Plain Truth

Hm, it appears that I'm slacking on my reading, but I'm not.  I'm just slacking on my blogging.  I'm going to have to post my rants in rapid fire style to catch up here.  

Plain Truth is the first Jodi Picoult book that I read instead of listened to.  I was hoping that my enjoyment of her writing wasn't just because I was hearing it instead of reading it, and that her stories would entertain me from the page as well as while being read.  Pleasantly, it did.  This is one of those books I don't want to say too much about, because what I really like about reading her books is that it's hard to guess the ending.  Contrary to my usual nature, I don't try to.  I really enjoy her writing and I want to know the actual ride she wants to take me on, so I don't try to spoil it by obsessing about the ending and wondering what's going to happen.  Instead, I let this author unfold the narrative as she sees fit, and appreciate that there's not a lot of ingratiating dialogue and ridiculous love stories messing it up.  

Of course, this particular book has a little bit of ingratiating dialogue and a ridiculous love story or two... but nobody's perfect.

Anyway, a big-time defense lawyer needs a break from the horror of getting dirty perverse criminals off the hook and a meaningless romantic relationship that is going nowhere.  She leaves the hustle and bustle of the city to seek solitude in the middle of Amish country (with her aunt, a former Plain person), and predictably a horrible crime is committed and she is forced to defend a distant relative for the murder of her own newborn child.  Chaos ensues, the book gets done.  It's a good one... go ahead and read it.  Thanks for the lend, mom!

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Well, I thought that it might be time to finally read some Agatha Christie.  It seemed wrong that I hadn't, and yet every time the word "mystery" comes up on Jeopardy! (yes, this game show will be a recurring theme on this blog), I shout out "Hercule Poirot!" and somehow get the answer right.  (That's not impressive merely in this instance... the other day the Final Jeopardy category popped up.  It was 20th Century Science.  Before seeing the answer, I yelled, "The speed of light!"  And guess what?  Speed of light.  Not only am I brilliant, I'm psychic.  I'm a brilliant psychic.  Hard to be me, huh?  Yeah, well, I can live with myself.)

Anyway, this is Hercule Poirot's first case.  Works great for me since I have a major aversion to reading books (and seeing movies and TV episodes) out of order.  So this was pretty fun.  I admit to enjoying it.  I also admit to not figuring out the culprit until it was revealed to me.  So that was pretty fun.  But there's not much to say about it- basic whodunit, brilliant detective, bumbling apprentice, red herrings galore... it was pretty fun.  I'll probably read lots more Agatha Christie books.  But of course I can't say anything else about it without ruining the book.

So there you go.  That's all I got.  What... you expected some anecdote that has nothing to do whatsoever with the book?  Wow.  You must be disappointed.  Well, I can't be brilliant, genius, and psychic all the time.  Guess we'll all have to deal. 

Elson Grammar School Reader, Book Four

I finished this book a long time ago, but I didn't post it because, well, life doesn't have a spare five minutes in it.  So anyway, I read this book.  I know, it looks like the other reader I read, but it's not.  It's for smarter kids than the last one.  Again, it's really, really old, like 1909.

Okay, I admit it. I didn't read the whole thing.  This book is for eighth grade, and is a lot harder than the other reader I read.  Instead of cute little stories about Alice in Wonderland, this one is "A study in verse."  Blah.  I believe we've already discussed my feelings about verse.  So, I paged through this one pretty darn fast.  I did read quite a few things in it, such as the fancy historical dissertations, etc... we all know the Gettysburg Address, but it does really speak pretty powerfully when you sit down and read it all in one shot.

So, the thing that stuck out the most from this book was "The Bells" by Edgar Allen Poe.  Not because this was brilliant poetry, but because I remember it from high school.  I remember some crazy teacher playing an audio recording of it, thinking that a bunch of high schoolers would appreciate some person repeating the world "bells" twelve hundred times in a row.  Well, I can tell you, we didn't.  And having read the poem, I actually enjoyed it.  I really heard all the different types of bells.  However, I only heard one voice.  It was the voice on the recording from high school... sort of a cross between Darth Vader and Freddy Krueger.  This strange, disturbing, psychopathic voice intoning over and over, "the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, the ringing and the tinging of the bells..."  What we impressionistic kids heard was, "the stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stabbing of your heart, the stabbing and the twisting of your heart..." because seriously!  This voice was AWFUL!  I had dreams about this scary bell-ringer that month.  

The funny thing is, he was a great voice on the funeral bells.  But when we're talking about the cheery sleigh bells, jingle, jingle, let's all go to grandma's house... "the digging and the twisting of your heart, the reaping and the feasting of your soul, your soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul!!!"  ...we were torn between wondering what "tintinnabulation" meant and fearing for our lives.  Most of us just figured "tintinnabulation" was another word for "brutal slaying."  So we feared for our lives.

So I was relieved to find out from this book that the poem was not psychopathic, but rather, merely Poe was.  How refreshing.  

Some other clever titles about pants

I am lax in my book updates.  So I'm doing two at once.  Mostly because there really isn't much to say about these two books except to make fun of them, but then to make fun of them is to make fun of me for reading them, so I can't do that.  Yet some strange brown-nosing impulse drive from my school teacher-pleasing days makes me feel that I have to write a book report, so... guess I better.  

Speaking of book reports, wasn't that just the most awesome time of the year?  There's nothing better than watching all those poor high school rejects stand up in front of the room and create an even bigger black hole for their social lives to be sucked into.  I mean, either you do a bad job on this silly report and get a bad grade, or you do a good job, thus verifying your status as a complete and total loser.  

Wait, maybe that was just me.  Never mind.  Go back and read that entire last paragraph in the FIRST PERSON instead, thus applying all those concepts to me, because that's what I was.  I couldn't stand to get a bad grade, so I would inevitably write a good report, which of course made everyone realize I cared about my grades, so they would make fun of me for putting in any kind of effort.  That is, until my senior year of high school, where I enjoyed a great deal of freedom in all of my classes- and I conveniently hated all my teachers so I took advantage of it.  I wrote and said exactly what I felt like saying, and deliberately chose books and topics that would allow me to say and do wonderfully shocking things, such as:

-force Nate Payne to wear a giant foam dragon mask and chase Justin Baum around the room with a whip, thus landing Justin in a giant puddle of simulated raw sewage, where he had to remain until I was done with my report- it was over ten minutes long

-write sarcastic poems about love which proclaimed in all caps "SO IT BASICALLY SUCKS"- hey, poetic license allows variations in all forms of punctuation

-Actually, pretty much answer "it sucks" to pretty much any question asked me for all nine months

-skip class, eat lunch in forbidden rooms, break a hole in the wall to create a forbidden room, leave school early (and, waving jovially, rollerblade past the poor saps still in the classrooms staring out the window), park in the teachers' parking lot, skip more class, break GPA and credit-earning records anyway, and silence any mean cheerleader, jock, or general meanie who might be making fun of me with a directed stare 

-cheat my way through physics because I was the uglier of two girls in the class (the teacher was fixated on the pretty one)... okay, that was junior year

-end my book report by showing a beautifully rendered movie clip of the movie "based on" the book, then say, "Actually, that blows- in the book he struck out, crapped his pants, and then shot himself."  And then walk casually to my seat.  

Senior year was fun.

But not for these poor girls.  Senior year for them was a mess, but as the only thing that matters is SUMMERS WITH THE PANTS, it was breezed over in a sentence, mentioned in a graduation photo montage, and we are off to yet another eventful summer orchestrated by the magic of what by now must be some seriously smelly jeans.  Remember the no-washing rule?  I mean, it's really starting to create a visual for me.  The author constantly mentions all the inscriptions, puffy paints, embroideries, and stickers that are all over the pants to document the summer fun the girls are chronicling, but all that does is make me remember the mud, blood, and other bodily fluids that are collecting on these jeans.  Did I mention they are jeans?  Denim.  Do you know how many tiny little ridges there are for things to stick in denim?  Did you know that I once had a grass stain on one of my jeans' knees that lasted through three years and about a million washings, and only came out when we finally cut the legs off to create some shorts?  Yeah.  And there's a LOT of stuff that happens in these pants that warrant some scrubbing, seriously.  Shudder.

(Oh, by the way, did you notice that transition in the two paragraphs above?  Yeah, I was talking about my senior year and then went right into the book, since it's about their senior year- that's the sort of "smooth transition" that got my essays read aloud in class my senior year.  Seriously.  I don't know if those teachers were really that hard up for good material, or if they were just trying to suck up to me (they had reasons), but come on.  How could I not be sarcastic at stuff like that?  Really?  A transition?  Brilliant!  Bring me my Pulitzer!)

Again, back to the pants.  In the third book, the third summer of the by now disgustingly filthy pants, all four girls get jobs, one goes to be a camp counselor, three stay in town, two hate their jobs, all hate their parents, one takes an art class- nakie painting, shocker!, one agonizes over her ex-boyfriend, three get a boyfriend, one tries to win an art scholarship, one hates her sister, one's sister nearly dies, one severely neglects her boyfriend, one fights off a younger admirer, one's grandmother makes her life miserable, one's mother makes her life miserable, one's mother has a baby, one basically delivers her friend's mother's baby... these people are way too close.  If any of you had friends whose lives you were this involved with, well, I apologize for this, but FREAKS!  What is wrong with these girls that they're so interdependent that they basically consider themselves interchangeable for one another?  And what is wrong with these girls' mothers that they just go along with it?  Gee, my husband and my daughter are missing, here's a random 18-year-old girl, hey, why don't you come on in here?  No, I'm totally fine with it!  Can you see the head?  Oh, just ignore my vagina, how's that baby looking?  See any hair?  No, on the baby, silly.  

Oy.  This is getting scary.  And yes, of course, the pants are in the delivery room, conveniently worn by the kid who happened to be walking by and peeked in for a quick baby delivery.  Shudder.  Add that to the list of body fluids on the pants.

So, then, yeah... everybody meets at the beach for their going-to-college-life-will-never-be-the-same-again party, great weekend, love you, love you, love you, best friends forever, blah, blah, blah.

Fast forward a year to the beginning of the summer after college.  Oh, the horror, oh, the sadness, they can't all be in town for the official sending-of-the-pants ceremony.  But they've been sending them all year because they were in college anyway, so the absentee is forgiven.  The absentee is hiding because she gained the obligatory Freshman Fifteen and doesn't want her friends to see.  Sounds like these girls have a true understanding of friendship, eh?  Deliver my mom's kid, but I can't let you see my tubby belly.  Hm.  So anyway, two of the girls stay at their school to take summer classes, one goes on an archaeological dig in Turkey, one goes to theater camp, one spends way too much time naked.  Two get a boyfriend, two more of them lose their virginity, one has a pregnancy scare (thank Heaven there's at least SOMETHING realistic in one of these books), one has a love affair with a dirt floor- I'm not making that up, those words are actually in the book, and these pants just keep getting NASTIER!  One accidentally gets a lead role in a Shakespeare play- that sounds nice, one continues to hide from her friends, one realizes that her college friend just isn't the same as the rest of her pants-buddies- shocker, one breaks up with her boyfriend, one hides from her boyfriend, one forgets her boyfriend all together, one's boyfriend is married, one doesn't really like her boyfriend but figures it's about time they have sex anyway.  This is... lovely.  One's sister dates another's ex.  One's ex shows up.  One's ex disappears.  And shows back up.  And disappears again.  And just for good measure, shows back up again and disappears again.  

TIME FOR SPOILERS: if you're at all still interested in reading this, well, here's the end.  So don't read any further.  If, like me, you are staring at this book series in the same way that one would stare at, say, Jaws 15, the most unbelievably ridiculous and unnecessary sequel ever, well, here's the end.  (I swear, the first book had charm.)

And at last, the unthinkable happens- the pants, they are lost!  And not just lost, lost in Greece!  That seems about right.  So the girl with relatives in Greece jumps on a plane to find them.  That seems about right.  And the three friends show up at the airport to "surprise" and accompany her.  That seems about right.  Four sets of parents who let their daughters deliver their own children will naturally support a teenage couplafew thousand dollar mission across the world for a pair of pants.  Yep.  Seems about right.  And off they go, in search of their precious... putrid... pants.  

Luckily, the author was smart enough not to let the pants be found.  How else would she end it?  So the girls are sitting on the shore lamenting the loss of the pants.  It's the end of the pants.  "Maybe this is the end of us..." they sob.  

Oh, come ON!!!  Are you kidding me?!  Tell me, where on earth do these girls come from?  Are teenagers today so shallow that these are believable characters?  We've forever lost our gross, dirty, four-seasons out of style, thrift shop pants, so we should just give up on our entire lives of friendship?  Friendship that prompts us to stick our hands between our friend's mother's legs, stay up all night to watch each other cry, drive all night to see each other in plays, and spend thousands of dollars so that we can all go together to chase a $5 pair of PANTS?  Wait, maybe the friendship hinge on the pants!  Or maybe the lunacy did, because just as you are about to completely give up on humanity, the girls realize that it wasn't just the pants.  They love each other.  

Whew.  THAT was close.  And here I thought they might never speak again.  What a tragedy that would be.  

So they stare into the sea of blue, contemplating the blue of eternity, and realize that eternity's blue is that of a well-worn pair of pants.  Pants equals love.

I swear, that's the last line in the book.

Okay.  Now I've spent a lot of time bashing this book, and I think I'm done.  (If you read this far... you poor soul.  You know by now that I never say anything worthwhile!)  But I'm not quite done... my favorite British/American lost in translation synonym is the fact that "pants" in England means "underwear."  So... pretty much the whole set of books is really freakin' hilaaaaarious now.  Pants equals love.  You betcha.   

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Okay, okay, I warned you I was going to read (well, listen to) all four of these books.  So let's nutshell it and get it over with.

This is number two in the series.  Hey, we're halfway there!  Anyway.  So this is summer #2 of the traveling pants, and all the girls expect the pants to work the same magic they did before.  In fact, they hopefully and brazenly dub them the "love pants," each counting on scoring some loooooooove this summer.

So.  Two stay home, two leave town, one goes undercover to visit her long-lost grandmother, one's grandfather dies, one goes off to some film making camp for artsy freaks, one's mom starts dating, three get jobs, three have disastrous encounters with boys, one becomes part of the cool crowd, one regains her pretty (shocking), three have a nervous breakdown, one's mother ruins her life, three ruin their mother's lives (I suspect the fourth missed out on this thrill because her mother was already dead), two lose their boyfriends, one has multiple midnight encounters with THE BOY OF HER DREAMS (note the use of "boy" instead of "man" because at this point the author doesn't want to commit any of these male characters to the girls for an eternity just yet- she's still got a little bit of sense), two break boys' hearts, one's heart gets broken by a boy, three can't stand themselves, one learns to love herself, all wear the pants, all cry, none find love.  

But we'll always be friends, friends forever, oh, and it's happily ever after once again.  Sigh.  Warm fuzzies.

Hey, it made the walks go faster.

Sister Carrie

"Theodore Dreiser's first and perhaps greatest novel, Sister Carrie appeared in 1900, was met with outraged disapproval, and immediately withdrawn as too shocking and sordid for polite readers." 

This is from the book jacket.  I pulled this book from my pile-that-mom-brought, thinking, "At last!  At last!  I will enjoy a book for once!  And not only will I enjoy it, it is a great work of literature!  Sordid, shocking, and ultimately the answer to a question on Jeopardy!"   (Getting Jeopardy questions/answers right is, of course, my ultimate goal with all this reading.  Obscure facts come out of NOWHERE and impress Andy when I gleefully shout them aloud.)

Alas.  Sigh.  Foiled again.  Let me tell you how this book would have been good:  See, you have this girl who leaves a small Midwestern town to seek her fortune in Chicago.  On the train some dandy meets her and tries to take up with her.  But she resists a little bit, and moves in with her sister and brother-in-law as planned.  She tries to find work but hates the factory job she finds.  The dandy from the train catches up with her and offers her some money for clothes and a place to live.  She moves in with him and tolerates him even though she wants to get married.  He keeps putting her off.  She meets one of his friends who is married but she doesn't know it.  His friend falls in love with her.  She gets a job as an actress.  Her friend leaves his wife and begs her to come away with him.  She agrees to but finds out he's married.  She has a big fight with both the dandy and the friend.  The friend steals a bunch of cash and tricks her into leaving town with him.  Now stranded in New York, Carrie has no choice but to be friends with the friend, who fake marries her.  She starts to make money as an actress.  He loses his job and keeps sponging off of her.  She becomes the most successful actress in the whole wide world.  She leaves the friend, who eventually dies homeless and useless on the streets.  The dandy finds her in New York but she ignores him.  She lives happily ever after, but realizes no matter how much money she has- a lot- she will never be truly happy.  The end.  

And why, you ask, did I recap the entire book?  Well, because that's IT!  That's all there is!  This is 399 pages of about, what, 15, maybe 20 events, one page each, and the other 379 pages are these ridiculous people THINKING about these ridiculous events.  And what do we get in the end?  Well, nothing really good ever happened, money doesn't bring you happiness.  REALLY?  Wow, pro-FOUND.  I am overjoyed to learn that!  

I mean, it might have been different if we had liked anybody in the book.  But the friend is a philandering snake, the dandy is a lazy weasel, and Carrie herself is shallow and silly.  At one point the book says, "Carrie was not dull by any means."  Well, if she's not "dull," how did two men manage to fool her into thinking she was married, and why was it that she couldn't take some of her hard-earned money back to her family in Chicago that was struggling to put food on the table for their children?  Sweet.  

Oh, and the scandal!  This is a shocking and sordid book, huh?  Well, I guess it must have been for the times... but I still can't see how cohabitation with absolutely no mention of, well, even LOVE, let alone anything sordid or dirty, is really that sordid.  But I guess I'm just silly and naive in my own way... if I had read this book when I was a kid, I would have said to myself, "Well, they were just roommates, right?  I mean, they didn't get married, and it's not like they were having sex.  The book would have said if they were having sex."  I might have wondered why when there was a fight they mentioned someone sleeping on the couch... but since other than the couch incident there was never even a mention of sleeping, let alone sex, I guess the whole scandal part just sort of flew over my head. 

Speaking of scandalous, my favorite part was when two cops were talking and apparently had something filthy to say, because this is how it was printed:

"That --- ------ ------ -------- hit me in the neck," said one of the officers.  "I gave him a good crack for it." * * *  "I know that big guy called us a --- ---- --- -------," said the first.  "I'll get him yet for that."

My innocent ears are burning.  Scandalous!  

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Okay.  So I read it.  Well, actually, I listened to it.  I told you I read everything.  So what if this is a teeny pop culture chick lit novel?  So what if it was filled with girls who worry about fashion, schoolgirl crushes, and their parents embarrassing them?  So what if the most meaningful thing that happens in this entire book is some girl being discovered skinny dipping by a hot guy?  I don't care.  Judge me all you want.  I told you.  I read for entertainment.  This may not have been meaningful or life-changing, but hey, it wasn't boring.  I quite nearly enjoyed it.  All right, I did enjoy it.  So?  I watch Steel Magnolias too!  I also do crossword puzzles, word searches, use crayons in coloring books, use color-coordinated markers and pens in my notebooks, put puzzles together, have a teddy bear in my bedroom, and shelves full of toys.  Oh, and I sing nonsense songs to my dog, skip for no reason at any given time, and, my favorite, whenever I'm pushing a shopping cart in the parking lot, I run as fast as I can and then hop on the back so I can go on some freakish daredevil ride through the parked cars- scaring vehicle owners and awakening jealousy in all the children whose parents are keeping a restrictive hand on their shoulders.  So I like to have fun!  So what?  Back off!  Entertain me!

So there's not much to say about this book.  Sometimes you read stuff for no good reason other than to find out what it says.  This is one of those books.  It was fun, and now I know all about the magic of the traveling pants.  So, four girls find these great jeans at a thrift shop and they magically fit all four of them.  They decide to each wear them for a week or two and then send them off to the next friend on the list, documenting all the while the magic that the pants brought to them.  Oh, they're supposed to document ON the pants.  So they write the best thing that happened to them while wearing the pants ON the pants.  Find this annoying?  I do.  Oh, and they're never supposed to wash them.  Find this gross?  I do.  The first thing I thought when I read the pants "rules" was, gross... somebody's going to have a little too much fun in these pants... and guess what?  I was right.  Teenage girls, mad hormones, ew.  I would have washed them.  Actually, I would have washed them after the girl sat down in the mud.  Or after the guy's bloody nose splattered on them.  I guess that makes me a bad friend.  Sigh.

So, one girl goes to soccer camp in Mexico, one girl goes to spend the summer with her father, one girl goes to Greece to spend the summer with her grandparents, and one is stuck at home working in a drugstore.  One girl makes a movie, one finds she has a new family, two fall in love, one loses her virginity, one has way too many experiences with naked (not the same one who loses her virginity, by the way), one makes a friend (who dies, thanks for the cheer), one runs away, and all have some marvelous life-changing experience while wearing the pants.  Beautiful!  The whole world put into perspective.  You're 16 and your life is complete because You Are Changed.  Ahhh.  So satisfying.  Truly filled with teen angst and somehow it's all happily ever after by the end.  It's just like watching a John Hughes movie.  In fact, I think I'll go check out Sixteen Candles or something just to bring back those warm fuzzies.  

No, I think I'll go to bed instead... because my falling-asleep music tonight is, in fact, the sequel to this amazing piece of literature!

Oh, yeah, there's a sequel.  Brace yourselves, people, there's FOUR of these books, and they're all queued up!!

Now, why did I write this ridiculous blog about this ridiculous book?  To prove my point.  Sometimes you read stuff for no good reason other than to find out what it says.  You just did.  

Now stop judging me.