What a bunch of charmers! But, you know, I'm a sucker for sparkly train wrecks and beholding the antics of bros in wolves' clothing with indignation. What a bunch of charmers! But, you know, I'm a sucker for sparkly train wrecks and beholding the antics of bros in wolves' clothing with indignation. So, that's a hobby. Hobbies are good, right? I've never huffed paint, but I suspect reading this was close enough.
Oh, to be a booth at the Rainbow! Come to think of it, that probably wouldn't be hygienic. Good thing alcohol is a disinfectant! ...more
**spoiler alert** Jeez, dude, John Green much? Oh, look, it's a manic pixie dream girl, and she makes our (anti-)hero feel so alive. And then, ooh, he**spoiler alert** Jeez, dude, John Green much? Oh, look, it's a manic pixie dream girl, and she makes our (anti-)hero feel so alive. And then, ooh, here comes a sadistic version of Robin Williams a la Dead Poets Society to make our hero Think about Art, Life, and Love. You can rest assured that Coming of Age Ensues and Life Lessons are Learned.
Are we there yet?
Maybe I'm being harsh. I did stick with it, after all. This is because the beginning showed great glimmers of promise and offered some laugh-out-loud moments, especially when the narrator discloses what possessed him to major in art in the first place. Also, I found the ending strangely poignant, which may or may not have been due to my mental state whilst in the throes of a mild bout of food poisoning. But it's hard to root for someone who essentially commits sexual assault on his unconscious professor (who, by the way, is the jackass to end all jackasses, which of course is only because he is an Artistic Genius). Predictably, the characters that are actually semi-endurable—those whose every waking moment isn't a performative attention bid dripping with barbed irony and terminal (self-perceived) cleverness—are written off as witless dullards, the poor dears.
At least if this were John Green, Ills would have died in a car crash at the end. Note to self: Jeez dude, cranky thirty-something much? And maybe that’s exactly the problem. I probably read this book about fifteen years too late. ...more
Every so often I like to pretend I'm an open-minded person. So, one day, when I am innocently shelving this book in the course of my library duties, aEvery so often I like to pretend I'm an open-minded person. So, one day, when I am innocently shelving this book in the course of my library duties, and for some reason it catches my eye, I check it out and think to myself, why not? I almost never read this kind of thing, so why not try something that goes against my grain? After all, I reason, as a writer, shouldn't I read as widely and voraciously as possible, including stuff I wouldn't normally?
And hey, I like mental mashed potatoes, fluffy and overladen with butter, as much as the next guy. Who doesn't need the occasional (or frequent!) reprieve from, well, thinking? But man, oh man. This was insipid, even as insipid fare goes. The protagonist, Adrienne, is a nonentity who evidently looks good swathed in silk and sipping champagne. There is endless and deeply irritating talk about teeth (Adrienne's father is a dentist), and Adrienne's email correspondence—and face-to-face interactions, and hell, her whole relationship—with her father will have you wanting to toss your cookies. Of course she has the requisite dead mother. And of course someone else important is dying. Human Tragedy. Where would we be without it? Certainly not on a Nantucket beach, looking gorgeous in silks and sipping champagne.
That said, I saw this through to the bitter end, which is unusual for me, especially when a book makes me grind my teeth (sorry, Dr. Don) as much as this one did. There must be a reason for this. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for food porn. Maybe because the character of Fiona was alright. Maybe it's because instant mashed potatoes don't come close to homemade (represented in this genre, I guess, by Maeve Binchy), but they're still mashed potatoes, so suck it up, pile on the butter, and clean your plate.
I liked this book better when it was called Kitchen Confidential.
Or, in the words of someone whose words I wish were mine and am thus appropriating, I liked this book better when it was called Kitchen Confidential.
Or, in the words of someone whose words I wish were mine and am thus appropriating, upon glancing at the book jacket: "One of the great bad boy chefs. An infamous user of hair gel."
Everything about this book was teeth-grindingly predictable, from the mixture of bravado and self-deprecation, to the misogyny and substance abuse, to the war, mafia porn, and Apocalypse Now references.
This, of course, didn't come as a total surprise. So what possessed me to fly in the face of my better judgment?
This beautiful pean to butter:
Turns out that was the high point. I could have saved myself a few hundred pages.
If you've been a real, live, contemporary harem girl, and you can write worth a damn, then clearly you have a story to tell. Jillian Lauren certainly If you've been a real, live, contemporary harem girl, and you can write worth a damn, then clearly you have a story to tell. Jillian Lauren certainly can write worth a damn, which makes for an entertaining and rather sickening glance into a mental landscape that is frequently unflattering, vacillating wildly between a preciously narcissistic self-concept and good ol' low self-esteem. In Lauren's world, other women are a series of assets and liabilities to be assessed as "the competition". It's enough to make you want to bust out the Bikini Kill. To be fair, she is also quite intent on documenting the physical flaws of the gentlemen who appear in this book too, so at least it was equal-opportunity grossness (particularly cringe-inducing is when she observes—unironically, as best I can tell—that a boyfriend is in need of a "de-geeking makeover"). Also, the WWPSD (What Would Patti Smith Do?) gimmick got annoying, but at least she seems to have the self-awareness to realize she really has no effing business putting herself in the same league as Patti Smith. To be fair, it’s entirely possible that the narrative voice of this memoir was intended to represent the author at nineteen, and who doesn’t want to disown more or less everything she said and did at nineteen?
All grousing aside, this was an almost compulsively-readable glimpse into a life I suspect I can safely assert I will never be a part of, and I found at least one part to be deeply moving.
For me, Some Girls helped to salve the Michelle Tea lacuna of recent years. You could say that if Michelle Tea is sugar, Some Girls is Stevia.
This book also represents for me the beauty of working at the library: I probably wouldn't have come across it otherwise, but I'm glad I did, because I'd place it in that important category of books that remind us that reading, after all, is supposed to be fun. ...more
The problem with criticizing memoirs is that it always feels like a personal attack on their authors, particularly when the author is your age, you boThe problem with criticizing memoirs is that it always feels like a personal attack on their authors, particularly when the author is your age, you both have dead fathers, and maybe just maybe there’s a little green-eyed monster sitting on your shoulder hissing “Hey! I can write at least as well as this! Where are MY book deal, freelance column with Bon Appetit, travel writing assignments, and True Love?� Which is of course unseemly.
Maybe if I were a regular follower of the blog, I’d get it, but�
My problem with this book is best illustrated thusly: “I promised to tell you about the young Frenchman, and it is kind of a good story, so I won’t make you wait.� In response to which I can only feel like the author and I are on a bus, or in the post office, or some other uncomfortably crowded public place, and she, donning a tea cozy with a cloying lavender and pale pink floral pattern on her head, is leaning in uncomfortably close, in flagrant disregard of my space bubble, and carrying on as if we were long lost sisters. In response to which I can only suppress the urge to say, “GAH! Get thee behind me woman! I don’t even know you. We are not having a heart-to-heart over chamomile, and moreover, we NEVER will.�
An unfair criticism of something that is, after all, a MEMOIR? Probably. But lesson learned: if it’s a personal food narrative and doesn’t contain some reference to bones or meat in the title, then the reading of such is probably a doomed endeavor.
Nevertheless, I made it to the end, so something kept me coming back, and it’s not just the drinking of the haterade. Despite that it commits many cardinal sins (lionizing France—I mean, do we really need another memoir that does that?; frequent use of the second-person; the incorporation of a high school essay), it has its moments, and was a nice, comforting book to read during moments of insomnia and before going to bed, like warm milk (with maybe too much sugar added) for the soul. ...more
GUPTGed on page 58. I was sufficiently charmed by the author's contribution to It's So You to seek this out from the library. I'll probably still try GUPTGed on page 58. I was sufficiently charmed by the author's contribution to It's So You to seek this out from the library. I'll probably still try to read one of her novels, but man, this wasn't the book for me. The bombastic declarations on the book jacket didn't set a good precedent: "Wilson says what everyone thinks but *no one* has the audacity to say about modern celebrity culture." Really? Isn't the whole point of celebrity culture building it up to tear it down? And to exactly whom is Barbara Streisand a sacred cow? When in the last several decades didn't Michael Jackson have a giant bull's-eye painted on his butt? Who would have dreamed there was something rotten at the core of Las Vegas AND Los Angeles? It also doesn't help that the jacket mentions her "fans" at least twice, which seems an odd replication of the very power relationships this book purportedly sets out to skewer. I mean, I realize she probably didn't write the jacket, but she did write what comes between the book flaps, and honestly, I have plenty of bile to pickle in without borrowing someone else's. This just came across as a snotty, run-on-sentence-laden (and if I'm criticizing it, you know it's a problem, because, as is painfully obvious from my reviews on this site, I adore a good run-on sentence, even if it's not very good), not terribly original screed. If you're going to roast marshmallows, don't pretend it's wild boar on those skewers, dig?
One final note: it's fascinating how quickly a book of this nature becomes dated. This book was published in 2000, before Jacko's passing, before the whole Siegfried and Roy debacle, before et cetera...Oh yeah, and I'm sorry, but the collages are dumb: we don't need to see them repeated flipping (har) every other page. ...more
I'm not sure what to rate this, since I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's pretty hard to put down, which is kind of mystifying, because it's prettyI'm not sure what to rate this, since I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's pretty hard to put down, which is kind of mystifying, because it's pretty awful. I'm at chapter fifteen and unlikely to finish it, as my recreational reading time is about to vanish into the ether.
The book doesn't hurt for entertainment value: it's fun, funny in parts, and full of heart. There are points where it reads like a kinder, jauntier Bukowski. But, my God, the characters! There's not a one that isn't profoundly irritating (which I guess means that they're well-characterized, since I feel like my skin is crawling in response to real people). I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Sociopathy does not equal fun, lighthearted rebellion, people. There are enough people in real life who are as self-serving and acquisitive as those they purportedly rail against but frame their dishonest, manipulative behavior (that usually ends up sticking it to innocent people and not The Man) under the auspices of railing against the system. I don’t need to read about fictional ones (not charming at any age, but particularly not here, since by all indications these characters are old enough to know better). And, gah, if Clyde calls Walter "Sunshine" one more time, this book is seriously going out the window, even if it does belong to the library.
Compounding matters is the fact that Walter (a follower's follower) narrates the story in such a fashion that every other sentence is a breathless epiphany to the effect of, "Before I met the Charming Sociopaths With Hearts of Gold, my life was as dry and forlorn as the parched shards of over-toasted toast, but now every day is ooey-gooey and delectably delicious, like maple syrup domineering the catacombs of a Belgian waffle," and "Looking back on the changeability of my changing life, I see now that what happened then is that I was changeably changing, and it's all because of these Changeable Changelings Who Taught Me How To Truly Live."
That gets old fast.
To bring it on home! I don't regret picking this up, and I might even make it all the way through. For all its faults, it's an undeniably fast, fun read (or train wreck). I think that at some point I'll end up revisiting this author--I suspect that I might have just chosen the wrong book (of his many) by way of an introduction. ...more
I'm not sure what to rate this, since I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's pretty hard to put down, which is kind of mystifying, because it's prettyI'm not sure what to rate this, since I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's pretty hard to put down, which is kind of mystifying, because it's pretty awful. I'm at chapter fifteen and unlikely to finish it, as my recreational reading time is about to vanish into the ether.
The book doesn't hurt for entertainment value: it's fun, funny in parts, and full of heart. There are points where it reads like a kinder, jauntier Bukowski. But, my God, the characters! There's not a one that isn't profoundly irritating (which I guess means that they're well-characterized, since I feel like my skin is crawling in response to real people). I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Sociopathy does not equal fun, lighthearted rebellion, people. There are enough people in real life who are as self-serving and acquisitive as those they purportedly rail against but frame their dishonest, manipulative behavior (that usually ends up sticking it to innocent people and not The Man) under the auspices of railing against the system. I don’t need to read about fictional ones (not charming at any age, but particularly not here, since by all indications these characters are old enough to know better). And, gah, if Clyde calls Walter "Sunshine" one more time, this book is seriously going out the window, even if it does belong to the library.
Compounding matters is the fact that Walter (a follower's follower) narrates the story in such a fashion that every other sentence is a breathless epiphany to the effect of, "Before I met the Charming Sociopaths With Hearts of Gold, my life was as dry and forlorn as the parched shards of over-toasted toast, but now every day is ooey-gooey and delectably delicious, like maple syrup domineering the catacombs of a Belgian waffle," and "Looking back on the changeability of my changing life, I see now that what happened then is that I was changeably changing, and it's all because of these Changeable Changelings Who Taught Me How To Truly Live."
That gets old fast.
To bring it on home! I don't regret picking this up, and I might even make it all the way through. For all its faults, it's an undeniably fast, fun read (or train wreck). I think that at some point I'll end up revisiting this author--I suspect that I might have just chosen the wrong book (of his many) by way of an introduction. ...more
Entertaining, but mostly for the wrong reasons, including but not limited to: the narrative voice (a little too preciously enamored of its own clevernEntertaining, but mostly for the wrong reasons, including but not limited to: the narrative voice (a little too preciously enamored of its own cleverness); the heavy influence of Kitchen Confidential, especially the author's attempt to cultivate the burnt-marshmallow-with-a-heart-of-gold persona (charred and crispy on the outside, squishy and tender on the inside--Bourdain does it better); his Humbert Humbert-reminiscent ruminations on young girls blossoming into women; his keen insights into women (direct quotes: "Sophie giggles the giggle all women giggle when they're in love;" "I consoled her by saying that that's what happens when women swim in the unmarried, bitter, and over-the-age-of-thirty pool. But I digress."); the fact that dude, within spitting distance of forty at the time he wrote this, uses expressions like "hottie" and "you the man"; the frequency with which dialogue scenes end with the other participant laughing (or giggling, as the case may be) appreciatively at some not-particularly-clever bon mot uttered by our hero; the endless references to nubile twenty-five-year-old blondes, strippers, miniskirts, body parts and Girls Gone Wild, to the point where one begins to wonder if the point is that yes, he's straight, he's really, really straight; and the frequency with which our narrator "chuckles" rather than "says".
All in all, a delightful little bonbon for a hater like me, as there was so very much to hate on in one little morsel. ...more
A fast read full of fun, easy, affordable projects (at least they seem to be--my forays into interior decorating tend to be of the armchair variety), A fast read full of fun, easy, affordable projects (at least they seem to be--my forays into interior decorating tend to be of the armchair variety), many of which could be made to suit whatever aesthetic you might prefer. The tone of voice started to grate, though. While tongue and cheek remain well-acquainted throughout, just when I'd be sold that this book has the proper sense of humor about itself, there'd be a gem about Goths vs. Normals (i.e. The Normals Aren't Goths Because They're Afraid To Be Different).
Really, Voltaire?
I mean, I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside, too, but maybe some people just feel mauve inside.
"'My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,' says Witch Baby in a dream. 'Everyone does,' Angel Juan says. 'My mother says th"'My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,' says Witch Baby in a dream. 'Everyone does,' Angel Juan says. 'My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.'"
This is leaps and bounds beyond Weetzie Bat in terms of plot and characterization and, like its predecessor, reads like a delectable poem written in spun sugar. Witch Baby is an interesting, complex--if not (to me) especially endearing--character.
The book gets a little heavy-handed with its "facing the pain" message toward the end, but it's still a joy to read. ...more
I tried to stick this one out, but I finally cried "Uncle" at page 106.
The story seemed intriguing (Fossils? Goths? Beowulf? Do tell!) and the musicaI tried to stick this one out, but I finally cried "Uncle" at page 106.
The story seemed intriguing (Fossils? Goths? Beowulf? Do tell!) and the musicality of the language and the strong imagery provided enough of an incentive to bear with it, to a point.
So what broke me?
The characters, man. There's only so much self-pity you can swim in till you drown. In Chance's case, it's arguably somewhat justified, but it doesn't necessarily make for compelling reading. And Dancy wasn't so bad, but seriously, Deacon? Really, Sadie? And you too, Elise! I know the world is a vampire, but maybe eat a little more iron and buck up.
Also, while I thought the prose was strong, in the end I couldn't deal with the author's idiosyncratic predilection for making word stew: mushing two words together to make a new word (i.e. bruisedark). This wasn't occasional; it was incessant. The first few times it was interesting; after that it was distracting and irritating. I realize the point was probably to create a stream-of-consciousness effect, but the effect it had on me was to keep pulling me out of the story.
Also, the pacing: I eat faster than this plot advances. And I'm always the last one at the table. By a lot. This might have been easier to bear with, barring the above conditions, and I bore with it for awhile because it seemed like the payoff might be worth it.
And maybe it is. But, in light of the above, I wasn't up to finding out. ...more
Memoir, while at its best a captivating genre, always poses the question of why the reader should care.
In this case it's because Bechdel presents a beMemoir, while at its best a captivating genre, always poses the question of why the reader should care.
In this case it's because Bechdel presents a beautifully written, engaging narrative of an unusual family.
The book doesn't completely evade the inherent pitfalls of memoir. The central relationship--that between Bechdel and her closeted gay father, whom she loses shortly after coming out as a lesbian--is interesting. And there are certainly aspects of her childhood that are out-of-the-ordinary and intriguing, namely assisting her father with the family business--he's the funeral director the Fun Home of the title. But ultimately this is yet another tale of an imperfect childhood and at times I did find myself wondering what made this particular example worthy of a book. And while Bechdel steers fairly clear of one of memoir's other chief pitfalls: competing in the Suffering Olympics, there were parts where childhood woes did begin to seem a bit like literary currency. Then again, why shouldn't they be?
Also, while her constant allusion to literary works as metaphor for her family drama is a skillfully executed technique to illustrate our need for myth as a way to understand our lives, and the way we construct personal mythologies in order to understand ourselves and our experiences, it can at times feel heavy-handed and distracting. Not to mention that if you haven't read the works in question, despite her explanations, these metaphors could be somewhat lost in translation. And if your lesbian feminism is a little rusty, you might also struggle a bit in parts. And let's face it--while it may be human nature to assume otherwise about our own lives, not many stand up to a treatment of themselves as literary/mythological archetypes. Frankly this one doesn't.
All of this notwithstanding, the writing is a treat, and this book succeeds as a well-told, sincere, intensely personal account of complicated family relationships and the ways that they can shape us....more
At this tale's beginning, our hero, surveying himself from a distance of some years, warns us of his past self, "I doubt that you will like hiOh, man.
At this tale's beginning, our hero, surveying himself from a distance of some years, warns us of his past self, "I doubt that you will like him very much: that is of no consequence, I do not like him very much myself. He is--well, you will see what he is."
What he is is an insufferable (rabidly heterosexual) Oscar Wilde wannabe. These opening lines lead me to believe that our hero's character will probably follow an arc, and after experiencing Life, Love, and Distant Lands, he will acquire great reserves of Depth and Complexity.
But in the meantime, are we really supposed to sit through such epigrams as "It is a curious thing with whores that one pays a premium for inexperience and lack of ability--surely the only profession in which this is the case. But I digress."
But he digresses?!? Capital idea, old sport. I digressed after page 45. ...more
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