Don't be such a square

This is one I read awhile back but hadn't gotten around to blogging about until now. I picked this up and really enjoyed it. I know that they made a movie of it recently, but I don't really have an interest in seeing it.

The basic plot is that on graduation day, Dennis Hooverman, during his high school graduation, tells the whole school that he's been in love with Beth Cooper. He also makes some accusations about some of the other members of the student body, including outing his best friend Rich. Even though Dennis is your typical "nerd" and Beth, of course, is a cheerleader, and the two of them have never hung out, they spend the rest of the night bopping around suburban Illinois together. Also, they're trying to avoid Beth's drugged-up army ex. Along the way Dennis realized that the Beth Cooper he's built up in his head isn't really real, and gets to know the actual girl in front of him.

Parts of this book were a little much for me, going just over the top. The drugged up ex and his army buddies and the super slutty friend of Beth's, Treecee, got on my nerves sometimes. Dennis and Rich get the crap kicked them so much yet don't go to the hospital. A car drives into and back out of a wall at a party.

One thing I really enjoyed was that I grew up where this book is set. Some of my cousins went to Harper Community College (Beth's probable choice) and I know my way around the streets they were careening down. I had a very, very clear picture of where this book took place.

Another thing I enjoyed was that Doyle starts off each chapter with some quote from popular culture revolving around teen drama. I didn't recognize all of them, but it made me smile to see Lloyd Dobler and Lorraine Baines quoted.

Some of the background characters were interesting. The drug dealer who deals exclusively in prescription drugs (Claritin-D, Adderall) was pretty much on the money for someone you'd actually meet in a suburban high school. Cammy, on of Beth's homegirls, was snarky and bitchy, so you know I loved her. My favorite though was the d.j. at the big party they all go to, Zooey Bananafish. Actually there was not too much to her character, but that name is such a shout-out to Salinger that I can't help but like her.

I enjoyed this book. The writing is easy and youthful, like a high-schooler is telling you the story. The ending isn't what you'd expect from a typical high school graduation piece, and it seems like Doyle plans on continuing the story.

Quotes:

"There's another Beth Cooper out there," she told him. "One just for you. The world is full of Beth Coopers." page 21

"She wore her party face, not unlike her real face, but with the hue and contrast dialed up...She still smelled like Beth Cooper, only more so." page 55

If love is worth the misery

A friend of mine lent me this book and I read it in little more than a day. Dead Until Dark is another vampire/human love story with a murder mystery. Sookie Stackhouse is our main human who can read people's minds, except for the handsome vampire Bill.

Reading this story I was amazed at the similarities to Twilight. I'm actually surprised Harris hasn't sued Meyer over the whole thing. I mean, we have characters who reads minds, Sookie and Edward, except they can't read the minds of the one they fall in love with, Bill and Bella. The vampires in Dead Until Dark "glamour" people into doing what they want while in Twilight they "dazzle" people. There is even another guy in love with the main gal who changes into some kind of dog, Sam and Jacob. Also, someone is trying to kill the girl. I'm pretty sure people have sued for less.

There are some more similarities, but the one big difference is that in this book there's a lot of sex.

Twilight aside, I really enjoyed this book. I've been working my way through 2666 and this was a nice lighter read. I thought that the mystery murderer element was well done; I wasn't able to tell who was going to be the bad guy ahead of time. I thought the lovey-dovey stuff was a little rushed, but apparently vampires don't have time to mess around when declaring their love.

I'm probably going to pick up the next one and may have to check out that HBO show, True Blood, which is based on this series.

IV

The first Klosterman book I read was Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, purely because Seth Cohen was reading it on the O.C.

IV starts off with mostly interview pieces of rock starts and other famous people. Some of it is a little dated, but all of it is interesting. The middle section is more social commentary and the end is a fiction piece. I enjoyed the middle section the most. The last part was really interesting though; he has since written a fiction book called Downtown Owl: A Novel. It'd be worth checking out at least.

I like Klosterman because I can related to the things he's writ ting about. Music, drinking, relationships, the perils of buying an outfit from the Gap, and more music. He writes one piece about going into a store and buying a complete outfit that a mannequin is wearing and how that changes the perception people have of him.

He talks about the difference between a nemesis and and archenemy and why it's important to have both. He writes about eating nothing but McDonalds' chicken mcnuggets for something like a week.


A quote from the first section:

"The dumbest guy in Radiohead is still smarter (by himself) than all three members of the Beastie Boys and two-fifths of the Strokes.”

And my favorite quote from the book:


"In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings and everybody cried for two weeks. And then Enron went bankrupt, and then the U.S. became a rogue state, and then The Simple Life premiered, and then gasoline became unaffordable, and then our Olympic basketball team lost to Puerto Rico, and then we reelected the same unqualified president we never really elected in the first place. Later, there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and the release of a horrible movie titled Crash.

Things, as they say, have been better."

I love this kind of thing

For this meme, you list a favorite book that starts with each letter of the alphabet. If you don't have a book for a letter (such as Z or X) than you can substitute a favorite book that simply has that letter in the title (ex. The Lost City of Z or Hot Six by Janet Evanovich). However, you can only do this a maximum of 3 times. (Z, X, and Q. But not Z, X, Q, and V.) Books can be of any genre from fiction to non-fiction to poetry to textbooks.



A: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


B: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky


C: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut


D: Dune by Frank Herbert


E: Extremely Loud and Increidibly Close by Jonathan Saffran Foer


F: Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott


G: The Giver by Lewis Lowry


H: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby


I: Island of theBlue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell


J: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo


K: Katherine by Anya Seton


L: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


M: Moon is Down by Stienbeck


N: Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger


O: Oh! Pioneers! by Willa Cather


P: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


Q: Queen of Spades and other Stories by Alexander Pushkin


R: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare


S: Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello


T: Tulips and Chimneys by e e cummings


U: Utopia by Thomas More


V: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides


W: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


X: The Sylnx by Tatyna Tolstaya


Y: Yertle the Turtle and other stories by Dr. Suess


Z: Zipporah: Wife of Moses a novel by Marek Halter

What is girl reading now?

I was over looking at my goodreads.com page and realized that I'm currently reading eight books. Jeesh even I think that is too many to be reading at once.


The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker:
I think this book is really, really interesting. However it is also really long and a little dense. I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but my dad talks about this Pinker guy all the time. And I find linguistics pretty interesting. That being said I have been "reading" this book since last year. I did actually just read one of the chapters about a month ago. I'm determined to finish it. Some day.

Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach
This is another book I started last year and another that my dad gave to me. It's a knights of the round table story that I cannot enjoy for the life of me. Some passages are pretty clever but I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to finish this, even though I only have like two chapters left. For some reason I own two copies of this book.

The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 byEric Hobsbawm
I got on a little history kick lately and am actually really enjoying this book. I haven't made it too far because I keep leaving it in weird places all over my apartment. I found it the other day in my cupboard with the plates.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 ed. Dave Eggers
I keep forgetting I'm reading this. I loved the list of hobo names.

McSweeny's Issue 18
This is my at work book for my lunch breaks since I finished IV by Closterman. I've just made it through the first piece which I liked so I hope the rest is as good.

A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin
Oooooh I like this book. I've been picking up a lot of stuff by Nin lately, even though this will be the first I've ever read. Hot stuff.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño
This was recommended to me by a couple of different people. This book is freaking huge. I'm only about 100 pages in, but I really, really am enjoying it so far. Of all the books I'm reading right now, this is the one I'm most excited to finish.

Katherine by Anya Seton
This is my book club book for the month. So far I think it's pretty good. A love story in old England with the knights and kings and horses and plagues and whatnot. Always a good time (except in Parzival). It has been awhile since I've picked up some historical fiction and this seems like a step up from Phillipa Gregory.

So I'm not sure that I'm going to finish all of these anytime soon. The last three for sure will be done soon - or at least this summer in the case of 2666.

Also, I'm looking around for a new bookshelf. Any ideas?

suicide...by tiny, tiny increments

High Fidelity has been sitting on my shelves for not too long. I picked it up and read it one Sunday.

I loved the movie; it's one of those I could watch over and over again. John Cusack helps a lot. But I really love talking about or hearing about people's connection with music. I also love making lists, so this book has a lot going for it.

Rob has just been dumped by Laura and the book chronicles his time trying to deal with this. He starts by listing the top five breakups he's ever had, and eventually searches each of these women out to try and find some answers. Laura is not on this list. Rob also runs a small record store which causes him to have some issues about his success in life. Music is a big part of Rob's life. Big part.

I love the idea of the top 5 lists that Rob and his two coworkers make all the time. They start out as lists dealing with music, but Rob has a hard time not thinking in top 5 lists. I especially love thinking about his top 5 breakup stories. Not all of them are what you would expect. They aren't all soul crushing, long-term relationship breakups. But they all had a huge impact on who he became as a person. I wonder what my top 5 would be.

In his angst about Laura leaving, Rob reorganizes his massive record collection. This is something I completely understand. I could spend days organizing my books - it's a kind of therapy.

This book is part love story and part coming of age tale, even though Rob is in his 30s. But I think that is getting more and more typical in our society - you don't quite know what you're doing with your life until later and later.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone. Pick it up.

Few quotes, sorry no page numbers

"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party." ~ how true do you think this is - I'm leaning towards agreeing completely.

"Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time."

"Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship." ~ This is another thing that is so true for a lot of people I know. All or nothing baby.

Books that Stick

From Booking Through Thursday
“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”


These are in no specific order - just as they came to me.

1. The Master and Margarita by Mikahil Bulgakov
2. Anna Karinina by Leo Tolstoy
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
4. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
5. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
6. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
7. Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
9. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
10. The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstien
11. 1984 by George Orwell
12. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
13. Extremely Loud and Incridebly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger

I now want to reread all of these.