glover's mistake. nick laird.

i found "glover's mistake" at the san juan capistrano library.  the cover caught my eye, loved the sea foam green and the illustrations.  and of course, the chicago tribune's praise had me excited to read it. the tribune claimed that it was "the kind of book jane austen would've written if she'd been male and hipper---and had internet access."  sounds amazing right?  but it wasn't.

i ran into the same problem that i had with "wuthering heights", i didn't like any of the characters.  perhaps a better comparison would be my dislike of the characters in zadie smith's "nw" because smith and laird are married.

"glover's mistake" is the tale of a love triangle:  david is in love with this old art teacher ruth but she falls in love with his roommate james glover. initially, i felt bad for david because he tried to date ruth but was unsuccessful.  david did not aggressively pursue ruth and as a result their relationship went straight into the friends zone.  ruth then meet james through david and is instantly attracted to him.  i felt bad for david because it is obvious that he was going to suffer.  he lost the woman he loved to his roommate. my sympathies did not last long because it turns out david was a jerk and a little bat shit crazy. david sabotaged their relationship,  going so far as creating a fake email to tell

ruth about james' infidelty (james did have a one night stand but in his defense he was a virgin prior to dating ruth so i think he should be forgiven).  david also made james insecure about ruth's lesbian past and friendship with an old lover.  quick note:  i couldn't decide if glover's mistake was the infidelity or his insecurity about ruth being a lesbian.

but even with david's evilness, i couldn't cheer for james and ruth.  their relationship did move way too quickly.  they got engaged after a couple of months of dating (or was it weeks).    there was an age difference which didn't bother me but i was concern about their difference in terms of life experience. it was her second marriage and his first real relationship.  i mean ruth had a list of lovers of both sexes and james was virgin.  (i would like to add that i think the best kind of guy to fall in love with is the kind like james.  the kind that was dorky or fat in high school who then grow up to be handsome.  all of these good looks and no conceit).  also they didn't seem to have much in common other than sex.  i mean if laird gave david and ruth's relationship some depth i would have wanted to see their love win but since he didn't i couldn't decide if i want david or them to win in the end.  and that is ultimately the problem with the book, i didn't know whose team i was on.  the thing about love triangles is that you should want to choose a side (see: team jacob or team edward) but here both sides sucked so i didn't become invested.

granted i have only read one jane austen book but i totally became invested because i cared about the characters.  at first i was on team wickham and then of course team darcy.  but the point is that i chose a side.  so sorry chicago tribune but this was not like an austen novel.  

i must add i am not giving up on laird, just like i didn't give up on smith, i still plan on reading their other works to see what the hype is about.

and one last thing, i did find ruth's art intriguing.  i wish the "republic of women"  really did exist, it would be an interesting piece.  i like the idea of ruth creating "artefacts" for a lost female

only civilization, i especially would have liked to have seen the menstruation headdress.  as i read, i was reminded of judy chicago's "dinner party".  i should google, maybe laird based is ruth's art on something in real life.

the casual vacancy. j.k. rowling (96)

i should have wrote that letter to j.k. rowling suggesting her next book be the story of harry potter but from the prospective of professor snape! it would give snape a chance to be the hero in his own words instead of via flashbacks. give him a chance to tell his side! but alas i never wrote that letter and even if i did and j.k. somehow read it, it would have never convinced her, because she was determined to write the anti-potter.

if you are a potterhead and looking to get a fix, look elsewhere. if you are a heroin addict, looking to get a fix, you should actually read this book because it will show you how heroin will ruin your life.

at first, i was hesitant to read "the casual vacancy" because i am not interested in politics. i am ignorant of what goes on in washington and the world because let's face it even if you are informed on the political affairs of the world, you are still ignorant. i believe the government only lets us know what it wants us to know. also i am one of those skeptics that believe that the masses can vote but it doesn't really count for anything. i vote for the sticker. so when i read the premise, i was certain that 500 pages of small town politics would bore me to death.

but guess what, it didn't. but also because it wasn't a political novel. well it was but in the sense that it is a novel about the class divide which is ultimately political. this novel actually reminded me of zadie smith's "nw" (amazon should consider doing a deal where you get both books for at a discount prices), both focus on the slums of england. oddly enough, i didn't like any of rowling's characters just like i didn't care for anyone in "nw". interestingly enough it was for the same reason, they were all horrible people who were selfish and only out for themselves. the only character i cared about was krystal weedon because she was dealt a bum hand by life. and yes there were some life choices she made that i didn't agree with but she dealt with her problems the only way she knew how.

quick digression. so the book is about the town of pagford and the divide within their middle due to the slums aka "the fields". interesting those those affected by the issue aka the lower class did not strive to keep their homes. this could a) be an analogy about how in politics the upper classes rule the lives of the lower without their knowing or b) the lower classes do not care about their own well being (which makes me question, why do the upper classes care than?)

this divide actually kept me interested in the book. my personal opinion on government assistance and welfare programs are that they have gone to shit. people abuse them. (see me on unemployment for 3 years). and there's no checks and balances on any of these programs. most people on assistance to not use the money properly. they buy iphones or ipads instead of what that money is allotted. plus a lot of time and energy is spent on people who would never spend the same amount of time and energy on themselves because let's be honest their lack of motivation in life is the reason why they need the assistance in the first place.

however, once i saw the story of krystal and how she could have a better life if she had the resources, i realized that life and assistance isn't so black and white. these welfare programs were put in place to help those in need. but sadly instead of doing that it has created a culture of dependence in which people abuse the aid. i have no real solution to this problem other than bitch about it. but i if i ruled the world, i would reform the programs to give assistance to those who truly needed it instead of junkies and teens that use their bastard children (sounds harsh but i am a bastard so it is kosher) as their meal ticket (krystal weedon planned on doing this).

at first glance, krystal seemed like the anti-potter. she was a girl born to a junkie mother who grew up in the slums. she skipped school, smoked, cussed, and had unprotected sex. but though rowling was trying to get away from her wholesome teen heros from hogsworth, krystal and harry both share a heart of gold. well krystal's was probably tainted a little, but she did try to sacrifice herself (via the attempt at pregnancy) to keep her family together. kinda like harry sacrificed himself for the world. also they are both searching for love due to lack of a home; krystal's single mom is a junkie and we all know what happened to harry's parents. both are also outsiders whose reputations proceed them, krystal is known as a hoodlum but she is actually a good kid. and well harry was a super star than a liar in the press about the return of he-would-at-that-time-couldn't-be-named and he really was the savior (not like blasphemous savior but he did save the world from evil.) so those rowling may have wanted her characters to be edgier, she still created a character you could care about.

however, her supporting characters were the opposite of the b-list characters in potter. whereas i loved ron, hermione, sirius black, remus, snape, and dobbie, i could have lived without all the other characters in "the casual vacancy". i absolutely hated simon and kept on wishing someone called the police about his abuse. he was such an asshole, i would have been okay with him dying. fats was another character i could not stand with his smugness and abuse of sukhvinder. (oh i forgot , i did like sukhvinder, she was a hero and had a heart of gold too.). i also couldn't handle gavin the coward. but everyone else were just sad.

also there were so many characters, it was overwhelming. like it was cool to see how they were all interconnected because that is how life is. but after a while, there were too many people. i could have done without knowing every detail of everyone's life.

overall, it was a good book but it wasn't great. i will not walk around singing its praise like i did once i gave harry potter a chance. i definitely would not recommend it to kids that read the series. this book talks about sex, drugs, affairs, and abuse, just to name a few. there is no denying that rowling is a good storyteller, she kept me interested with her plot twists. i was also shocked by her endings but without a person to truly care about or a cause to support, i did not get completely lost in the book. if you miss harry and the gang and looking for something to fill the void, just reread the series.

time (is never time at all . . .)

in the beginning, this blog was devoted to a book or DVD that i checked out from the library. but being the bibliophile that i am, i extended it to any book i have read. and just this past month had an entry about a movie based on one of my favorite books. and today i will start a new type of entry. a thematic entry. and this first theme is women as time.

today as i was reading ray bradbury's "something wicked this way come", i came across this passage on time and women:

oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. they nest in Time. they make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. they live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? how men envy and often hate those warm clocks, these wives who know they will live forever. so what do we do? we men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. we are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots or run away.

this struck me as interesting because women as time was also a theme in smith's "nw". smith wrote the following about her character natalie hanging out with her gay brother and his friends:

(natalie is envious of their fluid and "free love" living arrangement)
it was not possible to feel happy for him it was because the arrangement was timeless--it did not come bound by the constructions of time--and this in turn was the consequence of a crucial detail: no women were included within the schema. women come bearing time. natalie had brought time into this house. she couldn't stop mentioning the time and worrying about it.

women as time is a serious truth for me right now. i am slowly ticking my way to thirty and i have no idea where the time has gone. and the scarier thing is that even though i am only thirty i do feel like time is running out. why the stress? the dreaded biological clock that ticks inside of every women. as a teen i remember watching the friends episode when rachel turned 30 and this happened:

back then i didn't realize that this would one day me my fate. occasionally i will have the same freak out as rachel because right now i should be dating someone that i can potentially marry so i can have kids at a "reasonable" age and right now i am dating no one. and it seems like everyone around me is getting married (gay friends exempted) and my "future" and biological clock are going nowhere. (please note this freak out started to appear in the back of my mind at age 25. it started getting more serious around 27. but now at 29, i might just be in denial about it cos i should be going insane over it but am surprisingly calm, hence denial.) the only thing that is in my favor is that my mother had my brother at 43, so biologically there still may be hope for me.

and i think back to my life and wonder what have i done for the past 30 years and why have 10 of them been in singleness? and the only thing i can think of is that i should not have drank as much and i should have never wasted my youth on men who didn't deserve it. seriously there is one guy who is married (still shocking) that i wasted my hot years on. i mean i was hot, boys would hit on me but i would ignore them because for some odd reason i wanted this one guy. to this day all of my friends, still don't understand why or how i was interested in this kid. seriously my hot years, i have pics. and i have no idea why he passed me up because his future potential wealth were not equivalent to my personality or than hotness. but i digress.

and let me clarify, i do not regret the life i have lived so far. i have had fun and can say i have lead an interesting life. there is rarely a dull moment with me. but i don't know why i can't plan for a future. maybe it's because of my nihilist tendencies. i don't believe in an afterlife and without the goal of eternal life, it's hard to plan for a future. might as well enjoy things now because i'll be worm food once i'm in the ground. but then again, i do want good things for me twenty years from now but i am really too busy living now to worry about tomorrow. and i am not sure how to switch perspectives. isn't it suppose to come with age?

at the risk of sounding like a sappy female but maybe it will be when i find the "one" and start thinking in terms of "we" and ultimately the future tense. right now i can only think in the present tense "krisha is . . ." versus "krisha will . . .". and maybe having an "other" will make me less selfish?

i don't know. all i know is that i do feel like there is a timeline of my life and i have to stop denying it. i have to stop trying to slow it down or stop it and start ticking with it.

[sidenote: just like both "something wicked this way come" and "nw" discuss women as time. they also share instances where males express the pointlessness in having children:

smith's character nathan shares: "kids if they get born, they're gonna die. so [a death sentence is] what you're giving them at the end of the day."

and bradbury's jim had the following exchange with his mom:

"never gonna have [childern]," said jim.
"you just say that."
"i know it. i know everything."
she waited a moment. "what do you know?"
"no use making more people. people die."

morbid but true. what is the point of procreating if in the end we all die. its sad to think this way but if i took on this philosophy on childbearing, it would make a less neurotic thirty-year-old.)

nw. zadie smith. (67)

  

i first came across zadie smith's "NW" in a must reads of september article on flavorpill.  then a recommendation was posted in their fall 2012 books forecast.  and being the flavorpill devotee that i am, put in a request at the library for "NW" along with a handful of others.  of all the books, i looked forward to smith's the most.  i hadn't read any of her prior books, but according to flavorpill, "NW" was her first book in seven years and her last novel "on beauty" was award winning.

maybe i overhyped it.  but the book fell flat for me.  there is no denying that zadie smith is a great writer. however, "NW" was not a great book. perhaps it was because i am not a londoner, at times i was confused because i could not locate the surroundings of the book. the reason i love reading books set in LA is because i can visualize where the characters are. however, my dislike can not simply be an issue of setting, that caused confusion but i think the issue was the characters.

i was not invested in any of the characters. it was "wuthering heights" all over again, where i could not empathize/sympathize with any of the characters because there was always one element of their lives that i didn't agree with. with leah, i was disappointed with how she lied to her husband and how she treated her body. with keisha, i couldn't stomach her double life, denial of her upbringing and obsession with the listings. i was rooting for felix, but even he had to be a guy and have farewell sex with his booty call which demonstrated he wasn't going to change. his fate was sad but by the time it occurred, i lost any faith i had in him really turning over a new leaf in life.

and i hate to be a cynic but did not buy the ending. really? leah suffering so much because she couldn't come to terms with the life she has? it lacked sincerity in my eyes. i wanted to tag her conversation with #firstworldproblems. you made it semi out of the projects, congrats, no need going around throwing yourself a pity party, especially because there are more serious problems in the world. instead of questioning why you didn't become a statistic, be grateful that you aren't one. also i hate to be heartless but if you are drug addict than you deserve the shitty stack that you dealt yourself. when it comes to drug addiction you do it to yourself. i would never see a drug addict and then have a meltdown like why me, how did i not become that? i didn't get leah's meltdown. when i do drugs i am aware of what i am doing to my body and it is choice. everyone has a right to say no, so sorry crackhead on the street you can't have my dollar. you chose to be a crackhead. (btw, please save your CIA giving crack to the project theories.)

i didn't grow up in the slums but delano is definitely low/working class yet i couldn't connect to "NW". this might also have to do with smith's modernist writing. leah's section was difficult to follow because it was all stream of thought. i guess it's like stein and woolf all over again, i need to get smarter to appreciate it.

i guess in the end it just all seem contrived. i am not sure of zadie smith's back story, but she wrote like an anthropologist would write about the slums versus someone that grew up in them.  the bio on the book's back flap explained she grew up in "NW" and i am not saying that in order to write about the slums, someone needs to be from them, but it surprised me because i felt she didn't know what she was talking about.  its like when oprah tries to talk like she understands the everyday woman experience, sorry oprah you don't, you're oprah, there is absolutely nothing "everyday woman" about you.  its the same with zadie smith, she may have grown up in NW but she is too far removed from it now to be able to write about it, without sounding insincere and elitist. ( also now that i think about it, with the name change and the anthropological lens through which she viewed life, so she could be keisha.)

i expected this book to be provocative but it brought nothing new to the table in terms of class.  regardless of your class, life kinda sucks and no one is really happy. because regardless of where you grew up, you are still human.  rich people's don't have it all and are just as immoral as the next class.  the individuals in a perfect marriage actually cannot stand each other.  the thug you think is a drug addict might be turning his life around.  that crackhead who is begging for money who you want save, probably enjoys her life. i think a more interesting viewpoint would have been a character who grows up disadvantaged in the slums who doesn't recognize it as a disadvantage. growing up in the slums was the crutch for all of the characters, their get out of jail free cards for poor life decisions. and perhaps i am too american at heart but you may be born into a lower class but you definitely do not have to stay there. and yes you may have some fall backs in life that lead you back to the slums but that isn't because you don't deserve more or better in life, it's because regardless the slums are your home and will always be a source of comfort.

though the class issues smith presented didn't interest me, the women issues did. i can admit that as a woman approaching her thirties and being single and childless, it was comforting to read leah and keisha's dealing with the same thing. smith pretty much nailed me with leah's inner monologue of:

"simply: i am eighteen in my mind i am eighteen and if i do nothing if i stand still nothing will change and i will be eighteen always."

is that not what i am currently doing with my life? trying to freeze time. put it on pause?

also this "return of saturn" era of life is even more difficult when you add in the biological clock too. as smith wrote:

"natalie blake and leah hanwell were 28 when the first emails began to arrive. over the next few years their number increased exponentially. photo attachments of stunned-looking women with hospital tags round their wrist, babies lying on their breast, hair inexplicably soaked through. they seems to have stepped across a chasm into another world."

this one doesn't get me too much because my peers have been having babies since i was in high school. actually come to think of it, if they grew up in the slums, getting these photos would not be as pressing. at the risk of sounding classist, it is in my opinion that lower classes have kids at a younger age. actually this is more of an issue of education than class. people with more education seem to wait in life to have kids because that education consumes majority of their time so having kids is kinda impossible. so i guess this an example of smith not being too realistic.

but i understand that smith was discussing the inevitable pressure as women get older that they need to become mothers to progress in life. for me personally, i have more pressure in terms of marriage than having a child. especially since everyone around me is now either married or engaged. but that can be saved for another time.

though i did not love this book, i plan on reading smith's "on beauty".  as i said before smith is an excellent writer.  there is no denying that.  she was very clever when it came to descriptions.  i loved how she would reference something pop culture-y, and versus naming it, she would describe it, kinda like a riddle. there were references to kurt corbain's suicide, friends, the wire and even chatroulette! though i totally missed the amy winehouse reference. and the heading about her was "beehive." i also enjoyed her literary references like "rabbit, run" about a vibrator. i appreciate smith's cleverness but even that could not save "NW" for me. i plan on reading her other books and hopefully will find the writer that flavorpill was so excited to read.