the book thief. markus zusak. (151)

i have to admit that when i saw the book thief in the ya section at kmart, last year, i was judgy and didn't think much of it.  i like books, but what kind of person steals them?  and why would i want to read about it?!?!   (yeah, i totally misjudged that title.)  however, when i saw it on my friend fabian's instagram, i decided to not dismiss it.  and then when i saw the trailer for the movie version and saw the girl stealing the book from the nazi burn pile, i decided i had to check it out!

to start, i have to say i appreciate death as the narrator.  having death as the storyteller allowed the reader even greater insight.  also it allowed for the bleak comments about dying to be clever versus shocking because they came straight from death's mouth. it also got me thinking why is death never revered as a god?  he is never the head god but a b-list one.  death is something that is inevitable so shouldn't we have an open dialogue with death?  especially since everyone believes in death, so why not party to me?  i want to be able to ask him for more time? maybe exchange our own time for some more of our loved ones?  as odd as it may seem i would find greater comfort praying to death versus god, death is certain, i am unsure if god even exists.

but back to the book thief, it was a wonderful story.  i absolutely adored liesel, rudy, hans, the mayor's wife, and max.  i loved how hans taught liesel to read by painting unknown words on the wall.  i loved how hans kept his promised and kept max as safe as he could.  and i admired hans for having a heart, for instinctually helping the old jewish man during the march, not seeing him as a jew but someone in need.  

i loved how rudy rebelled against the hitler youth and always tried to stick up for the little guy.  though i have to say rudy's blackface as jesse owens was inexcusable, having grown up with white idols as a person of colored i never tried to whiten my face to emulate what i saw on tv.  rudy's desire to paint himself black demonstrated that he did not see jesse owens as a hero but a black hero.  blackface is inherently racist regardless of how hard the author attempted to make it endearing.  

i loved how liesel went to read books with the mayor's wife.  i admired the mayor's wife for understanding that liesel's anger was due to the tension of the world and left her a book for her to  steal.  

i also loved max, his boxing hitler (with a realistic ending) and the stories he wrote for liesel.  i will say that his story of him as a bird was better then the tree one.  

the characters were great and memorable.  i of course, cried at the end. how sad i was to lose all the characters that i loved.  i was in tears as liesel discovered all of the ones she loved were dead.  and how happy i was when we all discovered that max survived and that liesel went onto life a long life.

it was a great story and how brave liesel was.  her desire to read and thirst for knowledge was inspiring.  i admired how she wanted to test herself with reading at school.  how brave and lucky she was for not being killed by the nazis each time she intervened with the marching of the jewish prisoners.  and how beautiful it was when she and max discovered each others sufferings and helped each other overcome grief.  i loved how when he was sick she brought him a small gift, things to tell him when he woke up.  how sweet and endearing.

i loved the whimsy this book was filled with though i have to admit that some of the death's interjection did get a tad distracting.  i also have to admit that all of the foreshadowing that occurred via death did take away from the story.  i understand that the foreshadowing was to lessen the blow that would be dealt later but i think even the ya readers could have expected the impact.  no offense but a story about nazi germany, someone and quite possibly everyone will die.  also it made me too paranoid about the mayor's wife.  i kept waiting for her to snap but she never did.

regardless of all that, it was a very lovely read and i look forward to seeing the film.

harriet the spy. louise fitzhugh (151)

i never read harriet the spy as a kid.  i promise i read as a kid but now i am starting to realize i read kid fluff ie the babysisters' club and goosebumps and sadly never the classics.  even more odd, i was also around for the resurgence of harriet the spy when the movie was made in 96 with michelle trachtenburg.  i remember my sister had a copy and i contemplated reading it but i never did.

however, once again thanks to mindy kaling instagram:

i decided to buckle down and read it.

i hate to admit this but i have mixed feelings about harriet the spy.  i enjoyed following harriet on her spy adventures and i loved reading her musing on life but  i felt like she had some serious character flaws.  i found myself frustrated with her behavior at times so didn't love her as much as i thought i was going to.  come to think of it, i loved her for creativity and thoughts but hated how she treated others, so in a way my feelings must be similar to sport's feelings about harriet.  i did love her just wish she was a better person/friend at times.  

to be honest, being an adult and readinf this, i was a bit harsher on harriet than the child me would have been.  the child me would have excited about her spying (i at times found it a bit creepy).  but something adult me and child me would have agreed on is her musings in her spy book were quite thought provoking!  we both would have loved her little bursts of wisdom:  

harriet's musings:

"what is too old to have fun?"

"i'm glad i'm not perfect--i'd be bored to death." 

(i second this!)

" . . . in washington they've already got a little tube with a spoonful of something in it that will blow up the whole world? maybe the whole universe.  what would happen?  would we fly through the air? in spade you just float around.  i would be lonely."

"life is a great mystery. is everybody a different person when they are with someone else?"

(as an adult i have come to realize that we do wear different hats and assume different personas in life.)

"either we each have a brain and they look alike or we each have a special brain that looks like the inside of each of our heads."

"i wonder if when you dream about somebody they dream about you."  

(this last one is something i always thought about as a kid especially when i would dream of my crushes!  at let's be honest, i still wonder about this as an adult!)

i absolutely adored harriet for cleverness but was disappointed by her anger.  child me would have understood her anger but adult me expected better behavior.  i was sadden by her need for revenge.  i was absolutely appalled by the gossip she printed in her column (and outraged that the school allowed it).  my disappointment came from that fact that harriet was such a great character that to see her with poor behavior it broke my heart a bit.  

i understand that harriet's poor behavior was became her life seemed to be crumbling apart.  but i felt ole golly raised her to be a better person.  and i am not completely heartless, i did think that harriet did get a bum wrap when her friends turned on her because of the spy book.   i didn't think harriet was a bad person for writing what she wrote about her friends.  i mean we all pass judgement on everyone, only it was just unfortunate that she got caught being too honest.  but thankfully she learned her lesson about little white lies because kids should be honest but polite honest which means sometimes lying to spare someone's feelings.  

i have to add, i understood why harriet's life fell apart when ole golly left her because mine would have fell apart if ole golly left me!  i loved ole golly with her literary quotes and words of wisdom.  in fact, i would have preferred a book about ole golly growing up instead of harriet.  (this should seriously be a prequel).  

i really wish i would have read "harriet the spy" as a child because child me would have received some  great life lessons via ole golly (adult me sure did!):

". . . there is as many ways to live as there are people on the earth and [you] shouldn't go round with binders but you should see every way [you] can.  then [you'll] know what way [you] want to live and not just life like [your] family."

". . . find out everything you can cause life is hard enough even if you know a lot."

"people who love their work love life."

when harriet was crying about her leaving:  "tears won't bring me back. remember that:  tears never bring anything back.  life is a struggle and a good spy gets in there and fights."

though i love math, i found this clever: "math did for them that only want to count everything,  it's them that wants to know what they're counting that matter."

and from her letter:

"little lies that make people feel better see not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it, or telling a sick person they look better when they don't, or someone with a hideous new had that its lovely."

"but to yourself you must always tell the truth."

"gone is gone. i never miss anything or anyone because it all becomes a lovely memory.  i guard my memories and love them but i don't get in them and lie down."

ole golly!  what a great nanny!!!

this was an adorable book with little pearls of wisdom.  i guess in the end, i did love harriet.  i loved her like you would a best friend, you love them regardless even with their flaws!  

i have to add, i want to start doing literary costumes for halloween and as i read, i realized that harriet's spy outfit would be cute as a costume!  you might see it next year for halloween!

love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish. david rakoff (150)

since i already read books based on celebrities emma roberts, and mindy kaling's instagram.  i decided to throw another celebrity into the mix, b.j. novak.

(quick digression:  i didn't think much of him on the office looks-wise until he got the glasses, than swoon!!)

b.j. novak posted this:  

so i decided to check out david rakoff's love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish.  based on novak's pic and on the  fact that the cover was really cool.

quick addition, i have to give a shout out to my friend fabian for being in the know and beating novak to posting this.  i even liked fabian's photo but didn't think about checking it out until novak's post.  damn my pop culture media obeying brain!!!

here is fabian's post:  

since i based picking this book up based on b.j. novak's good looks and an interesting cover, i had no idea what this book was about.  i had never read anything by rakoff prior to this nor have i listened to this american life which he contributed to.  i also had no idea that rakoff passed away in august of 2012 due to cancer, and this book was published posthumously.  i had expected a normal size book and was shocked by how thin it was when i picked it up from the library.  but most surprising of all, was that the entire book is written in verse!  yes, verse!  its like dr. seuss for adults! and rakoff was a genius because he made it work with some impressive rhymes!

for example:

news-aperçus 

adolescence-phosphorescence

eyesore-mysore 

bon vivant-confidant

cantilever-fever 

(i could go on and on)

one of my favorite couplets was about the conservative blanche tilly who attacked clifford's gay comics:

"how i wish you would stop up that bile-spewing spigot,

you use when you speak, you rebarbative bigot."  

cruel and articulate!

but as my SAT scores will show you, vocabulary is not my forte, so the dictionary was out to help me with some of the words that rakoff used.

paresis:  slight or partial paralysis

frond:  large leaf

malfeasance:  wrong doing or misconduct 

aperçu:  a brief survey or sketch

bon vivant:  a person having cultivated, refined, and sociable tastes especially with respect to food and drink

(i really need to start a word-a-day program for myself.)

though love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish is written in verse which has a lightheaded feel to it, rakoff's characters stories are quite heavy.  the novel opens with the story of a baby, margaret, born into pitiful conditions, as the midwife saw it, red haired and without a father (he was trampled by horses) and a mother without a family.  and the midwife was right, margaret ends up being raped by her mother's second husband.  luckily, she runs away to california and finds a better life.

margaret's tragic story was a lot to digest especially being the opening story.  but as the reader is introduced to other characters in the novel, suffering is just a fact of life.  mother, lost the glamour life of her youth when her father gambled it away.  clifford, an artist, gay and found freedom in san francisco, and sadly contracted and died from AIDS.  hannah, suffered from dementia and a cruel daughter-in-law.  and josh, who lost is family and ended up finding a picture that connects the all characters in the end, a six degrees of seperation. 

of all the stories in this novel, helen and nathan were the highlights for me.  

helen was clifford's cousin.  her mother was had quite the sharp tongue and would tease helen growing up, and the sarcasm, unfortunately went over helen's head.  but that ended up being the least of helen's problems though it was probably the source of her problems.  

helen's tale is a story told before, probably in amc's mad men (i haven't watched it), and sort of in billy wilder's the apartment (i actually imaged the office set up from this movie as i read).  boss has an affair with secretary.  helen's affair went on for about 5 years (i can't imagine that!) and ended with an abortion.  due to this, she got drunk and caused a scene at the holiday office party but fortunately was not fired (the affairs were quite commonplace so nothing worth being fired over.) but what i loved about helen was that though this occurred to her, she didn't play victim.  she still went to the holiday party every year, even wore her cocktail to work so to not have to go back and forth between home.  she knew people talked and in the end gave a big fuck you to her office tormentor.

nathan, i admired as well for giving his life tormentors a big fuck you too and on their wedding day.  he was caught in a love triangle between his best friend josh and josh's girlfriend, susan, and ended up the odd man when the other two married.  susan, being the bitch that she was, something her father also recognized, made sure nathan attended and gave a speech.  i really enjoyed nathan's speech, it was based on the fable about the tortoise that helped the scorpion get across the river.  in the fable, the scorpion ends up killing the tortoise and himself because it is his nature to stab.  it seemed an odd choice at first but he amazingly put it on content. 

he explained:

so what can we learn from their watery ends?

is there some lesson on how to be friends?

i think what it means is that central to living

a life that is good is a life that's forgiving.

we're creatures of contact, regardless of whether,

to kiss or to wound, we must still come together,

like in annie hall, we endure twists, bad torsions,

for food we don't like, in such tiny portions!

but, like hating a food but still asking for more,

it bears standing dry but so lonely on shore.

so we make ourselves open, while knowing full well

it's essentially saying, 'please come pierce my shell.'

love is does leave us open to pain but in the end it is worth it than being lonely.  (this coming from an old maid).  

however, nathan's speech did not end on this pleasant note but in the end, susan deserved the harsh speech.  and i love how in the end, susan's dad corrected nathan, letting him know that turtles swim not tortoises.

nathan's speech also demonstrated rakoff's cleverness.  another favorite passage of mine was clifford's mother talking about being trapped in the valley (san fernando valley for all you non-LA-ers).

"malibu's breezy.  hollywood's shady

but burbank? he might as well've brought us to hades!

i could yip when i think of the crime it,

was moving me out here was 'because of the climate."

the fan in her hand the scene's sole, languid motion,

"i once heard it said that there was an ocean

not terribly distrant from where we sit here,

but, i supoose that was just a bum steer.

escaping me now are the details specific,

but could it be named something like 'The Pacific'?"

i was in the valley when i read it.  and it was a hot day in october!  so the perfect setting for that passage.  plus i plan on stealing mother's little joke about the pacific!  

also aren't the illustrations great?  they were done by seth.  the ending illustration was especially cute:

an enjoyable read, i now plan on reading the rest of rakoff's works.

ps i saw on bj novak's instagram that the la times review was written all in verse.  here is a link.