Behind on Reading

I am desperately behind on my reading goal for the year.   According to Goodreads, I am precisely 18 books behind.

Lately, when I try to read at night, I pass out before I make it through the first page.  I'm tired.  There's nothing like propping yourself up on the couch to read, passing out, and taking a book to the face. I may have to switch to all paperbacks.

The most frustrating thing that could happen right now is finding a book that straddles the fence.  And just that happened this week.

I had started it before but got a book in at work that other people were waiting for and, thus, put it aside.  One day I went back to it because I left the other book at work.  (Also frustrating as hell.  I was so angry that I almost made the 20 mile drive to get the damn thing.)  That one day hooked me and when I finished Jeneration X, I could not wait to get started on it.

The book was All the Way Home by David Giffels.  I was enchanted mostly because I thought we would relate to one another.  Giffels's book is a memoir about buying a falling down mansion and restoring it while his family is growing. 

The day I looked at the house I bought, I went to look at my Dream House.  It was a 3500 sq ft farm house on 10 acres that had been built in 1881.  I fell in love with it when I was 9.  My best friend at the time's grandparents lived around the corner and until graduation I got to look out Sara's bedroom window and see the Dream House in all its ruinous beauty.  When I went to look at it, it was everything I dreamed.  The kitchen would have to be completely gutted.  In fact, they had built a small addition onto the kitchen for a refrigerator and covered an outside door from the formal dinning room.  There was a black potbelly stove.  The woodwork in the house was all original, dark and thick molding, massive doors, floors that had expensive woods along the outside and pine in the middle where a rug would cover the cheaper wood.  There was a formal dinning room and a parlor and two staircases.  One staircase was the "family" staircase.  It went up to the second story bedrooms from the dining room.  The second staircase was the formal staircase and went from the front parlor to the BALLROOM.  A BALLROOM.  A ballroom with plaster falling off the ceiling and a charred wall where another stove used to be.  A ballroom covered in dust and dirt, fallen ceiling, and books.  The thing about old houses like that out here is that they have usually been in a family long enough to have strange updates.  A basketball court, for instance, or guest quarters built onto the back.  It may have been strange and old and ugly on the inside but every last thing in that house was STRAIGHT and SOLID and completely workable.

The clencher was the photo on the fireplace of the house as it was when it was built.

I loved that house.  I still love that house.  If ever I were to win the lottery, it would be mine and the asbestos siding would go down and real wood siding would go up.  There would be a front porch again and the ceiling would be repaired.  What would I do with a ballroom?  Fuck if I know but, dammit, I want one.  I want a front parlor and I want a kitchen that will have to be completely gutted and made into the kitchen of my dreams.  The difference is that I could I house for a third of the cost that needed a lot less work.  It wasn't a compromise.  The moment I pulled into my driveway, I knew it was MY driveway, that this was where I belonged.

So, what was the problem with Giffels work?  Quite frankly, it was Giffel.  He tells us that he has a degree in creative writing and that is all fine and good but I can guarantee that he didn't write like that in college.  He was too pompous a lot of the time, bragging about his abilities while trying to make it sound like he was making fun of himself even when he wasn't.  I was stuck on one paragraph for a day, unable to go beyond it, simply because he said Heineken is a beer for men who think they are of a certain distinction.  (Boyfriend is a beer snob. Heineken is mostly for tools who don't know that green bottles make beer skunky.  Thank God for Michigan, the beer state, and microbreweries.)  We hear repeatedly about how classy his wife is, how beautiful, how out of his league.  Sometimes the writing was too embellished, too whimsical.  But mostly it was slow and somehow grating.

I'm disappointed.  The book was published in 2008 and that's when it went on my list.  It was soooo close to the top that I was constantly excited for the day I finally got to it.  Then I could barely read a chapter at a time.

So, about a week lost to this one before I gave up just 70-some pages in.  Bummer.

Jeneration X by Jen Lancaster

If you were feeling disappointed with Jen's last couple of books and you were considering giving up on her, don't! She's back again with a new memoir that is possibly one of her funniest.

Jen and Fletch have decided to move to the suburbs and buy their first house. It's quite a change from living in the city (No gunshots.) and paying rent (but your landlord not paying the water bill). Now they have privacy and enough property for the dogs to run. (So it's only natural that they would add another puppy to the mix.)

Jen is back to her escapades. She is watching the neighbors. She's surrounded by idiots and not amused. She is learning how to be an adult through legal proceedings, estate planning, and life insurance purchasing. And it is all laugh out loud hilarious.

What I enjoyed most about this collection is that suddenly Jen feels like a friend and I can relate to her. She is no longer the exceedingly bitchy woman with a handbag that costs more than my car is worth from Bitter is the New Black. Now she is willing to do undignified things and laugh at them. Some of her stories actually feel downright hillbilly.

Also, she really makes me feel like I'm very grown up myself!

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

In the past couple of weeks, Sookie Stackhouse has become pretty common around my house.  We started watching the TrueBlood show and quickly became obsessed enough to decide that the books may be worth a shot.  I ordered in the first one and started reading it right away because I figured it would be a quick easy read.  It would have been quick too, except that I've spent most of my time watching the show instead of reading the book.  It's made for an interesting experience.  Sometimes it gets a little confusing.

That, actually, would be my one complaint about Harris's writing.  Sometimes I just don't understand what is going on.  The example that sticks out the most is Bubba.  I had to Google to figure out who Bubba was.  Why couldn't this have been spelled out a little better for the reader?  It appeared to be a pretty common question about the series.

In general, I must confess that I like to show better.  There is more going on.  It makes me laugh more often.  I like the characters that don't appear in the book or are just barely mentioned.  However, I love READING what Sookie hears in other people's heads and I actually like Sookie better altogether.

If you don't know the story, Sookie lives in a little town called Bon Temps.  This is our world but vampires have "come out of the coffin," as the book puts it.  Science has led to the invention of synthetic blood which the vampires can drink for nourishment instead of using humans as a food source.  That doesn't mean they do.  Sookie meets her first vampire, Bill, and falls head over heels for him.  In the meantime, women who have slept with vampires, or fang bangers, have been showing up strangled.  A killer is on the lose and Sookie is sure to be on his list because of her relationship with Bill.  This is one time where hearing other peoples thoughts doesn't seem to be helping.  Sookie is sucked into a game of trying to figure out who the killer is, attempting to find her way through vampire society, and protecting the people who mean the most to her.

This was a fun read and I have already ordered the next book in the series.  I can't promise that I'll make it through the whole set, though.