Rating: Thumbs Down

Review: Just a poorly written book. The worst kind of crap: foreshadowing things that never happen, scrambling at the end to create some kind of point to the whole mess, and no redeeming behavior out of anyone. And weirdly, I don’t think I’ve ever read that many descriptions of the picture quality of television sets. WHO CARES.

The ONLY thing it did was get me thinking about the mental problems a lot of Vietnam vets had/have and how there are going to be a lot of vets after this war with PTSD, too. And how sad it is that generation after generation keeps having to go through this, and how fighting in a war stays with you your whole life, and how we civilians can’t ever really understand. God war sucks. But I digress.

Avoid avoid avoid this piece-o-crap. Sorry Christie, but don’t quit your day job.

Rating: Thumbs Up

Review: This is chick lit, just FYI. Although I wasn’t satisfied with the ending to this book, I loved how it pulled me right in and was one of the quickest reads I’ve ever done. It started with some really good drama, but the people were so wishy washy and deceitful that it got a little unrealistic. Or maybe I’m just not very realistic about how much some people lie to their friends. At any rate, I think it was better than some other books in the chick lit genre, and easy to read without feeling dumbed down, so I give it a thumbs up.

Rating: Thumbs Up

Review: Ah, nonfiction. I’m not generally a fan because of one reason and one reason only: it’s always WAY too long. I would say about 90% of the nonfiction books I’ve read would have been much more suitable as long essays and not 300, 400, and 500 page books. How many ways can you blather on about the same thing? Academia exists to find out.

Anyway, Against Love. Well, I wasn’t familiar with the format of a polemic, but apparently polemics rail against something so aggressively as to almost come across as a personal attack. The author warns the reader at the outset that she’s taking no prisoners.

I like questioning societal norms just because I so often find myself unnecessarily unhappy with the way something is, and I know the only reason it is that way is because we stupid humans have said so. WHY DO WE DO IT TO OURSELVES. So she talks about the system of love and marriage and how first the church and then the state decided they needed an extension of their power structure to govern the home. And how you can’t predict how long love will last, so why expect it to last forever, and why make contracts with the state over affairs of the heart? And that our lives are so safe and structured and bland that of course we will seek a thrill of excitement through a new romance.

All of which I agree with. I think if you were a strenuous believer in the lifelong tenacity of a love that fulfills your mind, body, and soul, this book might offend you. As for me, I liked reading someone saying the things I often suspected. Of course, she could have said it in about 50 pages instead of 200, and she could have used the words “inchoate” and “fungible” about a quarter as often, but it was interesting and made me interested in reading other polemics in the future.

Rating: Thumbs Down

Review: This book follows the love life of a girl from her early teens to her early thirties, through a series of sequential vignettes. At first I couldn’t tell they were all about the same person, I thought it was short stories about all different people, but about halfway through I figured it out. I think that’s a flaw in the writing because it’s not like I was taking long breaks between chapters, I was reading straight through.

The main character makes stupid, self defeating, and seemingly intentional bad decisions about men throughout the book, and then the last chapter is a direct potshot at a nonfiction book that was popular at the time, The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. I like when people are brave enough to call out their contemporaries on stuff they disagree with, but Melissa Bank was just kind of sloppy about it. Yeah, the girl gets the guy despite flouting The Rules, but he comes off as a spineless dope in the process. Who wouldn’t want that dreamboat? (Don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler, she gets and doesn’t get and re-gets plenty of guys in the book.)

Rating: Thumbs Up

Review: While Ann Patchett is not my favorite person (based on what I know about her), this book is amazing. I read it originally when it first came out in 2002 and remembered loving it, so when it was suggested for the book club I’m in, I enthusiastically agreed. Probably my favorite type of fiction is the tragic love story, and boy does this have one. She also writes a lot about opera, not in a know-it-all, off putting way, but in a way that helps people who don’t like it see why other people might. So imagine those elements, but the whole thing is set in a politician’s house where a huge dinner party has been taken hostage by armed guerrillas. It’s intense! And I can say, it’s just as good the second time around.

Rating: Thumbs Up

Review: A sort of meandering, pointless book (I’ve only read two by Tyler, but that seems to be her M.O.) that follows the life of a man after the death of his son. It has a lot of harmless, eccentric, self-absorbed yet shallow characters, and shows how self-absorbed people can make the lives of those that love them kind of miserable. That review doesn’t sound positive, but I still liked the book, because I’m a fan of sort of day-in-the-life type writing. Life doesn’t have definite beginnings and endings, not even when someone dies, so why does fiction always have to?

I had a coworker pull out some old papers that belonged to a former coworker of ours who actually quit years ago. The emails were kind of personal, talking about buying a house, what was for dinner, how much they could afford for a downpayment, etc. etc. Not stuff you want your coworkers to be reading really. I would say either shred it, or don’t print it in the first place (I have no idea why she needed that printed out, to be honest, it’s like fine, make lasagna tonight, I don’t need physical proof of your intention).

I know this is common sense, but even the trash isn’t a guarantee nobody’s gonna read your personal stuff. I personally will even read notes people leave on other people’s cars.

Here are the parameters:

1) I must be able to either easily remove it or fold it down so I can close my curtains at night.
2) It has to be strong enough to hold 40 pounds.
3) It can’t slide around, be wobbly or prone to collapsing. A dog has to be able to heave himself on top of it without it falling.
4) It should have a lip around the edges so I can put a blanket in it.
5) It can screw into the windowsill and the ledge that sits two feet under the sill, but my walls are brick and I can’t get a screw into them, so something like a bracket that goes into the wall is out.

Why is this so hard? I’m just not crafty or mechanically/spatially inclined so I’m having the worst time visualizing it. Here is a drawing of what I thought of so far, but I don’t know if it can work.

How do I keep the bottom stilts from slipping when he jumps up, without attaching them permanently (because I want to fold it down). Same goes for the shelf itself. Could I use hinges on the underside of the shelf? Have some kind of interlocking pieces of wood screwed to the bottom of the shelf and the top of the sill?

HELP.

As a side note, my friend Megan found a really good website that analyzes the content of various dog foods and posts reviews. It helps you see if your dog is eating mostly filler and not enough protein or vitamins. The guy doing the reviews seems legit and not like a lackey for some company: www.dogfoodadvisor.com. Poor Hapoochie was eating a three star food till I was shown that site! The horror!

Anyway, my story. I’m sitting at the dog park on Sunday morning, minding everyone else’s business, when I see a miniature poodle go into the infamous hunch. Then I see his buddy, another nasty little poodle, run up to him to sniff. Or at least I thought it was to sniff. Imagine my disbelief when he opened his nasty little mouth with its nasty little teeth and began eating the other dog’s excrement AS IT CAME OUT OF HIM.

Enjoy your lunch!

A proud day for everyone.