the heart goes last. margaret atwood. (323)

the heart goes last is the first book of margaret atwood that i have read.  i know as a feminist i should really read the handmaid's tale, and it's been on my to-read list, but haven't made it happen.  i decided to put myself on the wait list for this work, assuming it would be a while before my turn came around, but i got it quickly. 

i wasn't sure what to expect from atwood.  i know she is a sci-fi writer and that isn't a genre i would consider my self a fan of.  however, everyone was excited about it online, so i decided to give it a try.  i was pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed this work.  to start, i had no idea what the book was about, from the cover it looked as if it was about prison like in the future we would all be prisoners.  and i guess this could a great one sentence summary.

the heart goes last is set in a distant future in which the economy has collapsed and the middle and lower classes are left to live in their cars and rummage for food and money.  the upper class have not been effected and still have wealth.  the novel is about a married couple, stan and charmaine, tired of living out of their car and scared of the crime that could occur.  they decided to sign up to live in consilience, a project based on the prison system.  since prisons create jobs and help sustain a community (i know i live in a town with two prisons), members of this community live as a prisoner for one month and then live outside as a civilian for next, and alternate back and forth.  they are given jobs both in and out of the prison.  they share homes with alternates that are in prison when they are home and vice versa.  they are not suppose to communicate with their alternates.

however, charmaine had an affair with her alternate and this caused a series of events to unfold because the man's wife was a woman that worked in surveillance and was assistant to the head of the project. using the affair as a cover, she then pressured stan into helping her stop the project by taking information into the outside world.  it turns our that the project originally was an actual prison and they began to kill off prisoners that were disobedient and harvested them for body parts.  this business started to become lucrative business, and so they started killing of people.  in addition to this, their biggest export were sex bots, which then lead to them operating on brains so that the first thing a person saw post-opt they imprinted on and basically became their sex slaves.  stan was to expose all of this, but to get him into the outside world, he had to fake his death by charmaine killing him.  

sounds like an exciting book, yes?  well it was until the end.  there was all this great build up but then it was like atwood wasn't sure how to end it.  there was some mission that took place in vegas which reminded me of ocean's 11.  and the outside world learned of what was occurring but unsure if anything really stopped.  and the head of the project turned into a sex slave due to the operation. charmaine had the same operation and imprinted on stan, only to learn that she never had the operation.

this twist at the end felt odd, and i wondered what atwood wanted us to take from it.  that love is not real but a construct of our minds like everything else in life. that the heart does goes last but not due to love but because it is a muscle and simply is the last to complete its function.  it feels cold for an ending but seems true.  we place all this emphasis on following your heart, but really your heart is guided by your brain, so it's your brain all along!

another lesson could be that of obedience, in which today especially, we so blindly follow what is presented to us that we don't question it and just believe.  so many times i see individuals post articles on facebook, only for me to google and find they are not true.  it reminded me of the study in which people were instructed to shock individuals and though they knew it was wrong, they did it since an authority figure instructed them to do so.  the members of the community worked in this prison and just followed instructions without realizing what they were actually contributing to.  this leads to the usual lesson of futuristic tales to question your government and to not conform.

lastly, since the story centered around prisons it reminded me of the stanford experiment.  that study dealt with the conforming of roles to that of authority and inferior.  though there did not seem to be any abuse of authority within the prison, we did see it from wife in surveillance.  since the prison was set up as a business, i wonder if atwood's critique would be that of how we criminalize individual to sustain this business, which i would counter, i have seen these prisoners after their release and they deserve to be there.  i will say it is horrible the amount of funds that is put into our prison system, especially in california, and if atwood was advocating that i am with her.  i will have to google to see what she says on the matter.

all in all, a great novel with a weak ending but definitely worth reading. 

brooklyn. colm tóibín. (320)

i picked up brooklyn because i had seen advertisements for the movie based on it all over goodreads. and given the title and my hipster tendencies, i decided to check it out.  it had to be about williamsburg, right?!?  lol. wrong.

brooklyn tells the story of a young irish girl, eilis that immigrated to america in the early 1950's.  unable to find work in ireland, eilis' sister arranged for her to move to brooklyn and live in a home for irish girls that had immigrated. eilis moved out on her own and dealt with the issues of adjusting to a new country and being on her own.

i really wanted to love this novel, given the setting and that it is historic fiction, but i didn't get completely lost in the story.  i admired eilis for her independence, especially considering it was the 1950s.  she moved to a country on her own, supported herself with a job in retail.  at her job, she did not discriminate against african-americans when the store she worked for being to sell stockings for them.  when she began dating, she dated outside of her ethnic group, dating an italian.  she also did not suppress her sexuality and had premarital sex.  as a feminist, i would name eilis as one of my book sheros, but i wasn't on board for her love story.

her love story goes that she fell in love with an italian boy named tony.  everything was going well when her sister suddenly died due to a heart condition.  upon her returning to ireland to visit her family, she and tony secretly married.  upon her return to ireland, since she had been to america, her status was different.  instead of being a social outcast, everyone was interested in her.  eilis then began to be courted by a man that had previously ignored her, jim.  eilis was then caught in a dilemma, she could stay in ireland, live a comfortable life with jim, and take care of her mother.  or she could return to tony.  in the end, she was confront by a woman she used to work for that was going to expose what she had done and so she returned to brooklyn and tony.

i have to admit i thought she should have stayed in ireland, but to each their own.  i guess she ultimately chose the life with the most freedom.  there is a parallel there.  anyway, though enjoyable the story didn't grip me.  i mean i am not sure why they turned it into a movie.  however, i will see it because nick hornby adapted the screenplay and i love

him!

emma. jane austen. (307)

i decided to read emma, because,  the movie, clueless, was loosely based on it. i i recently read as if, and didn't get any of the emma reference, so figured it was time for me to read austen's classic.

to start, i have to add that the movie did mess with my head as a i read.  i kept on trying to sort out who was who based on the movie.  though i did not see any of the characters as the actors.  i did start watching emma, the mini series, so started to see jonny lee miller as mr. knightly.  also i knew that mr. frank churchill was engaged due to a quote i read in as if, so the big surprise at the end was not a big surprise.  i was also shocked at how blinded emma was to their relationship.  i must add i knew the piano was from frank because really he ran into town for a haircut?!?!

i have to admit that it did take me a while to get into the novel.  it was quite a struggle from to read this novel, especially since all of the good stuff happens in the last fourth of the novel.  other complaints included was mr. woodhouse's neediness, poor miss taylor indeed for having to listen to him whine. how horrible that he could not be happy for her but instead lamented about she was no longer in their service.  i have no idea how anyone put up with that.  and though i might be guilty of miss bates' blabbering on and on, but just reading the descriptions of her talking, bored me.  and maybe it's just because elton was so "so sweet that he gave me a toothache" in clueless (i would listen to the cranberries all day with him), but felt bad that mr. elton married such a dreadful woman!  ps kudos to amy heckerling on the picture fiasco which was a great mirroring of the painting mix up.  also love love loved how heckerling had tai burn her belongings from elton just like harriet did with her mr. elton things.

back to the novel, so though i was bored, i have to admit that just like emma, an darted through my heart when it came to mr. knightley.  austen created the most sensitive, noble, morale, loving men and mr. knightley was rather quite knightly.  she created these moments when her leading men confess their love and her readers sit there wishing it would happen to them! i mean what a dreamboat mr. knightley was when confessing his love for emma.  so sweet was this ending to the novel that i forgave austen for how bored i was in the beginning.

i will close in saying that even though i didn't love it straight off the bat, emma is like the quintessential girl novel, reminding us how naive we were when we were young and when it came to love and life.  how often we fall in love with men we can not have, and at the same time can be blinded to affection of someone else.  or we try to give someone advice and we really should just keep our noses out of their business.  i guess its best to say that, emma reminded me of how when i was younger, i though i knew everything, but really i was just clueless.  

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.

the unbearable lightness of being. milan kundera. (292)

i picked up the unbearable lightness of being to reread it before i read kundera's latest book.  he hasn't written a book in about 15 years, so it's a bit of a big deal. i put in a request for his latest work, but felt like i should revisit this first.

i read the unbearable lightness of being about 13 years or so ago.  at the time i was obsessed with nick hornby's high fidelty and in the movie version (i don't recall if it's in the book), rob says:

i’m not the smartest guy in the world, but i’m certainly not the dumbest. i mean, i’ve read books like "the unbearable lightness of being" and "love in the time of cholera", and i think i’ve understood them. they’re about girls, right? just kidding. but i have to say my all-time favorite book is johnny cash’s autobiography "cash" by johnny cash.

since rob namechecked it, i decided i'd read it.  so young late teens/early twenties me read it.  i remember having the feeling that i had read something profound.  i also recalled the bowler hat (mainly because of the cover.) but as i reread it, i doubt younger me truly got it, especially all the parts about sex and also because even now some of this went over my head.

before i sound dumb, all the communist stuff went over my head.  i mean i get  communism, what went over my head (like a true american) was the geography and the link to communism.  like all the czech stuff. i know, i know, how ignorant can me? apparently, very.

also nietzsche was mentioned but in relationship to mental illness and an apology to animal for humans (specifically, descartes) not acknowledging their souls, but this book is about nihilism, right? (i just opened the novel to get a quote and it looks like nietzsche opens the novel, so this is nihilistic.) i mean, we read about these people's lives, but in the end they all die and all that we read, doesn't really matter.  i mean i have nihilistic tendencies, so i am all for this being the point of the novel.  it felt like every time, someone found "enlightenment" about life, when they finally got it all figured out, they died, proving that life is ironic, if you use alanis morrisette's definition.

franz realized that what really brought him happiness was his student-mistress. tomas explained to tereza that she did not ruin his life (i will have more on this in a second) because he was happy just to be with her.  i mean it's a beautiful idea, but maybe this what we humans do to justify the unbearable lightness of being. (i feel like i am being deep but this might be the whole point of this work, so just let me go with it. you might be reading this and thinking, duh, krisha).  we take any situation we are in and justify it by using the all encompassing adjective "happy" to help us cope with the decisions we have made in life. we are lying to ourselves to stop ourselves from spending our entire lives regretting.  who can truly say whether or not tomas would not have been happy if he didn't follow tereza? he would still be a surgeon, and would be able to sleep with anyone without guilt, and without tereza probably would have justified his life by saying he was happy to live with the regret of not chasing her.  we would probably be "happy" in whatever path our lives take, because we can never know the way the other options would have played out.  as explained in the beginning, we only have one life.  there is no way for us to truly know if we made the best decisions in life:

we can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can not compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

we can not undo the past and so to deal with the decisions we have made, good or bad, we say that we are "happy" so that we can live with ourselves.  i mean i have made some poor decisions in life, but am happy on a day to day basis when i am not regretting the would have, could have, should haves, but in the end i think when i die there is nothing, so i am not that stressed out about my choices.  we just have to accept what we have done and this acceptance is the unbearable lightness of being.

the definition of the unbearable lightness of being came via sabine.  when she moved to paris, there was no drama to explain her move.  instead of a heavy burden to bear, she had the unbearable lightness of being, existence without a struggle.  its easier to explain life decisions by having trigger versus just doing or being. to exist is not enough, we have to explain all action.  our need to do so has resulted in the creation of religions, psychology, sociology, biology, any ology or field of study in fact, even art. it's our ability to reason that results in the need for this justification of our being.  life is tough cos we constantly have to justify it, as i explained above.

sorry i feel like i am talking in circles.  but this book is deep.  i should read it every 5 years to get perspective on life.  and should also do some czech history research to really get it.

i mean i could go into storylines but it's all pointless and i mean that is the point right?  we can see the detailed background of individuals and can see this reasoning behind their actions, but in the end, we all die so what does it matter?  it just one life, we don't get an do over.

with that being said, i do need to discuss tereza, cos i thought she was one crazy bitch and that she did ruin tomas' life! first of all, really? with the showing up and just moving in?  girl showed up casually, but had her suitcase at the station, ready to move in.  and i thought she was manipulative from the beginning (see: how she moved it).  also the whole hand holding in her sleep was crazy too! i would be frightened if my partner did that.  i would not see it as love.  i mean she admitted how manipulative she was in the end, but it was too late.

and yes, i know tomas was not faithful to her, and i didn't agree with his whole sex doesn't equate love theory, but she forced him into a relationship!  i am not saying that if he was truly in love, he would be faithful, but he was kind of coerced into allowing tereza to move in which then lead to marriage.  he was an idiot, the guy forgot to wash his hair after his affairs, but i doubt he would have settled down if given the choice.  and before you say he loved her in the end, go back to the part about the justifying our actions because we only have one life.

so i feel like this blog is just a bunch of rambling (i wish i was part of a book club so that i could share my ideas with someone), so here is a list of random thoughts i had as i read:

-i liked the definitions of words the demonstrated the differences between sabine and franz.

-that one artist on bravo's "work of art" totally confused unbearable and pride and prejudice why else was their a bowler hat on her book cover.

-there is a lot of sex in this book.

-the whole section on shit was interesting.

-this is the second book this summer that has mentioned plato's theory of people being split in two and finding their other half. (reminded me also of "hedwig and the angry inch".)

-what a whole section for the dog and about animals. also i have soul though i don't like animals. also i like karenin as a name for a dog.

all in all, a great and enlightening read.  if you have any comments please post.  if i an complete off base let me know.  

  

modern romance. aziz ansari. (290)

before i start about the book, i have to begin with my love for aziz ansari.  so it all started with the movie, funny people, randy had be dying, he was like the highlight of the movie.  then, i started watching parks and recreation, and when tom created a tent that looked like something out of harry potter, and made sure to keep up with top chef, i was like, we could so be bffs.  and then, he was on lcd soundsystem's last concert dvd, and i was like we really need to be friends.  so now i am like his biggest fan, because, he is hilarious, eats well, and his friends with james murphy!  when i heard that he had a book deal, i was super excited, though i wish it were a memoir, a sociology book on love impressed me.  i have to add that i did see his modern romance tour with my sister and glad i did, because it goes hand and hand with this book.

and before i start on the book, i have to add that i saw aziz at bookcon and he was the best panel of the day.  even better than the much anticipated mindy kaling and bj novak panel (sorry guys).  the stories behind and in his book were hilarious, but the best was the q&a.  so i just googled and it's online and i am going to post it here.  please watch:

so i was dying, absolutely dying during his q&a, when he told the first girl that he didn't care where she was from.  and he called out that other fan for the stupid swagalicous question and last but not least the last question.  so enjoyable and we also got conversation hearts that were printed with quotes from the book.  so freakin' cool.

so the book was hilarious and being a single lady, surprisingly very helpful.  the book offers a lot of helpful advice finding love in this modern world.  here is what i learned:

-i need to start having friends set me up on dates.  back in the day, people married people that lived in their neighborhood since that is what their life was restricted to.  now people move away for school, work, etc. and just like aziz shared, i wouldn't want to marry a bozo from delano (no offense, people from delano), but i guess to get that quality neighborhood kind vibe, being set up by friends would be my best bet.  so friend start setting me up!

-how to do online dating right!  so i have been on okcupid and pretty much i just check out people, i don't really contact anyone, but i will start.  and start going on actual dates.  they share that people spend too much time getting to know each other online versus going on actual dates and face time (actual face time and not facetime) is what helps us determine if we are a match with someone or not.  also there was a hilarious segment on optimal profile photos.

-it was interesting to read about all the subtext there is to texting now.  how like pauses cause us to stress out when sometimes, people are just busy.  i will say that i am glad i was part of the generation that actually used to talk to people on the phone (though i rarely do that now), but i mean these kids today only text.  i was shocked to read how many were comfortable breaking up with someone via text.

-also texting and emails does allow us to have a paper trail of our love lives, which is sweet if we are together.  i have to admit to spending nights reading old emails from people i thought i loved and being heartbroken about how happy we once were and angry about how shitty things became.

-speaking of breaking up, honesty is the best policy.  i loved the experiment he did while on tour, having people raise their hand if they ever lied about the reason they wanted to break up with someone and then asking if they would want honesty or to be lied to if someone broke up with them.  i was one of those contradicting audience members!

-it was also interesting to read about how what we want in a partner has changed.  i mean we are all looking for this elusive soulmate, but it seemed like back in the day people got married and grew to love each other.  we need to lower our standards! lol jk

- also we do have an infinite number of options so that makes choosing a partner, difficult as well.

-tokyo is freaking amazing.  i really want to stay at the jurassic park hotel, see ladies sitting on large robots and of course get good ramen. it was also interesting to learn about the herbivore men phenomena, it reminded me of fight club, this idea of generation of emasculated men raised by their mothers.  also that whole weird thing lubing up and rubbing yourself on someone sounded fun if you were in a relationship but sad if you do it cos you are single.

-the whole argentine part was crazy to read but i got it.  when i was in buenos aires, my friends and i were always shocked by the number of being making out at dinner.  also sadly i never got catcalled there.  

-i loved the girl who photoshopped beyonce into her photos with her ex.  reminded me of that satc quote to destroy all pictures where he looks good and you look happy.

-i also loved how aziz shared about his actual gf now. i knew she was a chef, i missed her pop-up in la at son of gun.  i had no idea that she worked for momofuku milkbar and loved that they bonded over cookies.

-i laughed outloud every time aziz made fun of alfredo, the doughnut lover.

of course, i also saw why aziz and i should be friends.  as i posted on insta this: 

why aziz ansari and i should be friends:  a mutual love of taxidermy, a strong desire to always eat the best tacos life has to offer, and of course, a need for delicious ramen in our lives

seriously, how are we not friends yet?

anyway, if you are single or love aziz, pick up this book.  it will make you laugh out loud and hopefully help you find modern love.  

skippy dies. paul murray. (283)

i picked up skippy dies because it was one flavorpill's 10 great off-kilter love story lists.  and though i love emily temple's list, i have no idea how this book made this list.  yes, there is a love story, somewhat, and yes, it is off-kilter, but it was not a quirky love story like office girl and high fidelity (both which i love) that are on this list.  i had gone in with the wrong mindset because i would not describe this book as a love story.  i mean my initial reaction when i finish this book was, "this book was fucked up."

it is also long.  this book is 661 pages long!  and in all honesty, i regret spending so much time on this novel.  i actually read about 300 pages, or so, stopped to read another novels and then went back to.  and in all honesty, i surprised myself that i picked it up again.  i did and i knocked out the last 250 pages in a day, cos i was like let's just get this over with already.  i will add the story is a lot of background that doesn't come together until the end, so i mean it was easy to get through because everything interesting is at the end.

so as the title tells you, skippy dies, the story opened with his death and then recounted what happened prior to it and the after effects of it.

skippy, or daniel juster, was a young boy attending a prestigious all boys school in ireland, seabrook.  though the school of the rich, seabrook, was not as perfect as the acting principal wanted everyone to believe.  the students and staff are all fucked.  there a handful of characters that we meet and their stories are what makes the novel so long:

ruprecht:  skippy's roommate.  he was having a donut eating contest with skippy, when skippy died.  an intelligent yet socially awkward kid that 

dept. of speculation. jenny offill. (278)

i requested jenny offill's depart. of speculation after seeing it on bj novak's instagram.  he called the novel, "funny and heartbreaking", and this is the perfect description.

a short novel, it is written like random thoughts but end up giving us a complete story of marriage that has had it ups and down. the story was told from the perspective of the wife (we never learn anyone's name) and she oftenreferred to herself and her husband in simple terms of wife/husband,and woman/man.  she was a writer and like every woman struggled with being a mother, a wife, and also an artist.  it's a honest portrayal of how tough it is for women, everyone assume motherhood comes naturally, it doesn't.  it also addressed the internal agony women face when choosing to put their family first and their work second, demonstrating it is okay to want to put your work first.

there is an affair.  her husband cheated on her.  his affair foreshadowed by an anecdote about carl sagan and his wife, ann druyan and how he asked him to marry her while they working on "the golden record" project for nasa.  however, i like the intern, was confused because carl was married and ann was engaged.  my heart broke when he explained the other girl was easier and of course when he used pronoun.  

i like every situation for cheating, want the woman to leave.  but they went to therapy or what they called "the little theater of hurt feelings."  she confronted the girl which i think she deserved and completely freaked out.  in the end, the moved to the country and the things got better.  however, i felt bad for the daughter being so isolated.

a beautiful and honest tale about marriage.  also, offill is a wonderful writer. some of my favorite instances were:

that one was so beautiful i used to watch him sleep.  if i had to sum up what he did to me, i'd say it was this:  he made me sing along to all the bad songs in the radio.  both when he loved me and when he didn't.

we applied our muzzy intellects to a theory of light. that all are born radiating light but this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not.) the most charismatic people--the poets, the mystics, the explorers--were that eat because they had somehow managed to keep a but of this king that was meant to have been dimmed.  but the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish.  it hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and the almost always the eyes went dark.

i decided to make my class read creation myths.  the idea is to go back to the beginning.  in some, god is portrayed as a father, in others, as a mother.  when god is a father, he is said to be elsewhere.  when god is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

(this novel is filled with random facts that shed light on the narrator's life. however, when i related to this to myself, it rings true for those raised by a single mother.)

my very educated mother just served us noodles.  this is the mnemonic they give her to remember the left of the planets.

(i can't recall how i learned this, but i love subtle dig at gender roles!)

researchers looked at magnetic resonance images of the brain of people who described themselves as newly in love.  they were shown a photograph of their beliefs while their brains were scanned for activity.  the scan showed the same reward systems being activated as in the brains of addicts given a drug.

(ke$ha was right, your love is a drug.)

this novel is filled with little facts that have deeper meaning for the story, which i adored.  i really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it.  it reminded me of one of my favorite novels, the lover's dictionary.

namedropper. emma forrest. (273)

for 2015, i decided to do book riot's "read harder" challenge.  one of the challenges is to read a book that someone wrote when they were under the age of 25.  lucky for me, flavorpill had a post about authors who published great books before the age of 25.  this is how i discovered emma forrest and namedropper.  the flavorpill blurb nameddropped tavi gevinson and lena dunham and so of course i had to read this.  furthermore, it mentioned that the book came out when forrest was being called "the teenage 'voice of her generation'".

i have to say that if i read this back in 1998, i would have been obsessed with emma forrest and namedropper.  i really wish i would have found it in high school, like i stumbled upon blake nelson's girl.  i mean the cover would have won me over.  oh well.  adult me read it and loved it, but not as much as teenage me would have.

namedropper follows the life of teenager viv cohen.  viv was obsessed with old hollywood, best friends with a druggy hot girl, treena, and an aging pop star, ray, and was raised by her gay uncle.  (i would have loved to have been raised by a gay uncle!)  the heart of the story is one night, she met the opening act for ray, a boy named drew, his band named "kindness of strangers" (which is cute now that i think about it. lol) viv and i have the same taste in men because i would have been all about drew.  scrawny, pale kid, artsy, bookish, into things from the past and depressed.  i imagined conor oberst as i read. lol.  after a lovely evening, in which viv falls in love.  drew winds up missing and she decided to go on a search for him.

  

viv and ray go on a hunt for drew, but the end result was that viv discovered her night with drew was nothing special for the desk girl at the hotel had a similar night as well. 

but life is not sad for too long, because ray invited her and treena to los angeles with him while he promoted his new album in the states. maybe i was smarter than average bear, but i knew that treena and ray were fucking. i knew the second he left viv on the drew hunt.  anyway, i felt bad for viv cos i have been in that awkwardness before.  but it wasn't that bad, because viv had her adventure with the lead singer of ray's rvial band.  i wish there love affair would have lasted, but it had to end.  he had a girlfriend.  also i like uncle many was pissed about tattoos.

so that is a run down of the story, which was enjoyable.  i, of course, loved the bit about hollywood.  i have to add that it made me sad that i never visited the rocky and bullwinkle gift shop that viv mentioned.  i googled the dudley-do right emporium and it closed in 2005 and i was in la during the time.  i used to always take the  bus down sunset to the greyhound so i know i passed it but it didn't strike a cord in me.  i definitely got drunk on sunset too.  i googled and looked at pics, and it looked vaguely familiar, but i could just want the memory.

so as i said, i would have been obsessed with this book, if i was a teen, because i would have loved reading about her fun adventures with bands.  but what made me love this book now was all of the witty writing.  here is some of my favorite:

from their black miss haversham clothes, i guessed the former.  (i love the description of the goth wear!)

my moods are the equivalent to madonna's dancing:  inappropriate but all-out. 

tears sprung in my eyes, like russian ballet stars.

she looked like a quentin blake illustration in a roald dahl book.  (so cute right?)

all in all, a delightful book, which i recommend if you love tavi and lena.  oh and i have to add, it totally made me crave salt and vinegar crisps, which viv ate and so of course after reading, i had to do!

                                                                                                         

brown girl dreaming. jacqueline woodson. (260)

i checked out jacqueline woodson's brown girl dreaming after i read that it won the national book award for young people's literature.  i remember seeing articles about someone making an offensive joke at the awards ceremony but regardless was still excited for

it's win and couldn't wait to read it.

this book was truly amazing.  it is a collection of poems which made me weary, because i am not good with poetry. however, it was free verse and read more like prose then poetry.  as a whole, the poems are a memoir, sharing woodson's life growing up in both the north and south during the civil rights era.  the poems also share woodson's childhood dream of becomig a writer.

i initially considered getting this book as a gift for my friend tiffany but figured i should read a book first before i gift it.  i really wish i had just given it to her.  the beginning of the book reminded me of her parents.  her father grew up in the south and her mother in california and just like jacqueline's parents, their experiences with discrimation and racism in america differed.  papa gibson is always telling us stories about how it was in the south and mama gibson shares how she never experienced any of that.  woodson's father's family in the north lived in a very different america then her mother's family in the south. it was inspiring to see how woodson's family from the north had a long string of professionals in their family which fueled a desire for success for the younger generations.  yet at the same time it was frustrating to see her mother's family still suffering from discrimination due to jim crow laws. 

brown girl dreaming is more then just a memoir because through her poems woodson tells a part of america's history that normally goes untold or unstudied.  her poems covered the meetings held by marchers, the training necessary for lunch counter sit-ins, the rise of the black panther movement, choosing to wear one's hair natural, there was even a poem about angela davis.  woodson gave voice to the black experience in america. 

her poems also shared woodson's personal history, her time as a baby in ohio, then in the south when her parents divorce and finally in new york.  due to this i connected to the poems personally. since woodson was raised by her grandparents in the south, i related to the poems about them.  some of her poems reminded me of my grandma bea and grandpa jimmy.  "the blanket" woodson shared how when her mom first left for new york, they were not sad because:

. . . the weight 

of our grandparents' love like a blanket

with us beneath it

safe and warm.

though my mother was a single mom, i never felt at a disadvantage because my grandparents' love was greater than i would have had from my father.

"two gods, two worlds" reminded me of my grandpa jimmy.  he was a muslim and i was raised mormon.  as i have shared before, i didn't understand why we would be separated in heaven simply because of our faiths shouldn't our love for each other be more important?  in this poem, woodson who is jehovah wondered what will happen to her grandfather based in lessons she learned about armageddon.  the poem ended with

but i want the world where my daddy is

and don't know why

anybody's God would make me

have to choose.

"bubble-gum cigarettes"

this is exactly how i felt when i realized that my grandfather and i could never be sealed together as the lds church believes is the way for families to stay together in heaven.  i couldn't believe god could be so heartless in dividing up families when we have no choice in who we are sent to and then develop love for each other only to be split up in heaven based on faith.

and since jill was technically my grandpa's favorite all of the poems woodson shared about her grandpa reminded me of my sister and my grandpa.  

the other poems i enjoyed were:

"south carolina at war" in which her grandfather explained to woodson and her siblings why the protesting was going on in the south.  it closes with 

Because you're colored, my grandfather says.

And just as good and bright and beautiful and free as anybody.

and nobody colored in the South is stopping,

my grandfather says,

until everybody knows what's true.

"ghosts" which shared how "whites only" signs were painted over in greenvills except for the bathrooms when a lot of paint wasn't used so the words were "like a ghost standing in front still keeping you out."

"lessons" about how woodson's mom never learned to cook because instead of learning, she wanted to play outside like the boys.  mama realized it wasn't fair that the boys played while the girls were inside, a step forward for feminism though a step back for mom (because know she doesn't know how to cook.)

"stevie and me" in which at the library, woodson discovered stevie which featured characters that looked like her.  she shared:

I'd never believed 

that someone who looked like me

could be in the pages of the book

that someone who looked like me

had a story.

"learning from langston" in which woodson demonstrated how she mimicked hughes' poems to learn how to write.

"music" which shared how woodson's mom didn't let them listen to songs that had the word funk, so they listened to white radio stations.

how too listen #8 

do you remember . . .?

someone's always asking

and someone else, always does.

"the revolution" which likens the revolution to a merry-go-round.

"every wish, one dream" in which woodson wishes on everything to be a writer. (which we all know comes true!)

reading this book was a wonderful experience and i learned so much from it, i can only imagine what young adults will gain.  i highly recommend this book and hope you enjoy it as i much as i did.

the lover's dictionary. david levithan. (259)

i read the lover's dictionary back in 2012, but i never blogged about it.  i meant to play catch up and wanted to post for all those books i had read, but it never happened.  i absolutely loved the lover's dictionary.  after seeing it on strand books' instagram for valentine's day, i decided to reread it for valentine's day.

the lover's dictionary was exactly that a dictionary, each definition shared an incident or a character trait of the protangonist and his partner.  i say partner, because the sex of the partner is never disclosed.  the first time i read it, i had assumed the partner was a woman, however, after reading levithan's work, it could be a man.  i tried to look for an indication of the gender, but other than a mention of a need to buy shoes, everything was gender neutral.  (it is also sexist to think that only women splurge on shoes, see: sneakerheads.)  back to the definitions, they are very clever and there is wonderful wordplay which makes this book even more delightful.

through the definitions, a love story is revealed, the definitions past back and forth through time revealing how love was found, betrayed and in the end, lost.  the definitions about falling in love and realizing one is in love, bring joy.  the ones about fights and losing are sad yet beautiful.  the epiphanies brought on by heartache were my favorite parts, but i am a big fan of sad love songs so this makes sense.

there were a handful of definitions that stopped me and caused me to reflect on my life and love and isn't that the markings of a great book?  i really need to buy a copy for my personal library.  i will keep it next to an actual dictionary.

but here are some of my favorite definitions:

I, n.

Me without anyone else.

only, adj.

That's the dilemma, isn't it?  When you're single, there's the sadness and joy of only me.  And when you're paired, there's the sadness of joy of only you.

punctuate, v.

Cue the imaginary interviewer:

Q: So when all is said and done, what you learned here?

A:  The key to a successful relationship isn't just in the words, it's in the choice of punctuation.  When you're in love with someone, a well-placed questions mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kind of exclamations.

oh and i have to add, the definition for meander made me smile.  it discussed how to kill a mockingbird had no follow-up so was essentially a literary one-hit wonder, but that will be changing soon!

lovely right?  oh and i have to add this book is even better because i learned on amazon that valentine's day played a role in the start of this book!

   

every day. david levithan. (257)

i came across every day on that search for a christmas gift for my cousin.  the premise sounded amazing and i loved david leviathan's other works but decided to go with something more recent.  however, when i saw it listed on times' 100 best young adult books, i decided to check it out myself.

every day was the story of a, a soul/spirit/possible devil or demon (we never find out for sure) that wakes up in the body of a different person each day and leaves at midnight while asleep (to avoid the pain of being pulled from the body.). a did not have a gender or sex nor any understanding of what a was or why or how a is placed in bodies.  a had rules to avoid disrupting the lives of the people he inhabits but that all changed when a met a girl, rhiannon.

i will say i was shocked by how quickly the book got started.  i assumed that we would see a in a series of bodies before a fell in love but the action started quickly.  

i don't want to giveaway any details of this book because i want people to read it.  plus my rehashing of the story wouldn't do it justice.

and though i did get a bored with the actual love story and didn't support a's decisions to disrupt the person's day so a could see rhiannon especially the kid that missed his flight to hawaii!  i have to praise this book for it's lessons on acceptance and tolerance.  a assumed bodies of every race, class, gender (including trans), sexual orientation, even mental illness and it was amazing because by doing so it demonstrated that underneath all of our identities we are human.  i think this alone is the reason to read the book and is a great lesson for young adults.  i also admired that the couple that demonstrated to a what love truly is and how beautiful it can be was a lesbian couple.  

if you haven't read this book, you need to an interesting story with great lessons about the human experience and a love story to boot!!

how to be a woman. caitlin moran. (251)

after reading moran's how to build a girl, i had to read how to be a woman.  and can i just say, i absolutely loved it and her.  if you are a woman, its a must read!

so this work is categorized as a memoir but i feel like it's more than that.  each chapter starts off with an event from moran's life but the lesson learned can be applied to all of us.

there is so much for me to write about, maybe i will go through chapter by chapter.  well maybe just favorite chapters.

"i become furry" in this chapter, moran discussed when her pubic hair began to grow and how she would shave it because she was scared of growing up and of course it.  this segues into a discussion on how we women work so hard to be hairless.  she shares how so much planning occurs when women go to a party via a conversation with a friend, which made me laugh cos it is so true.  her friend uncertain if she is going to sleep with this guy after a party, doesn't know if and when she should get waxed.  seriously it's such a bitch to have to deal with pubic hair.  you know my hurt hand?  it's from me trying to wax my upper life by myself before meeting up with a boy i thought i was in love with.  i mean i have given up on daily maintenance for my bush that only gets spruced up when i think someone is going to see it.  (if i was in a committed relationship, it would only get spruced up on special occasions, hence why i might still be single.) but i feel like i should have pubic hair, i'm an adult woman not a prepubescent child.  i refuse to be completely hairless down there, i mean i do clean it up when it needs to be but for the most part i let it be.  also nipple hair, i used to be so embarrassed by mine, but then now i just shave it when i need to.  i am a person, we have hair.  i mean the one on top of my head is quite lovely.  i think that should be the main focus.  and just like moran shared at the end, when she lost her virginity, the man did not care what the state of her pubic hair was.  its like my friend peter would always tells us in college, guys don't care if your underwear matches your bra, its just going to end up coming off anyway.

"i don't know what to call my breast".  this of course discussed finally getting breast and how they are referred to as.  this lead into a discussion on what to call your vagina.  i for one use vagina.  as a child growing up, our family didn't give it a nickname it was just our private part.  but what caused my decision to use vagina as the term to refer to my vagina was that one time at my work, a little girl told one of my tutor's that her vagina hurt. the tutor was so surprised by her use of vagina, but i mean the girl was right that was what she had.  we told her mom, it turns out she had been having some urinary issues and the mom also explained that she didn't want her daughter to use some silly term for her vagina so had her call it that.  i decided to do the same.

"i am a feminist".  so i have been on a bit of feminist kick since last year, after reading bad feminist, i have always seen myself as a feminist, but i feel like i am truly embracing it and this book reminded me why we need to reclaim this title.  as i shared on my instagram page:

love her for this!! but seriously this book isn't some feminist agenda, well it kinda is, but it's really just some good ol' girl talk about women issues.  though i will say i didn't always agree with what moran wrote, but then again, i don't have to, part of this new feminism is allowing acceptance of all ideas as long as progress is being made for women.  but if you are a woman and you want to be treated as an equal, then guess what, you are a feminist!

"i am in love", caitlin shared her horrible boyfriend that she thought she could change and from which she took abuse because she thought it was love.  we all have had this type of situation.  i blame romantic comedies for making us think we can change men that really aren't good for us.

"i go lap-dancing".  i felt guilty when i read it, because i have always been a bit of a "cool" girl, a guy's i mean strip clubs are gross, its a place men go to have women dance for them.  

"i get into fashion" fashion is expensive and i like moran don't spend a lot on handbags.  she did once and it was stolen.  though i am glad she wrote about how horrible heels are.  i really wish i could walk in them.  i recently discovered that my arch doesn't rest completely on the arc of the shoe so this might be why i can't wear heels. or maybe i am flat foot, i don't know.  i need to go see someone to verify this.

"abortion" what i admired about this piece was that moran was completely honest about having an abortion.  she didn't have one because she was too young, or unwed, or even sick, but because she knew she could not handle having another child.  that sounds horrible and insensitive but its honest.  she discussed how there is a notion of "good aids" ie someone getting it via blood transfusion and "bad aids" someone that gets its via drug needles.  the same kind be said for abortion.  moran got what some would consider a "bad abortion."  it appears selfish, but not all women are mothers, trust me i have worked with kids my whole life and some people are truly unfit to be mothers.  why bring a child into the world if you can not care for it like a mother should?  i know it sounds insensitive because life is life, a baby didn't choose to be born, but at the same time there is so much suffering in the world, why add to it.  at the end of the day, it's the pregnant woman's choice, she is the only one that can make the right decision for herself.  it might not be something that everyone agrees with, but then again are only truly responsible for ourselves.  

moran discussed a handful of other topics as well, pornography, childbirth (her first birth really grossed me out, i couldn't read it), bras, role models, and plastic surgery.  oh and growing up in the nineties, she writes alot about the riot grrl movement, which i need to revisit.  my roommate samira introduced me to bikini kill and bratmobile, so i have a taste but i need to get some more!

i just realized that this blog is about how my life relates to what she wrote about versus analysis of what she wrote.  but you need to read it and enjoy it yourself!  and all in all though it does explain how to be a woman, in the end, we learn that moran just wants to be a human, just one of the "guys" (which i think discredits her notions of feminism, because it still holds up equality on male terms.  but hey you can't win them all.  and regardless, this was funny book to read, so i forgive her!

weetzie bat. francesca lia block.

so i was like 99.9% percent sure that i saw francesca lia block's weetzie bat on flavorpill, but i can not find a post.  i have found this amazing a "weird girl's reading list:  10 best outsider books for teenagers" that i will now add to my many list of books i need to read.  however, i know it wasn't this post that i learned of weetzie bat from because the cover is not the same.  though maybe the cover isn't why i got it? i just recognized the name.  anyway, who cares all that matter is that i have it.  and that i found it at the goodwill in delano! yes, in delano, and for like .79 i think.  talk about a deal!

so weetzie bat was supposed to be my final read of 2014.  it's only 113 pages and the book is a mini one so it's probably more like 50.  i started it on new years eve while waiting for my friend danny to finish his shopping at the amoeba in sf, however, i did not finish it before midnight struck.  (there was a lot of prep and prepartying on my nye). so instead of being my last book of 2014, it ended up being my first book of 2015 (i finished reading it while waiting for brunch on new years day!)

and can i just say that i love weetzie bat it's like this wild little adventures that takes place in the city that i love best, los angeles!  i mean on the first page, graumann's, the farmer's market and okie-dog are name-checked.  i texted my friend cody, who dragged me to okie-dog, a handful of nights, when i read that.  and it turns out his ex-stepmom had him reaad weetzie bat in high school!  (also i learned about ponyland which used to be an amusement park where the beverly center is now!)

so weetzie bat was a young high school girl that lives in shangri l.a., she had a blonde pixie haircut and dressed up in vintage dresses with taffeta or fringe, feather headdresses and moccasins (all the pre-coachella phenomenon.)  she befriended the hottest guy at school, dirk.  they spent a bunch of time hanging out, there was the promise of love in the air, and then it is discovered at the end of the chapter that dirk is gay!  the best ones are always gay! oh and i should clarify, no love in the hetero sense of boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, there is plenty of love between dirk and weetzie!

from dirk's grandmother, weetzie received a magic lamp.  a genie granted her three wishes and her life began to unfold.  i won't go into a rehashing of the plot, i mean it's 100 pages, you should check it out and i promise it won't take more than a day to finish.

i will say that i loved the story of dirk and duck, at the end of the novel. duck unable to cope with death of a friend to aids ran away to sf.  dirk just following instinct found him because duck was in his blood.  so sweet and what a wonderful point to make esp since blood became so scary due to aids.  

there is so much that happened in this novel and it was all weird and wonderful.  oh i just remember about how weetzie, dirk, and duck decided to have a child together!  loved that too.  it's a great little book and you should definitely pick it up or you can borrow mine.  hopefully i can make it through the rest of the series in 2015.  it was a great kick off book for the new year!

adverbs. daniel handler. (246)

i came across daniel handler's adverbs in a flavorpill post on 10 underrated books everyone should read.  since he is lemony snicket, and i loved the movie version of his series (i know i need to read it!) and the dark, i decided to give this novel a read.

and i hate to go against flavorpill, but this would go on my list of underrated books that are actually overrated.  there is a blurb on the back by dave eggers that likens handler to nabokov,  which is a huge compliment and yes his prose is quite clever but it wasn't that impressive.  and i have to admit, eggers in a bit overrated in my book as well.

adverbs is called a novel, but i would consider it a collection of short stories.  there are a series of elements that threads that the chapters together.  initially,  i felt that it was the name of the characters, but as the reader discovers on the front jacket, characters may have share the same name.  however, i did not believe handler, all of the characters were the same person except there may have been two keiths.  he does admit at the end of the chapter, "truly", that we can not follow the names through the book that there are other elements to trace throughout the book, birds, stranger you spot outside of your cab, cocktails, pop songs.  and i did admire him for these added elements that connect the stories to create a novel, magpies, cocktails with silly names like "morning sickness", pop song lyrics like "baby, baby, oh, baby", a snow queen and of course, cabs.  it was like being on a treasure hunt, every discovery of these elements felt like an inside joke or ah-ha moment and i have to give him credit there.

i must also admit that "truly" (all of the chapters were titled with adverbs) was my favorite chapter, because it felt true.  the novel made sense after reading it, it felt like the heart of the novel.  it told us point blank why handler was writing as opposed to all the word play and coyness of the other chapters.  i liked how straight forward he was in this chapter.

the overall theme of the novel was love, all sorts of love.  for example, the novel opened with  falling in love with a total stranger (there was even the added element of it being gay love, that sounds bad but you know what i mean.) but this is my favorite kind of love, a missed connection sort of love.  it reminded me of the yacht song "psychic city", "i used to live in a heartbreak city, i swear i'd fall in love every minute on the street".  there was unrequited teenage love, best friend love, love of money, and love for thy neighbor (literally).

and with it being about love there were some great quotes:

the opening lines set the bar for me, "love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.  we breathed it in, particularly me' the air was full of smells and birds, but it was the love, i was sure, that was tumbling down to my lungs, the heart's neighbors and confidants."

(after reading that, i had high expectations, but the novel fell kind of short for me.)

"they say love's like a bus, and if you wait long enough another will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay."

"you meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do."

"love is like candy from a stranger, but its candy you've had before and it's probably won't kill you."

"it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people, or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. the miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done.  it is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe."

"and when love is over when the diner of love seems closed from the outside you want all those hours back along with anything you left at the lover's house and maybe a couple of things which aren't technically yours on the grounds that you wasted a portion of your life and those hours have all gone southside."

"they say when you're really in love, the word becomes gossamer and gorgeous, but in my experience the world gets grimy, and the love object is in stark relief from the surroundings.  this is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street."

"love is really liking someone a whole lot and not wanting to screw that up."

and of course i loved:

"they looked at each other like a pair of parentheses."  (i just love the idea of people as parentheses, it's that blow song!)

so i know all of these great quotes, so clever and sweet, so how did i not enjoy the novel?  because as i read i became confused by the need to make everything cohesive.  these quotes were like gems and hided under weird story plots.  i got caught up with the characters names, when maybe i should have focused on the elements and the love. i should give it another read, i guess.  i don't know.  i mean these quotes are great, maybe i just need to buy myself a copy and highlight the love quotes.  maybe i will love it more.

but for now, i think it is overrated, every though it has amazing quotes on love!

and the heart says whatever. emily gould. (232)

while looking up the blurb flavorpill had written about emily gould's friendship, i came across another article titled "could emily gould be the voice of our generation"? i didn't read the article, because i wanted to read the book first, but i would have to say yes, gould could be the voice of our generation.  (i have yet to read the article, i want to write this post first.)

as i read this collection of essays, i couldn't help but think of how it reminded me of hbo's "girls" and i am shocked that flavorpill did not put it on their list of books to read to fill the the girls' void in your life.  

this work was published in 2010 and the series started in 2012 and they do feel a lot a like.  so i wonder why it was excluded.  (actually i just googled thinking that maybe gould and dunham were friends, turns out they are not.  a feud started between them during the time gould's book came out.  how sad.)

and the heart says whatever covers gould's early twentysomething life.  it is just as curtis sittenfeld's (not sure who he is) words on the front cover share:  "these smart, poignant essays about being young and literary in new york city are like a twenty-first century version of the bell jar but with more pot, sex, technology, and (thanks goodness) a different ending."  gould shared with us her shitty jobs, bad break-ups, even worse rebound relationships, depression and bad discussions in life.  as i read about her time working at a publishing house, gawker, i can see how she gleaned from her life for friendship.  the same can be said for the relationships she had.

this collection felt like life, i mean it was, but it wasn't a forced life.  in the introduction, gould shared a story about how after a work thing she went to see her boyfriend's band play.  it turned into a late night when his band became the headliners.  her boyfriend was elated but she was tried so went home.  she realized that this was the moment their relationship shifted and they eventually broke up.  she has looked back at the moment wondering if she would do it different.  she goes on to question all the mistakes she has made. however she admits that "i would be lying if i said i was a different person now.  i am the same person.  i would do it all again."  it sad but its true.  i mean we did end up where we are now because of these mistakes and we would probably make them all over again.  i'd like to think i would do things differently but that is not how it ever is.

my favorite essays were "and the heart says" and "the lens".  "and the heart says" captured the difficulty and confusion of break-ups.  how one looks back on the period when it was good and realize that those feelings were not fake but only temporary as gould described.  it is also scary to think how someone we are so intimate with can suddenly be a stranger.  it also made my heart sad to know that that recording of joseph singing to her is lost forever, but at least she has the memory.  i enjoyed the ending to "the lens", the story of nan goldin's photo of cookie mueller and her husband at their wedding and sadly his funeral.  gould explained that "but [cookie] looks into the coffin with the same expression she'd worn at the wedding:  love and sadness, twined together so tightly they are indistinguishable.

gould's collection was just her life, but it felt more real then other similar works i have read, how to be a person or taipei, which attempt to do the same thing.  due to this, i would have to put a vote in the column for voice of a generation, but definitely need to see what else is out there.

heartburn. nora ephron. (217)

i requested heartburn because i was under the impression that when harry met sally was originally a book.  the library didn't have it, so i requested heartburn instead.  i later discovered that when harry met sally is simply a screenplay, thanks alot goodreads for getting a girl's hopes up!

anyway, i felt it was about time that i finally read some nora ephron.  i, unfortunately, was not aware of her until she passed away.  i mean i loved the films she wrote and directed, sleepless in seattle, michael, you've got mail, i just didn't know she wrote them.  i also discovered that the female celebrities i adore, adored her, mindy kaling and lena dunham for example.  when she passed away, i remember looking her books up at the library but didn't commit to anything because i wasn't sure where to start.  well two years, later, i finally sorted it out, i started with her first and only novel.

heartburn, was the story of rachel samstat, a cookbook writer and tv personality, which in my head closely resembled rachel ray (including the critiques of not being a real cook).  we meet her at a very low point in her life.  she just discovered that her husband mark, a syndicated columnist, was cheating on her.  rachel was pregnant with their second child and discovered the affair via an inscription her husband's lover, thelma, left in a baby book!  how disgusting right!?!?! the message was horrible and mentioned mark and thelma as a couple singing to rachel and mark's children!!!! seriously some people are disgusting, i would have gone apeshit, if i read that.

the novel then covers rachel struggle with what to do.  does she take mark back and work through it?  or does she leave him.  it sounds heavy, which it is, but the story is actually funny.  as ephron writes via rachel, 

of course i'm writing this later, much much later, and it worries me that i've done what i usually do--hidden the anger, covered the pain, pretended it want there for the sale of the story.

she goes in to explain:

because if i tell the story, i control the version.

because if i tell the storyif i can make you laugh, and i would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.

because if i tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much.

because if i tell the story, i can get on with it.

this then confirmed my suspensions that heartburn was one of those memoir-ish novel (the second trend of this year of reading).  and sure enough, wikipedia informed me that heartburn was based on ephron's second marriage to carl bernstein.  the cheating bastard!

how horrible that ephron really went through all of this but kudos to her for turning her misfortune into a funny little novel and a movie!!

and can i just add, what a bunch of sluts in washigton d.c. though i am not surprised.  i don't trust politicians.

in the end, rachel made the right choice and leaves mark but not without throwing a pie in his face.  she took her two sons, the second child nathaniel was premature after she fell spying on mark and his lover, to new york to embark on next chapter of life.

this was an enjoyable little read and was even filled with recipes!  i want to try the cheesecake, linguine alla cecca, and potatoes anna.  so look for that happening too!

of course their are hilarous bits, rachel's jewish prince routine, her therapy group being robbed and of course, her starting the thelma has an STD rumor.  

and i loved that rachel's obstetrician helped her realized that she did believe in love.  as her thoughts to herself share:

sometimes i believe that love dies but hope springs eternal.  sometimes i believe that hope died but love springs eternal.  sometimes i believe that send plus guilt equals love, and sometimes i believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex.  sometimes i believe that love is as natural as the tides and sometimes i believe that love is an act of will.  sometimes i beige that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes i believe that everyone is faking it.  sometimes i believe that love is essential, and sometimes i believe that the only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.

this is why ephron's romcoms are the best.  a sweet little book, short and worth a read.  i look forward to reading more of her works and course watching everything she made as well.