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!

                                                                                                         

great expectations. charles dickens. (155)

a couple months ago i purchased a used kate spade great expectations book clutch.  they normally run $328 but lucky me i found it used and in good condition for $62 on poshmark!  and as much as i love it, it isn't worth the $300, i mean its laminated!  but $62, yes it is.  but here it is:  

anyway, i felt like a poser because i never    read all of great expectations yet here i was carrying it around as a purse.  it was an assigned reading my senior year but i totally cliffnoted it. (i had a really bad case of senioritis).  i knew pip and of course remembered miss havisham, but they were all i could recall.  well i did have an scene in my head of someone, running in and tearing down the curtains in miss havisham's room, but i think that was because of the movie because this scene, i would discovered on this reading did not occur in the book.  

this rereading or actual first reading of great expectations epitomizes why i started this lets-read-those-high-school-assigned-readings-now project!  because i regret not reading this the first time i was assigned it.  i will admit that 30

year old me is a better reader than 17 year old me (i remember being lost vocab wise.  those macbeth references definitely would

have been lost on me the first time!) which may be the reason for my enjoying great expectations on this round but i absolutely loved it.  there were so many twists and turns and sadly (or gratefully) i didn't pay any attention in class because i did not recall any of them so i was actually surprised!  i mean even the identity of pip's benefactor caught me off guard.  (in retrospect, i deserved that b+ in ap engish).  modern day soap operas have nothing on this dicken's classic, it was amazing how everyone's secret connections were revealed in the end. i really was not expecting any of it. 

i won't rehash the story since the story is so well known.  or give a deep analysis other than looks can be deceiving.  plus the most important lesson of just because a person is high class doesn't mean they are classy and the vice versa being in the low class doesn't mean you are trashy.

i do want to discuss my love for certain characters.  who doesn't adore joe with his heart of gold and love for pip? society would not have labelled him a man of good manners and pedigree but there was no denying that he was a loyal and reliable friend.  i thought it was amazing that though "poor" he had the means to settle pip's debt in the end.  i was also happy he got a happy ending with biddy and kids of his own!!

i also enjoyed wemmick and his two personas, not mixing business with pleasure.  his home self was the best, how he took care of his aged parent.  and the surprise wedding could not have been more adorable! i had a total book crush on him!

and though she was batty, you can not deny that miss havisham was great.  i mean she would make an excellent halloween costume!  one would need a wedding dress, once white now yellow, one shoe on also once white now yellow, and a watch stopped at twenty to nine.  she was scary but such an excellent villain that you can't help but love her.  and in the end,  like the grinch her heart does turn three times in size and she regretted what she did to estrella.

i love/hated pip.  i hated how he treated joe when he came into his great expectations.  i hated how he was in love with estrella though she was proud, their first day together was a red flag that she would make him miserable.  but he redeemed himself when he accepted and helped his benefactor.  also i loved how he secretly helped herbert and made sure miss havisham did too.  

but i must add that my disapproval of his love for estrella caused me to dislike the ending and i wish the original ending was the standard ending.  the ending i read was all hollywood where pip and estrella randomly meet up at miss havisham.  she recently discovered, he in town for a visit.  they meet and it's hinted that they end up together.  boo!!! because he was not worthy of her love!

in the original ending, estella discovered the spider and fell in love with a poor doctor.  she and pip run into each other on the street.  pip has joe's son with him and she assume it is his and that his life is better without her (which it is) and he sees that she has actually has a heart and is capable of love!  

i like that ending because they both become better people which i doubt would have occurred if they ended up together.  

though i will add if they originally ended up together out of actual true love i could have dealt with it.  how happy would pip's benefactor be to discover that his the wife of his gentleman was his daughter!  so for his sale i would have been okay with it.

i am glad i ended up enjoying great expectations as much as i did because i would have felt lame carrying that clutch around if i didn't.

also if you were in mr. brice's class with me and didn't read this, you really should!

amendment:  so after posting this on fb i thought to myself, maybe we didn't read this in brice, so i consulted my classmates.  we didn't, it was assigned our freshman year!  freshman year!! there was definitely no way 14 year old me could have got this!  but i will add, i did get an a in that class.  lol