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.

Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno

I don't usually read short stories but I am always willing to make an exception for one of my favorite authors.  With Demons in the Spring, I never regretted making that exception.

Meno has a way with words.  His novels are always heartbreaking and difficult and this set of short stories follows suite.  The stories are odd.  There is one about a woman who becomes a cloud whenever her husband kisses her.  There is one about a girl who has a tumor that progresses the same way a city would until there is a sky scraper growing from her heart.  Even though the stories tend to contain strange subject matter, they always seem to be such quiet stories.  It is just a day in the life for these characters.  In this way the reader isn't surprised by something strange happening.  Of course it is possible.  Why wouldn't a woman turn into a cloud?

What I love about Meno's writing is that he always leaves me feeling raw.  Sometimes he fills me with loneliness and longing.  These characters are people with a great capacity to love.  If anything, I would say that is what holds this collection together.

Besides the writing, this is a beautiful volume.  I gasped when I opened the envelope it came in.  It has a beautiful light maroon fabric cover and each story has a different illustrator.  While I borrowed this from the library, it would be worth spending the money on.

I Love Everybody (And Other Atrocious Lies) by Laurie Notaro

When I think of female humor writers, my mind comes up with Laurie Notaro and Jen Lancaster first, probably because they are young enough for me to understand what they are talking about even if they are a little older than me. I mean, I love Jill Conner Browne but she has decades on me instead of just over a decade on me. Anyway, Notaro is definitely my girl. I love Lancaster but Notaro understands what it means to have to glue down everything in your yard and house. She has animals that poop jelly beans on her desk. She knows how to work the Costco sample system.

This was a great book. At this point, it's been years since I read Idiot Girl's Action Adventure Club and I feel like I need to go back and re-read it before moving on. Notaro is a Loudmouth Girl. She says the things that we all think. Her brain reminds me distinctly of my own. She has a tendency to go off on angry and hilarious rants. I laughed out loud, literally, and read bits and pieces to my boyfriend who now thinks that I may be crazy.

This was a great read and I can't wait to read the next one!

Grow the Good LIfe: Why a Vegetable Garden will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise by Michele Owens

Last year we planted our first garden. If was rough. Our pepper plants only produced one pepper a piece. The onions failed. The only plants that did very well at all were the tomatoes, which we couldn't keep up with, and the cucumbers, which an inexperienced pickler accidentally let rot in the fridge. This year I set out to learn something about gardening before starting again. I wanted some nice, easy advice to get me started and maybe some encouragement too.

I chose Owens's book because of the subtitle. I've spent a lot of time in the past year or so thinking about the quality of food I am eating and what it would mean to improve it. Gardening was one of my fights for better food and growing it was an attempt to save money. I am also in a constant pursuit of happiness and wisdom so this seemed like an all around good bet for me.

Now that I'm done with it, I'm just not sure. I feel like maybe I took some information from it. I found myself arguing about hybrid versus heirloom with my boyfriend in the store the other day and I certainly wouldn't have been able to do that a week ago. I also feel inspired to try new things. I also feel a little less worried. Owens argues that the best way to plant a garden is to throw some seeds down and see what happens which is the kind of laid back approach I am all for.

I did have issues with this book. Ownes's voice tends to take on a snooty tone at times. By the end of the book I felt like she was telling me that she was better than everyone because she had a garden and she eats locally. Sometimes, her point gets a little lost. She is honest enough to say that there may not be enough evidence to support her argument, which I appreciate because it is honest but after a while it feels like there isn't enough evidence to support most of her arguments.

If I could have given a 2.5 star to this book, I would have. It was right in the middle for me.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I wanted to like it. I really, really wanted to. It is, after all, one of those books that has become almost legendary. I know a few people who love it, including one who has mentioned in conversation plenty of times that she feels bad for the monster.

I don't.

What happened here is that a teenage girl had a wonderfully frightening idea for a story to thrill her male companions. Then she wrote it and made the kind of mistakes that young authors tend to make. She took her horrifying tale and smothered it with morals. This is the type of writing that wouldn't make it past a 300 level creative writing class. There is too much that feels faked and forced and coincidental to a level that is positively exhausting.

It was exhausting to read. I could barely get five pages in before passing out where ever I was sitting. It was suggested that perhaps the language of the period was the issue but it was really the period of inaction that felt as if they dragged on forever. I ended up downloading a free copy to my Kindle and having a larger font helped but still it dragged on. I had less than 25% of the book left for well over a week but, as I said, the moment I started reading I fell asleep.

As for sympathy, I suppose that Shelley managed to create enough moral friction to arouse discussion. Who is the real monster? Is it Frankenstein or his monster? It is true that Frankenstein created the monster, which was probably not right. However, the monster obviously has free will and chooses to do evil. Nobody had my sympathy except possibly Frankenstein's father. Even Elizabeth annoyed me, mostly because she was such a very flat character.

My final opinion on this one, as given to a seventeen year old boy was, "If you have to read it for a class, do so. Otherwise, don't waste your time."