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!

April 2011

BOOKS READ:
-American Vampire, vol. 1 by Stephen King
-Petite Suzanne by Marguerite de Angeli
-Labyrinth of Desire by Rosemary Sullivan
-Other People's Love Letters by Bill Shapiro
-Smashed by Koren Zalickas
-Peace and Plenty by Sarah Ban Breathnach
-Two Dead Girls by Stephen King
-My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster
-The Mouse on the Mile by Stephen King
-Orchids on Your Budget by Marjorie Hillis

10 books! 10 books in one month! Anyone would consider that impressive.

Okay, you busted me. I've been reading Stephen King's The Green Mile in its original form, the series. I started this purely because I wanted to up my book count and that is probably cheating but I've decided that every Stephen King novel needs to be made into a mini-series. I love Stephen King but so many of his books are large enough to be downright daunting. Proof? The Stand has been in my stack of books to read for nearly a year. I just keep moving it instead of reading it. If it were in handy installments it would be done by now. American Vampire is an graphic novel co-written by King that takes place in the old west and in Hollywood. I liked it but it was pretty standard.

It was a really weird reading month. I can't quite figure out how to tackle this list!

I read two books about love this month, Other People's Love Letters and Labyrinth of Desire. Other People's Love Letters was a collection of love letters (Imagine!) similar to Post Secret. They were sometimes silly, sometimes dirty, sometimes heart wrenching. The whole experience made me wonder if I would someday regret not writing a love letter. Labyrinth of Desire was a study in obsessive love. Sullivan starts her study with a story and then breaks it down into pieces which she analyzes. It was a surprisingly good read and I am not doing it justice.

I read two memoirs this month as well. My Fair Lazy is by our good friend Jen Lancaster. I've read the rest of her memoirs and they were all great. Bright Lights, Big Ass may be my favorite. This could come in second. Jen embarrasses herself at a party and realizes that doing something like that could jeopordize her career as an author. She decides to set about culturing herself up. She takes cooking lessons and goes to the theater and opera and museums and it is ALWAYS a good time. My favorite part was when she went to China Town and was horrified of bringing home a gremlin. Smashed, the second memoir was a good read but ticked me off in a number of ways. Like, the author is constantly talking about how typical her experience with alcohol is but I, for one, have never had my stomach pumped and certainly not at age 16. Mostly, it gave me some great drinking game ideas.

There were two personal finance books this month too, but I'll spare you the details. To sum them up, Peace and Plenty brought me no peace at all while I found 1937's Orchids on Your Budget both entertaining and useful. How could you now with such chapters as "Well, Who isn't Poor?" and "Can You Afford a Husband?"

May is already nearly two weeks gone. (Better late than never!) I can promise that it won't be as productive as April. I am nearly three books into the month and the next book is a doozy! Wish me luck and HAPPY READING!