I was in my favorite Eugene bookstore, Tsunami, yesterday, and I picked up a copy of this book for someone I work with. While I was buying my stack ofI was in my favorite Eugene bookstore, Tsunami, yesterday, and I picked up a copy of this book for someone I work with. While I was buying my stack of books, the woman ringing me up told me that Michael McGriff works there now! So, I told her to tell him hi and that he’s a wonderful poet.
This small book of poems feels like Oregon. It feels like growing up with hills and forests and rain – with rusted cars in the front yard, and swimming in the creek. It is very, very beautiful. It reminds me of my best friends when I was in college, and how two of them would decide to live in the woods sometimes, and then they would rejoin us when they got that out of their systems.
I think this book was recommended to me as, “If you like David James Duncan, you might like Michael McGriff.” That is accurate to me. I think both of them are brilliant at conveying the rooted, wet, peaceful, unbalanced feeling of living in Oregon. When I write my book, I hope it will be as beautiful as this. ...more
I don’t even LIKE hobbits, but I would sI LOVE TINY HOUSES!! Look:
snowboarder tiny house:
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Lighthouse tiny house:
[image]
hobbit tiny house:
[image]
I don’t even LIKE hobbits, but I would so live in that house if it’s as cool on the inside as it looks on the outside. And if it has hot running water.
This book is pretty fucking cool. It has a bunch of rad tiny houses and floor plans for them. It has a house made out of wood pallets! WHAT?! And instructions on how to make a house like that. It has a bunch of adobe houses with hay bales for insulation. So, that seems like a major fire hazard, until they tell you it’s adobe. Still, don’t play with matches in that house.
It turns out, though, that I am not as big a fan of tiny homes as I am of tiny houses. Homes, it turns out, includes people who built geodesic domes on top of their cars, and people who drive around with a log cabin on the back of their truck like in Arrested Development. And BOATS! I mean, come on. I love boats, but I want my tiny house books to have tiny houses in them, not boats! I am a tiny house purist.
I will admit that I hadn’t realized before this particular tiny home book how the whole tiny house phenomenon has a pretty serious hippie and hillbilly element. But there is even some unexpected full-frontal hippie nudity in here. And I’m not gonna lie, if I was as hot as that girl, you’d probably see me posing nude in more tiny house books. More than none.
Rated R? Can you rate something PG-13 with full frontal nudity?
When I worked at Barnes and Noble, I used to stop by the art and architecture section sometimes and look at the tiny house books (and there weren’t even naked people back in ye olde tiny-house-book days). Mostly the seemed like freakishly cool Japanese and Swedish inventions that sparkled from the inside and had amazing nooks and crannies to put books in. But, now I see how they can be made to look like barns and geodesic domes. Thanks a lot, America. But, that is okay, too. My love of tiny houses continues. I have a tiny house myself, and I love how everything fits together in it and there is no wasted space. Tiny houses rule.
_______________________ I downloaded a copy of this book from NetGalley, and I get to keep it for 55 days, which is exciting and weird at the same time! But, if you download one for yourself, make sure you have a way to look at it in color because it’s mostly about the pretty and weird pictures. (If you’re just going for the naked girl, though, those are in black and white anyway, so don’t put too much effort into the color download.) Helpful tips....more
Whaaaaa? I don’t even know how to react to this because I am so caught up with the locale description. This is set in Eugene, you guys. This book is sWhaaaaa? I don’t even know how to react to this because I am so caught up with the locale description. This is set in Eugene, you guys. This book is set where I live! Only not. These people . . . and the places . . . so weird. Most of this takes place in a diner. A DINER! How weird is that? Have you even BEEN to Eugene? A diner called Dixie’s? Where the owner was part of the mafia? That crazy Eugene mafia. WTH? And it is open all night? I am lost to what you are trying to do here.
AND WHAT GRAVEYARD IS THAT??? It looks like Pioneer Cemetery, but I don’t think they bury people there anymore. I mean, this is what the book was to me. Extreme cultural dissonance.
And one guy works at the tower retirement home where they have, or at least used to have, the old-people-crossing sign, but in this book, it’s called Whilamut Retirement, or some shit like that. Seriously??? That's not a place, right?? RIGHT?? Don’t do that. And don’t tell me people pronounce that word right when you spell it that way. Maybe I am being totally un-PC, so sorry Eugenians if I’m missing something (and definitely correct me), but people can learn to pronounce the word without a new transliteration. And I feel ya on the retirement home being the tallest building in the city, but it is NOT a shiny new glass building. Is it?? Do I not know this city at all?! No. I don't think it is. Keep dreaming.
And these people are walking around wearing clothes from Deb, and there are no college kids, OR even any rasta stoners, OR even bikers with giant plugs, or ANYTHING. Which, I’ll give you that is not the sum of the culture of Eugene, but seriously, these people are going to a DINER to drink coffee. What? What is happening?
So, there is also a story that happens in this book, I think, but I’m not totally sure because these people are going to a DINER to drink COFFEE in EUGENE! I am just as appalled as you are. I don’t know. These people must actually live in Springfield or Creswell is all I can imagine. And that would explain the importance of paintball. Not that I have a problem with paintballing, but it’s not exactly the essence of Eugene culture.
So confusing.
Generally, I think I like the idea about supernatural beings having a soul mixup. That was pretty good, but I am mostly concerned about where there is a diner in Eugene that is open all night, and what kind of coffee they serve.
My friend Kay gave me this book for graduation, which was awesome of her. Kay, did you know this was set in Eugene(ish)????!!!! Crazy. And what is the deal with "Whilamut"?...more
A wise woman, while brushing her hair demurely in front of a mirror, once mocked another wise woman saying, “Remember that time I wrote a book with a A wise woman, while brushing her hair demurely in front of a mirror, once mocked another wise woman saying, “Remember that time I wrote a book with a conceptual spoiler?” Well, Laini Taylor, I now picture you in that room with the other wise authors chatting each other up about your conceptual spoilers. Because, holy shit. How do you even talk about this book?
I’ve been marinating in it for a couple of days, while getting caught in apocalyptic electrical storms, losing luggage, stumbling around airports and homes and streets trying to get ready for school to start. In the midst of this busyness, I’ve been letting the story sink into my brain, but really I keep coming back to the fact that all of this story, the whole crux of the character development and plot of the entire thing, is in the last, maybe, three pages of the book. That may sound bad to you, but I’m telling you, it’s completely genius. That’s just my opinion, but it’s true.
The first page of the book says, “Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.” And that lovely beginning, a thesis really, which tells you the entire story in two short sentences, echoed through my head the entire time I was reading. Well done. Just masterful. That is the way you should give away your story.
And I’m not saying that the 400-whatever pages that precede the pivotal last three aren’t enjoyable – they are absolute fun and action packed for the most part. They were strangely ordinary, though. When you read the book, you’ll laugh that I said that because they are very un-ordinary looking in most ways. But, there is a lot of furniture and clothing and staring-into-smoldering-eyes and yearning for completeness, and other things u see in ur romance novels. After Lips Touch, which is three sharp kicks to the gut, the meandering descriptions and sudden brainless passion were weird. I still think there could have been less “their hearts were so one that they didn’t need to communicate with words” business. Like, you know, “she knew by his sideways glance that he had eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich earlier, gotten heartburn, decided to drink a glass of water, and then felt better, after which he watched TV for a little while and then took a walk.” I mean, at some point, the silent communication of soul mates is just not entertaining to read. Even after the last three pages, I think you could have cut some of that, but I could actually be dead wrong. Maybe you need all that to get to the end. Anyway, it was so worth it to me when I was done.
Also, the clothing and furniture were good. Like, usually, everyone’s walking around in damask and chemises, or, like, jean skirts and velour jogging suits, or whatever, and it’s itchy and boring. And all their furniture is so uneventful. Here, I kind of wanted to know what Karou’s furniture was like and what she was wearing that day. Plus, blue hair is almost always a good idea. I had blue hair for a while, and it was very pretty. I’m sure Karou’s is, too. It might be petty, but I think it’s worth a wish.
The other . . . criticism? . . . I have is that I’m not totally positive who this narrator is. Taylor wrote the book in a very distant, omniscient third person, but that raises some questions for me because the narrator is obviously from Earth and American. The dialogue is American slang, even though, when the characters are even on Earth, they are in Prague, speaking Czech. Also, the devils in the book are part human, part animal. But . . . the only logical conclusions from the way the characters discuss the devils is that Earth is the reference point for their species. For example, a half-human, half-wolf dude is called that. A hummingbird with moth wings is called that. But, if you only grew up with a hummingbird with moth wings, and you had no reference-point in Earth, would you know that it’s wings belonged to something else? Wouldn’t you get to earth and say our hummingbirds are weird? So, at certain points, when characters were staring into each other’s eyes, I got to thinking about how the narrator is this teenage American girl behind the curtain. I just wanted her to out herself and be like, “I’m off shopping at a thrift store on weekends,” so that I could orient myself to the source of the story. That is over-analyzing, I know, but there were narrative pauses to think about stuff like that.
I loved how this book undermines. I love the fantasy and romance mythos that it breaths and destroys. I love that it looks straight in the face of what angels and devils could be, what they are, and what love is, in a cultural sense. I agree, but also disagree, with Taylor about one of the fundamentals of her world, but that is kind of a spoiler – I disagree that (view spoiler)[the source of magic is pain (hide spoiler)]. But, in the way that magic is commerce in this story, and the way that is just factually true of industrial capitalism, I have to agree with Taylor. It is not a lecture in the way she presents that reality, but it is fundamental to the story in a respectable way. And I am left, days later, turning that fundamental over and pondering both sides of it.
So, you are obviously going to read this anyway, but I am here to tell you that I think you will not regret it. It’s got style and action, and then a kick to the gut in the end. Some of you will get hives from the middle of this book, and some will get hives from the end, and I think that is because the story is luring and elusive, but, really, only because it is actually being rather brutal the whole time.
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I read an ARC copy of this, and it was lovely although the cover leaves something to be desired.
P.S. Ethnocentrism is no good, kids. Don't try it at home....more
I’m one of those annoying people who, when someone else waxes nostalgic about a previous decade or century, is always like, “sexist, racist, no hot ruI’m one of those annoying people who, when someone else waxes nostalgic about a previous decade or century, is always like, “sexist, racist, no hot running water, cobble stones are annoying, smelly, wild animals, Hitler, and no zippers.” I dig simplicity, but that’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder, you know? For example, I could run around town, trying to find somebody who wanted to listen to my opinion about this book, or I could just post it on the internet, and see if anyone cares. The latter option seems much more simple to me. When people say they’re abandoning technology to simplify, I feel suspicious. I do not think life is simpler without technology. But, maybe they are not trying to be fashionably retro-counter-culture, and they just mean that they love enough people who they see in person that it is overwhelming to look beyond that. That seems nice.
Anyway, this book is a beautiful story that illustrates what I think about the “simple life” not being all it’s cracked up to be. It starts out like a funny, silly chapter-book experience. Like, Oh no! They fell in a river! Mamma, what are cow pies?! That kind of thing. Then, it goes pretty seriously into . . . well, life. It goes into how people suck and growing up sucks. It doesn’t do that in a whiny way, but it does do it in a somewhat adult way. The kids buy a dead man’s hand. There is swindling and rejection and murrrderrr. This is such a good book.
I think Holm does an excellent job at maintaining the Voice of May Amelia, while she obviously grows and changes. Her voice stays the same, but it grows with her. And it does that thing that old documents do, where they capitalize the first letter of words that seem Important. A friend of mine in law school always nerdily laugh about that. Like, whaaa, James Madison? Do you want us to notice the word Jurisdiction there? May Amelia does that, too. At first, it wasn’t my favorite, but it really grew on me.
I don’t know if I would have liked this when I was young. I think I would have. But, I like it now. It was a really simple, beautiful way to talk about being a girl in a world that doesn’t always love girls.
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I received a free copy of this book from a book fairy. Thank you!!...more
When you want to take a story that someone else has told and make it your own, do it like this. If you want to write a story, recognize your own magicWhen you want to take a story that someone else has told and make it your own, do it like this. If you want to write a story, recognize your own magic, your own style, and add it to the story you want to steal. If you want to write a story, do what Laini Taylor did, and absorb the story, wait until it has seeped into the interstitial places of your writing, and give it back to your reader. Make it beautiful and true. And the only way you can do that is by figuring out what to you is beauty and truth. So many writers try to figure out what made something beautiful to someone else. They try to say, what made the Trojan war beautiful to Homer? What made Harry Potter beautiful to J.K. Rowling? And they try to imitate that. They don’t say, "What makes this story beautiful to me?" Well, Laini Taylor told us what makes these stories beautiful to her.
So, I’m a little expansive tonight. I’m a little drunk. I’m not usually one of those drunks who goes around telling everyone she loves them. In fact, I’ve been told I can recite a pretty good story while drunk, even if I don’t remember it a few months later. I usually don’t remember who I told stories to anyway, drunk or not drunk, no offense. Anyway, I just want to give this book a hug and tell it I love it. I love you, book. Like, in the full, Wayne’s World sense of the word. I love you, book. Damn, every time I write “book,” I spell it “bood.” Sorry.
I love this book in a drunk, college-high-school kind of way. I love this book like, “Wait a second, what have we all be doing, standing around fighting over whether vampires are sparkly or not?” So, it turns out there are people out there writing real love stories and fairy tales. There are people reading great writing like Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, getting inspired by them, and then writing these wonderful tributes to them.
I think, when anyone writes anything great, their ultimate hope has to be in some kind of legacy. They have to hope that their great writing will inspire something beautiful in the future, some kind of strength and inspiration. I think it is a tribute to the traditions that Rossetti, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism created that Taylor could create something as beautiful as this book. And then, hopefully her writings will inspire someone else, and the stories of goblins, hell, and eternal life will continue. It is like how Shakespeare reminded us that 13-year-olds falling in love doesn’t always end for the best. And, look, that story has continued in tradition because of him. Hopefully we will all, likewise, remember not to eat goblin fruit because of Taylor, not to doubt our own curses or our own mortality.
I had intended to talk about how some authors are natural with language, and how some authors know how to integrate a magical, traditional feeling with really modern writing. I don’t really feel like talking about that now that I am writing this. Maybe I will have more to say about that in the morning. Anyway, it’s not like Taylor tried to add a bunch of ‘ye’s to her writing, or like she tried to end everything with “e” like, unfortunately, some authors do, to give a sense of ye olde timmes. Taylor shows everything beautifully, and in doing so she shows how “modern times” are not removed from tradition and magick(e).
I like how this book is not about kisses, is not about love. When I first picked it up I thought it would be an emo version of Gossip Girl, but it is not that. It is about evil kisses, lips shutting in silence, and kisses that are sense memory. I like how this book is about loyalty and strength. I like how it is about curses. This book is beautiful, and in true, drunken or non-drunken spirit, I love it. ...more
I have long been a fan of dreams: talking about dreams, working out the interweavings between dreaming life and reality. I almost scare-quoted realityI have long been a fan of dreams: talking about dreams, working out the interweavings between dreaming life and reality. I almost scare-quoted reality there, but then I realized that this review is probably going to be douchey enough as it is without adding a scare-quoted reality to it. Anyway, Ursula LeGuin’s worlds are typically not my worlds; when I’m reading her books, I tend to bump into walls and trip over furniture, where other readers intuitively know the lay of the interior decorating. And, that is just the way reading goes, I think. Neither bad nor good. Sometimes an author puts the couch were we would like to sit, and other times not. This book, though. This is the LeGuin for me. This book is lovely in a way I can understand.
I grew up in a sometimes-fundamentalist home, so for those who didn’t, this comparison might sound like an insult. Please know that I don’t mean it that way. It strikes me that in some pretty superficial ways, The Lathe of Heaven is to Daoism what Narnia is to Christianity. In making that comparison, I am really comparing two things I love, even though they are both representing two very different value systems. I think that both present an emotionally symbolic world in which the roots of a belief system can grow in a simple and understandable way. I think both do a really good job of not sacrificing story to allegory, but still forming a perceptible spiritual message.
The other preliminary thought I have is a spoiler about Heather, so I’ll hide it. (view spoiler)[It strikes me as really interesting that Heather starts out as a femme fatale, swings over to being a domestic goddess, and then winds up somewhere in the middle. I don’t have anything profound to say about that, but it did make me think about how any woman can play those parts and it would not be informative of who she really is. It made me think about how it is easy to adopt caricatures and difficult to know who we really are. It is easy to play a role, but difficult to be human. (hide spoiler)]
But, that is really only about the structure of Lathe, and what I really want to talk about is dreams. In Lathe, George Orr has “effective” dreams that change his reality. That is the basic premise that you find out at the opening of the story, and I will try not to spoil the plot beyond that. Joel was making the point that the story is a reflection on writing, which I think is an interesting, but narrow, reading of the story, and honestly was not how the story resonated with me at all. I think it is a good point, though, and worth noting. A writer re-creates the world, and in that way probably also shapes other people’s perceptions of the world. I think in many ways, though, we all do that, writing or no writing.
I guess the way the story resonated with me was more literal than Joel’s reading. I do think that any of us can have a dream in the Martin Luther King, Jr., sense, and that dream can guide culture, but I also think that literal dreams can do that, and maybe that is more where the book fascinated me. In college, I once went to sleep with no interest in a boy in my class and I woke up with a crush on him that it took me months to get over. And all that happened was that, in a dream I had that night, he looked at me a certain way. Dreams seem mysterious and mysteriously powerful to me. I had a dream like that this week, and the content of it is not very important, but there was a snake in it, and the snake was also human, and the dream changed something to me, so I thought of this book. I’m not sure what it changed, but it was just different than other dreams.
Once, in college, my best friend from high school had a dream in which we were both preparing for her wedding. About a year later, I had the same dream but from my point of view, which I didn’t realized until later that night I started describing the dream to her and she knew all of its details before I told her, but from her own point of view.
In my part of the dream, after she got married, I went to help an ex-boyfriend move his things into a new house and there was a soundtrack in that part, which is something I don't think I've had in another dream. After I woke up, I was walking to work and I put the Velvet Underground Loaded CD into my discman (I had bought it the day before). “Who Loves the Sun” came on, I realized it was the song in my dream, and I looked up and saw my ex-boyfriend sitting in front of the house he had moved into in my dream. The whole day was off, with the people I cared about in my dreaming and waking life crossing over.
I don’t have a moral or a lesson to that story, but it was an experience I had that made me wonder whether my dreams were creeping in to my reality, like they do with poor George Orr. And I do think many dreams can shape the world in a way I don’t understand, in a way that makes me small and brittle. I think LeGuin captures that literal power of dreams very gracefully, without creating a heavy-handed allegory, leaving room for many applications of the tone and texture of the story. I also love what she does with George and his therapist, and the yin and yang of their personalities, though I can't think of more to say about that than just stating it. I’m glad I found a LeGuin that is for me; I’m glad somebody wrote a story about dreams....more
As an unmarried person with many married friends, I have heard my share of lectures and seen my share of demonstrations about how to have a successfulAs an unmarried person with many married friends, I have heard my share of lectures and seen my share of demonstrations about how to have a successful (or repair a broken) marriage. I get why you would have to talk about marriage lessons after you learn them because it really is an accomplishment to realize something about relationships. But I never realized until I read this book that it would be SO MUCH MORE FUN if they told their stories with ZOMBIES!!!! Yaaaaay! Not that I wish they had to fight zombie hordes (well, maybe I do wish some of them would, if we’re being completely honest . . .). But, sometimes I bet half of what they’re saying is made up anyway, whether they know it or not, so add some freaking undead, people!!
So, yes, I’m giving this book a very inflated 4 stars. This is another casualty of the Skye O’Malley tragedy. This is probably more of a 3-star book, but it’s so much better than all of the other RBR reads! I’m suspicious that it is better because it’s not actually a romance, but we’ll choose to turn a blind eye to that for now. The minute I held this book in my loving little hands at Powell’s in Portland, I knew we had a connection, though. This is my kind of self-help. Self-help with BRAAAaaaaAAAINS!!!
My only complaint is that there is a great part with a cult, but the cult was not nuanced enough for my taste. I like to see a cult that has some draw at first and then later chains you up. The cult leader in this book was a little too stranger-danger for me to feel sorry for them when they got locked up. Don’t worry, I won’t tell you what happens then.
I think that complaint goes to how I still think watching zombies is a more pleasing overall experience than reading about zombies. Like, if the cult leader guy had been on the TV, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me that he was too obviously loony tunes. Horror movies are so flash-bang that you don’t have the time to pause and want a little more complexity. And I don’t want to want complexity with my zombies! If I get it, great, if not, then I get omg-we’re-all-gonna-die instead, which is just as good. So, basically, I’m bothered by my being bothered.
There’s not a lot to say about this particular piece of litratuhr, and my fellow rippers have done an excellent job in their analysis already by noting the references to Whedon, Zombieland, and Shaun of the Dead. I was satisfied by those references. Jesse Petersen knows her shit. Also, she knows where her book is going to land in the continuum of zombie stories. That’s a bonus. But, now I am off to explore the complexity of the human spirit in The Egg Said Nothing and This is Not a Flophouse. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about those two because I can already tell they have a beautiful mix of subtlety, nuance, and flash-bang. ...more
Okay, the star rating is a lie.Twilight rox. But you know what does not rock and gets only one star? Real-life Twilight experiences. Twilight tells tOkay, the star rating is a lie.Twilight rox. But you know what does not rock and gets only one star? Real-life Twilight experiences. Twilight tells the basic creepy-old-man-stalks-young-girl story. You know the one. It’s everywhere. He woos her by being vaguely threatening and manipulative. She sees his condescension as the patient musings of a wiser soul. It’s fun in a book, but when you see it in real life, walk the other direction. In my experience, it is possible for creepy stalkers to come around almost anywhere, and the internet is no exception.
I don’t want to get lecturey on you, but I think that, especially for people who are the typical targets of stalkers (all you Bellas out there), but really for everyone, it is important to be aware and smart and even suspicious. Don’t give your address to people you don’t know. And don’t think that a compliment is always what it seems. Sometimes compliments are manipulation. If someone makes you uncomfortable or seems suspicious, don’t be afraid to tell them that. Don’t feel pressured to keep yourself in an uncomfortable situation or to talk to people who skeeze you out. You don’t have to be afraid, just remove yourself from the situation. If a friend tells you to watch out for someone, give that advice a chance. I know it’s obvious to say, but I like being reminded every once in a while that you can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control your own.
As an example, I’ll tell you a story of one time when I wasn’t smart and didn’t remove myself from a situation. This is a pretty specific situation, and it takes place in Ukraine, but I really think things like it could happen anywhere.
So, my friend, Vanessa, lived in the middle of the country, and I was going to visit her. We met in Kyiv to take the bus back to her city. The bus we got on was old and rickety, and the only seat was right in the front. We were exhausted and Vanessa fell asleep against the window. The bus driver kept looking at us in the rear-view mirror, but I didn’t think anything of it because we were American and got stared at all the time. He must have been going about thirty miles an hour the entire way there, because I think we got in about two hours after we were supposed to. Vanessa told the driver, in Ukrainian, where to drop us off, but he drove right past the stop down to the regular station. We got out at the station and Vanessa was pissed. It was really late, and it would have been easy for them to let us off at her stop. She had just woken up, too. We had both been sleeping off and on.
We got out of the bus to get our luggage, and as we were grumbling and trying to find our bags, the driver’s assistant came up to us and explained that they were actually going to let everyone off and drive us BACK to her stop. Oh! We slapped our foreheads. That makes so much more sense. We got back into the bus. (NEVER GET BACK INTO AN EMPTY BUS.) Duh. We were really tired, so that’s some excuse, but not much. Anyway, the driver’s assistant got behind the wheel, and took off in the opposite direction of the town. So, there we are, driving out in the middle of the country (but really the middle of nowhere because there aren’t even houses or lights or anything) with these two old, creepy Ukrainian guys.
Vanessa was freaking out a little bit, and started gathering weapons around her. She had her keys out and some kind of antenna from the dashboard. I don’t remember what else, but that is exactly what you should do if you find yourself in a situation like that. Self-defense 101. The driver, now freed from his driving responsibilities, sat across from me and asked us the Ukrainian for “do you girls like to party?” We quickly answered “no.” He told us that he had a stash of vodka stored in the back of the bus for just such an occasion. He slid his hand over onto my leg. Vanessa immediately slapped it off. You could see the gears in our brains turning. What if we were murdered, there in the Ukrainian countryside, and just left out to rot? What if we escaped, but spent days wandering in circles in the empty fields and eventually died of thirst? Could we jump from a moving bus? Why did we get back on the fucking bus?
Then, after about ten or fifteen minutes, they pulled up to a gas station – in the middle of friggin’ nowhere, mind you – got gas, and headed back to town. We were fine. We were shaken, and it wasn’t a safe situation, but we were fine.
What I’m telling you is this: it’s not your fault if you are the victim of unwanted attention, but there are a lot of things you can do to be smart and safe. Take a self-defense class. Be honest with other people. Listen to your instincts. Block people on the internet if they are making you uncomfortable. Don’t harass people yourself, but if you’re uncomfortable, be smart. Learn from your mistakes.
Twilight is fun. I’m the first to admit it. Fictional Edward is a boyfriend you could buy at Claire’s™. How much does that rock? But in real life Edward is just an old, bossy man with a thirst for blood. That’s not romantic. It’s gross. While awesome, fictional Edward got into Bella’s home through her window, gross, real-life Edwards get into our homes through our computers. (Not literally, although, oooo sci-fi fan-fic waiting to happen?)
It recently came to my attention that a member of goodreads was accused on another website of using Goodreads(.com) and other places on the internets to harass people - basically he was accused of being a real-life Edward. (I expressly claim the content of that link, though I apologize for its graphic nature. Goodreads(.com) does not claim the content of that link. : this should in no way constitute legal advice to anyone, including Goodreads(.com) or affiliated agencies, but according to §§10, 12, and 14 of my and the accused member's contract with Goodreads(.com), as well as U.S. federal law, 47 U.S.C. sec. 230(c)(1), and U.K. law, Defamation Act of 1996 §1(3), Goodreads(.com) is only a content provider, not a publisher of my statements, and has no liability for what I say on here. Although Goodreads(.com) may not be convinced that any users of its service are creepy, I am persuaded. We are separate. Please don’t blame it for what I say. I have talked to both parties involved in the incident. Below are the accused’s responses to me. The girl who originally posted the accusations has asked that we not contact her, as all of the harassment she has received from questions about that post has been just about as awful as the original harassment. I hope you will respect those wishes. I would be glad to answer any questions I can about this either in the thread below or in a private message.
You might not think that the accusations are true, and that is entirely valid. I did the investigation I needed to do in order to confirm for myself that the accused member of Goodreads is creepy, you can do what you need, or ignore the situation entirely, as you like. I understand the importance in a trial of presuming someone innocent until proven guilty, but I do not believe that I need to wait to have an opinion about someone until that person has gone through a trial. I can have an opinion based on whatever standard of evidence I like, and the testimony of a witness, combined with my own experience, and countered by nothing, is enough evidence to persuade me. Also, I am willing to err on the side of caution where the potential for harm is either exposing Bellas to stalking and harassment, or exposing an innocent man to loss of business. Both are horrible, but the former is more horrible to me. Again, everyone should balance that for themselves. Honestly, beyond blocking him myself, I'm not very interested in this particular person, as I don't think he's at all unique. He serves as a symbol in this review, yes, but a symbol of something much larger and more ubiquitous. If someone STARTS harassing the accused member because of the things I wrote here or for whatever reason, I will think that harassment is as stupid as any other harassment.
The community manager of Goodreads(.com) has informed me that the appropriate way to deal with a potential predator on Goodreads is to inform the community manager of where the offensive posts exist, and he will delete them. That seems to me like just about the worst way possible to deal with situations like this. Not only does it cover up for the offender by erasing evidence, it also makes it difficult to warn people in the future of patterns. I think the stupidest (bless their ‘lil hearts) way to deal with stalking is to pretend you can stop it by erasing it. I have already blocked the accused member because I don’t want him to access my friends through my profile, but I think censoring his account or his comments is a ludicrous way of “dealing” with a situation. Also, I frankly think that crazy people have the right to read books and talk about them, too. Just because I don’t want to be friends with the accused member, doesn’t mean other people, who are not in danger of being targeted by him, shouldn’t. Plus, deleting his account or comments doesn’t accomplish anything, as he can make a new profile, or write new comments. The point is that we should all be careful (especially the Bellas). Again, trust your instincts and learn from your mistakes. If you have bad instincts, trust your friends. Do the opposite of what Bella does because Edward, in real life, is the opposite of what Edward is in fiction.
I’m a big fan of the Take Back the Night movement, but I don’t think the night is the only thing that shouldn’t be dominated by fear. So this is your call to take back the internet. When goodreads originally took down this review and the others like it, I had invited people to copy my review and write about their own experiences with real-life Edwards. I invite you to do that again if you would like. You are definitely responsible for whatever you copy or change from this review, but you are welcome to it. The world is there for all of us to enjoy, for men and women. Parents shouldn’t be afraid to let their kids use the internet. We are real people on here and should treat each other as such. Don’t let people gain power through fear.
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POSTS from me to the accused Goodreads(.com) member
Do you have a response to these accusations? More specifically, have you given attention to other people that they have perceived as unwanted or offensive, or have you threatened people? I'm also specifically interested to hear what you have to say about the accusation of racism.
For myself, I'm not very concerned about being friends because if you harass me, I can always block you. I don't want my posts to expose other friends of mine to that kind of harassment, though. If you don't respond to this with some kind of reasonable explanation, or if you delete this post, I will probably block you. I would rather not block anyone, but I don't want people I care about to feel uncomfortable posting on my threads. I look forward to your response.
message 11: Sep 28, 2010 07:54am
I had hoped you would be upfront about answering the livejournal accusations because it seems both childish and overly formal to need to set a deadline for you. However, because you have not responded, I will be more clear. I am willing to wait until 11:59 p.m., PST, on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 for you to provide a reasonable explanation for the accusations listed on the livejournal link in my comment below.
If you delete either of these posts, or if you do not respond by that time, I will understand that as you acknowledging that the accusations are true. At that point I plan to block you as a user and do what I can to make it known on goodreads that you have acknowledged the accusations. I recommend you post your explanation here on your own profile for future reference in case this issue comes up again.
(At this point, the accused member sent me a PM with the quoted language in the message below.)
message 12: Sep 28, 2010 01:45pm
[The accused member] Wrote: "I saw the first line on your comment to me and couldn't read any further. I don't read or discuss Bad News. I cannot read anything that will be hostile or minatory or derisive."
It surprises me that you say this, given the books you seem to usually read. I'm left to assume that you mean that you cannot read anything derisive about yourself. I think it has come to a point where you might need to learn how to read that type of material, as many people, including myself, are prepared to take your silence on the topic as admission of guilt. ...more
I know, I know. This book had police caution tape all around it warning me not to read. I wasn’t surprised that it was as bad as it is. Actually, I thI know, I know. This book had police caution tape all around it warning me not to read. I wasn’t surprised that it was as bad as it is. Actually, I think that this book provides a good example of one of the central weaknesses of Stephenie Meyer’s books. I heard someone say the other day that the purpose of art is to make people feel. I know, doi, but I had never looked that one in the face before. Meyer spends most of her time, in all of her books, trying to cushion the reader from really feeling anything.
It makes sense that she does this, since her writing started from what sounds to me like a sort of limited self-counseling exercise. And, I think this is why her other books worked so spectacularly for me when they did – I already had so many feelings going on about so many different things that I was looking for comfort, not art. I think that’s also why they work for teenagers, whose emotions are an alternative energy source that I’m convinced could power the world. (The fact that they’re left in disuse is obviously some big oil conspiracy.) Her books are a fake, plastic world with fake, simple people. Her plots are driven by basic motivations and superpowers. I love it.
Here, though, it worked out pretty unfortunately. You could feel that Meyer was writing it because her teacher assigned it to her and the due date had passed. In her introduction, she goes to great lengths to warn the reader that she might be forced to feel something at the end of the book; there was just no way for Meyer to get around it. It’s uncomfortable. This is another example of Meyer being unable to handle any of her characters winding up unhappy. I’m not complaining about that, necessarily, because I generally find it pretty funny in a sit-com kind of way. But in this case, I needed her to suck it up.
The rest of this review will contain spoilers, but if you’ve read Eclipse, as Ms. Meyer points out in the introduction, you already know about the timely (or untimely, if you consider how long and drawn out it is) end of Bree. Basically, the story breaks down into three parts:
Act 1: The Cheeseburger of Pain. This is where Meyer is at her best. Two vaguely shallow high school kids with vaguely tragic pasts find each other and fall in love because they’re vaguely speshul. She describes their attraction in a style poignantly reminiscent of LOLcats (see thread* below). Also, they’re vampires. This is what I love in Meyer. It’s something that is both the easiest thing and the most impossible thing to make fun of because it’s already there making fun of itself. It is everything shallow in culture, and so it is absolutely beautiful. It is its own caricature.
Act 2: The Metaphor of the Cave. This is where Meyer is on shaky ground - in consciously or unconsciously referencing other canonical works of writing. The title of the book, for example, is a major problem. Why would you rip off the title of one of the greatest short stories of the English language for a high school vampire romance? That is a problem. I feel genuine emotion when I think of The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, so you can’t just reference it flippantly. The title hurts my feelings a little bit. If she was genuinely and respectfully using the Macomber story, then great, but I can’t figure a way that’s happening here.
Anyway, what she is using (and it appears that she’s using it unconsciously, but maybe not) is Plato's metaphor of the cave:
[image]
So, the premise of the story is that there are all these baby campires that an eeeevil campire is turning into a campire army. In the Twilight world, if you didn’t already know, vamps don’t dust if they go into sunlight, but they do get sparkly. BUT, the evil campire told the babes that they will dust if they go into the light. So, they all believe this until they discover it’s not true in a very metaphor-of-the-cave kind of way. It’s funny, but also not, so it left me with an awkward neutral feeling. The cave was sitting right there, waiting to be referenced, but Meyer never explicitly did, and the revelation about sparkling didn’t turn into a metaphor for life. It fell a little flat.
Act 3: Finding Forrester. There are, as I may have already ranted to you, so many reasons to be embarrassed for Gus Van Sant. Not the least of these reasons is the movie Finding Forrester. Because Finding Forrester is a perfectly fine movie, EXCEPT that it is exactly the same as Good Will Hunting, a movie that Gus Van Sant ALREADY made! That is so not okay. I actually think Van Sant has a lot of decent movie-making skills, but these choices he makes are so embarrassing to me. So, that’s what the last third of Bree Tanner is. It’s a recap of the end of Eclipse, but mostly in slo mo. It’s truly boring. It would have made so much sense to end this book after the cave metaphor. The repeat ending wasn’t revelatory, but more like explaining a joke. If we didn’t make the connections, then explaining it isn’t going to help.
Overall, I’d say go see the new Eclipse movie instead. That movie pretty neatly combines what this book has to say with what Eclipse has to say and is totally watchable, imho. It even has some great John Hughes moments, and I felt like it was laughing with me, not crying while I was laughing at it. If you can manage it, go when there are about 100 13-year-old girls in the theater, too. The swooning is a really important part of the Twilight experience.
* The thread that happened before I actually read this book ends at comment 113, fyi. All future comments will be equally loved and appreciated. ...more
"Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don't like to read good books." - Jac"Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don't like to read good books." - Jack Handey
This is one of the only books I plan never to finish. I thought the writing was beautiful, and I don't even know that I would say it was badly edited (a comment I read in another review), but I hated all of the characters. I loathed them by the time I stopped reading. I even hated Chick a little bit. I skipped some and glanced at the end to see if it would be worth finishing, but I couldn't get too excited about anything I saw. If anyone has a good reason for me to finish this book, I would be interested to hear it.
I was recommended to read it by two very different people - the prom queen my Senior year of high school, and a friend of mine who was later locked up in a high security mental ward in Seattle. Made me want to give it a try, you know? I don't know if I've ever hated so many characters in a book as though they were my personal enemies.
This book sat inside my nightstand for a couple of months, and then I just couldn't stand having it there any more, knowing it might be sneaking out and watching me while I slept. I took it to the library and handed it to one of the customer service people, asking him if I could give it to the library. I didn't want to sell it to a used book store and then have someone make the mistake I made of actually spending money on it; and I couldn't throw it away because I do think it's well written, so I had to give it more respect than that. The man tried to scan it for about thirty seconds as though I was returning it. "No," I explained, "I'm not returning it. I just want to give it to the library, if that's okay." "Oh," he said, looking at his computer screen and not giving any other response. I walked away quickly, just in case he was planning to tell me I couldn't leave the book. He's the librarian here at the Eugene Public library with the handlebar mustache, and the greying hair with a bowl cut, who looks like he's part basset hound. That's a pretty irrelevant story, but why are you still reading this? (that's what Katherine Dunn said)...more
David James Duncan is one of my heroes, both for being a wonderful writer from the Pacific Northwest, and for saying a lot of the things I think way bDavid James Duncan is one of my heroes, both for being a wonderful writer from the Pacific Northwest, and for saying a lot of the things I think way better than I could ever say them. He is a preacher of rivers, which description I think conveys both the lovely things about him and the sometimes irritating things about him. God Laughs Plays is a collection of talks he has given and articles he has written or for which he was interviewed. You can probably gather the basic idea from the title. Duncan very accurately describes my most simple thoughts about him as a writer, when he talks about how people react to the moment in his book The River Why, when the protagonist, Gus, has a mystical spiritual experience:
"Reader reactions to this climax have been neatly divided. Those who have experience similar detonations have sometimes been so moved by the scene that their eyes filled as they thanked me for writing it - and those who've experienced no such detonation have asked why I ruined a dang good fishin' yarn with woowoo. I admire both reactions. Both are constitutionally correct. Both are perfectly honest. What more should a writer want from a reader?" (p. 50)
I could not agree more with both sentiments. Duncan is one of the best of the great "fishin' yarn" writers (in which group I include Ernest Hemingway and Herman Melville), but is also a metaphysical preacher and spiritual guru, in the way that he should be, as a reader and Northwestern lover of the wonderful rivers and forests. Sometimes he can get a little too flowery in his metaphysical talk for my taste. It's the same problem I have with the Madeline L'Engle books after A Wrinkle in Time. I'm willing to believe the universe has all this grand organization, but it gets to me when people are too impressed by it, but not too impressed to talk about it. I'm sure everyone experiences that kind of awe in one way or another, but it doesn't translate well into words. It sounds desperate, or something. Also, sometimes Duncan uses words like "woowoo" and "dang good fishin'", which . . . umm . . . I don't like.
There are many transcendent moments in all of his writing, however, and he does have the ability to set a story up as spiritually over the top, when suddenly he becomes very self-aware and turns it into an appropriately hilarious joke. I think that is one of the greatest abilities writers can have - Shakespearean in a lot of ways. It seems relevant to quote, for your reading enjoyment, the story that inspired the title God Laughs and Plays, which took place when Duncan was in college at the beginning of the Vietnam War (In this type of book, I don't really feel like there is anything to give away in terms of a plot, but if you truly wish to read the book and want it to be entirely a surprise, I'll throw in this spoiler warning for you: *SPOILER!!* - skip the italicized letters, or else. Also, there are enough other brilliant stories in here that I don't think quoting this one will make this review like the preview for a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, where the summary makes the actual thing a disappointment):
While waiting at the food stamp office one day, I happened to open my new used Eckhart book to a sermon titled "God Laughs and Plays". I don't recall what scripture the Meister quoted in defense of this truth. And I refuse to look it up. There's too much dead text and too little living intuition in American spirituality these days! "God Laughs and Plays..." The title alone hooked me. I'd read enough Eckhart to know he was wiser than any Christian I'd met, and far wiser than me. I'd read enough to feel the glowering Republican "God" of fundamentalism losing his last shreds of power over me in the face of the unfathomable, loving mystery that is Eckhart's "unknown God". I'd read enough to know I trusted this sage with my mind and heart. And there in the food stamp office, the man I'd come to trust informed me that "God laughs and plays."
"The joy of all saints and angels together . . . amounts to as little as a bean when compared to the joy of God at play."
. . . Why did I believe these crazy words? I don't know. Why did my life begin to morph because of these words? I don't know. Given the grim death of my brother, the threat of the draft, threat of the war, plus my lifelong religious skepticism, the idea of a God who laughed and played seems incredibly unlikely to have pierced me. Yet the instant Eckhart declared it, things started to change.
The food stamp office, for instance. How ridiculous it began to look! So self important. So institutional. So deliberately depressing. . . The place seemed conspiratorially designed by some Nazi Martha Stewart out to create oceans of ambient guilt in poor people.
The rules, too, began to seem ridiculous. That the ailing, half-wrecked, unhirable folks who dragged themselves in here had to lie every visit, as I did, saying we'd been out hunting jobs, in order to collect our stamps! Not only did it make us feel guilty, it taught us that lying is necessary in order to survive.
In short: the place suddenly struck me as so concertedly Kafkaesque, and the news that God laughs and plays was so explosively non-Kafka, that I began to grin at the whole clumsily officious arrangement. . .
As soon as I started to think this, I too started to feel joy. And in its presence, I found I could no longer do what I was doing. The grubby plastic chair beneath my ass suddenly struck me as hilarious. Then so did the buzz of the tube-lights, the guilt-inducing rules, the shame-inducing stamps. Then so did my fear of going to Vietnam. If God laughed and played, I could laughingly refuse to serve in 'Nam! If God laughed and played, it was ridiculous of me to be eking out an American half-life according to so many tiny-minded miserable little rules. I stood up. I snapped Eckhart's sermons shut. "God laughs and plays," I told the food stamp office, "and I'm outta here!" And I never went back again.
That's a crazy-sounding story, I realize, and it leaves what we tend to call "reality" out. So let me say how I dealt, in nuts and bolts, with my loss of government nutrition assistance. . . " (p. 181-183)
Duncan is very willing to acknowledge his own silliness, but still dive right into it. What better compliment could I give an author?
This book was published in 2006, and I should have been more prepared for the repeated references to Bush Jr. than I was. While I agreed with everything Duncan said on that topic, it was tedious to me to read about that presidency, when so much of me wants to never read of it on my free time again *sigh*. To give you an idea of Duncan's excellent sentiments along those lines, this is a little snippet from an interview Duncan includes. He is discussing his relationship with his family, who it seems were involved in rather oppressive Seventh Day Adventism, and he says, "And my mother remains one of my closest friends, and she has never answered an Altar Call in her life because, in her own words, 'I'm already a Christian, and that preacher has no right to try and shame me!' And in her view the presidency of G.W. Bush is 'one big Altar Call" (p. 176). Yep!
Duncan came to speak to a small group of people at the University of Oregon School of Law when I worked there and was very inspiring about getting rid of useless dams and saving communities from the destruction of gold mining. These are things we should do. He has this really meek, but persuasive, air about him of being some kind of cross between Louis L'Amour, Gandhi, and Gloria Steinem. I like it. He writes boy stories that I can get into. This was more of a fan book than a stand-alone work, but it still had much of the beauty and thoughtfulness of his fiction. I would think that for people who prefer nonfiction (though, as Duncan smartly points out in one of his essays in this book, what is that really?) this would be a better read than The River Why, but nothing of his that I've read quite compares to The Brothers K. ...more
One summer in high school, I lived at this camp on the Oregon coast. It was kind of a run-down place that a family owned. They would let high-school kOne summer in high school, I lived at this camp on the Oregon coast. It was kind of a run-down place that a family owned. They would let high-school kids come there and run the place as staff while different groups of campers from different types of churches and high-school groups would come through. The girl staffers slept in bunks in one house, and the guys slept in this apartment over the gym. It was all kind of Empire Records, if that movie is actually how I remember it from watching it in high school. Or, like, Hey Dude, but Oregon-coast style, not dude ranch. Anyway, for a week, we lived on the Rogue River, and it was probably one of the best experiences of my life. Just a bunch of high school kids camping out (with adult-ish supervision). I grew up in the San Juan Islands, and on and around the Rogue and Illinois rivers, but I don’t think of the Ocean and rivers or visit them like I should. They are like blood: I take them for granted, but when I remember to, I do appreciate their beauty, and I know I would shrivel without them.
I finished my second year of law school this week, so I took the opportunity to read River Teeth, drink three greyhounds, and get nostalgic about Oregon rivers. I love that DJD loves Oregon rivers because they deserve to be loved. He is maybe a little sentimental in that hippie, rain-stick kind of way that gets to me sometimes, but when he stays out of that territory, he is my favorite ever. Ever. This is kind of a strange collection of stories. He pulled them together with the idea that they are river teeth, he explains in the very beginning. When trees fall into rivers, the current quickly decomposes their trunks, except for the knots where a branch joined a trunk, or other knots where the wood is particularly dense. Those, he explains, stay in the river much longer, and they jut up from the ground like river teeth. In the same way, Duncan goes on, time washes over our lives, and the moments that don’t decompose in our memories are like river teeth. So, this collection of stories is made up of those startling moments, the memories seared into his identity. Or, stories he heard from other people of their river teeth. I like the concept.
Otherwise, there is not much to unify one story from another. Some are Duncan’s stories, others he invented or transcribed from friends. I liked all of them, but I lovedThe Garbage Man’s Daughter. I, like, love this story, you guys. I laughed so hard at one part that I couldn’t read the pages and had to get up and walk around for a while. Then, when I came back, I still couldn’t read the story. It needs to be read. It is an outstanding story. I looked for an online copy to post here for you to read, but I couldn’t find one. You should find it and read it.
There is some dangerous territory in this book, though. The Brothers K is a perfect book in my eyes, and there is a story at the end of this book that happens after The Brothers K, and I feel that it spoils a lot of that book. I don’t necessarily know if the information would be hanging over you when you read The Brothers K, but I think it would influence your read of that book and those characters. I would rather you read that book than this, but you should still read The Garbage Man’s Daugher. I love it ever so.
The stories at the very beginning of this book are really wonderful. They are of Duncan’s childhood, and they are truly horrifying and memorable. There is also a story interestingly dedicated to Katherine Dunn, for all those Geek Love lovers out there. At the end of the book, the stories get increasingly sentimental and tie-dyed, as Duncan gets increasingly that way. I can handle that to a point, but, I don’t know. I do think he is wise, and I don’t disagree with anything he’s saying. He just goes a little to sentimental/poetical for me ever so slightly and every once in a while. Not in The Brothers K. He goes just the right amount of far in that book, as I recall. In the others, though, I just hear didgeridoos and rain sticks in the background every once in a while. And, like, Yanni. For some, that is a compliment, and I can see where it would be just the right thing in some circumstances. For me, It goes just slightly too far, every once in awhile. Then, usually, he’ll say something with all kinds of perspective that is totally hilarious, and it will reel me back in (fishing metaphor, tres apropos!).
Duncan is wonderful on fishing and rivers and baseball and personal mythology. He’s great with a subtle pun, and he’s kind. This was a lovely book. Have I told you to go read The Garbage Man’s Daughter yet? Well, go. It is a hilarious story. He is so kind about families and the way family personalities destroy and invent each other. He does that so well. I had been thinking for weeks that I wanted to re-read The Brothers K, but then I remembered that I had this one and hadn’t gotten to it yet. In a lot of ways, I’m glad I read this instead. But, I still miss that book and can’t wait to get back to it someday. Anyway, Duncan talks about rivers and families, and explains things that he understands instinctively about those things that I love and don't understand. One of my heroes....more
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