i am making my way back into the land of reviewing....
i don't read a lot of nonfiction. but if i am really into the subject matter, i will take the pli am making my way back into the land of reviewing....
i don't read a lot of nonfiction. but if i am really into the subject matter, i will take the plunge, and when it is narrative nonfiction, told with verve and humor, that makes it all the better. however, it turns out, i am more interested in food itself than in the utensils and machines that facilitate food preparation and storage.
"Consider the Fork is an exploration of the way the implements we use in the kitchen affect what we eat, how we eat, and what we feel about what we eat."
and it's a great book for those of you inclined to explore these matters; there are definitely fascinating facts, and i have discovered a heretofore underdeveloped desire for a le crueset pan,
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yeah, i want this.
overall, it was not quite what i was expecting. my fault entirely. but i learned a lot of interesting facts about the history of kitchen safety, and the development of cooling agents, a ton of antiquated kitchen gizmos, the evolution of the knife and its cultural associations, the dangers of the mandoline, the microwave phenomenon, and geyser cooking!
it is about food fads, and tradition and the evolution of cooking, and what we lose in quality the more we rely on machines to give us the shortcuts. it isn't a plea to return to simpler times, though - it doesn't have that kind of emotional agenda; it is purely scholarly, with some personal stories in the mix.
the best chapter is the one that talks about the food of the sixties and seventies, and the introduction of the cuisinart. i collect all those better homes and gardens cookbooks like
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and
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and
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because they crack me up with their food presentation. everything has unexpected (canned) fruit, there are always these glistening sauces and toothpicks and aspic and everything can be made in a wok or tortured beyond its intended shape. and this book talks about this a bit, with the craze for smooth textures and endless dips and the ease that homemakers now found preparing more "exotic" dishes at home. with the newer technologies, women had more time on their hands to experiment, and these experiments have really defined that era. do yourself a favor and check one of them out sometime. so many cans to be opened!
and i do love thinking about "the first time." the first time people realized that an animal could be cooked over a fire. the first person who thought nutmeg might be edible. because, let's face it, this screams "poison" to me:
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and it is, a little bit, but it is also delicious, right? but this book really makes you pause and think about foods we take for granted, and to think about that "first time" feeling, which is pretty exciting.
but it is also about the way we delude ourselves in the kitchen.
Kitchen gadgets - especially the fancy expensive kind that are sold through the shopping channels - advertise themselves with the promise that they will change your life. Often, however, your life is changed in ways that you did not expect. You buy an electric mixer, which makes it incredibly quick and easy to make cakes. And so you feel that you ought to make cakes, whereas before you acquired the mixer, making cakes was so laborious that you were happy to buy them. In fact, therefore, the mixer has cost you time rather than saving it. There's also the side effect that in making room for the mixer, you have lost another few precious inches of counter space. Not to mention the hours you will spend washing the bowl and attachments and mopping the flour that splatters everywhere as it mixes.
and it's true, all of it.
my grandmother is a sucker for cutesy kitchen gadgets. she has...everything. and then she will give them to my dad, and he will dutifully take them and eventually, he will pass it off to me. i have a ton of things here i will never ever use: plastic pastry shapers for making turnovers, a corn on the cob butterer shaped like a piece of corn, a teeny tiny rolling pin for making teeny tiny tarts, butter warmers, a machine for making those blooming onion thingies... and it's not like i have a lotta space here. but i feel sticky getting rid of them, you know? but having said that, my father has also become a devotee of the king arthur flour company, http://www.kingarthurflour.com/, and his baguette pan is something i would never have him be without. so for every lapful of "wait, why do i have this??"
there is something that actually works, and that i wouldn't want to give up like my ferocious microplane, which is pretty rad, but a bitch to clean, for sure.
but it is not just about fancy-schmancy devices, it is also about the invention of the pot, the spoon, the colander. things that we take for granted, but are timeless and necessary.
my only complaint is that the book lacks flow. the chapters don't really cohere into a unified story of food, the way i had hoped. the chapters stand alone, and each does have its nuggets of gold, but overall, it read like a series of essays. i liked the personal touches and anecdotes, and i think i would have liked to have seen more of those. for people who are interested in food, and cultural history and social anthropology, there is a lot here to chew on (heh.) but for me, it will always be about the food.
i wish i had read this when it first came out. and i am mad at myself for not loving this book as much as everyone else seems to have - when i read other reviews of it, i am jealous that it didn't grip me as much as it did others, as much as her other books have gripped me.
there are definite strengths here. she demonstrates an uncanny and impressive cultural prescience; the way william gibson predicted the internet, she imagines social networks and reality t.v. before myspace, before facebook. and this book, published only a week after 9/11, has some eerie EERIE terrorist situations and general "america is corrupting and must be brought to its knees" sentiment flooding through it. and that prescience, like the trailer for this movie whose coolest part is now probably going to have to be cut because of horrific events makes the reader uncomfortable, knowing what we now know.
but for me, the multiplicity of storylines, while (mostly) individually fascinating, never really came together. i mean, in the most superficial way they did, as characters' lives intersect unexpectedly, but thematically, there didn't seem to be enough connective tissue. obviously image, perception, "we are who we say we are" certainly does recur, but i was hoping for the moment that makes the multiple narratives necessary, and it just never happened.
when you have as many characters and viewpoints as you do here, some first-person, some third-person, closure becomes a little tricky, and i think some characters did not reach a satisfying resolution. for example, moose, in his final scene. i don't know how to read it.he seems to see it as a triumph, as a hopefulness, but he is subject to the same veiled perception as all of the characters in the book, perhaps more so, and it remains unclear. and charlotte's (model-charlotte's) pre-epilogue final scene is almost exactly like infinite jest, where we are left to fill in the gaps of "how did we get to here from there?" and i'm not sure i understand why ricky was given a discrete narrative, except that it gave her a chance to show off her storytelling skills. as a whole, it never really came together for me, although i liked so many individual parts so much that i feel a little sad only giving out three stars.
the parts that are good are very very good. if i may:
Even as a child, riding home with my mother and Grace after a Saturday in Chicago, new dresses and Frango mints from Marshall Field's packed carefully in our trunk, lunch at the Walnut Room still alive in our minds—even then, when the drive between Rockford and Chicago had encompassed the entire trajectory of my known world, arriving at State Street's outer reaches, at that point practically rural, had roused in me not the lilt of home but a flat dead drone inside my head. Even then, I experienced my return to Rockford as a submersion, a forfeiture of the oxygen of life. And with every subsequent return there had been a flattening, an incursion of dreariness, as I remembered what I had come from and faced it again.
Except now. Today, a silly joy flopped at my heart as I drove past the Clocktower Hotel with its "Museum of Time," past the "Welcome to Rockford" sign, past the Courtyard Inn, the Holiday Inn, the Bombay Bicycle Club, Burger King, Country Kitchen, Red Roof Inn, Gerry's pizza, Mobil, Century 21, Merrill Lynch, Lowe's Gardening and Home Depot. I felt proud of Rockford for appearing on cue and playing its part with such conviction. I had told Irene it would be blighted, bloated, vacant, and now Rockford heaped upon us a quintessentially awful American landscape, the sort of vista that left Europeans ashen-faced: flat, hangar-sized windowless buildings; a swarm of garish plastic signs; miles of parking lot crammed with big American cars throwing jabs of sunlight off their fenders and hubcaps. It was a land without people, save for a few insect-sized humans sprinkled among the parking lots like stand-ins from an architectural scale model, humans diminished to quasi-nonexistence by the gargantuan buildings and giant midwestern sky, pale blue, dotted with tufts of cloud, vast and domineering as skies in Africa.
a triumphant homecoming it is not. but it is a recognizable one, and everything is so descriptively razor-sharp it makes me ache.
i loved great chunks of this book. and again, i wish i had read this when it first came out.
know when to say when, barron's. why don't you go make some more study guides and call this series a day?know when to say when, barron's. why don't you go make some more study guides and call this series a day?...more
like This is Not a Test, this book seeks to answer the question of "what happens to suicidal characters when they are forced into life-or-death decisilike This is Not a Test, this book seeks to answer the question of "what happens to suicidal characters when they are forced into life-or-death decision-making in a crisis situation?" unlike This is Not a Test, this book has zero zombies.
but it does do a good job of depicting a character who wants to throw her life away until she is placed in a situation with someone who really wants to live. jane has been born into a family tradition of suicide. three generations before her have had someone make that decision, and jane feels like it is her turn. she has already tried once, which landed her in a facility for suicidal teens, and she has been savvy enough to trick her minders sufficiently with good behavior to earn her a trip home for christmas. on a plane. a plane in which she plans to kill herself. but then the plane crashes, oh nooo! and she is one of two survivors, the other naturally being a dreamy teen boy.
and now she must survive through the cold and the hunger and the wolves and the mountain climbing, and good lord why does the dust jacket say this:
but the wilderness is a vast and lethal force, and only one of them will survive.
because that's spoiler city, really. and in my head, reading that, for some reason, i thought it was going to be about a girl and a boy who were adversaries, because i read the synopsis quickly, and so i was kind of disappointed that this wasn't more like the movie the edge. it is not. no bears - raaaar.
and it is a really quick read, tense in parts, touching in parts, but at the end of the day, i have loved other survival books more than this one. there isn't anything wrong with it, other than a couple of questions i have that this review does a good job laying out so there is no need for me to repeat the quibbles.
it's fine, it just didn't blow my dress up. for me, books like Hatchet are superior because you actually learn practical survival techniques and not just "have mountain-climbing gear on hand."
because i am telling you right now, i will never have mountain-climbing gear on hand.
this is a great book to use as a springboard for discussions about reproductive rights and governmental responsibility and what kind of world we are cthis is a great book to use as a springboard for discussions about reproductive rights and governmental responsibility and what kind of world we are creating and leaving to the next generation.
but i'm just going to talk about me. cuz i am a very laissez-faire individual, and i live my life like i am reading a book someone else is writing, and i am just tuning in to see where it all goes, and any discussion of this sort always leads to conflicts, and i think goodreads has enough of those, yeah?
i am of two minds on this book. on the one hand, i got completely sucked into the story, and i love the characters (especially lev), and i thought it was one of the rare dystopian YA books that actually took the time to world-build enough so that its characters made sense in the world they were given. but even at the beginning, i was picking it apart, and finding flaws in the construction; ways that the system could be abused and that just would not work, even as a dystopia. catie's review goes into a lot of concerns i had, and even though i liked the book a lot more than she did, i agree with a lot of her observations.
i am late to this book's party, and most of you have already read it, but for the newborns out there who can't even read yet, i will lay out some of the plot points, so your folks can read them to you.
in this book, abortion is no more. there was a war between the pro-lifers and the pro-choicers which resulted in legislation (apparently only half-seriously proposed) that satisfied both sides: no more fetus-abortion, but parents had the right to "unwind" their unwanted kids once they reached the age of thirteen, but once they turned eighteen, they were there for good. unwinding is a process whereby the kids are used for parts, and nearly every single piece of them is transplanted into a needy recipient, ensuring the donors would "live on", but in a different state. and all these parts retain the muscle-memory of their previous owners, which seems medically implausible, but who am i to judge? this results in "more surgeons, fewer doctors" because no one needs to be cured anymore, they can just get some spare parts and fix themselves up that way.
for people who are unable to raise their children until the age of thirteen, there is another feature of the legislation that is called "storking," where unwanted babies are left on the doorsteps of strangers, and THEY HAVE TO RAISE THEM. i mean, it is better than a dumpster, by far, but what a drag. this is the part i had the most problems with. i mean, how easy is it to abuse that law? and i was grateful that he included an anecdote about one such incident that was horrifying, but i can't see how this was a law that ever got accepted. assuming that financial responsibility for thirteen years at least? no thank you.
but whatever, if i can accept the chinks in divergent's armor, i can accept this. it is a teen fiction book; it's not flawless, but this is the world we are given. and it is admirable that he took the time to a) construct such a fully-developed world and b) point out its flaws, occasionally.
and its strengths are numerous. there is great detail-work here, even when it is just given briefly, in the anecdotes of the various unwinds. the variety of reasons a kid can be unwound are numerous and heartbreaking. and just the number of wonderful moments of revelation - (view spoiler)[ the scene where roland thinks he has the upper hand at the end only to find out he has no leverage and that the juvey police already know about the compound was great stuff. and i personally liked the scene of him being unwound - it was a little manipulative and again not medically persuasive, sure, but i kept expecting the door to fling open and have him be saved, and it was pretty ballsy to have that not happen, even though we do not like roland, do we? (hide spoiler)]
but overall, i was completely engaged in the story, and i do think the characters grew and became different people, (view spoiler)[ and had they been unwould, risa never would have discovered her aptitude for medical care, connor never would have learned to control his temper, lev would not have been able to see past his upbringing and become his own person rather than just a sacrifice. (hide spoiler)]
overall, i thought it was a great read, and i appreciated the care that went into writing it, even though it is one of those books you have to accept as-is, without going over it with a hyper-critical eye.
this book is everything everything everything everything. i don't even know where to start.
you book-criers?? this is for you. i didn't, naturally, but god how i wanted to. this is the most poignant and tender book, full of real (i.e., not schmaltzy manipulative nicholas sparks-style) emotional pull.
its focus is june, a fourteen-year-old girl who is a character uncomfortable in her own reality. she would rather live in the middle ages, when magic and science were still intertwined, where the world was hushed and yet majestic. where the forest could envelop and shut out all problems. unfortunately, she lives in westchester in the 80's, and her beloved uncle has just died of AIDS.
june is a tremendous character. and so lovingly written. you feel everything she feels: her confusion and her loss and her strength even when she doesn't realize how strong she is being just by going to school and not giving a shit about what her peers think of her in her medieval boots and long skirts. because they are not important. all she cared about in the world was her uncle, and the times they shared listening to the requiem and drinking tea and going to the cloisters and endlessly creating worlds around themselves to the exclusion of all else, including june's sister greta, with whom she used to be extremely close.
after finn's death, june is shattered, and no one understands the depths of her pain. until someone does. until june begins to learn about other facets of her uncle's life and meets someone who understands perfectly well the empty space finn's death has left, and the long slow journey towards healing starts with one step, a teapot, and a painting.
first novel? how is this possible?
there are so very many passages here that i just wanted to eat up. this whole book is just perfect. every character, every moment of clarity, every petty jealous thought and hasty act. every moment when june takes a step back to really see what she has been misinterpreting or overlooking, every confession, every moment she spends with her parents... she is just a marvel of a character.
if things went my way, i would be working at a renaissance fair as a falconer. i wouldn't have to worry about climbing career ladders or getting promotions, because falconry's not like that. either you're a falconer or you're not. either the birds come back to you or they fly away.
both of her parents are accountants, which means that during tax season, when the events of the novel take place, she and her sister are "tax orphans," taking care of themselves while her parents work long and exhausting hours and are not around to help her through her grief.
when her father comes home one evening, tired and sick and worked to the bone:
"well, why do you do it, then?"
i meant it seriously.i really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. it seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. you could be anything. then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. you were a boy, and already it was certain that you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. you broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. you failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. like that. on and on through the years until you were stuck. you'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. or an accountant. and there you were. i figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.
"why do i i do it?" my dad said. "that's a no-brainer. for you. for you and greta and your mother."
"oh," i said, suddenly feeling immensely sad that somebody would throw their whole life away just to make sure other people were happy.
i mean, that is gorgeous. and a coming-of-age realization that doesn't come across as trite and commonplace. and that last sentence will resonate after you finish the book. no doubt.
there are so many more passages here that i want to type out, but i think you should just read the book. trust a karen on this one - this is a keeper. i borrowed this from work, but i am just going to buy it instead of returning it. i don't want anyone else touching this copy. this one is mine.
a note on the requiem. i spent about 20 minutes digging out my copy of it before sitting down to write this review, i rarely listen to music anymore. but the requiem has to be one of the most perfect musical pieces ever, and it has always shattered me while buoying me up at the same time. and this book is positively dripping with it. it is the perfect musical accompaniment. and it reminded me that this exists:
which is a cover of part of the requiem that this band played at my store one time, (better than this recording) and i remember i was shelving, walking across the floor with some books, and as soon as i realized what i was listening to, i dropped everything i was holding and just stood there, mesmerized. it is kind of a fantastic interpretation. the version i heard is on this podcast:
but i can't figure out how to ffwd to the song, which is the last one they played that night, so someone should do that for me, because i think that version is way superior.
but really - read this book, even though this review is completely inadequate at even coming close to what it did to me, you have to.
i'm going to be floating some of my favorite monsterporn reviews until thursday, since goodreads informs me this is "romaHAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY WEEK!!
i'm going to be floating some of my favorite monsterporn reviews until thursday, since goodreads informs me this is "romance week." hey, beasts - bring on the romance!
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wow. just...wow.
okay, this is just... wow.
so. robot sex.
what is this about? well, it is about a man who meets a woman at a halloween party who is insatiable.he is dressed as a robot, she is a nurse, naturally, and they find they have a great deal of sexual compatibility.
he has a huge dick. at some point, she punches it during their first lovemaking session. punches it. amazing.
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he is not a man you take home to mama - he enjoys taking pictures up girls' skirts and shoving his lovers over fences. and she is a special kind of woman, the kind who has nipples the size of thumbs and yells things like "gimmie that hot robot cum, you piece of fucking metal!!"
so they get married, but the bedroom gets boring. and he still actually wants to be a robot.
katrina is unwilling.
"I need a hot, meaty dick. You know that! A metal rod isn't gonna be able to satisfy me!" "Sweetie, we could design whatever dick you want! You'd get the perfect cock, engineered to pleasure you!"They would never see eye to eye on this. Katrina was just so old fashioned and unwilling to keep up with the changing world all around her.
what a square...
and a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. so he does. and now he is a robot. with like a million dicks, each larger and more specialized/terrifying than the last.
hips and pelvises creak and "shatter", rusty bear-trap jaws rip fabric, James pulled out once more and Katrina's now huge, cavernous snatch sagged in on itself like soufflé removed from the oven too early....
ow!!!!!
and... oh god... the last two dicks i can't even think about.
i just can't.
this story is amazing. it is funny and graphic and it made my body ache and feel squirmy.
i will never take a robot lover. never never never.
but i will definitely read more from "dixon heruass," certainly his real name.
**now with all the quotes i promised at the end of the old review.**
interesting fact. when an employee of bn borrows a nook from the store, WHATEVER T**now with all the quotes i promised at the end of the old review.**
interesting fact. when an employee of bn borrows a nook from the store, WHATEVER THEY PUT ON IT DURING THEIR LOANER PERIOD SHOWS UP ON ALL THE DEMO NOOKS IN THE NOOK DEPARTMENT WHICH ARE ON THE SAME ACCOUNT. i did not know this. and i, of course, filled it up with teddy bear and bigfoot porn.
so, a rabbi walks into the store...
this is not the beginning of a joke, but a real-and-true story.
and so ryan is innocently showing him the features of the nook, and then up pops, large as day, 8 feet tall CUM FOR BIGFOOT. and ryan's all nervous laughter and fumbling, but the rabbi is super-cool and says only "people have some interesting reading tastes..."
and bought a nook.
but i don't think he is going to buy this series.
so - oops on my part, and i regret, un peu, all the lactation porn i may have inadvertently exposed to old ladies and the unready.
but let's try to review this book.
i mean, it is very similar to the previous two. it begins with the former installment's cliffhanger, in case it wasn't seared into your brain, never to be washed clean. this book has such a casual attitude towards human carnage. i guess when you have a woman being penetrated by three bigfoot at once, the human body becomes both more than it ought to be and less than it is. but the human girls, kidnapped into sexual slavery and loving every minute of it, just kinda wrinkle their noses at the corpses left in their wake. is this a sign that they are becoming more like animals themselves? or were they horrible people to begin with? or is this erotica, a genre that doesn't have to necessarily concern itself with anything other that the old in-and-out?
because hygiene does not seem to be top of the list here. i can understand, while not relating, to bigfoot-sex. some girls like it rough and want to be practically torn part and size really really matters. so fine - you put up with the "wet dog" smell for the sensation that only a bigfoot can provide. you nestle into his furry security, knowing that he will club a motherfucker to death for you.
but being fingered by a bigfoot? i think you have to draw the line somewhere, or the next chapter will be "at the hands of bigfoot: porsche's UTI." DO YOU KNOW WHERE THAT FINGER HAS BEEN? and don't say "in your friend sally" because i meant BEFORE that.
okay - i am very unhappy. i was going to go extract some fine quotes from this to delight you all, and "the lending period for this ebook has expired." which is untrue because i put it back on there last night! it has not been 24 hours, nook gods!!!
times like these i am closer to buying one of my very own. but then i would have to pay for these things myself, and i would quickly go broke.
i will try to get you those passages, but it won't be until i go back to work on tuesday. will you be okay until then???
**okay - so i promised some quotes, and here they be:
"jesus," murmured shelley. "way to eat a ton of jizz.
that might be my favorite line in any book ever, and precisely what i think one girl would say to her friend when they have been kidnapped by sasquatches and one has just been forced to provide oral upon an 8-foot monster.
after that, it's just a lot of:
it's been a while since i've seen a good ape fuckin'.
and
"you on me, porsche." he lay down and held his penis, the head dripping with wetness. "be good girl."
and some inconsistent behavior, because if all of these kidnappings of young women are supposed to be (view spoiler)[because bigfoot/feet cannot procreate because they only produce male cubs, then why is there so much forced girl-on-girl action, and so much oral and anal play? procreation u r doing it rong! (hide spoiler)]
but it does end on a tender note:
how could you explain to someone who had never felt what it was like to mate with a sasquatch? being held in the arms of my bigfoot was like snuggling into a warm, fuzzy blanket. all thoughts of the life i knew before dissipated, because, being with him, i felt whole.
i never thought i would be writing this drunken book review. but, you see, i was summoned to an after-work gathering with my form dear penthouse forum,
i never thought i would be writing this drunken book review. but, you see, i was summoned to an after-work gathering with my former boss and some colleagues, and... well, there was tequila. and salted rims. and i had my borrowed nook, and things just got a little out of control.
i didn't want to read my precious megan abbott book in this condition.
i didn't mean to read another bigfoot porn.
but you know how it is... when the first one ended on such a cliffhanger (view spoiler)[ and it turned out there were multiple bigfeet and all the girls were taken by different ones and scattered like dandelion-froth (hide spoiler)], well... a girl's gotta know. right? you remember eve? with the curiosity? and pandora? lot's wife? me reading my ex's journal as a teen?
sometimes we just gotta know.
and now i do. but guess what?? another cliffhanger! so you know i am going to be reading numbers 3,4, and 5. when will this crazy merry-go-round stop spinning?? oh, that's just my head.
so, anyway, bigfoot porn.
it's what you would expect, if you expect bigfoot porn to be about the desire of a young girl for a bit of strange, all giving in to her animalistic urges but putting up a struggle so she can patty-hearst her way out of it afterward.
there is a lot more snuggling than there should be in a true kidnapping scenario. IMHO.
and i get it - it is hard to resist an articulate man, even when the definition must be stretched (view spoiler)[like her rear-hole (hide spoiler)]...
some of bigfoot's (leonard's) bon mots:
good, sex girls...nice...
good, blonde, good!
grrrooooaaarrr...
good pussy. good.
grrroooooaaaarrrrr! good ass! good!
and for variety:
nice ass. nice.
how can a girl hold out against such poetry?
there is a lot of no-no-yes going on here:
he's forcing me...i have no choice. i'm only sleeping with him to survive. i don't like him...i...hate everything he does to me. he's an animal...he's a monster...ooohhh...don't ...stop...
it is a very complicated scenario. and with the cliffhanger - who knows what will happen next? do i dare pull back the curtain and discover the answers? will i require much much more tequila to find this sexy?
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i admire the skill here, in being able to write genuinely hanging cliffhangers in what should really be just throwaway erotica. but what else would you expect from the acclaimed author of pride and penetration,maya's tight pussy, and stacy's gangbang wedding????...more
i have watched the first two episodes of this show and i am displeased so far. if anyone wants to talk about it, i'm game.
****************************i have watched the first two episodes of this show and i am displeased so far. if anyone wants to talk about it, i'm game.
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megan abbott knows all the secrets of being a girl, and she keeps on spilling them, book after book."it's fun to be a girl!!" nah, man, it's not. have you ever seen the feet of an actual ballerina? (view spoiler)[
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(hide spoiler)]it's like that—underneath all the pink frills and the careful make-up, there is a horrorshow waiting to be revealed, and it's anything but soft and pretty and elegant.
this book is neither her girl noir nor her coming-of-age style, but some sort of seam where they both meet. the back cover claims this is "a fight club among cheerleaders," which isn't bad, but it reminded me more of Eating The Cheshire Cat, a book no one has read, and so unsuitable for a tempting comparison, but whatever.
this book is much better than that one, anyway.
this is a thriller/murder mystery tucked into a more interesting story about what happens when a group of young girls falls under the spell of a charismatic leader, in this case, their new cheerleading coach. it is about competition and burgeoning sensuality and the long long memories of teenage girls.
but this is megan abbott restrained. it is as though someone told her to use fewer pretty words and focus on the story.
that doesn't mean she doesn't occasionally come out with this heart-stopping shit:
My question is this:
The new coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and the shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators?
abbott has done something here for cheerleading, for the athleticism of it. i didn't come from a high school where cheerleading was any big deal. pom pom and butt shaking, short skirts—nothing to make you sit up and take notice.
but these girls are single-minded, furious. and under the leadership of coach french they are indeed transformed into machines, into bodies that respond, into an ostensible hive-mind that is all trust on the surface, and all back-stabbing behind the scenes. and these girls can fly.
a really nice touch is that, in this book, the girls aren't the beloved centers of the high-school hierarchy. they are not the popular girls. the rest of the school pretty much sees them as frivolous bitches and don't really interact with them, so their entire social experience is lived within this squad, making their allegiance even tighter, but also intensifying the rivalries.
never has a book made me feel so...fat. i have read a ton of books where characters have eating disorders, but they usually just make me hungry. this one—these girls are so strong and so starved, living on tea and hydroxycut and cigarettes. chewing muffins and spitting them out as a real treat. and yet they are capable of so much sheer power, despite so many instances of near-fainting. but i felt like a complete potato the entire time i was reading this. thanks, megan abbott!
still, i can forgive her when she breaks my heart so easily:
She has so much pride that, even if I'm weary of her, of her fighting ways, her gauntlet-tossing, I can't say there isn't something else that beams in me. An old ember licked to fresh fire again. Beth, the old Beth, before high school, before Ben Trammel, all the boys and self-sorrow, the divorce and the adderall and the suspensions.
That Beth at the bike racks, third grade, her braids dangling, her chin up, fists knotted around a pair of dull scissors, peeling into Brady Carr's tire. Brady Carr, who shoved me off the spinabout, tearing a long strip of skin from my ankle to my knee.
Tugging the rubber from his tire, her fingernails ripped red, she looked up at me, grinning wide, front-teeth gapped and wild heroic.
How could you ever forget that?
such a casual paragraph that distills everything about young-girl obsessive relationships and their growing-apart. this is what i wanted more of.
and this:
When we're walking out, I look back at him, and his face looks troubled, like years ago, eighth grade, and my dad, who no longer bothers, watching me as I left the house with Beth, our bodies suddenly so ripe and comely and there was nothing he could do.
parents are non-entities throughout this book. beth's mother is given maybe two pages of ineffectual page-time, and at one point, addy's father leaves her a note. these are girls finding their own way, going wild and living a glittery version of thug life, whose foundation is cheerleading. theirs are lives lived in a constant state of manipulation, where they anticipate each other's next moves with slitted eyes and the mental acuity of chess players. on-court, their actions are all about trusting each other not to let them fall, but off-court, it is a different ball game altogether.
and the arrival of coach french and all that happens just fans those flames into a bonfire.
i know i have only given her books four stars, but that's because i am waiting. she has quickly become one of my favorite authors, although this one is my least favorite of my four-stars. it is a great psychological thriller that is at the same time "a harrowing exploration into the dark heart of the all-american girl," but it doesn't have those claustrophobically packed sentences that i have loved from some of her other books. and for most people—that would be an improvement, but i love writers who manipulate language like she can—who give you everything in a sentence—who stretch their prose to bursting. this is more streamlined and conventional, in that way. the story itself is a better-than-average thriller that forces the reader into uncomfortable situations and offers plenty of twists, but it didn't make me howl.
and why oh why is she listed as a "young adult" author on here? i do not want to use my librarian powers to change this until i know for sure that there is a good reason. she does not write YA. her noir stuff is definitely not YA, and this one and The End of Everything, while they feature young girls at the center of the story are in no way suitable for the YA audience.
that's tricky, right? because she captures everything about teen girls that is vicious and tender and lost and confused and deeply sexual, but it is through this filter of knowing adult sensibilities that i think would be completely inappropriate for a younger audience. although i still feel it is scarily accurate in its depiction.
although i think if she did write YA, she would be amazing at it. i think she could foster an entire generation of strong, cool, toughgirls.
like this
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or this
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but classy, you know?
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girls that could kick your ass but reapply their lip gloss afterward
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so i don't know... maybe she should be listed as YA after all...bring on the girl gangs!
when this came in to the store, greg handed it to me and grunted something like, "here. byron."
and byron is not in this book. at all.
which is a shame.
when this came in to the store, greg handed it to me and grunted something like, "here. byron."
and i was like "yayyyy!" because of all the millions of books i have read that have byron as a character, tim powers is the only one who ever got it "right." and i skimmed the dust jacket and saw polidori's name and saw byron's name, but didn't really read it too closely because i knew i had to borrow it immediately.
and i kept waiting for byron to appear, in some form or another, despite it taking place years after his death.
but alas, this is not a story about byron. at all.
however, tim powers has done it again.
he has written a densely plotted book that somehow SOMEHOW manages to work freaking vampires into a story about poets without it being even one bit silly, and instead being genuinely tensely scary and - convincing.
this is an amazing accomplishment.
he has redefined the vampire mythology in a way that is eminently satisfying and it is just stunningly crafted.
here the focus is on the grown son of the characters from the first book, and the major poets in this one are the rossettis and swinburne, about whom i know nothing. trelawny comes back as a major player, and he manages to redeem that damn pirate, and even account for some of the less savory aspects of his personality. and, yes, polidori.
when i was reading The Stress of Her Regard, i knew a ton about byron, and more than enough about shelley and keats to see how the fragments of their works sprinkled throughout could quite easily be read as something other than what they were - something supernatural. the plot, although it involves freaking VAMPIRES, seamlessly inserts itself into actual events from the lives of the poets, and interprets their sometimes incomprehensible life-choices through this filter of FREAKING VAMPIRES that feels authentic. seriously, i don't know how he did it, but you gotta believe me - that dog HUNTS!
again, i know nothing about the lives of the poets covered in this book, but i am confident that powers has done his research, and he manages to once again assign supernatural explanations for events actually occurring in the lives of these people, and the poetry reprinted here certainly does tip the cap to the spectral and the occult.
stress blew my mind, even though it was a slow start. this one also suffers from a slow start, for me all the more because i kept being so impatient for byron.
but once it gets going...i forgot all about byron and i loved loved loved it.
johanna. one of the best characters i have ever read. and i have read a book or two.
cats. i can't even talk about how great they are in this book, and the scene that comes towards the end IF YOU READ THIS BOOK YOU WILL KNOW WHAT THIS SCENE IS is so noble and made my heart get all pudding-y.
however - i do not recommend reading this book without first reading stress.
i mean, do what you want - who cares what i think. but know that this vampire mythology is so dense and complete, it is better to become exposed to it as nature intended.
powers writes hard. not that it is difficult to understand, but there is something almost claustrophobic about his prose. sometimes it feels like he expects you to know what he is talking about before he remembers to tell you. but it is a really great technique. and kind of amazing the way he pulls it off. there were times when i became lost a little, and then in the next paragraph, this light would shine on my brain as he backtracked, and i would be all "tim powers, you've done it again!" it sounds clumsy, but when he does it, it is ballet.
i don't know why i liked this particular passage so much, but i did:
Booths crowded both sides of the street, and in the space of six yards Trelawny could have bought bootlaces, tin saucepans, or a smoked codfish nearly as tall as himself; and he threaded his way between gentlemen in silk hats, tradesmen in caps and leather aprons, and headless dummies wearing embroidered waistcoats and Norfolk jackets. from all sides rang the din of vendors announcing their wares: "Hot chestnuts!" and "What do you say to these cabbages?" and "Three a penny, don't pass it up!" and "Here's your bloaters!" as if Trelawny had misplaced the disreputable fish in question and had been looking all over the city for them.
that passage just comes alive for me, as do so many in this book. i loved this book. i am going to go back and give stress five stars, too. because the more i think about what powers has done here, the more i am in awe.
even without byron.
oh my god, and i haven't even mentioned boadicea!
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who is not as developed as i would have liked, but man, just even to have included her...
thank you, tim powers, i love you like candy.
maureen, this book, if it were candy, would be reese's peanut butter eggs. in other words, divine.
AHA!!! i knew aussie YA couldn't all be the very pinnacle of perfection! i knew there had to be some clunkers cluttering up their shelves!
australia - AHA!!! i knew aussie YA couldn't all be the very pinnacle of perfection! i knew there had to be some clunkers cluttering up their shelves!
australia - they're just like us!
so, this one is about ixion - the island of ever-night. (read in a spooky voice, please) which is some sort of permanent goth spring break where it is always nighttime and the only rule is you gotta strive to experience pleasure all the time.it is an island of youth and raves and hallucinogenics, where there are "ripers" who oversee the whole operation, and they call everyone "baby bats" which gets annoying after, like, two times, and everyone just parties and parties and parties like it's 1999 until they burn themselves out or until they get too old, when they are taken away by the ripers to no one knows where.
this is appealing to some youths because some of the alternatives in this world are more austere, sheltered communities where women have no say in anything, and punishments are strict, or the opposite, where women live together in communities where they hunt and take care of business and only see men when they need to breed. and there are giant flying monsters.etc. so - also unappealing.
suffice it to say - somehow this island of youth where you will be guaranteed at least a few years of fun sounds good to some people. (and after watching the grotesque display of another bridge-and-tunnel st. patrick's day in nyfc, i know exactly what type of people would be populating this island and i would stay away)
but our heroine is not in it for the sex drugs and rock and roll, nope - she is there to find her brother,who escaped to ixion,and without whom her home life has become unbearable.after he left, she was implanted with a sort of tracking device that would shock her if she tried to escape, but she managed to inure herself to the pain by daily self-inflicted punishments, raising her threshold in order to eventually be able to escape and find him.she is from the strictest quarter, where modesty and self-denial are expected from women. suddenly, she is thrust into this party-hopping scenario, where cable "kars" are taken from one club to the next, and no one ever needs to sleep; instead they take "petit nuits," which are open-eyed and brief hypnotic states that occur only in the many churches scattered about the realm.
yeah. churches.
and seriously - why is french the default language here? all the "naif" and "fou" and "neglegere" etc...
there's a lot of this:
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and a lot of this:
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and a lady-pirate.and shadow monsters that will getcha if you stray from the (literal) path.
it's not terrible. it just feels insubstantial. flimsy.the premise never grabbed me, and i couldn't latch on to the main character - wide-eyed from being raised in such a sheltered and cloistered environment. suddenly thrust into this excess of decadence, lusted after by every male human, creature, "riper" - there is no real explanation for it, in this environment where every pleasure and every need can be satisfied by a number of aggressively available partners, unless it is her very innocence that is supposed to make her so irresistible.i love her pain-endurance, coming as she does from such a community of self-negation it is very fitting that she would be able to withstand pain and remove herself from the protests of the capital-b body and endure what many others could not.
this book incorporates shades of the vampiric without ever fully committing to it, but the mythology needs to be fleshed out more - i read the whole damn thing and i still have no idea what this place is.
"coyness is nice" but coyness can stop you from understanding what the hell is happening and that is just not cool.
what is frustrating is that i know the author knows where she is going with this and she is just being close with her explanations. it would be one thing if i sensed that she was still working out the details, but i think she has a clear sense where she is headed, but the frustrating thing is that it was such a fluke that i got my hands on a copy of this to begin with, and who knows if book two will ever come my way, so i will probably be left in the dark, like a baby bat... forever. or until i burn out from too much partying. so - yeah - forever.
it reminded me of that stupid movie greg made me watch, even though it is not at all like that, but i don't care. that's all i could think of. stupid zombie rave movie. so bad.
and another thing: character names. our heroine is named retra, and other names are rollo and kero, and charlonge and suki and lenoir, and her brother's name is...joel??i mean, it is traditional in this world to take on a new name once you hit ixion and everything, but even before that...joel?? joel is a fine name, but it just seems so...regular when compared to the other names in this book. sorry, joel.
not a terrible book, but just one i don't feel any particular attachment to. sorry for being a two-star charlie.
so, just up front, my two-star rating is probably completely unfair. if you are looking for a way to reduce the amount of preservatives you consume, kso, just up front, my two-star rating is probably completely unfair. if you are looking for a way to reduce the amount of preservatives you consume, kudos for you, and this is probably a truly helpful book. it lays out all the crap that is in snack foods and beverages, and offers up tasty organic substitutes. yum, right? goobers = bad, sunridge farms all natural chocolate toffee peanuts = good. fig newtons = bad, barbara's whole wheat fig bars = good.
but for me - i am under the impression that the artificial sweeteners in my food are going to slowly embalm me so i become immortal. and anybody who tells me that pop-tarts belong in the "hall of shame," well, i take that as a personal attack. pop-tarts have made me what i am, and while people may argue that that is all the more reason to be put in the "hall of shame," i think i am a mighty fine specimen, strong like hulk, stinging like bee.
and anyone who claims that something called "jolly beans" are better than the delicious array of flavors and wonderfully crackling "skin" of a jelly belly is clearly insane.
so - this is probably a fantastic book for all of you people with your bicycling everywhere and your bodies like temples, but for me, who has only eaten pancakes drenched in syrup, french fries drenched in mayonnaise, and ice cream today, well - you see how i roll.
why did i take this book from the free shelves at work, you ask? i thought it would be useful, you know, to try to teach an old dog new tricks. but it turns out i am one stubborn old dog.and you can pry my nutter butters from my cold, dead, good-looking corpse's hand.
you have to admire someone who has gone through the romance aisle of their bookstore with a checklist: "regency, regency, regency, navy seals, nascar,you have to admire someone who has gone through the romance aisle of their bookstore with a checklist: "regency, regency, regency, navy seals, nascar, vampire, sheikh, billionaire, scot, tycoon, firefighter, cowboy, cop (all the village people amply represented)
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doctor, boss, shapeshifter, art historian...
what is missing?
and the answer is "bigfoot," naturally.
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hot stuff.
so i kind of have to three-star the sheer audacity of it - to write a serious, non-campy bigfoot porn. that's what's so amazing - this is not funny. its treatment is purely serious, with the humor only manifesting itself in the pre-bigfoot moments of innocent camping* and lighthearted girl-to-girl sextalk. three girls, three guys, and a stepfather chaperone. there are some nervous sexual tension and underaged jack daniels-fueled giggles. after that - the abduction of the three girls by an old woman and her "son" leonard the bigfoot is treated like hostel; where the porn world meets the horror world. and it's not at all bad. i mean, it is, obviously, but it is not unenjoyable even if, like me, you tend to sorta skim the genital-scenes. i don't need to close-read pre-orgasm pillow talk for deeper literary meaning, and that stuff is always more likely to make me laugh than to make me... anything else.
there were many difficulties and obstacles standing in the way of me reading this book - the store-loaner nook has a tendency to delete downloaded books at will** (THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN WITH THE REGULAR NON-STORE-ACCOUNT NOOKS - THE NOOK IS A FINE PRODUCT) and it deleted this one three times before i was ready to actually sit down with it. the second time, connor downloaded cum for bigfoot 2, 3, and 4, suggesting that i get all of them because if i got to the end of the first part, and there was a cliffhanger, i would be anxious to not know what happened next. i assured him i would be all right, and when nook ate them again, i only downloaded the first one. and guess what?
fucking cliffhanger.
so i don't know what is going to be-cum of these girls and the monsters that have abducted them, but i bet that it is going to be sexy...
thank you to lizzie for tipping me off to this book's existence. if there are more interesting-sounding hookups out there (but what are the odds,right?)let me know. unicorn porn (uniporn??),hippogriff porn,wombat porn, whatever - i will be your guinea pig (guinea pig porn??)
i'm not here to make fun of people who have this particular kink. at first, i was amazed that there were so manyMORE WAYS TO CELEBRATE FATHER'S DAY!!!
i'm not here to make fun of people who have this particular kink. at first, i was amazed that there were so many erotic tales devoted to lactation fetishes, and it was good for a laff, but i am going to try to be respectful here, because no one is getting hurt or exploited and it is all consensual, so i am going to try to do a straight lit-review here. but i might giggle a little. forgive me.
so i have read two of these stories now. lactate for teacher by burt maverick is unfortunately not here on goodreads.com, and i lack the motivation right now to add it myself, but i am going to briefly discuss it as a foil to drink me, daddy.
in lactate for teacher, a young girl approaches her gym teacher in his office at the end of class:
i'm sure you've heard the rumors, about me being pregnant."
"yeah, i heard a little something about that." he's looking again. i can see how badly he wants to touch my nipple-protruding tits as they stretch the thin fabric of my gym shirt.
"it's true...well, it was, anyway. i mean, i'm not anymore, but i still have these." i wiggled my tits, making them sway heavily.
"oh, oh my word." he sits down trying to hide his fully erect cock. "yes, i see. i mean- i don't see, but, um. i mean, um...what was the question again?
oh, my word is right... so the implication is that she had herself an abortion, right? there is no mention of a delivery, or a baby anywhere, and if she did in fact carry the baby full-term, her gym teacher would probably have gotten a note or something to excuse her from class, and would have heard more than "a little something," yeah? so how is she lactating? because if she did indeed have an abortion, and even if her body got ahead of itself a little, somehow, there is no way she had one within the accepted, what is it - first trimester? what is happening here? i do not understand the medical facts this story is presenting.
and then it just gets gross.
i'm sorry, i'm not trying to judge here, but this was just the messiest act of sexual intercourse i have ever heard. you would think her boobs were water hoses for the force and abundance of liquid she is able to shoot out of them. him, too. they are both very...productive. it becomes this soup of fluids going everywhere like a sexual laser show, and ruining all his paperwork. single-celled organisms everywhere are reading this book and thinking - "nope, i'm going to stay away from that, thanks..."
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"i'm asexually reproducing right now, how you like that??"
so - yeah - that book - not recommended unless you are unlike me, and can get over the thoughts of "who the hell is going to clean up after that??" this is why porn doesn't work on me - i am too damn sensible and practical.
drink me, daddy is much more tasteful. within the lactation-porn realm - this isn't edith wharton. so, it involves a 22-year old new mother and her widowed stepfather. okay - phew, no incest here, and she has been dead for five years, so no intercourse on the coffin. and she is of age. so it shouldn't be icky, right? well... it is still icky, even if you are unrelated, to keep calling him daddy throughout. that's just a no in my book. that was inside your mother! it's not like borrowing a sweater. and come on - that is supposed to be food for your baby. won't that complicate your future breastfeeding, psychologically?
i wanted to look sexy for you, daddy. did i do okay?"
yes, sweetheart. you look so sexy. my baby girl is a woman now..
you smell so gorgeous, claire. like a real woman.
i'm every inch a real woman, daddy. but i've never been fucked by a real man..
blarg. blarg. blarg.
i mean, whatever. this book has way more intimacy in it than the other, and more of an attempt at characterization. there seem to be actual humans having relations here, not manga characters. and there is a sort of sweetness here - the characters might actually have feelings for each other. but seriously, you need to drop the "daddy" routine. and go feed your son. also: telling your stepdad, "jake loves you. i..i love you..." is a cheap ploy. jake is three months old. he doesn't love anything except your boobs, which you have been treating like a soup kitchen.seriously - he's starving. make your dad a sandwich or something.
i still don't get it, myself, as a sexy fun time, but at least i am now aware of some of the range of styles and emotional appeals within this subgenre. for science.
this one tells the story of mr. bud, a dog who is very set in his ways: when he eats, when he is taken for a walk, wanother great dog book from tommy!
this one tells the story of mr. bud, a dog who is very set in his ways: when he eats, when he is taken for a walk, when it is nap-time...
but then - OH NO - A NEW DOG MOVES IN!!
and this dog has his own opinions about how things are going to be.
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can they find a way to live together? and share? and find compatible activities in which to engage?
probably. this is a kid's book after all.
but awwww
i love zorro. he is the really grouchy-looking pug on the left. do you see how grouchy he is?? and he is bossy! and he hogs all the stuffed animals! i have no idea who he reminds me of, but it is someone very cute.
carter goodrich draws dog-expressions so well. (RISD grad - woot!) especially angry dog-expressions. the one of zorro chewing on the stuffed bunny is so funny, it cuts through any black mood i might be in. zorro!!!!
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if ever i have the space for a pet dog, i am going to get many pet dogs, so they can have adventure-time together and they can entertain me when i am blue.
when i am promised "a lesbian zombie novel," i kind of expect that the zombies are going to be lesbians, with all the emotional anHAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!
when i am promised "a lesbian zombie novel," i kind of expect that the zombies are going to be lesbians, with all the emotional and physical difficulties such a relationship would entail, and some "we're here, we're queer, we're gonna eat your children".lesbian werewolves were, after all, lesbian werewolves...
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but this is a novel, in fact, about zombies, in which there are some lesbian characters.so if you are planning on reading some hot girl-zombie on girl-zombie action, this is probably not the book for you. and it's not erotica, either, so you cheap thrills-seekers, go elsewhere. the sexy bits in this book frequently go awry, and are more likely to leave you laughing than revved up.
this is just a whizz-bang of a book. it is a fun zombie romp with characters that you would actually want to see in a zombie-filled situation: one has badass training in zombie-evasion from her film career, and one is just regular-people-tough and sweet and loyal and well-meaning, but isn't going to freak out if a zombie heads her way, thanks to video games.
good action sequences, good and charming characters, still pretty confused about the zombie mythology in this one, but no matter, because the pacing of the story is enough to hold the reader's attention, and it's not as though, were this a real occurrence, there would be simple and straightforward explanations about what the fuck was going on, so i am okay with a little zombie-origin-story vagueness.
definitely worth a read for its action sequences and humor. she should write more, please.
this book was a rollicking bit of occasionally dirty-minded fun.
what is it about, you ask? shit, i didn't expect to have to answer this one. okay. well - it is about a very self-confident man who lives in a castle of human skulls surrounded by a moat of crocoweilers, who is horrifically lonely, hundreds of years old, and seemingly invincible. it is also about gangs of geriatric mall-thugs, free pie, hippies, toasters, the university of phoenix,ratsecks and finding true love.
and also how annoying the moon is. which is my favorite part, and reinforces my notions about the moon and how i hate it so.
it is about more than this, and less, and is a fun strange journey through the psyche of a delightfully deranged author. like vonnegut, but with more erections. by which i mean statue erections, naturally.
...they'll erect a shrine to me, a giant statue right off Ellis Island. My statue will be punching the Statue of Liberty in the face for being such a weak and inferior statue. It will also be calling her a whore. That's right, my statue talks! People would gather at the base of my statue and dance and copulate and drink wine and spirits and chaos will rule and birds will fly backwards and that dude who hosts Wheel of Fortune will spontaneously combust on national television in front of thirty-five million horrified viewers and it'll be I who will save mankind!
yeah, but also penis-erections
On the plus side, it was my massive, veiny, throbbing erection that single-handedly kept Levi-Strauss in business during the Great Depression.
also, there are pictures! so it is like shel silverstein! with more poop-jokes!
...take your shit! Take your shit and admire it. Love it. Cradle it in your arms. For it is a piece of you. Take your shit. Take your shit out to dinner. Order the roast duck. Have a moderately-priced glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Tip the waiter generously. Take your shit to Niagara Falls. Stare at the wall of water in wonder, just you and your shit together on the railing as the waves crash on the rocks below. Go on the Maid of the Mist. Later, ride in the Skywheel. Propose marriage when you reach the top. Your shit will say yes because your shit loves you too. I command you to take your shit on a honeymoon to Punta Cana. Sip margaritas on the beach. Make love to your shit under the orange sunset. Fly home first class. Rent a loft together in a brownstone on the outskirts of the city; nothing too flashy, but enough for the two of you. Make Wednesday night movie night. Visit the in-laws once a month. Raise your kids agnostic. Retire to Boca Ratan.
see - exactly like shel silverstein.
i mean, it is silly, sure, but the fun kind of silly, not the eye-rolling kind.
extra points for use of the word "callipygous," which is one of my favorite-ever words.
okay, so remember when you were planning on spending your friday night being a total loser and writing a paper while everyone else was out having pre- okay, so remember when you were planning on spending your friday night being a total loser and writing a paper while everyone else was out having pre-halloween shenanigans? and then you got home and decided to take a moment to "decompress" from work before getting into schoolwork and you ended up reading this entire book, a wonderful gift, and laughing -HOWLING- into the empty apartment, frightening the cat (okay, not totally empty) and gasping for breath, amazed at how much hilarity poorly-made and thematically misguided cakes could cause? because these were not giggles. i was guffawing. shrieking. i have switched from second to first-person seamlessly. SEAMLESSLY. but seriously - pentagrams on hanukkah cakes? stars of david on cakes that say "merry christmas?" cakes that have the starship enterprise and storm troopers on them? (it is totally a holiday, shut up) reindeer with swastika horns? and it's not just the cakes themselves - i love her commentary - she can come to my house any day. i loved the crap out of cake wrecks when it came out, and this follow-up book is just as good. i am a little embarrassed at how funny i find this shit. and now i will go write a paper, i swear.
but what's a goodreads.com review without pictures?
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