re jane. patricia park. (301)

i picked up re jane after seeing it in a post on book riot.  a retelling of jane eyre with a half-korean, half-white/american protagonist!  i was in!

oh and if you read my previous post, and wondering why i was am okay with this retelling and not the last novel i read, was because park did take all of her storylines directly from bronte, instead, she took the overall structure, but wrote her own book.

before i start, if you ever read my post on jane eyre, you know that i loved it, but i did have issue with rochester being the only person ever talked with so i felt bad that she had no other experiences other than him.  though i mean their love was true, i still always wondered you know.  i didn't have this issue with re jane though i was shocked at times by how sheltered jane was but while during bronte's time all women were that sheltered, park made sure her jane was aware that she was.

just like jane eyre, re jane, started off with an orphan named jane that lived with family members that treated her poorly.  jane hoping to escape her uncle, sang, went to to work as au pair for a family.  the rochester of this work was ed farley, the father of the adopted girl, jane was in charge of.  and just like jane eyre there was a wife, but while rochester's was locked away in the attic, this wife, beth, was not crazy (well not in the same way as rochester's first wife) that worked in the attic.  i have to say the fact that ed and beth were married, made me very wary of jane falling in love with ed.  whereas i gushed over rochester and jane's budding romance in jane eyre, i was really uncomfortable about ed and jane's, though it did make me hungry for heroes.  even though park set up beth as an insensitive and overbearing wife and mother, i still was upset with jane for trying to be a homewrecker.  i was grateful that park stopped ed and jane from having sex (the tip doesn't count for me), because i would not have been able to go on with the book.  as you know from other books, i don't like cheaters.  anyway, that is really where the parallels between the two books stop.

i will add that park did include nods to jane eyre, having jane address the reader as a reader and jane's first job was to be at a company named lowood.  i thought these little details were cute.

back to the story, the climax of the novel, is when jane and ed decide to finally have sex, as i mentioned before it didn't happen.  on the night that they were to meet and try it again, jane decided to go to korea to see her grandfather on his deathbed.  the day she decided to leave . . . 9/11.  so as i read, i couldn't really gage the era, i figured it was now.  however, after a mention of the twin towers and the backstreets boys and of course this, i knew.  i have to add, i feel like a lot of books have been alluding to this, which is fine, it must be mentioned especially if a work is set in new york.  however, i feel like it shouldn't be used as a device to cause a drastic change, i think jane could have left on any day and the novel would not have lost anything.

okay, so jane went to korean.  she learned more about who she is, which she needed.  she even became engaged to a guy, but thanks to her aunt and this soap opera realized that she still loved ed.  so she came clean to everyone, ed about her love, beth about their affair, and returned to nyc.  however, once back, she realized just how different she and ed really were, and yes, dear reader, they broke up.  which i actually appreciated, i mean they were at different stages in their lives and also there was so much more she needed to experience.  i mean i was fine with jane eyre ending up rochester, because i mean what else was there for a single girl to do, then to be an old maid.  luckily, though nowadays, we have so many options.  it was great to see jane end up as an independent woman!

a greater part of the novel, aside from this kind of love story and self-discovery, was race, culture and identity.  to start jane was mixed, her mother was korean and her father was america, due to this she felt like an outcast.  people spoke and thought poorly of her mother.  in addition to this, she never felt like she fully identified as a korean.  it was the same situation for the child she was in charge of, devon.  devon was a chinese girl adopted by two american parents.  at school, she felt like an outcast due to her mixed cultured background.  her mother, beth, tried to keep her immerse in chinese culture but she still was not accepted by her fellow chinese students. being mixed and being americanized culturally, i understood how both of them felt uncomfortable among people with the same racial identity as them.  there was a scene in which jane and devon got moon cakes and devon became uncomfortable because although she looked chinese, she wasn't culturally chinese and couldn't speak the language.  i used to feel the same way as a kid, i look filipino but was not raised culturally filipino and did not learn the language, so when i am around alot of filipinos i do not know, i feel uncomfortable.  like jane and hopefully devon, you reach a point where, it doesn't really matter if your own people judge you, you have to learn to be happy with who you are.

in addition to this, i have to add that at the beginning i had mentioned how jane's family was mean towards her.  in jane eyre, her family was outright abusive.  however, in re jane, it was more of a cultural difference which made the reader and jane initially believe that her uncle hated and took her for granted.  its tough because as an outsider, we tend to judge without really knowing, this is what occurred when beth and ed tried to tell jane that she didn't have to obey her uncle (ironically, ed was doing the very thing he critiqued jane's uncle of doing, being controlling).  however, we gradually begin to see that jane's uncle is not a bad guy at all, he made sacrifices for her and he always made sure that she was taken care of even when she tried to push him away.  and in the end, the reader realizes when jane does that some things were lost in translation that maybe what she took as an insult was actually him trying to help her improve or actually meant as a compliment.  in the end, it was great to see her make peace with her uncle and culture.

a fortunate age. joanna smith rakoff. (300)

i picked up a fortunate age after reading smith-rakoff's blurb on the back of emma forrest's your voice in my head.  it sounded like a book i would be interested, twentysomething trying to make life happen in nyc.  in fact, i was shocked that the work didn't make it onto flavorpill's list of books to fill your the 'girls'-shaped hole in your life.  it seemed like it was girls but in the nineties.  however, after reading the book, i discovered why it was probably off of the list, this work is simply mary mccartney's the group (which was on the list) but with the characters' names changed and set in the nineties.  it was such total plagiarism that i had to give it a one star on goodreads and wrote this review:

Rakoff more like ripoff!  I had deja vu the entire time I read this novel, I felt like I had read it before and in fact, I had.  Instead of reading this, you should just read Mary McCarthy's "The Group".  This book is an "homage" to it but really, she just took McCarthy's novel and changed the character's names and the decade to the 90's.  The whole time I was reading, I kept wondering how this book was ever published, I mean it should be illegal to copy another author's like Smith Rakoff did.

i mean i get that authors will allude to other works or do retellings, even fan-fiction is fine since you are simply taking character's names but writing your own work, but what smith rakoff was just plain copying.  i mean how did her publisher and editor let this book see the light of day?  were they just banking on the fact that the group is kind of dated and current readers have never read it?  i mean i will say that most of the goodreads reviews either didn't mention the group, or admitted to never reading it.  but still, i can't believe that this book was allowed to be published.

in addition to that, i can't help now but i think of smith rakoff has a coattail writer.  last year, she came out with a book about your time with j.d. salinger, which i was tempted to read, but didn't since he was a recluse.  but it seemed like she used his name to sell her book, i mean it was called my salinger year.  and after reading this, i can't help but accuse her of stealing from mccarthy.

but seriously just read the group, instead of this.  i hate to waste so much time on this novel, but have to call out this copycat.

lily and tuck were kay and harald.  both kay and lily's wedding opened the book, as their deaths closed it.  just like kay, lily became the breadwinner, and just like harald, tuck, was a horrible husband.  tuck cheated on caitlin, a character that was exactly like norine, the girl that harald cheated with.  i even think caitlin's justifications for tuck's cheating were the same ones that norine used.  just like harald, tuck had kay committed must like lily, and both claimed their wives were hysteric.  the only difference was that kay may have committed suicide while lily died from the flu.  however, both husbands were  unwelcome guest at the funerals.  i also have to add both husbands were arrested after involvement in a protest that took place in a hotel.

beth was dottie.  both had a sex adventure at the  beginning of their story.  where as dottie lost her virginity, beth just had some weird sex.  though beth ended up marrying the person she had sex with, just like dottie, she had second thoughts about her marriage.  both women worried about still being in love with her first love (for dottie this was the man she lost her virginity too.) both women had close relationships with their mother and got advice from their moms on this matter.

emily was polly, both were the poor ones of the group and have a family history of mental illness.  they both have affairs with married men who are separated from their wives.  however, these men's wives still have power over them, in original gus' wife had him see a psychoanalyst while curtis' wife made him join AA, in the end, both men return to their wives.  just like polly's dad who suffered from mental illness went to live with polly, emily's sister who suffered from mental illness went to live with emily.  everything is fine and dandy when they move in, i even think polly's dad, like emily's sister help make improvements around their apartment.  both become socialist/communist, and started to be a financial drain.  however, emily and polly both end up marrying doctor's they meet due to this drain on money, polly married the doctor she met donating blood, emily married a doctor that helped her when she got injured as her second job (this doctor she had met previously when trying to get help for her sister.)

sadie was a blend of priss and helena.  she was helena because both discovered about their best friend's affair.  she was priss, because she struggled with motherhood, though while priss struggled to get her baby to breastfeed, sadie couldn't get her son to stop.

and caitlin is norine, both had affairs with married men and then justified it with politics.  they also both end up divorcing their husbands then remarrying rich jews.  both show up and make a sense at the funerals of the women whose husbands they slept with.

tal was lakey.  the one that everyone was in love with, and just like lakey spent most of the novel, aboard.  i kept on expecting tal to come out in the end just like lakey did, showing up at the funeral with her lesbian lover.  but i guess smith rakoff figure to cut back on some of the copying.

don't know who dave was, but i mean smith rakoff needed to have one character of her own.

ps i also didn't like how lightly she treated 9/11.  i mean the fact that she mentioned it in emily's storyline explaining that her sister came in two days after that seemed odd to me.  i also wonder if travel to nyc was stopped due to 9/11 and if so, then she should have had emily's sister come in a different time.  

i was told there'd be cake. sloane crosley. (280)

i decided to reread i was told there'd be cake because sloane crosley was at bookcon.  unfortunately, i didn't see her. i also didn't finish the book before i left.  i had about a chapter left and thought i could download the ebook from the library, however, they didn't have the ebook so i didn't finish before bookcon.  i did when i came back.

to start, i have to say that on my first reading, i absolutely love love loved this collection of essays.  i felt like sloane was writing about my life, so many times, i was like OMG that is me, especially the you ponies! i also had/have a bunch of toy ponies because my best friend and i used to carry one around like the amelie gnome. so right of the back, i was like i love this book.

other than that, i didn't remember too much.

i have to say i enjoyed my rereading.  crosley is hilarious and this book had me laughing.

"the pony problem" was as enjoyable as my first read and i really think she messed up by getting rid of her ponies!

i enjoyed reading about crosley's experince as a jew at christian camp in "christmas in july". and loved that she played mary! i also would have loved to have told off darien.

"the ursula cookie" made cringe when she got caught in her lie by her boss.  it was also interesting to head her day after 9/11 story though then she didn't realized that it would be a day after 9/11 story.

any and every 90's kid has to love the oregon trail essay, "bring-your-machete-to-work day", i did!  i wish someone would make it an iphone app.  like the og version.

having a unique name myself, i didn't get why she was so bent out of shape with her own name in "bastard out of westchester".  however, i did get the how the story behind her name was not true.  the verdict on my name is still out, not sure if steve garvey (of dodgers game) has a daughter named krisha.  just googled and he did!

"the kindness of stranger", which crosley discussed her luck with always getting her wallet back when she lost it, reminded me of me and my phone.  i have lost my phone at least 3 times in my life and it had always been returned to me.  then, one day in nyc, i came across a phone and tried to return it, then bragged about my lost phone luck, only to lose my phone an hour later.  it was not returned to me.  eff my life.

"one-night bounce" proved that me and crosley would totally be friends.  her desire to have a one night stand would be something we would both obsess over.  and yes, i have had a one-night stands, fun from what i can remember.

"sign language for infidels" made me want to volunteer at a natural history museum.  i googled the atlas moth, and it does look like a snake!!

"you on a stick" makes me want to never be a bridesmaid and an amazing not demanding bride. 

"smell this" was gross.  who does that?!?!

"lay like broccoli" reminded me how mean i am to vegan and vegetarians, but obvi not as mean as they are to each other.

"fever faker" was whatever.

all in all, a delightful reread.  i regret not seeing her at bookcon and look forward go her new novel!  i also need to read her other book!

turn around bright eyes: the rituals of love & karaoke. rob sheffield. (180)

i have read rob sheffield's two previous works love is a mix tape and talking to girls about duran duran.  love is a mix tape was the story of how he lost his wife at a young age to a brain aneurysm, a sad yet great tribute to her via the music they loved.  so i kind of have a soft spot for him.  however, to be completely honest i don't remember what talking to girls about duran duran was about, i do own a copy, but i am sure it was entertaining.  anyway, i like sheffield, he is a music geek and i love a good music geek.  so when i saw that he had written a book about karaoke, i immediately put in a request.  

for those of you who know me, i am pretty good at karaoke, please note i said karaoke not singing.  i agree with sheffield that karaoke is not about singing ability.  i always tell people that i can't sing but i can put on a good performance.  my training ground for karaoke was high school.  when i was in high school, mtv's say what karaoke (which i was shocked sheffield failed to mention in this book) was popular and i took the idea of their idea of random shuffle karaoke and turned it a noontime rally game (i was an asb geek).  i may have forced my high school peers to play that game too many times, oh well, my friends and i loved it. 

my first memory of doing a crazy wild karaoke performance was at an end of the year work "party" (i use the term "party" loosely because there were only like 12 of us there) from my first year at the front desk at ucla's covel commons.  we had a karaoke party and i performed a song by my vocal doppelganger, gwen stefani.  sheffield explained that everyone has a vocal doppelganger, "when you start singing you find out whose voice suits yours and who doesn't, and you don't always get to make the decision."  he goes on to share that "the voice gets into your soul and this guy means more to you than he ever did before.  your doppelganger becomes your spiritual mentor."  and it's true, gwen stefani has always been my go to girl when karaoking; i do no doubt songs ("just a girl", "sunday morning"),  i her solo stuff ("what you waiting for?" and "wind it up"----quick digression, i used to have the dj at westwood brew co, play my ipod but so that i could do those two songs because they weren't available as karaoke songs.)  but back to my first karaoke "performance", i performed "just a girl" and was so into it that i jumped off of the speakers like i was some pop princess.  i may have even done a push-up (i like to incorporate moves from music videos into my performances) but yes, i went all out, and set the standard by which i karaoked.

i have had some pretty memorable performances.  "like a virgin" at brass monkey, the first time i did it and i did it in the style of madonna's vma's peformance aka i rolled around on the ground.  i even added a little introduction to it when i would perform it at westwood brew co, i would ask all my fellow v-card holders to hold up their vs for me (my friend richard once thanked me for letting him know which girls were virgins.) in vegas, at this one karoake place my friend rolly took us to, i did a crazy rendition of system of a down's "sugar" and had some guys off the street come in to watch me perform.  there was the time i did "don't speak" and my friends tiffany, jaye and i discovered the power that is "miss cleo karaoke" (my friend and i were going through a rough patch and this song expressed exactly what i felt.)  i have also been known to do amy winehouse's verison of "valerie", and some selena (faking spanish of course).  these two i perfected in my friend cody's apt.  i don't know how it started but we would host karaoke nights at his apt.  and not like filipino machines karaoke, but literally a mike and a CD player.  you had to really know your songs.  it was a little rundown but made for some amazing karaoke nights.   i have also started to add "part of your world" from the little mermaid, i have perfected my singing of it at my friend's danny's dinner party.  

as you can see i love karaoke, and when i heard about this book, i imagined it to be filled with fun stories of random adventures in karaoke bars, similar to the ones that i have shared.  i saw each chapter as a song that pertain to some crazy night.  however, the subtitle "the rituals of love & karaoke" hinted that there would be more.  after reading the first chapter, i saw that it would also be about how karaoke brought sheffield and his new wife together.  sounds sweet, i would enjoy that, but in reality this book was not limited to just that storyline too.  in fact, it was more of a hodgepodge of stories that shared the theme of karaoke (and at times very loosely).

to be perfectly honest, turn around bright eyes felt thrown together.  i imagined his agent calling him one day, telling him "ummm, remember that three book deal you signed?  well they want that third book." and sheffield was like "hmmm i like karaoke, i can write about that!"  so he started writing this book but realized he only had so many stories about his nights out karaoking and so he decided to add in the element of his wife for length.  however, this topic only gave him a handful of more chapters.  as a last resort, sheffield started to add in anything that remotely resembled karaoke, for example, the essay on rock'n'roll fantasy camp.  seriously, i am pretty sure his logic about using this piece "hey, i have that rejected rolling stone piece, and i did sing at camp, so yeah lets add that in too for filler".  some chapters would be some music related story and then sheffield would add in a concluding paragraph with the word karaoke in it somewhere to make it fit into the theme of the book. 

i know i sound harsh, i am normally okay with a hodgepodge of essays (see:  the fact that i have read everything by chuck klosterman), but sheffield narrowed his scope with his subtitle (though i guess ritual is pretty general) and didn't deliver on it.  even with the lack of cohesion among the stories, there were some great chapters.   

i enjoyed reading about how sheffield and his new wife met.  it was adorable how he heard her voice on the radio and then stopped by to meet her.  it was sweet to see how he was so unsure how to court her and how thoughtful he was in their relationship.  

the chapters about 9/11 and post 9/11 were interesting.  sheffield lived in the financial district near the twin towers which allowed me to see that situation in a different light.  for example, i never knew that the financial district was a wasteland nor did i know there was a mall in the twin towers.  i really enjoyed the chapter 99 luftballoons, seeing how the city and people started to piece themselves back together after 9/11. what an incredible scene and how therapeutic to sing a song about bombs after a tragedy like that.

i also enjoyed the beatles chapter, though again what did it really have to do with karaoke.  

the parts about karaoke that i did enjoy;  it's history, the story about the guy that is paid to perform at karaoke bars to get the crowd going (possible side job, once karaoking in k-town in a private room with my friends, i was instructed to sing so everyone could get over those initial fear), and of course the tales of sheffield actually performing karaoke.

this book was seriously all over the place, and it's lack of cohesion, left me bored. this is the kind of book you leave in your bathroom and read occasionally like a magazine.  good but not great enough to devote a serious reading off.

1984. george orwell. (99)

george orwell's "1984" is on flavorpill's "30 to read before 30" and since i am two months away, i decided i need to crack down on my reading. so i picked up a copy of "1984" at the library. and before i go on, how great is this cover?!?! there was a paperback version i could have checked out but after i saw this cover, i had to read this one.

i guess i should clarify, this was my first reading of "1984". i never read it in high school, it wasn't assigned to us. my sister read it in college and i remember borrowing her copy to read but could never get into it. i tried twice. and thanks to apple and cbs, i knew about "big brother is watching" so was okay on the pop culture front. but in order to get its literary significance i needed to read it.

this book is always noted as a revolutionary novel and it is especially considering the time it was published. i remember checking the publishing year and surprised to find it was 1949. to question and portray governments in such a manner had to be shocking. however, as interesting as the concept of this novel is, i still became bored with it, there were points were i was like, get on with the story already.

let me clarify, i was not bored by the segments on oceania but by some of the story plots. i loved learning about the society of "1984" and how it worked. being a history major, it was interesting to see how the world we know could develop into oceania. for example, i believe that war has become more of a means of economic growth than anything else. just like in the novel, the boundaries for our countries are set, which is why we now fight for concepts like democracy and freedom and against terrorism and islam, fighting wars that truly do not have a means. i know we captured osama bin laden, but are we still at war with afghanistan? honestly, i do not know. can someone clarify this for me? my confusion is also an example of how majority of the united states is now like the "proles" when it comes to being informed about the war. we know nothing other than we need to support it and we have an enemy. also the switching back and forth between the enemies in the novel, foreshadowed what happen with the us and 9/11. i was always confused as to who our patriotism and nationalism was supposed to be directed against because i thought it was al-queida and then all of sudden, saddam hussein and iraq were targeted as enemies. another thing from the novel that reminded me of 9/11 was the labelling of things like "victory" gin or "victory" cigarettes, just like we had our "freedom" fries. and though we did not have "hate week" or "two minute hate" after 9/11, i did feel this odd peer pressure to demonstrated my patriotism via a flag. remember how everyone had flags on their cars and it was unamerican not to have one? it's scary to think of how simlilar the world was post-9/11 to "1984".

another way our world is similar to "1984" is the news and stastistics. part of winston's job was to change the figures that big brother had projected in terms of production so that production was recorded as over what bb had predicted. in the novel, winston pondered how these numbers were all arbitrary. first of all, a prediction is a prediction so if it was not accurate that is fine. why go through the point of lying especially since people know that production is low because whatever was being produced was scarce. this reminded me of our news and the stastiscs it spews at us especially in terms of health. there is always some study that shows this or that but in real life, disease strikes whoever. there is j real means of preventing things. i mean explain ozzy osborne, with how he treated his body, yet he is still alive and kicking. stastiscs are just a means of manipulating society.

last but not least, i am worried that history would be lost like in "1984". not so much because it is being rewritten but because it is not being taught. i recently subbed for a fifth grade class and they only worked on social studies for 15 minutes. i worry that the youth today do not understand the importance of history. because as orwell wrote and zach de la rocha from rage against the machine sang "who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past", so if they learn nothing, they will control nothing.

this is all praise but there were also aspects of the story that i did not enjoy. for one thing i did not like julia. it just seemed so random that her character feel in love with winston. i thought she was part of the thought police and was going to betray him. (also the fact that the shopkeeper was a thought police totally took me by surprise though in the back of my mind, i wondered how his shop was still in existence). once i figured out she wasn't, i didn't care for her character. she wasn't a rebel because of any inner longing for a better life like winston, she was a rebel just to be against the system. i hate to get all women's lib but i felt julia was an unjustly portrayal of women in revolutionary movements. julia was not fully committed to the ideologies against the party and her primary act of resistance was sex. and i am all for women gaining liberation via fulfilling their sexual appetites versus following societies virtues. however, julia demonstrated no intelligence or knowledge when it came to protest against the current system, she often became bored by what winston had to share. she even feel asleep during his reading of the book. it just seemed like a copout to make her so shallow once the real revolting started especially since she was smart enough to get goods like real coffee and sugar and had came up with routes for them to meet. and sadly throughout history women's roles in revolutions sadly get reduced down to their sexual experiences.

since we are on the topic of sex, i was shocked by how much sex was discussed in the novel. and wonder how high schools that teach this present this. or is "1984" one of those banned books? and the sex is why "1984" is banned. anyway, i found it interesting how sex is a means of control. the party takes away the sensuality of sex and turns it into a duty. i know i have discussed it before but i really feel that being raised mormon, the emphasis on purity and chastity resulted in my obedience as teen. i was so focused on being pure, i didn't date in high school. i am not saying that as a teen one should have sex. i am just saying that for me, my abstinence from sex may have been a reason for my obedience as a teen.

also i did not buy that winston was so naive about o'brien. i thought it was too convenient how it all came together. it seemed too easy to become apart of the brotherhood and felt like a trap. but i guess winston was so hopefully that he was too gullible.

last but not least i did not like the ending. i was hoping the human spirit would have prevailed. i didn't expect winston to spark a revolution but i didn't want him to give in. it was also pathetic that he gave in because of rats. i would hope that the human spirit would have been stronger. it was heartbreaking to see all hope lost. i would have been happier with winston committing suicide versus loving big brother.

i enjoyed the appendix on newspeak. it is interesting to think of how important vocabulary is in terms of expressing our views. it is also interesting to think
how lack of a vocabulary restricts our thinking. the focus on language also demonstrated how important it is to read and expand our vocabulary. it is true with my recent reading of classics, i have been about to better expressed my view of the world by using literary examples. so let this be a lesson!

after reading all of that analysis, you are probably wondering, but you said you got bored. i did simply because though
"1984" raises important questions about politics, war, government, and history for someone that is already skeptical about their government it doesn't present anything new. i was a history major and so many of the trends discussed were not new for me. however if i had read this book while in high school or during college, it would have blown my mind. so i guess instead of being a book one reads before they are 30, it actually before 25.

last but not least at the lacma, while looking at the bcam elevator, i was able to imagine what it would like to have big brother watching:

the emperor's children. claire messud. (59)

have you seen girls?

if yes, omg! don't you love it?!?!

if no, it's a show on hbo. kinda like the urban outfitters generation version of sex and the city, but twentysomethings with a lot less money.

i'm new to girls and haven't seen the complete first season. my cousin apollo told me about it a while back but who has premium cable nowadays? well actually my cousin erin does, so i watched three girls episodes when i stayed with her. i will say that the first episode was kinda ehhh but by the third i was hooked, i even tweeted "all adventurous woman do. #girls". (though the best quote from that episode is one my friend markley always quotes: "what happens to the stuff around the condom?!?")

anyway since the series ended, flavorpill listed books to help fans fill the girls' void in their life. and yes i decided to add those to my reading list.

http://www.flavorwire.com/302791/10-books-to-fill-the-girls-shaped-hole-in-your-life

it was kinda kismet that i found claire messud's "the emperor's children". i was browsing the classic section trying to sort out what to read and was like why is this contemporary book in this section? fastfoward like a day or two and its on the list for girls so picked it up. (spoiler alert: if you have not read this, i do kinda spoil it for you. so stop here. well you can read this next paragraph but stop after that.)

"the emperor's children" follows the lives of three friends (danielle, marina, and julius) "on the cusp of their thirties" (the back of the book says this) who are trying to sort out life in nyc. it was comforting to see my fellow age group-ers with their shit not entirely together. marina was back at home with her parents (granted she did have a book deal) and julian wasn't settled career-wise and worked for a temp agency. though they still managed to live glamourous nyc lives on someone else's dime (marina on her parents and julian had a sugar daddy or a rice queen, julius was asian-who i pictured as my friend keith.)

the book has about six different story lines that intertwine and overlap. and they all involve marina's famous journalist/activist father, murray thwaite except julius, he was in this odd relationship in which he was domesticated like a chinese wife minus the bound feet. he also experienced this crazy gruesome fight in a gay club (which i visualizes as bablyon from "queer as folk.")

so marina's storyline involved her odd relationship with her father, the book she needed to write and her way too quick marriage to a horrible aussie that wanted to destroy her father via his new magazine. danielle has an affair with said father. which i found kinda hot but only cos i want an affair with an old man (though single and not my friend's dad.) then there is bootie ("like shake your?" as julius would say), marina's fat cousin who at first i cared for like one would a lost puppy. he had given up on traditional education and was going to educate himself by reading books from the library and writing essays. anyway in the end he ends up just going slightly crazy screwing over his uncle.

it was a good read, not great. the issue i had, was the use of 9/11 to resolve all of the issues in the book. i was left with too many questions. we never find out if the aussie was evil or was going to publish bootie's article. it also got murray off the hook with his affair. and i get that life paused for new yorkers but for me it felt like a cop out. maybe if i read it in 2006, i would be of a different opinion. also at the risk of sounding unamerican, it could also be because i was not deeply affected by 9/11. in my defense i was on the west coast. the distance can account for something. while reading bradbury's "the martian chronicles" i came across a passage that paralleled my indiffference to 9/11. father peregrine explains:

we heard about the wars in asia. but we never believed them. it was too far away. and there were too many people dying. it was impossible. even when we saw the motion pictures we didn't believe it.

i was unable to relate due to the distance. here all this was going on in nyc but life in delano, ca went on pretty much the same. furthermore, i was also young and at a very exciting period in my life. two weeks after 9/11, i was to start my first year of college so my life was full of hope not bleakness.

so did this fill my girls void? not really, it's kinda like hannah and the gang in 5 years. i could see hannah as danielle for some odd reason. it was a good read but i didn't fall in love with any of the characters except for julius (apparently i am a literary fag hag too). also julius
inspired me to read "war and peace" because he was always trying to sort out if he was a natasha or a pierre.

quotations:

"but he was already thirty, and the question was how?"

on the road. jack kerouac. (7)

in college, as a pleasure read versus an academic one, i read john leland's "hip: a history", sadly i wasn't too familiar with majority of the social movements or time periods it discussed.  i remember reading about the beats but hadn't read "on the road", "howl" or "naked lunch" so the impact of their hipness didn't really reach me. since then "on the road" has kinda haunted me. whenever i went to a bookstore, the back of my mind told me to finally pick up "on the road" but i never did.

what forced me to finally pick it up was an ed rusha exhibit at the hammer museum. on display was ed rusha's book version of "on the road". (the plaque next to his piece also taught me that kerouac wrote it all on one scroll. i can't remember if that scroll was on display, hmm). i can sadly admit that there were a series of pieces that i loved in this exhibit that i thought were solely ed rusha but turned out to be "on the road" quotes when i finally read the book. (yeah i am quite the poser.)

after reading "on the road", i reached one conclusion about myself. i have always been labelled a "flower child" by my family and though i do have hippie tendencies, i think my nomadic life is more on par with the beats. there is a rawness and grittiness to their lifestyle that is more attractive to me than putting flowers in my hair in san francisco.

if i was a male during the 1950's, i would have been a beat. i would have hitchhiked across the country, got drunk, got high and slept with girls and boys. and at the risk of sounding sexist, i would have to be male, there really wasn't a place for females in this movement; unless you wanted to end up used or abuse (not like physically or sexually though this did happen but also as a source of income as seen in the book) or dead like williams s. burroughs' wife (as in real life). as a female, i am not offended, these men were jaded by the war. did anyone actually survive the weird tension in the us caused by the cold war? all the creative spirits we recognize now were all tormented by it but that led to their genius. as i explained recently to darlene, i have a greater tolerance for communists and socialists in that historical context because society was so static that you had to believe in the extremes to have any hope for change. so i don't hold anything against the beats. they did let their women drink, do drugs and have sex so in a way that is liberating. their women were equal in their access to life's vices.

"on the road" is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 and it will probably be on my list too. it would make my list due the great quotes in it. what i loved most about "on the road" was kerouac's poetic style. he had a chaotic and beautiful way of describing life (surprisingly at times, my life.)

my favorite quote of course was:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everyone goes "awww!""

i also enjoyed:

"people change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal."
(why i am a foodie)

"she threw down drinks when it seemed she was about to chuck up the last."
(how i drink)

"...and like the prophet who walked across the land to bring the dark word, and the only word i had was 'wow'!"
(how i feel at coachella)

one quote that stood out, was kerouac's nostradamus moment. he wrote:

"dean has a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. he said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up new york."

random, right?!?! i googled to see if at then time of 9/11, anyone drew a parallel to this. they didn't. but i did find an article about a professor who noticed post-9/11 that his students normally wrote their class papers on that excerpt.

but what i loved more was his descriptions of the city i love the most, los angeles:

"LA. i love the way everyone says ‘LA’ on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done."

"on corners old women cut up the boiled heads of cows and wrapped morsels in tortillas and served them with hot sauce on newspaper napkins"

while in LA, sal eats at what i assumed was clifton's cafeteria downtown, so i emailed "ask chris" from los angeles magazine on the topic and he said possibly though there were multiple clifton's back than.

i love this book because of its carefree spirit. sal just went with the flow of life. and sometimes it worked for him and sometimes it didn't. sometimes he lived like a king and other times he had to scrape and scramble to get life together. the importance was the experience of life versus living by society standards.

i will admit that "on the road" made me romanticize a time period that was not as glamorous as it read on paper. it made me nostalgic for something that i never lived or could have ever live or even survive. i realized that today, i can not travel like sal paradise did, especially being a female. i can even admit that at the end i started to get a little bored and found the lifestyle tedious. being on the road would be exhausting however like the saying goes, it isn't the destination but the journey. and kerouac proves that to a t by making the destination obsolete. and i think this is why i would be a beat, it's about experiencing life instead of where you end up.

ps here is one of the pieces from the ed rusha's exhibit. it reminded me of delano, which is why i initially loved it.

this side of paradise. f. scott fitzgerald (3)

i read "the great gatsby" and thought it was not all that great.  it should have been called "the good gatsby" or maybe "the decent gatsby", but great seemed like a misnomer.  but people love their f. scott fitzgerald, so i decided to pick up another of his books to see what he was all about.  i decided to start with his first work "this side of paradise".

and i have to say "the great gatsby" did not do fitzgerald justice.  "this side of paradise" was filled with so many great lines, but then again i think i'm made of the same cloth as f. scott and zelda fitzgerald.  people made of that cloth simply want a life of leisure, constantly in the pursuit of not only happiness but entertainment as well, even if it beyond their means.  

fitzgerald stringed these pearls of wisdom throughout his book.  the thoughts and opinions of his two character amory blaine and rosalind:

i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires”- armory


"i'm as restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic." -amory
(this is seriously my biggest fear in life)

"her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others."
(i try to seize the day (though not the responsible day), but am pretty lack when it comes to other people's lives, do what you want.)



i like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-- i dread responsibility."-rosalind 
(i swear his words not mine.)



i googled f. scott to find out more about his life because i admired his words of wisdom.  and i now get all the fuss over the fitzgeralds.  who doesn't want to party all night and lead glamorous lives.  i also learned a little something about "the lost generation" and just like i thought i was a beat before i feel more aligned with this generation. (coincidentally, there are many similarities between the two. both were disillusioned by the world wars and had looser and less conservative values/morals than prior to the war.) 

as i was reading i couldn't help but think history does repeat itself.  armory said of himself, "i'm a cynical idealist", and i think this is an adequate description of my generation.  i remember reading an article once about how my generation, the millennials, are extremely skeptical about the government.  we don't trust the government especially when it comes to war.  however, even though we are cynical about how our country is ran, we are extremely hopefully.  i mean that obey giant obama hope poster worked on us like no other (i own a shirt).  we are also extremely optimistic about what the future holds for us.  so i guess that would make us cynical idealists?

the major similarity between us, the lost generations and the beats was that a war left us all disillusioned.   though we didn't have a great war, i think that 9/11 and the war against terrorism has effected my generation the same way that world war I effected the lost generation.  for millennials, we were "lost" or confused because the enemy we were fighting wasn't necessarily the country that attacked us.  furthermore, we wanted to be patriotic but couldn't support a war that in our eyes wasn't justified.  fitzgerald's generation was lost because they fought a world war and came back to lives in turmoil.  in addition to this, what the lost generations and my generation also share is a period of economic turmoil; the great depression and our current recession.  as resulted both could be considered "lost." this loss of faith for fitzgerald's described as:

"we want to believe. young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. too many voices, too much scattered, illogical ill-considered criticism.”

this description is also relevant today. we want to have faith (our hope) but know it is impossible.  as i read i armory's viewpoints on politics and the economy i couldn't help but draw parallels to the way the world is today.

but not everything stays static.   i was surprised by the whole hotel checking in incident.  its crazy to imagine a time when the only man and woman pair that could stay at a hotel room was husband and wife!  not that i'm a floozy but its difficult to imagine having to show paperwork to prove you can stay in a hotel room with a woman!

in addition to this words of wisdom on life and politics, fitzgerald impressed me with his clever descriptions and writing style.  he opened book two with a clever description of a mess in a girl's room.  he wrote:

"great disorder consisting of the following items (1):  seven or eight empty cardboard boxes, with tissue-paper tongues hanging panting from their mouths; (2) an assortment of street dresses mingled with their sisters of the evening, all upon the table, all evidently new; (3) a roll of tulle, which has lost its dignity and wound itself tortuously around everything in sight . . . "

i bolded my favorite line.  it was almost like a poem in the middle of the novel.  an ode to a messy room.  i also enjoyed book two because fitzgerald switched styles and wrote it like a play, which i found interesting because everything that surrounded rosalind was melodramatic.

i thoroughly enjoyed "this side of paradise".  i found him clever, wise and delightful.  and i am glad i gave him another go versus just keeping "the great gatsby" as the only book of his that i read.