people say she’s crazy…

Yesterday, I gave Emily hell about not posting for a while, and in the process realized that I, too, am a bad blogger. So for an update on why I haven’t, please see Em’s post, because I can say the exact same thing, just replace “Ashley’s wedding” with “Molly and Chris’ engagement party,” and we’ll call it a day.

TONIGHT

After inciting rage and jealousy in my pilates class over my upcoming trip to Canyon Ranch (speaking of which, HELLO BLOG, MEET WEEK WITH MOM AND A FEW HUNDRED HEALTH NUTS!), I came home with lofty plans of laundry and cleaning and showering. Instead I heated up a can of my new default dinner, Amy’s Vegetarian Chili (P.S. HELLO BLOG, WE EXPRESS OUR CONDOLENCES FOR THE LOSS OF YOUR COOKING PHASE, MAYBE ONE DAY IT WILL RISE FROM THE DEAD, THOUGH I DID MAKE BANANA BREAD ON SUNDAY SO THAT IS A START) and somehow located Four Weddings and a Funeral on Turner Classic Movies, where apparently you can cuss. Having never actually seen it, this was a great way to spend 8 PM - 11 PM, unless you are my laundry and/or hair and were expecting some attention.

BOOKS

But 11:00 isn’t so late! I could have gotten off the couch and made a go of it for an hour befor ebed, right? Heck no. Instead I checked my email, where I found a request from famed writer Johnathan Wilbur to be his friend on goodreads.com. I had not heard of goodreads.com an hour ago. Now I have three whole goodreads friends, and I have written the following book reviews. By “book reviews,” you must understand that I mean misplaced blog entries, which I quickly realized and vowed to copy and paste right here for your viewing pleasure. You may also wish to join goodreads.com in order to find out what your friends (like me, Johnathan, Tony and Briggs, my three thus-far friends) are reading or have read. Anyway, book reviews, sort of (oh, and there may be some spoilers):

The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffeneger

I started this book and then dumped my boyfriend. So then I put it down for 2 weeks before I picked it up again, because I was afraid it would be far too… lovey. And yeah, it kind of was, but it was still a good read, an easy February read like The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which I cracked out shortly after finishing The Time Traveler’s Wife.

It’s a good Chicago book, I guess. As a fake Chicagoan, I can only pretend to know so much, though, so I guess I can’t fairly make that assessment.

Uh, spoiler alert?

What struck me in particular about TTTW were the multiple, painful miscarriages Claire suffers. As a recent convert to relative adulthood and having even more recently surprised myself with a panic attack based on the thought, “Oh my God, what if I can’t have children?”, these scenes hit hard, fast, close and real. There are a lot of colors in this book, and nowhere are they as real as in these scenes. Though the future is made apparent midway through the miscarriages, they matter a great deal. With the explicit gimmick of ::poof! I’m off to 1973!:: having long worn off, the present is a painful place to stay, and Ms. Niffenwhatsit keeps you there. Snaps for that.

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank

I have been reading easy books of late. Sherri lent this to me, and it was over in a day or two. “Hunting and Fishing” is men, boys, &c. It is not clever, but I didn’t figure that out till it was made very explicit at the end of the book. Perhaps this is because I read this book far too late at night, and, just like what happens to my knitting when I try to do it too late at night, I fail.

The best part of this book is the chapter about the people who live below Jane’s aunt. It stands totally alone, and I am glad of that. That part is quite good.

The Namesake: A Novel, Jhumpa Lahiri
(for TvG)
Not as good as Interpreter of Maladies if you ask me, but The Namesake is a decent read. And that guy from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is starring in the movie (this I learned when I saw the Queen at the artsy theater). Did you see the SVU he was on? Daaamn.

Food and Loathing, Betsy Lerner

For some reason, a random ledge in the laundry room of my apartment building has become a book exchange. Usually, the books are Danielle Steele, sci-fi paperbacks and westerns. And then one day in January, I saw this hot pink Food and Loathing, complete with a mirror on its cover, like that fancy TIME magazine about me!

Anyway it was a half decent read about a tubby poet with low self-esteem, her suicide attempts and fleeting sexual exploits. Oh, and her parents, which is probably what makes it the best. Anyway, worth reading, if you read stuff like this about people and food, which I, obviously, do.

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell

I actually have no idea when I read this book. But I love Sarah Vowell and decidedly want to be her (or Liz Lemon, it’s a toss-up right now). Anyway, I also heard her read excerpts from this in February 2006, which made it even funnier.

And then this week’s This American Life featured a story about New Orleans by some correspondent who, though quite good, was sort of a poor woman’s S.V., which made me think of S.V., which is why I am typing this right now.

Newsflash: I should not write book reviews.

Adverbs: A Novel, Daniel Handler

Jenna once gave me the idea of buying books from Borders and then returning them within 31 days after having read them.

The problems with that practice in my life are not ethical; they are practical:

1) I read in two- to three-months fury spurts, just like how I knit, except the reading trend is unrelated to avoiding other things in my life. Said fury spurts cannot be fabricated or induced, they just happen. I forget this, however, with great frequency, and buy fury spurts’ worth of books sometimes without a fury spurt in sight.

2) I fold corners. If you know, you know.

3) Sometimes, at the end of a fury spurt, I get really ambitious and starting picking at the piles of New Yorkers all over my apartment. New Yorkers SUCK YOU IN and do not let you go until you are 13 pages into the article about the concrete industry in New York City and want to die and never read again. Behold: the end of the fury spurt.

4) Sometimes, to stave off the end of the fury spurt, I will try to “take a break,” from such heavy heavy reading by listening to podcasts while commuting. Also sometimes, this happens because I can’t always keep my eyes open on the bus, particularly when el Jeffo is on the bus and I need to pretend to not be there, or when it is very early in the morning AKA before 10 AM. This, ultimately, takes me away from the habit of the fury spurt and behold again: its end.

5) I am constantly overwhelmed by the volume of books in my apartment that I have not read or not finished. Sometimes this is so overwhelming that I stop reading.

Anyway, I bought Adverbs with the intention of running through it and returning it, but then I folded corners, slowed to a crawl, and realized a month had passed. That said, it was a good read: a little gimmicky but very earnest, if that is at all possible.

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear: I should not write book reviews.

The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, Peter Singer & James Mason

I am obsessed with this book. I am obsessed with you, and me, and P-Sing and J-Mas, and all the things we do to ourselves through food that we don’t know about. Okay, that is a lie, because P-Sing and J-Mas actually know it all, and the rest of us quietly rot from the inside. Amazing.

Anyway, please read this book–because then when you ask me why I’m eating funny vegetarian food for lunch (no, I’m not one), I won’t have to tell you why. And I won’t have to tell you all the icky stuff I know, because you will know it too! For serious.

Anyway, those are this evening’s book “reviews,” a random smattering of useless information about how I feel about said books. I would like once again to point out that an hour ago I did not know what goodreads.com was, and now I have doubled my goodreads pleasure by turning it all into a blog post. I have always been really good at not going to bed.

THAT IS ALL, ENJOY!