to unravel the mystery of his grandfather's life if he's going to ever be able to cope with his death. He travels all the way to Wales, to a tiny little island, searching for the Home. Spoilers!


He finds it. And through some time travel made possible by a woman who can turn into a bird, he finds the children--all of them still children. They're in hiding, you see. Some of their kind are evil (which is what killed the grandpa) and so they hide in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over again. The REALLY bad guys can't go through time loops. Then, they're attacked by a really bad guy and a slightly lesser evil guy, and they have to flee the island and search out more of their kind, get help for their birdwoman, and warn the others. Jacob decides to stay with them, leaving his family without notice. Honestly, the way they're written, they deserve it. But, it still feels like a really shitty thing to do. I guess because I have a much better relationship with my parents than Jacob. Also, I'm starting to notice this more and more in young adult books, this willingness to leave normalcy, and family, to go on adventures. Maybe it's not a new thing, but maybe I'm just noticing it because I'm an adult and the idea of all these kids virtually on their own frightens me. I worry about their safety now! I am a responsible adult! Whereas I saw nothing wrong with it as a teenager.

Also, hey, guess what? Amazon has these Kindle Singles and you can buy short stories for like 3 dollars. And, also, awesomely, I can go on Amazon, buy it, send it to my phone, and then IMMEDIATELY I AM READING A SHORT STORY BY STEPHEN KING THAT I JUST FOUND OUT EXISTED.

I am kind of excited about this.

And Another Thing, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

And Another Thing, by Eoin Colfer

Hitchhiker's sequel. Apparently Colfer decided to write another piece of the story. It's pretty good, too. You feel as if you're reading a Douglas Adams book. My only gripe with it is that I felt that there were too many Guide's notes. Those were a little distracting. Remember the last Adams' Guide book, that had all the Earths in all the dimensions exploded? Well, it turns out that the Guide 2.0 version, if you will, wanted to see what life was like, and so he took Random, Arthur, Trillian, and Ford on a little mental journey, that took them all to old age. And then his battery runs out and they're all forced back into their younger bodies just before Earth(s) are about to be exploded. Before they can explode as well, though, of course they are rescued, by none other than Zaphod Beeblebrox. And from there things get a little confusing, so I suggest everyone just read the thing themselves. You won't regret it.

Now, onto the book I am currently reading. It was an impulse purchase at Walmart while I was waiting for my prescription to be filled (sinuses, fucking again). I decided that I had to have it because Jen Yates of Cakewrecks and Epbot fame read it and said it was good, and also THERE ARE PICTURES. Photographs. The author claims he found them and created the story around them. They're all old-timey and creepy as hell. When I finish the book maybe I'll scan some in, but most likely I'll forget.

OH WAIT TITLE, I FORGOT.

It's called "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", by Ransom Riggs. I've only read a few chapters, and seen a few pics, but I think I'm going to enjoy this, and the book is of the quality that I think I'll treasure this thing for a few years. No one gets to get their grubby little hands on this, I'll tell you that.

The reason I'm bringing it up even though I'm not finished is that I just read a passage that immediately made me want to tell someone about it, and tell why I do not feel the same as the kid telling the story. And I'm home sick, alone, so the internet will have to do!

p. 63 I love you too, I wanted to say with as much hurtful sarcasm as I could muster, but she hadn't seen me, and I kept quiet. I did love her, of course, but mostly just because loving your mom is mandatory, not because she was someone I think I'd like very much if I met her walking down the street.


I know that people have relationships like this with their mothers, or hell both parents, but I've always counted myself lucky in that I have 4 people who I love very much, genuinely, not because it's "mandatory." (That's right, I said 4--broken families for the win! TWO CHRISTMASES......and okay so their also just freaking great people, the lot of them) And my mother specifically--she is AWESOME. If I met her walking down the street, I think I'd adopt her immediately. Hello ma'am, you are my new mother. Or aunt. Whatever you feel most comfortable being. Because YOU ARE PRECIOUS, AND SWEET, AND seriously, you guys? Everybody loves her. It's impossible not to. So I've always looked at those with not great relationships with their mothers with a little of pity and just not understanding it at all.

I know my mom doesn't read my blog. She would, if I set up a bookmark and then emailed her whenever I finally updated, but I bet she just doesn't think about it. Plus, everything I write here, I usually end up telling her anyways, because all of these books I've either read AFTER her, or forced upon her immediately upon finishing them. That's another reason I bet she wouldn't read the blog--lady HATES spoilers.

Yeah, so I kind of goofed.

I put off writing so long that I can't quite remember everything.

The first book I finished, I think, was "Across the Universe," by Beth Revis.

 http://www.amazon.com/Across-Universe-Beth-Revis/dp/1595143971

I had bought the audiobook because Sirius Book Radio was playing it and I wanted to hurry up and find out what was happening. It's kind of a let-down. I LOVE that Laura Ambrose reads Amy's part. Her voice makes everything better. However, the dude who read Elder's part kept making me hate him when he'd do Amy's voice. Why is it that women can read a book and give a male character a perfectly fine voice, but when men read, they give all the women these simpering, weak little voices? We don't all sound like that, douchebags.

Okay, on to recap: story begins from Amy's point of view, as she and her parents are frozen and stored in what's basically a morgue. They're going to be thawed in 300 years, when the spaceship carrying them lands on a planet that scientists have discovered that is Earth-like. Once Amy's frozen, the story shifts to Elder's point of view. It is now 250 years in to the future, and Elder is the youngest person aboard the spaceship Godspeed. One day, he will be eldest, and he'll also be Eldest, leader of the ship. We learn a little about his life on the ship and the way things are supposed to work there, but I'll save you the trouble of reading this part: it's all wrong. Elder doesn't know it, but in a few weeks he'll realize that this ship is not what it seems.

Amy is thawed and almost dies. She can't be refrozen because there's a good chance her body won't be able to take it. Elder is immediately in lust with her, because she's the only person on the ship his age, AND she's like, totally exotic and shit. After several generations of breeding on the ship, everyone is pretty much the same shade of olive, has the same brown hair and eyes, and all speak the same lilted English. Amy has problems understanding at first. To Elder, Amy speaks very slowly. Being inside Elder's head during his parts of the book are instantly annoying; he keeps having to tell us how he doesn't like when his friend chats with her, doesn't want to hear about her boyfriend back on Earth, he's looking forward to his "season" with her (gross). Beth Revis doesn't really know how to write as a teenage boy.

OH yeah. Amy was unplugged early by an unknown saboteur. She is devastated at the news she can't see her parents for another 50 years. However, she quickly gets distracted by the job of protecting their frozen forms when other people start getting unplugged (and die). However, she also quickly gets distracted from protecting them by wandering around the ship and refusing to understand how the society works, crying a lot, moping, and running.

I'm going to save everyone the trouble of reading this, or getting the audio version, by telling you what the big secret is:

The leader of the ship, the current "Eldest", is actually a clone of the very first Eldest. The first Eldest was the man who stepped up to lead the people of the ship after it was discovered that the engine was malfunctioning and it was going to take longer than expected to reach the new Earth. People went crazy. They killed themselves, and each other.  So the first guy got everyone that was left, realized they all had kids. They had a reason to stay sane, a reason to live. He put into effect the "season", a time period where everyone ruts like animals. He orchestrated this by adding hormones to the water, and stopped the birth control at the same time. Also added to the water from then on? A substance that makes everyone obedient and happy. So by Amy's awakening, you have several generations of people have lived this way and see nothing wrong with it. Elder and Amy, of course, find out and want to put a stop to it. And the original Eldest actually cloned himself, so that's who Elder and the current Eldest are: same person, basically. So the ship runs like this: 20 years, you have a season and everyone has sex and all the women get pregnant. Then, you take everyone to the top level of the ship, show them the stars, break the news that it's going to be 25 years longer to earth than previously thought, and nobody riots because they're all drugged up, and they've all got babies on the way to think about. You do it again in another 20-40 years, I've already confused the details.

Amy and Elder find out the ship is actually way way WAY behind, far more than 25 years. The engines just suck.

And everyone was getting unplugged from the freezers because a guy who was previously an Elder (ergo, another clone) was convinced that when the ship landed all the frozens were going to be thawed and then they'd enslave the all the people who'd been running the ship. So yeah, wackadoo.

Both are dealt with, and Amy and Elder lead the ship together, and tell everyone the truth, and stop drugging them. And Amy makes peace with the fact that she'll never see her parents again.

I think Revis tried hard, and certain things I liked, but it was just waaayyyyy too long. And I'd be listening to it, and Amy would be talking to some dude at the record hall, or Elder would be sulking about Eldest not teaching him how to run the ship, and I'd be all "Who's going to relieve Harley on guard duty with the frozens!!?? Why is nobody thinking about that?" It seemed like a TON of shit would happen while Amy was around and then she'd NEVER remember to mention it to Elder. Yo, chick, he lives here, I bet he could help you figure this out! Moron.

"The Birth of Venus" and a minor note on "Across the Universe"

Firstly, "The Birth of Venus" is a pretty good book. I read it a long time ago and don't remember all the details, but the gist of it in my memory is positive. I know from listening to the audio version on Sirius that there are things I didn't, and don't, like but overall, good story.

But I'm not bringing this up because of the story quality. What I want to talk about is the narration on the audio version.

Jenny Sterlin reads this.

Jenny Sterlin is AWESOME. I love her voice. I love her accent. I could listen to her read ALL DAY. Here is her narrator profile.

For fun, I'll give a meandering synopsis of the book: main character is a girl in Italy, back in days of arranged marriages, olden times, and such. She's peculiar in that her parent's have allowed her to go to school. She's scholarly and artistic. Her parents arrange for her to marry a much older man, who actually seems to be a good match at first, because he has a huge library and is totally okay with her eccentricities. But then she realizes that he's gay and in love with her brother. Also, around this time a monk, or priest, or some dude who has something to do with the church, decides that Florence needs to change her ways. Everyone needs to become more pious and start having much less fun. People start to be taken in for questioning. Questioning involves torture. The husband gets her brother out of prison (where he's been getting tortured for being a sodomite) and basically abandons the girl (I think, memory getting hazy) to care for him. She ends up having an affair with a painter (also a monk), and then joining a convent. It's a nice convent in the beginning, sort of a safe place for scholarly and artistic women to go. She has her kid there, has visits from her painter, but then a new order of theology comes in, and everything gets stricter at the convent. She sends her daughter away to live with the painter, and lives at the convent until she dies. When she dies they prepare her body for burial and find out that she has tattooed a snake around her body with the head of a man (her lover).

I kind of don't remember the point of the book.

Anyway.

On to the minor note!!!!

I'll talk more about this book when I finish it. I'm listening to the audio version in my car.

Today I heard something that made me say "What?!" in my car: Amy says that Eldest sounds a lot like Hitler, and then Elder is thinking to himself, wondering what she meant by that. Because Elder has taught him that Hitler was a wise man.

A WISE MAN.

Until this point, I was trying to be sympathetic to Elder, through all that he's done until now, because he has a load on his shoulders and all that shit. But now I realize that this man is insane and very possibly the villain in this book.

Side note: the parts told by Amy's point of view are read by Laura Ambrose, who played Claire on Six Feet Under, and who I LOVE. I seriously love how she reads this.

The dude who reads keeps giving Amy a baby voice and makes her sound pathetic. I hate that.

Bad Things Happen, by Harry Dolan

This is a typical murder mystery about a murder that occurs in the offices of a magazine that specializes in murder mysteries. IT'S SO META! Several characters, several times, mention "If this were a story in Grey Streets (the name of the magazine) then THIS would happen." Only to be reminded by another character "This isn't a story in Grey Streets."

Ok, it starts with the main character, David Loogan, buying a shovel. The author is very cagey in the beginning, referring to him as "the man who calls himself David Loogan" and exposing some of the man's fears about being out in the parking lot at night and shit. You don't find out why until nearly the end.

Loogan buys the shovel to help his friend Tom bury some guy killed in Tom's house. Prepare to go several hundred pages on before finding out who that guy really was as well.

In all of this we go back and learn how they became friends (David and Tom) and about Grey Streets (I wish it were a real magazine, actually) and how David has begun a small affair with Tom's wife.

Later Tom ends up dead, with a crime scene that screams THIS IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE A SUICIDE! HELLO! I'M A MURDER! The suspects are mostly Tom's friends--other authors. Other people die, things get hairy, and it's all so deliciously juicy.

And the mystery is solved, and that's awesome, but there's still someone who hasn't been caught yet, and you've got a few pages left, so you just know David's going to pull something from up his sleeve and get this shit settled, but instead, it's the AUTHOR who pulls something out. SOMETHING OUT OF HIS ASS. The last two pages of this otherwise great book reveal that David can see ghosts.

SAY FUCKING WHAT?

Yeah, he sees two figures outside and you think he's going to solve that one thing I mentioned and then WHAM BAM SPOOKY SPOOK it's two of the characters who died earlier. He has a short conversation with one of them. they disappear. END OF BOOK.

While searching on Amazon to link that Amazon page, I saw that Harry Dolan has other books, and the cover is similar to Bad Things Happen. Does Loogan go on to get himself mired in other murders, maybe very casually chat with some dead guys? I'm thinking YES.

I'm also thinking WHAT A HACKEY PIECE OF SHIT TO THROW INTO AN OTHERWISE GREAT BOOK?

But I'm also thinking that if I happen to run across any other Dolan books I COULD be persuaded to buy one.

Getting Near to Baby, by Audrey Couloumbis

This is a very sweet story. It stars Willa Jo. It opens at dawn on the roof of Willa Jo's Aunt's house. With her is Little Sister, who hasn't spoken since Baby died.

The story takes you through the trials of living with the aunt, and the grief of losing Baby. It's touching, and sad, and a little funny in places.

Also it takes forever to get to how Baby died. She makes you work for it. Spoiler: she drank bad water at a fair, probably died of dysentery, but since Willa Jo is telling the story and she's a kid you don't get any medical details out of it.

I found this book on a discount rack outside of  a Books-A-Million and after reading it I have no idea what it was doing out there. It's a freaking Newberry! Why did no one else want to buy this?? That's what's wrong with kids today: nobody appreciates good literature. They're all reading fucking vampire books. Have you seen young adult bookshelves lately??? Everything is a Twilight clone. Everything is about vampires. Or werewolves. Or fallen angels. Every book cover is black with a bit of a wispy-looking image on the front in bold colors. STOP READING STEPHANIE MEYER WANNABEES!!!!

United States of Tara and Hellbound Hearts

I just realized that United States of Tara is over. FOREVER. I thought I was watching the season finale, not the SERIES FINALE. This bums me. I wanted some therapy for Tara, some happy endings. This ending just........is.  Tara and Max head off to another hospital to try to help her, and fade to black. Goodbye Tara, T, Alice, and Buck.

The episode in itself was a bit of a letdown. At the beginning of the episode Tara kills her alter Bryce, but nothing extraordinary happens. I would think this would be more of a breakthrough, or something.

I finished a book called "Hellbound Hearts", a bunch of short stories inspired by the Hellraiser series. Some stories were rather distasteful, others were pretty good. If you don't want to see how many different ways people can stumble upon bdsm demons and a puzzle box, just stay away from it.

The Four Humors

I learned about this book on Cracked. It's a bunch of stories inspired by the four humors of the body: melancholic, choleric, sanguine, and phlegmatic. It sounds a little gross at first, but each section begins with an essay on that particular humor, and it explains the theme of the stories a little.

All of the authors and artists, if I'm not mistaken, come from Cracked, and they all came together to create this work of awesome when one of them apparently said "Hey, let's do a book for charity." And they did. Is that not awesome. The book is only 2.99, and it's WAY under-priced. WAYYYYYYY under-priced. I almost feel guilty.

The Four Humors

Veins, by Drew

Veins is funny. It's also very, very sad.

It tells the story of one dude and his inability to connect with the world. In the beginning you empathize, but by the end you just want someone to explain to him what's really going on, and why these things are happening to him. This is the kind of book that can be quite depressing if you're feeling just a little bit down yourself. Approached from your happy place, it has some nicely humorous passages. I think my favorite is the passage printed on the back cover:

"It's like you're born, and they put eggs and index cards and fish in a blender, and you have to drink it. Every sip is worse, but you have to keep going every day. The last sip is horrible, and then the glass is empty, and life's over."

Also FYI, Drew is the author of ToothpasteForDinner, which was my very first internet web comic discovery.

The Room, by Emma Donoghue

So I have managed to read another book! As always, it took me awhile because my life consists of more than just me reading alone. Now there's other people, and I want to talk to them. And there are games to play and tv shows to watch and conversations concerning ice cream to have!

I acquired this book via Books-A-Million gift card. I took a chance on it because it was, essentially, free. I'm glad I did.

It concerns Jack, 5 year old boy, and Ma, 26-ish mother, and their Room. Jack has never left the room, he knows no other world, so it is Room. Bed is Bed, and wardrobe is Wardrobe. They are people to him. He knows of things outside Room, via television and books, but Ma told him they are make-believe. They are not real.

Jack tells the story, so the mystery of why they are in Room is not known to us until Ma decides to tell him. The story up to that point drags. It's kind of interesting, trying to decode Jack's observations of things to figure out what is really going on, but once you figure that his mother was kidnapped and the guy has them prisoner, it's kind of slow. You just want the book to get to the point.

Ma angers me. The escape plan requires Jack to do things he's never done in a world he's never known, and she's understandably in a hurry to do this, but she's impatient with him and I don't like it. Same thing when they finally do escape. She just wants to run around and live, but her child has never been outside, grass is scary, people are scary, EVERYTHING IS SCARY and she has the audacity to get mad at him for being frightened, and it fucking pissed me off. And THEN! Then she decides life is too tough and attempts suicide. Jack has to go stay with his Grandmother, who he barely knows, and who tries to understand him, but makes some really shitty mistakes at first. She thinks she knows kids, but she doesn't know this kid! She can't stop to think "Maybe this will freak him out. Maybe I shouldn't except him to love a playground just because all other kids love playgrounds."

But in the end, Ma and Jack are free, and they're making their way, and you get the idea that everything will be okay eventually.

I also read "Memories of the Future: Volume I" by Wil Wheaton, where he rewatches the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and writes hilarious synopses and critiques, and behind-the-scenes memories. It was funny, and actually prompted me to watch a few of those old episodes on youtube. However, it's only Volume I. Where's Volume II, dude? You only covered half the season!

Viktor Hertz

Viktor Hertz is an artist. He calls himself a graphic designer, but to me he is an artist. He does these awesome pictograms of movies and ideas that I absolutely LOVE.

Link to his web page: http://viktorhertz.carbonmade.com/

Link to his Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hertzen/ Be sure to check out the Taxi Driver and Rosemary's Baby movie posters!

Sobbing on the Highway

Ever heard of "Metamorphosis" by Kafka? The other night I was listening to Book Radio on Sirius and they were playing an adaptation of it. The man doing the voice of the main character, Gregor Samsa, put so much into his performance that he made me feel so deeply for the man, and by the end I was full-on crying. Did I mention I was driving? And it was NIGHT?? On the interstate???? Those responsible for my despair and recklessness are "Night Kitchen Radio", who are now part of Yorinks Theater Group (found here).

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning as an insect. His family can't understand him, but try to protect him, at first. His sister seems to care the most about him, bringing him food and talking to him, but eventually just brings food, and then sometimes seems to forget. The family eventually has to all go get jobs, because Gregor was actually taking care of all of them. A word on that: their son/brother becomes a giant insect and all they can do is whine about their finances. And they actually seem to be mad at Gregor, like HE PURPOSELY BECAME A FUCKING INSECT!!!!! HEY I'M GREGOR I THINK I WANT TO BE TRAPPED IN MY ROOM AND FEARED BY MY FAMILY, JUST FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES!!!!

So they get jobs, start renting out some rooms, and largely try to forget him. His room is a sty, and he's not in good health. (During an earlier misunderstanding his father threw apples at him and one is stuck in his back. Not only is it an injury that is never treated, but also the apples rots and creates more infection.) One night he hears his sister playing violin, and she's talented, and it's beautiful, and he creeps forward a little from his room to listen. And then he actually crawls into the room behind her, and he's thinking about how he wanted to send her to school, to study violin, but the insect thing happened before he had a chance. When he's spotted, a raucous occurs, and his sister ends up screaming to his parents that they have to get rid of it, the "it" in question being her brother. She says that their lives are ruined enough, and the thing is not her brother because her brother would have left them ages ago to spare them this difficulty. Gregor hears this, and agrees, and he goes into his room and he dies. The story continues a tiny bit further, but I do not care to write about how his parents and sister cope with his death. I'm still angry with them. I first heard this story a week ago, and I still get a little choked up when I think about it. The guy doing Gregor's part just reads it as so.....pitiful. I don't know why this struck such a chord with me. It just.....makes me want to help him.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

I read this on my phone, and I'm not entirely sure I got a legitimate copy, so some of the things I bitch about might not be actually in the book. Like the author's insistance on giving way too much detail on things which did not advance the plot. In my version Blomquist (I have no idea how to spell that) loads up a program to create a database for all the Vonhamm family members, and Larsson spends a lot of time telling us all about the two guys who invented this program. For all I know that was added later by whoever created my digital copy, like a free advertisement or something.

If it was included in the actual book, then what the hell, Larsson? Did you sell ad space in this thing???

Isn't Larsson dead, though? Perhaps all those way wordy passages were kept because Larsson himself wasn't around to edit these books. I will never know, because I'm not going to research it.

So, this book starts as a painful exposition of Blomquist's legal troubles, but eventually gets to the point: Blomquist is hired by an elderly gentleman to write his biography/history of his family, and also to solve the mystery of Harriet, the man's neice who went missing at 16. SPOILER: She's alive. She ran away because her brother and father were serial killers. Blomquist solves the mystery of the disappearance, solves the mystery of the killings (which no one even knew about before he started digging) and eventually solves his legal troubles. He does all this solely because he is fortunate enough to become aquainted with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Lisbeth Salander). She's a punkish, tiny woman with incredible hacking abilities and a photographic memory. I totally understand why these books are popular and why everyone loves her so much. I kind of want to be Lisbeth Salander, too.

This took me awhile, because I kept getting bored during all the boring parts (and there are many) but overall I liked it. I'm definitely going to read the other books, eventually.

Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

I can't understand why the synopsis on this book is so shady. They don't want to to tell you what happens in this book.

"It is truly a special story and we don't want to spoil it."

So they tease you. And they tell you that you will WANT to tell others about it, but ask you not to tell them what happens because "The magic is in how the story unfolds."

No, it's not. It's a very good story, yes, but I didn't get any magic. It's your basic flashback/flashforward story, with little elements mentioned HERE that won't get explained until THERE.

I'm honestly really conflicted about spoiling this.........it specifically says don't say what happens. The rebel in me wants to blab it in all caps, in 72 point font. The good little girl wants to tell you to read it for yourself, because it is a good book.


Hmm.........ok, I'm going to spoil it. I'm going to spoil it because Chris Cleave is not the boss of me, and also as a little "fuck you" because I hate the way he ended it.

HERE IS WHAT HAPPENS!!!!

Little Bee is a Nigerian girl, young, probably teenager, who met a British couple on holiday 2 years before the book begins. She and her sister were fleeing men who killed everyone in their village (it was built on an oil field and the oil companies wanted the land) (this is the event that they hint at for half the book). (the meeting on the beach not the village massacre)

So the white couple (Andrew and Sarah) and black girls (Little Bee and Nkiruka) meet, and then the men come, and then the white couple are put in a terrible position by them, and guess what? Sarah cuts off a finger to save Little Bee!!! Andrew would/could not. This haunts him forever. Little Bee's sister is killed, Little Bee somehow sneaks aboard a ship heading to England, spends 2 years in a detention center, and finds Andrew and Sarah. Andrew kills himself. Little Bee is there. Takes her the rest of the book to tell Sarah that she was there, but that part is handled all crappily. It's like "and then I told her." That's it. Disappointing, really. Ok, Andrew's buried, Little Bee is staying with Sarah for like 3 days when a stupid mistake happens and the police catch Little Bee and she's sent back to Nigeria. Sarah and her son accompany Bee, because Sarah knows that Bee's government won't do anything to Bee in the presence of a white lady. Sarah's plan is to tell Bee's story, and tell the stories of as many other Nigerians as she can, until she has enough for a book, and enough to save Bee. It's a great plan.

It's doesn't work.

Bee is captured by soldiers on a beach.

Bee has some nice thoughts about some shit. I almost cried.

The end.

I still really like the book. Just hate the ending. I saw another book by Chris Cleave at Wal-Mart the other day, and it totally has the same kind of cover (tiny white silhouette inside larger black silhouette). No idea what it's about, but I think I'm going to buy it. I like the way he writes. Example: he begins the book with Little Bee dreaming about being a pound coin, and it's awesome.

I'm Ashamed.

I only read this because it was free and handy. I'm only posting about it because I read it and it's a rule, and I have to tell people about even though I don't want to admit to reading it.

So. I read it. Does Laurell K. Hamilton really get paid for these books? All I've read so far is sex scenes with a little story sprinkled in. She does write some steamy sex scenes, I'll giver her that, but her attempt at a story is ridiculous and she doesn't know how real people talk OR how to actually right a conversation in the first place.

Her favorite thing is to write:


"You didn't." I made it a question.

Uh, Hamilton, you know how you can make something a question? Add a freaking question mark. I've used one in this very paragraph, can you find it? OH HEY ANOTHER ONE.

I think I read "I made it a question" roughly 1 kajillion times in this book. Rough estimate. Give or take a billion.

Also I have a theory that Hamilton IS Anita Blake. Blake is a woman, who is a badass, who is required(!) by some magical bullshit to have sex with a lot of men. So she gets to be a slut, but it's not her fault. And all of the dudes like to cuddle. Ever heard of a Mary Sue? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue