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!

                                                                                                         

matilda. roald dahl.

i originally purchased this copy of roald dahl's matilda because it is absolutely adorable and i wanted to turn it into a book clutch.  however, if was too small, but still adorable so not a total lost.  it has been on my to-reread list but i hadn't gotten around to it.  the last couple of days, life has been overwhelming so decided to read matilda because i needed a light-hearted and easy read.

i loved matilda as a child and loved it even more as an adult.  i always loved matilda for her love of reading and as an adult i decided to christian her a patron saint of readers.  i was amazed at how well-read matilda was for a child.  check out her reading list:

she more well-read than most adults i know!

matilda also name-checked the secret garden and great expectations; the former which i just purchased and the later which i had recently checked out from the library so they will be the next two books that i read in honor of matilda.

and since matilda was bookish, matilda is filled with some great bookworm quotes.

"the books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.  she went on olden-day sailing ships with joseph conrad.  she went to africa with ernest hemingway and to india with rudyard kipling.  she travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an english village."

"she knew it was wrong to hate her parents like this, but she was finding it very hard not to do so.  all the reading she had done had given her a view of life they had never seen.  if only they  would read a little dickens or kipling they would soon discover there was more to life than cheating people and watching television."

there is another great quote that i saw a print of on etsy but i couldn't find it in the book.   it shows up on the Internet as a dahl quote but i searched the book and didn't see nor do i remember coming across it while reading.  i think it came from the movie version.  if anyone knows its true source, let me know:

"so matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. these books gave matilda a hopeful and comforting message: you are not alone."

and like all dahl novels, this book is filled with little gems on life.  like matilda's mom telling her that "i'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are.  you will learn than when you get a but older, my girl."

i also enjoyed all the talk about the overpraising of kids which is something i have discussed prior in this blog. the delusional environment kids are reared in when they are constantly praised and everyone is a winner.  i loved how dahl talked about telling parents the honest harsh truth about their kids, as a substitute teacher there are definitely times i would love to send an honest note home to parents about how their kids really are.  

also taking it one step further, matilda can also be a critique on administration in schools.  unfortunately, there are probably some trunchbulls in schools, individuals who do not understand kids yet are in charge of their futures.

but back to matilda, she really is a wonderful role model for girls!  she is intelligent and kind and can serve up her own karma!!!! you have to admire her how she punished her father for his wrongdoings.  she also saved the day when it came to miss honey!  and last but not least but how happy of an ending that matilda was able to live with miss honey!!!  such an extrordinary girl deserves an extrordinarily happy ending!! i should change your patronage, matilda the patron saint of readers and extrordinary girls!

ps i really want to see the broadway musical now!

ps 

it's

the fantastic mr. fox. roald dahl (141)

last week in honor of roald dahl's birthday, i finally watched wes anderson's "fantastic mr. fox".  of course, anderson walks on water in my eyes so i loved it.  it was sweet and clever and filled me with whimsy, just like all of his other films.  and though the film and the book are nothing alike other than the premise, there was a scene from the movie that sparked my desire to read the book.  it involved bunce and his goose liver doughnuts!  foie gras doughnuts!!! though a villan, bunce sounded like my kind of man!  and so i wondered did this really happen in the book?  did dahl or anderson create this dessert??

and of course . . . it was dahl!

bunce is alittle on the short side but, if he made me foie gras donuts everyday, i could look pass it.

the rest of the story was of course a delight.  mr. fox is fantastic and clever, stealing food from the three farmers.  though i guess it is quite horrible that he does steal from them.  but i will justify his thievery by claiming that the farmers left mr. fox with no alternative by farming mr. fox's hunting grounds and a fox has got to eat.  mr. fox did have a family to feed.  also they destroyed his home!  they turned a hill to a crater, so here is another justification for his stealing.  also  he ashared his stolen goods with the other animals which makes the stealing okay.  he wasn't a greedy thief, more like robin hood!  

also the farmers did shoot off mr. fox's tail (poor guy) so stealing their goods was sweet revenge in my book.  and really did  bean need that much cider???

all in all, this book was a delight and if you have never read it, pick it up.  let me know if boggis, bunce, and bean are still waiting by the fox hole.

the witches. roald dahl. (69)

in honor of halloween, i decided that brother bear and i would read roald dahl's "the witches" together. but sadly with my work schedule, we didn't get to read together. also he checked out books from his school library and lost interest. but i still read it.

as a kid, i was scared of the book because the movie dramatized me. i never watched scary movies growing up, but saw "the witches" at the afterschool program i attended. i remember being freaked out when angelica houston peeled off her fake face and revealed her grotesque witch one. that scene alone may be the sole reason i never read it as a kid. come
to think of it, i'm not sure if i saw the ending of the movie, i was that scared.

i know this may sound odd but i may have owned a copy or maybe my sister did because grandma bea definitely read the book. so maybe i got older and tried to brave it but never read it. until now.

and what a delightful book. i regret not reading it as a kid and being such a chicken. but i know that elementary school version of me would have loved it especially since the grandma played such a important role in the book. grandma bea will always be my most favorite person in the world and in elementary school she definitely was. if i read this back then i would have been reminded of how fortunate i am to have such a great grandma (because i was reminded now). and though it may seem morbid, as i was reading i worried about the fact that his grandmamma would probably die when he was still young and then he would be all alone in the world. i also thought it was just me being a worrywart but dahl did address this issue. i was so relieved when dahl turned him into a mouse so his life expectancy shorten so he wouldn't end up alone. it sounds crazy as an adult to want to shorten your life so you won't be alone but to kids this would be comforting.

worrying about your grandparent's death might seem heavy for a kids book but it is something that kids do (i know i did). and that is what is great about dahl's books, he writes for kids but doesn't treat them as children. dahl discussed "adult realm" things with subtlety in terms that kids could/can understand. what i love best (and this is something that dahl does in all of his books) is when he gives philosophical insight on society via his characters. like when the boy turned into a mouse and realized that it's not all that bad because "when mice grow up, they don't ever have to go to war and fight against other mice. mice, [he] felt pretty certain, all like each other. people don't." most kids probably never viewed war in this light before. i think it's important to give kids this other perspective considering that war is never demonstrated as being something negative in grade school but is usually taken up as a display of patriotism. yet by showing how silly a war with mice would be, it ultimately shows how silly war is for humans.

i think another important lesson in this book is unconditional love and that hopefully all kids have it. it was gruesome to think of bruno being offed by his parents simply because he was a mouse. but in contrast it was wonderful how his grandmamma loved him regardless. for as the boy told his grandmamma in response when asked if he was sad about being a mouse, "it doesn't matter who or what you look like as long as somebody loved you." the boy would always be okay because he would always have his grandmother's love.

this all seems deep for a kids book. but the great thing about dahl is that his stories are so creative and enjoyable that these little life lessons are dropped in your lap versus forced in your face. it's like pixar movies in which the adult and kid experience are completely different. in my "old" age, i may have focused on parts that would have meant nothing to me as a kid. but that is the beauty of a good book you can go back and find new things.

(ps after reading this i think next year i might dress up as a roald dahl witch. if i was a school teacher i would read this to my class and then on halloween, wear a wig and claws and show my no-toes feet to my class. lol.)