Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

1 star - I really hated it.

You know that coworker, the one that is shallow, small-minded, and loves nothing more than to gossip about anyone and everyone? Picking up this book always made me feel like I had been cornered by said coworker, subsequently being forced to listen to their judgmental, bitter prattle until I could find an escape. Enjoy this sampling of the hollow thoughts of the characters from this novel:

But she was seventeen now and not actually dumb. She knew that you could love somebody more than anything and still not love the person all that much, if you were busy with other things.

In Washington people literally talk about how many feet away from John Kerry's house their own house is. The neighborhoods are all so blah, the only thing that turns people on is proximity to power. It's a total fetish culture. People get this kind of orgasmic shiver when they tell you they sat next to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference or got invited to Grover Norquist's breakfast.

Back to the coworker analogy, no one is paying me to tolerate these pretentious characters or their incessant judging of every personal choice made by others. The final straw for me was the vulgarity (for which I actually have a decent tolerance level). The author describes in detail characters sampling the various odors of their flatulence, cheesy phone sex dialogue, and repeated objectification of female genitalia. This was DNF'd at 60% (~345 pages) in a gleeful execution of literary *freedom*. I have better things to read.

-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: Use well thy freedom.

First Sentence: The news about Walter Berglund wasn’t picked up locally—he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now—but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times.