Sexual ethics are fascinating, aren’t they? But I got tired of this book anyway. It was all disorganized. I was pleased to learn about Sylvester Graham, a completely joyless fellow who advocated bland food, invented the graham cracker, and said that if someone didn’t do something to stop little boys from masturbating, they would grow up and become “a living volcano of unclean propensities and passions”. I swear. Those were his words. I suspect they are burned into my brain forever. But as for the rest, Ms. Horowitz kept teasing me with the promise of a good story, and then…
3 CommentsAuthor: Gin Jenny
I just finished the second book in my “Take Against Matt Smith Unreasonably Before David Tennant Even Goes Anywhere Project”, and I shall watch the film version this evening, taking against Matt Smith with all my might. And if I haven’t taken against him sufficiently, I’ll just, I’ll just look up videos on YouTube and make complaining comments in my head about how his HAIR is stupid and he’s completely COMMON like a little LONDON GUTTER RAT and he keeps on making PRETENTIOUS HANDS. (I just went and watched a video of him on YouTube and okay, yes, his hair’s…
3 CommentsI got this for Christmas. Dorothy Parker really liked it, but I didn’t think I would, due to the sadness. On the other hand, I thought, it has layers, and I like layers. On the other hand, they are layers of misery and depression and unlikeable characters; which is to say, not my favorite type of layers. Revolutionary Road is all about this couple, Frank and April Wheeler (I just wrote Frank and Alice. Twice. Why does that sound so right?), who used to believe in their own independence of thought and action, but now they are living boring, stifling…
7 CommentsThe Eleventh Doctor isn’t Paterson Joseph. I really, really wanted it to be, but no, it isn’t him. They said so today. It’s some little child twenty-six years old (my generation, for heaven’s sake!) that nobody’s ever heard of. Except that apparently he was in the BBC film version of Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke. With Billie Piper, Billie Piper! Hurrah for Billie Piper! So I decided to read the books and then watch the films when they come in at the library. The Ruby in the Smoke is about a girl called Sally Lockhart whose father has…
Leave a CommentYeah, pretty much, Jodi Picoult. Her books tend to be largely the same. Keeping Faith has all the elements – moral quandaries, relationship troubles, fierce mothers, legal battles, and handsome men hopelessly in love with the protagonist. I read it because I was at my parents’ house and I didn’t have my books with me, and I needed something to read for a while. And then of course I got interested and took it home to finish it. As I say, it was much like all of Jodi Picoult’s other books. Always entertaining but not generally worth rereading.
5 CommentsBut I just read this and threw up in my mouth a little. I can’t help feeling like this person has to be being sarcastic. Because nobody could say these things seriously, right? I mean everyone has noticed that Bella is a cipher, right? Even if you have overlooked Edward’s tendency to stalk and make decisions for Bella and you think he’s the perfect man, you’ve noticed that Bella has no personality. I mean, right? Twilight centers on a boy who loves a girl so much that he refuses to defile her, and on a girl who loves him so…
8 CommentsRecommended by: Trish’s blog I’ve been reading this on and off for a while. I don’t like it when this happens with a book – when I put the book down for a while, it looks so reproachful every time I see it, and eventually I often come to resent it and think reasons not to finish it. In the case of The Sixteen Pleasures, I did feel guilty about abandoning it so callously, but last night I picked it up and finished it before I went to sleep. (I stayed up later than I was going to stay up,…
2 CommentsThis weekend I did a lot of things I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, including covering my paperbacks with contact paper. And in the process of doing this, I got started reading Harriet the Spy, which I haven’t read for ages and ages. What a good book it is! Harriet is an eleven-year-old girl who wants to be a spy, and she goes around spying on people and writing down everything she sees, and trying to figure out grown-ups. I identified so strongly with Harriet when I was a kid. I once got into huge trouble for writing a…
1 CommentFor Christmas I got Smoke and Mirrors (with a very cool cover), The Underdog (which comes before Fighting Ruben Wolfe and Getting the Girl, and which I did not know existed), Jane Eyre (this so incredibly cool copy with cool, spooky drawings – much nicer than the copy I have now, which is paperback and I got it when I was eight), a first edition of the letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (so sweet!), Deerskin, and a hardback of The Mummy Case, which is brilliant of course. And then I got Wall*E and Atonement and this movie…
3 CommentsThis is one of about five billion books my father got for my mother for Christmas. My mother loves to get a bunch of books for Christmas, so this year my father made a humongous effort to think of and buy books for her that she would enjoy, so at the end of the day she’d have a great big stack of new books to read. What’s nicer than that, eh? And I swiped it today and read it on the drive to the farm for our family Christmas. (Hm, that paragraph sounds ridiculously wholesome. I made a sneery face…
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