One Fifth Avenue

I can’t believe it. I’m going to have to do it. I’m going to have to classify yet ANOTHER kind of chick lit. This is getting ridiculous. But I can’t escape it… there’s just no way out of it… here’s Type Eleven, into which category this book very snugly settles:

Type 11: Sex In The City. There is not much to say about this kind of book/movie/tv show/tv network/horrible, horrible horrible piece of literature. This is the kind of thing that any self-respecting woman will not admit to reading. (So if any woman ever admits to reading/watching/liking this stuff, be warned: she is more than likely just as shallow as all the characters in this book/movie/horror show.) I, however, have no self-respect, so I will admit to reading this… sigh… book. Ish. Thing. I will not, of course, admit to liking it. Hated it. However, as outlined earlier, I read everything. So it is no reflection on my character. But for the occasional boy who might happen upon this blog, I’m going to tell you the truth about this particular category. If you meet a girl who admits to “just looooving” the E! network, anything written by Candace Bushnell, or the mall- any mall, mind you- then run. Run like the wind, Bullseye. She will spend $50,000 on a wedding and divorce you in six months when she doesn’t receive a new pair of shoes every day, every hour, on the hour. And not that Payless junk, either. You’re going to have to cough up designer, baby.

Izzy, Willy-Nilly

Cynthia Voigt has always been one of my favorite authors, and this book is one of my favorites. Voigt wrote books for young adults before young adults were really an identified genre. “Young adult” in the literary world basically means “teenager,” which, if you think about it, is one of the biggest misnomers in the history of the world. Teenagers? Adults? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA… but I guess it would be bad form to have a library section named “stupid punks who make our insurance rates go up,” so “Young Adult” it is.

Anyway, these YA books back in the 80s were a varied bunch. Basically any book that had teenagers in it fell into this crazy genre. That meant everything from “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” to “Flowers in the Attic.” Oh, my. And I repeat, oh, my. I remember one of my friends reading FITA when we were in junior high and telling me how she could handle it until she realized that the brother and sister in that book were “the same age as Erik and Jozi!!” And YIKES, that was enough to turn her off. (I’m a little appalled that she needed to relate that tripe to real life in order to be turned off by it, but I guess we all have different boundaries.)

So anyway, it’s a little ironic that she related FITA to my life when it’s really Izzy that ended up being a little more applicable. I mean, of course none of us knew that way back when we were reading these YA books. And if I may be inappropriate for a minute, I think it’s slightly (but only slightly, of course) better that a drunk driver ended up impacting Erik and I’s life rather than dirty mattress incest. Um, call me crazy. I believe I’m digressing.

So Izzy goes to a party with a jerky guy who gets drunk and runs her into a tree on the way home. She loses her leg as a result and he gets off scot-free. (Don’t they all?) By the way, this all happens in the first chapter; I’m not spoiling anything. The rest of the book is about how she copes with her loss and her re-entering of society. It’s not a brilliant literary venture or anything, but I have to say that Cynthia Voigt does an amazing job of getting inside the head of a teenager. That’s why I love her writing: she follows their inner workings so astutely that no matter how tortured their thoughts are, it is a joy to read them. And of course Izzy’s thoughts are tortured, as are most of the other kids she writes about, but who cares? Empathy is a gift and it’s very rewarding to feel it through these pages. Highly recommended.

Deception

Oh, I’m sorry. This book was just so boring that I don’t even really have anything to say about it. It was about deception… everybody in the book was acting like they were someone they weren’t, and of course the bad guy was the good guy all along. Sigh. That’s really all I got for ya. It was an ok time killer, but it was so lame I don’t even have the heart to make fun of it.

I do hope that those of you who read this blog do so out of mere boredom and not truly expecting anything of substance. I would probably feel guilty for disappointing you… but surely if you’re actually reading this you know me well enough by this time to expect to be let down. If not… well, consider yourself informed.

One of Those Malibu Nights

Chick Book, Type Ten. What? Don’t know Type Ten? That’s right, you don’t, I just added it! I can’t believe I forgot this classic type of chick book. So here’s Type Ten, or you can go read about it and the rest of the code here.

Type Ten: The Thomas Crown Affair. There’s not much to say about this one except that it’s another one of those “I fooled you!” chick types. Most of the world sees this book/movie and thinks, “Hey, that looks good!” Its advertising is actually geared toward the male persuasion. It appears to have all the good guy parts- action, crime, cops, token hot chick. So guys go see it expecting to see a James Bond type flick, only to discover- zoinks! The hot chick isn’t really a token. Unfortunately, the whole story revolves around her, and this little romp in chickland ends with requited love. Awww. Sorry guys, but your date is happy!

So anyway, just because there’s so much to say about it- just a little bit about this book. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the library, so I forgot a couple things I had learned in my previous library visits. Important things, like which authors to avoid. So I’m wandering through the A’s and I realize that there’s a number of books by this author- Elizabeth Adler- that I haven’t yet read. Wow, I think, she must be really popular and all these books were always off the shelf when I was here the other times. So I pick up the first one I hadn’t yet read.

When I got it home, it took me about 5 pages to remember why I don’t read books by this author. Anybody who creates a main character named Precious Rafferty (and does it with a straight face) is probably going to bore me to death.

Nevertheless, this book was so absolutely horrible, I had to give it a go. Less for the story and more for the grim fascination of the ridiculous grammar, I read on to the bitter end. And it was bitter. Oh, don’t worry, the guy got the girl, of course- this is Type Ten, after all, but it was pure torture to wade my way through the myriad of grammatical and punctuation errors the whole way through. These weren’t those artsy-fartsy errors where they mess up on purpose for effect or narrative color, either. This manuscript just forgot to go to the proofreader.

Some impressive points to consider before heading over to pick up this book:

- I counted 12 grammatical errors in the first 5-page chapter alone.

- That’s not including the use of the word “kinda” on page 3.

- After 27 instances of starting a sentence with a preposition, I stopped counting. (I was on page 27.)

- This book contains a security guard named Lev Orenstein. Nice. (Precious Rafferty was in another book- one that I did not bother to finish because there were not nearly as many amusing mistakes in it.)

- Lest you think I’m making it up, this is a direct quote: “Unmade-up and with her long dark hair all tumbled Mac thought she’d never looked more lovely.” Seven-year-olds can punctuate that sentence. Or this one: “Silk of course.” Oh, wait. A seven-year-old would have a hard time punctuating those, as neither one is a real sentence.

- This one may be grammatically correct, but it’s no less ridiculous: “What could a girl do when her love life was sabotaged by her own Chihuahua?” Ay-yi-yi.

- Oh, nice moment: a watch found on the wrist of a dead body was still ticking. Wow. In this age of quartz, that’s quite a stimulating image.

- Perrin sighs about how terrible his life is: “First my wife disappears. Then my girlfriend.” Poor, poor, pitiful Perrin.

- Another awesome quote: “Shut up, you interfering Mexican slut.” What? As opposed to an ambivalent Mexican slut? An enabling one? A lazy one? What is the most offending kind of Mexican slut, anyway? Seriously, some of these people who author 40 books should have stopped at 39.

- There is a dog named Dog Dear… he is referred to as Dearie.

- Upon the bad guy driving his car off the bridge into the river: “It seemed an appropriate ending for such an evil man.” Well. You sure told ‘em.

- Believe it or not, the first paragraph includes the phrase, “It was just one of those Malibu nights.” Even more unbelievably, the last two lines of the book are: “It was just one of those Malibu nights. But this is where we came in.” You got to admire a book that ends with both a major cliché AND a grammatical error.

So, kudos to Ms. Adler. She has managed to do something that only one other author has ever done: turn me off of her writings forever. I officially boycott her until the end of my days. And I strongly suggest you do the same.

Night Train

It will be hard to talk about this book. So I’ll just talk like this book. That should give a good idea of what non-readers of this one are missing.

I am a read. When I read, that’s what I am, and I know to read makes me a read. No need for qualifiers when read is what we are. Got that? Good. That’s enough, right? You read me? Now we’ll talk about the narrating voice, which is a police.

(By the way, now I’m the narrating voice.)

Read this. I’ll give it to you to read. Maybe after reading you’ll understand. Maybe not. Probably you’ll think I’m a hack and don’t belong a police. Especially since I was set up to be such a typical police, me with my weird masculine name and checkered past and troubled childhood. But I’m the best police, and I’ve got nothing but awesome on me. So I got this case, the one that’s going to change me. Everybody gets this case, so it’s my turn. Maybe I’m just a hack police. I don’t know. I’ll solve this case. It’ll change me. Then I’ll lie about it. I don’t want anybody else to be changed. That’s just me.

Not you either. I’m not telling you. You read all this crap, then you’ll wonder, and you’ll never be changed. Except you’ll be 150 pages older. And I did that to you.

And I only used punctuation half the time. That was fun.

(I’m not the narrating voice anymore.)

So, confused? So was I. And I’m now 150 pages older, and I still don’t know whodunit. But I do know any cop book about a female police detective named Mike is a cliché waiting to happen, and I should have known better.

This Year's Model

Chick book, Type Three.

Even more type three than usual, but what do you expect? It was written by a former supermodel. I can hardly wait to read those books by Pamela Anderson next week...

Get The Code.

Running With Scissors

I’m in a bad mood because my Sunday was just ruined by an innumerable amount of factors. So I decided now would be a good time to blog about this book, because, well, it’s crap. And since I’m in a bad mood, I can really be out there about how I feel about it. Which is, it’s crap. Absolute trash. I have never “read” (listened to) such a waste of literary space. How are these people getting published? How? Why? WHY??!!

I listened to this book knowing that it was a true autobiography of some random author, and no matter how obscure the person, I enjoy reading other people’s stories. So let me just say this. If one word of this book is true, this Mr. Burroughs is one of the most depraved lunatics I’ve ever been in contact with. He was born by depraved lunatics and passed around to be raised by multiple depraved lunatics who encouraged his depraved lunatic lifestyle. This proves my long-held theory: idiots breed idiots. No good can come from stupidity procreating. They should be stopped in their perverse little tracks, and humanity should require licensure for reproducing.

Along with being a very sick freak (I’m so mad today I’m losing my ability to come up with any more creative adjectives, so I’m just going to be getting meaner instead of more clever), this author is also a very bad writer. Very bad. I spent the whole book wondering if there was something wrong with my CD ripper. It jumped from scene to scene and decade to decade seemingly in the middle of paragraphs. I spent the first half of the book thinking that I just wasn’t intellectual enough to appreciate the art form of non-chronological storytelling. Then when I heard “epilogue” at 3:41 of a 10:07 track (track number 31 of 45), I decided that this depraved lunatic was also an idiot. Awesome. I suppose it was a little too much for me to expect this goon who couldn’t figure out which orifice was designed for what to understand that epilogues go at the END of the book, and generally the easiest way to get from point A to point C was by way of B. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the flashback. But reinventing the alphabet just to make some artsy point isn’t really my thing.

So if you want to read this, go ahead. But it stunk. Terribly. And it’s ridiculously wrong. No dismembered babies or anything… just your every day run of the mill lack of any moral subjectivity whatsoever. You have been warned.

And just because I’m in a bad mood: Just so you know, if you ever tell me that you read this book (after reading this blog), I find you also sick and disgusting. There’s something wrong with you weirdos who seek out this crap. You should wash your mouths (and eyes and ears and probably other parts) out with soap.

Now everybody go away and leave me alone. I’m still in a bad mood.