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| 1683090802
| 9781683090809
| B01GF1CXJ8
| 3.71
| 7
| unknown
| May 30, 2016
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it was amazing
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Love this one by my coach friend, Kim Benjamin! Kim and I were trained together at The Life Coach School, and she is just one of the most wonderful, b
Love this one by my coach friend, Kim Benjamin! Kim and I were trained together at The Life Coach School, and she is just one of the most wonderful, beautiful people you'll ever meet. There were three Kims in our group, all of whom were in my small group for our certification process. In the certification practicum, we recorded ourselves coaching our clients to be approved. I remember every time I listened to Kim's calls, I was so excited to hear her beautiful, calm voice. I was so happily impressed by the lovely writing in this book and all of the wise tools and inspiration for pursuing writing, while still keeping a professional job. By the end of the book, I was absolutely convinced that if I followed Kim's tools, I could write a novel. She lays out exactly how to manage your schedule and what to expect from yourself. My main takeaway is that she talked about writing a book as a "practice," in the same way that law is a practice. It is something we come back to and commit to, without an end goal hanging over us and giving us an excuse to create disappointment. I also loved something Kim said, "Whatever your thoughts were, they just were. They are neither good nor bad. Thoughts are neutral. It is the attachment of emotions to our thoughts that controls the directions we take." Love that. I often think about the stories we attach to neutral circumstances and how much chaos that creates. But, I had not fully separated that attaching our emotions to thoughts is another layer in that chaos. And then acting on those emotions is the next layer. There is always a place to interrupt the cycle. Highly recommended if you are a professional who wants to write, but you are worried about how it will look, whether you have time, and all the other excuses we make to not fully show up in the world. Thanks for being such a shining star, Kim! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 04, 2017
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Jul 04, 2017
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Jun 02, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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| 1591791286
| 9781591791287
| 1591791286
| 4.43
| 365
| Jan 01, 1995
| Sep 01, 2003
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it was amazing
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This is my favorite-favorite of all of Pema Chodron’s lectures. I haven’t listened to this one in a while, but it was really influential in my total l
This is my favorite-favorite of all of Pema Chodron’s lectures. I haven’t listened to this one in a while, but it was really influential in my total life overhaul last year. My favorite part of this lecture is Pema Chodron’s description of the Buddhist idea of ego, which is so different, I think, from the western idea of ego, which is more like hubris. But, I do think that the two descriptions are different ways to get at the same thing. They both see ego as something that alienates us from other people. The Buddhist idea of ego, like everything else in Buddhism, is a way to describe aversion and clinging and the chaos they cause in our lives. She describes it like this: ego is like if you’re in a room you love. The temperature is your perfect temperature, the food is your favorite. Your favorite music is playing and the walls are your favorite color. But, you suddenly realize that you can hear sounds from outside and there is an uncomfortable breeze, and so you close the window. Then, you realize there’s a little air still coming in under your door, so you put a towel down. You can hear the neighbors through the wall, and so you brick up that wall, and pretty soon you are trapped in your perfect room. Anything from the outside is threatening to your comfortable space, and you can’t tolerate anything coming into your space or being taken from it. I’ll tell you about how I’ve seen this play out in my own life with the topic I’m so passionate about right now (as always) – sexism. I used to react when someone said something sexist by pulling into myself and seeking out people who I knew wouldn’t be sexist, jobs that would encourage me to show myself. I assumed I wasn’t welcome where sexism existed, and since I wasn’t welcome, I should go home. For example, a supervisor said, “Women often have trouble promoting themselves in their resumes.” Even though I listened to his advice about my resume, I decided that this was evidence that so many lawyers just assume women are pushovers. Maybe we are pushovers, I thought. I also thought there are so many benefits to being humble and straightforward about skills and not bragging, but maybe the law and especially men in the law, can’t accept that. Maybe I don’t belong in the law, I thought. Men in the law were the outside world, they claimed it, and my inclination was to withdraw into my comfortable house and let them have the outside. But, that was a limitation I was putting on myself; it was not reality. In reality, I can go out into any situation and be safe in my own thinking. Who cares if this guy thinks women have trouble promoting themselves? I don’t have to think that, and him being wrong doesn’t hurt me. My thought that maybe I’m a pushover and don’t belong was super uncomfortable, but that was allll my choice. I can open my door and step outside, and then I can step back into my comfortable spot when I want to. I can open the window, and then close it again when I’m tired of the outside smells. But, I can still be me no matter what feelings are out there. I can hear someone say that women have trouble with promotion, I can sit with the thought and let my supervisor think it, and I can still not choose to believe it. So, this is the kind of coaching I’m doing with people now. Transforming their workplace through managing their mind and setting boundaries. It’s the most fun ever. Check me out, and get my free guide to getting the respect you deserve at work! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 2015
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Apr 2015
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May 28, 2016
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Audio CD
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| 0440508835
| 9780440508830
| 0440508835
| 4.18
| 43,666
| Jan 01, 1997
| May 11, 1999
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it was amazing
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How had I never heard of this before??? Why were you all keeping this book a secret from me??? This book is so fantastic. There are so many things I w
How had I never heard of this before??? Why were you all keeping this book a secret from me??? This book is so fantastic. There are so many things I want to say to you about it, but mostly just read it. I’m pretty much obsessed with Gavin de Becker after reading this book, and then Lena Dunham did an interview with him for the Lenny Letter!!! When I saw that I felt like that part in Friends where Ross realizes Monica and Chandler are together: [image] My heart grew three sizes, folks. Gavin de Becker is a violence expert (how cool is that?). He grew up in a violent household, and he went on to be a consultant with the Secret Service and an advisor to celebrities being stalked or receiving threats. I need a title like “violence expert.” Maybe “gender power dynamics expert”? Too long? This book tells you everything you need to know about protecting yourself from violence. Probably, there are more things I need to know, but this book at least gave me the resources to find them. For example, Gavin de Becker recommends women be trained in IMPACT self-defense classes, and that sounds SO FUN, but I have not done it yet, and I don’t know everything about it yet. A friend of mine in LA did it and posted part of her training on Facebook. It’s this video of her totally taking out this guy like three times her size. So incredible. The biggest takeaways from this book for me were listen to your instincts, not the news, to decide whether you are in danger; engaging at all with stalkers or other people who raise alarms is positive reinforcement with them; and we always have a choice about whether we are going to put ourselves in danger or become violent ourselves. Particularly the parts about stalking were so fantastic to me. De Becker refutes the one-size-fits-all take on stalking orders that most law enforcement hands out. For example, at the Circuit Court in Eugene, the “FAPA” (restraining/stalking order) docket happens every morning. Women (almost always women) come into the court and apply for restraining orders against men who are being creepy or physically threatening them. Often, they do this because they’ve called the police or sheriff’s office, and the responding officer told them that they can’t really do anything because the person hasn’t committed a crime. But, the officer tells them, if they apply for a restraining or stalking order, have it granted, and the creeper violates it, the officer can do something. So, the woman applies for a restraining or stalking order, and whether or not she has it granted, continues the cycle of contacts with the creeper. De Becker says, and I totally agree, that this is helpful in some cases, but not all. In many cases the cycle of contacts with law enforcement and the creeper just reinforces the attachment that the creeper has. Many times, ignoring the person is much more effective in getting him to go away. I had a woman visit me for legal advice one time, and tell me a story about an alleged sexual assault. She was fixated on having her restraining order granted and was visibly afraid about something that may happen if it were not granted. I reminded her that if someone was trespassing on her property or was threatening her, she could call the police without a restraining order. She said, “Yeah, but the police are terrible at responding.” “Do you think they are better at responding if you have a restraining order?” I asked. Even though my question did not put her at ease, hers was a case in which she continued to maintain contact with her alleged assaulter through the justice system. De Becker says that if a stalker calls 30 times, and on the thirtieth time, you pick up, he learns that it takes 30 calls to talk to you. For someone who is fixated, learning that it takes police contact or 30 calls is worth it. But, if you don’t respond at all, often people do not become violent and learn that it is not an option to talk to you. It is somewhat counterintuitive advice, and it relies completely on our willingness to trust ourselves and our intuition about a situation that is physically dangerous and a situation that has not reached that level yet, but could with continued contact. We often repress our fear signals for so long that when we let them out they are absolutely screaming at us. If we listen to our fear at the outset, and calmly avoid a potential threat, we don’t escalate it. Law enforcement is always available for a physical threat, but often involving law enforcement further antagonizes someone who is already unstable. I really love the overall point that continuing to talk to someone who is fixated on you, even to tell them that you don’t want them to call anymore, does not prove you don’t want to talk to them. There is also an entire section about how to look at our workplace fears and what they reveal about our thinking patterns and assumptions. Such fantastic reading for anyone who experiences fear on a regular basis at work. As a people pleaser myself, I have a really hard time saying a firm “no” to anyone, and I think I should read this book at least every year to absorb its fantastic advice. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 29, 2016
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Jan 29, 2016
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Feb 16, 2016
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Paperback
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| 039332737X
| 9780393327373
| 039332737X
| 3.87
| 10,353
| 2004
| 2005
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did not like it
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I never thought this would happen to me, but while I was reading this book, I actually had a sense of nostalgia for Harold Bloom. A woman I work with I never thought this would happen to me, but while I was reading this book, I actually had a sense of nostalgia for Harold Bloom. A woman I work with forced this book on me with the guarantee that I would adore it. I later found out that she "hates music like the Velvet Underground." It's always people like that who are forcing book recommendations. Not that there are "people like that" who hate the Velvet Underground. I have a lot of faith that she is an isolated case. This book pretty much hit on every single thing I ever hate about books. I know other people have said the writing was engaging, but I have to disagree. One sentence was just a list of the types of businesses that existed in London in the late 16th century. The businesses were grouped together in a way that let the author use some semi-colons, and it seemed pretty clear to me that the whole purpose of the sentence was so that he could show he knew how to use semi-colons. If that is not the case, and the editors had to put those semi-colons in, well . . . god help us all. I think this book should be classified as historical fiction because every sentence is about how "maybe this happened" or "if . . . then Shakespeare could have thought." There is a whole chapter devoted to speculating about whether Shakespeare had a happy marriage based on the marriages in his plays. !!!! That makes me so mad!! Here's what I would read: a book that compiles the documentary history related to Shakespeare and has a short explanation of what the document is. I would be fine with that. Speculation is so infuriating. I was dating this guy recently, and he only used the word "film" for "movie," which drives me crazy. And then one day, he asked me if I wanted to go have a "romp in the sack," so I decided we should not go out anymore. This is the book version of the phrase "romp in the sack." I am judging the soul of both this book and anyone who is passionate about it. As to people who feel pretty neutral about it, you are okay, I will just assume the History of Elizabethan England class you took in college was only a survey. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 2015
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Apr 02, 2015
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0395631246
| 9780395631249
| 0395631246
| 3.95
| 77,684
| 1981
| Apr 28, 1992
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liked it
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I think I've read this book three times and I never remember anything about it. You gotta know your BATNA, I know, but I actually know that from the n
I think I've read this book three times and I never remember anything about it. You gotta know your BATNA, I know, but I actually know that from the negotiation hornbook I helped edit. It's like this: sometimes, when you're negotiating, it's better to walk away. Other times, it's better to take the offered compromise. How do you know which is better? If walking away is a worse alternative, then you take the compromise. Also, sometimes you only want money in a negotiation, and other times you want to be creative. But, they use acronyms to make it more complicated than that. This is an important negotiation book, but I think it's kind of telling that I've read it this many times and still never remember anything about it. I think I had the same experience in college with the book Utopia by Thomas Moore. ...more |
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1
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Oct 27, 2014
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Feb 18, 2015
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Oct 27, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 1556593848
| 9781556593840
| 1556593848
| 4.12
| 119
| Jan 01, 2012
| May 29, 2012
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it was amazing
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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 of
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 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 |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 28, 2013
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Sep 28, 2013
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Sep 28, 2013
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Paperback
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| 1451661509
| 9781451661507
| 1451661509
| 3.75
| 68,941
| Jun 11, 2013
| Jun 11, 2013
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it was amazing
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It’s been a weird year, you guys. I bleached my hair blonde again, and if I haven’t mentioned it before, people say the most ridiculous stuff to blond
It’s been a weird year, you guys. I bleached my hair blonde again, and if I haven’t mentioned it before, people say the most ridiculous stuff to blondes. It’s crazy. It’s like people are standing in line to make idiots out of themselves if you have blonde hair. Blondes, you guys have to dye your hair brown for a while. Just do it to see what life is like on the other side. It’s real different. You can go places and not have people be asses to you. Samples of some of the weird things people have said (and these are not even close to the worst): 1. I was walking down a hall and a security officer in his fifties or sixties was walking towards me. I realized that I needed something back at my desk, so I turned around. As I was walking away, the security officer said, “Are you ticklish?” I turned around, and thinking I must have misheard him, said, incredulously, “What?!” “Are you ticklish?” He repeated. “Huh,” I said, and walked away. Then I spent the next week trying to figure out if there is another, totally normal meaning to that question. People have not been able to tell me one, so if you know of anything, pass it along. 2. I was judging oral arguments at the law school last spring. I was wearing a judge’s robe and sitting on the bench in the school’s classroom that is set up like a courtroom. There were two other judges in robes, and the professor of the class was there. To provide context, when I was in school, oral arguments were the most terrifying thing I did. The topic of the oral arguments was an allegedly illegal seizure, and one of the issues was whether the discovery of a warrant against the defendant, in the words of the Supreme Court, “purged the taint of the illegality of the initial search.” So, we had questions written out for us as suggestions of what to ask the students. I had to ask this one question about the warrant issue, and I was trying to say it in my own words, but I was stumbling. The student interrupted me, said he knew what I was trying to ask, and answered the question. Then, as he was leaving the room, after his argument was done, he said in a low voice, but still TO A JUDGE IN A ROBE AND IN FRONT OF HIS TERRIFYING PROFESSOR, either, “Gotta purge that taint, huh?” or “I’ll help you purge that taint.” And he didn’t do it in so much of a come-on way, as much as he did it in this way like that was why I had stumbled over the question and we were sharing an inside joke. We were so not sharing that joke. So, those are just a couple of the less-lawsuit-material, less-totally-dehumanizing experiences I’ve had with this blonde hair business. I bet, at this point, you are seriously wondering how I am going to wrap this idea around to relate to the book. Here’s how: I think having blonde hair makes people associate me as a child, so they feel more free to say inappropriate things and show terrible judgment. And Jeannette Walls is so amazing at telling stories of what assholes people are to kids. She is a genius at telling these gut-wrenching stories without being maudlin. And lord knows I can’t handle the maudlin. So, like the people in Byler, I am left thinking that if some skinny kids can stand up for themselves in this way, I can. It was, you know, inspirational, without being sickly heartwarming. The Silver Star is the story of two sisters who just experience life kicking the shit out of them, like ya do, and respond by being these brilliant, scrappy heroes. This story is not accusatory, and it is unflinching, and it’s not exploitative of the victimization of children, but it touches on just about every hideous topic possible. I guess something I love about Walls is that she isn’t writing for middle-class comfort, and to me that makes her stories more true and less manipulative than most. And this book touched on almost every hot-button issue: civil rights, Vietnam, corporatization, child neglect, and sexual assault, so it was rife with opportunities for me to get mad about exploitation and privilege comfort. But, Walls knows how to tell that stuff. It seems like, at least on some level, this book is a response to The Help. Maybe Walls had this crisis of conscience and thought, “Eeeesh, someone needs to show this unfortunate Stockett woman how to write with a little humility about experiencing the South in the Civil Rights Era.” And this is how you do it. You know your own perspective, and you recognize that not everyone admired you. Not that this book is even really about racism, other than in a peripheral way, but that is what seems appropriate to me. Walls isn’t black, so she can only give the perspective of a white girl and her black friends, to the extent they tell her their perspective. But, Bean’s friend Vanessa had more dignity, in her small appearances in this book, than the whole of the black maids in The Help. And, good lord, these kids made some excellent points about To Kill a Mockingbird. This was a lovely novel, and I appreciated all of its purposefulness and structure. This was how you should tell a Social Topics story. I would say I did not enjoy this, in a page-turning way, as much as I enjoyed The Glass Castle, but I did enjoy it, and the end really paid off. I know Walls is not for everyone because, where I experience beauty the most as overcoming and conquering evil, some people experience beauty as finding peace or reinforcing principles, or you name it. But, to me, these were wonderful, human characters. I’ll also say that a lot of things in here were weirdly reminiscent of my college days – from the baby left on the top of the car to the word-playing, to the emus. Just weirdly striking associations that make me look behind me to see if Walls is watching. Hopefully, instead, she is just breaking a path for me because I want to be her when I grow up. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 23, 2013
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Sep 2013
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Jun 19, 2013
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0822225093
| 9780822225096
| 0822225093
| 4.06
| 204
| Jan 01, 2012
| 2012
|
it was amazing
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It is a joke of a cliché to talk about the indefinable nature of love, but it is also obviously one of those things that is cliché for a reason. It is
It is a joke of a cliché to talk about the indefinable nature of love, but it is also obviously one of those things that is cliché for a reason. It is so mysterious how love can suddenly appear in our lives and then, just as suddenly, disappear. I am a big believer in accurately and honestly defining relationships according to what they are, not what we wish they would be, and so I might be even more baffled than the average person by the relationships around me. How do some people cultivate and maintain long-term love in their lives without even seeming to try? How do others live with people whom they hate and who hate them? How do people use the words of love to describe what looks like contempt or addiction to me? Language isn’t enough. I have a friend playing the part of Emma in The Language Archive in Seattle, and she suggested a couple of us read it and talk about it, so I read it. And I really loved it. For me, it is about the indefinable nature of love, and, maybe obviously, about language – how language is too broad, and not broad enough, to describe what love is. Maybe it is more centrally about how love is always about communication. George communicates through the study of languages, but struggles to actually express any emotion. Mary communicates through bread. Alta and Resten save English for their fights and speak in their native language when talking of love. Emma struggles to communicate at all. It is not a long play. Mary and George are married; Emma works with George at the Lanugage Archive. Alta and Resten are a couple that has been married for years, and they come in to the Language Archive to record their native language, which is dying. Mary leaves George, and Emma struggles to tell George she is in love with him. The rest of what I’m going to talk about is a spoiler, but I’m not going to hide it because, even though it tells you some of how the play turns out, I don’t really think that ruins the play. I think the play stands alone, regardless of whether you know the ending. So, Mary leaves George, which devastates him, but which the play makes pretty clear is a good choice. They have this conversation at one point where George says to Mary that her leaving means that their whole language is dead. He says that sometimes one of them could say, “Did you take the garbage out?” or something like that, and it could mean many different things from, “I’m really angry that you never do housework” to “I couldn’t live without you” and those types of varied meanings created their language. And he asks her if she knows what he means. She responds that she doesn’t and that she’s never known what he’s meant. She says, “Here, have this bread and you’ll understand,” and the bread is meaningless to him. I think it is a simple, but beautiful, way of showing that they’re wrong for each other, that they could never understand each other. And then, Emma and George communicate perfectly, but Emma tells the audience in the end that George never falls in love with her. So, that is something I keep coming back to. What does it mean that George and Emma communicate perfectly and work together for years, but that he never loves her? How does she know that? Does he know that? Was he actually in love with Mary, as he says he is, when he couldn’t understand or communicate with her? How is that love? It would be simple if you could say, well, he wanted to have sex with Mary and not with Emma, ergo . . . but that obviously makes no sense for defining love either. So, I keep wondering, over and over, and thinking about the relationships of these couples and the non-fictional couples I know. It seems to me that every relationship exists outside of the naming of it, even though naming it can cause the relationship to change. People can be committed to each other in some sort of eternal way without calling it marriage, and people can be married without any kind of love or commitment. People can love each other without ever naming it, and people can hate each other and call it love. Even though the naming of it interacts with the experience of the relationship, I don’t think it creates the relationship. But, I don’t know what creates or maintains a relationship, and the way the naming of it molds and bends the relationship itself is a mystery to me, too. I have known so many couples where the woman told the man they were in love, and he believed her, and so their love existed. That is a mystery to me. Because Emma tells us that George never loves her, and she tells us believably, I do believe her, but I don’t understand. If he had said he loved her, would that have made it so? Because he said he loved Mary, did that make it so, even though he never really saw her? I can’t wrap my mind around those ideas. There is that monologue Nick Cage delivers so beautifully in Moonstruck, here. The play put it into my head, and it is something I understand about the play and about love, and it is something I love about love. It is something about love that you can sink your teeth into. It goes like this: “Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!” Maybe George just needed to hear a speech like that, and he would have snapped out of it. Maybe not, though; I have no idea. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 19, 2013
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May 19, 2013
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May 19, 2013
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1433288486
| 9781433288487
| 1433288486
| 3.90
| 80,952
| Nov 01, 1987
| Jul 01, 2009
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it was amazing
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I hope Tom Wolfe has gotten so laid because of this book. I hope women have put down this book, thrown on some lingerie, and walked over to his apartm
I hope Tom Wolfe has gotten so laid because of this book. I hope women have put down this book, thrown on some lingerie, and walked over to his apartment – unless Wolfe is gay, in which case, I hope men have done the lingerie thing. I hope women (or men) invented a time machine to travel back in time and lay young Tom Wolfe because of this book. I hope Tom Wolfe has gotten anybody he’s ever wanted – x-ray, lemon tart, girls with any shade of lipstick imaginable, men with impressive sternocleidomastoid muscles. Anybody! Not that I’m recommending everyone start stalking him. Consent first, of course. But, I wish on Tom Wolfe a lifetime supply of sex and ice cream because of this book. I’m pretty sure he’s gotten it, but just in case, my wish is out there. The idea of writing such a beautiful book kills me. How does it happen? How does someone put something this perfect together? And I don’t even want to know. I just want to read it over and over again, mystery intact. This book made me scream and gasp and stop, sit, and stare. This is one of the audios I listened to while I walked to work, so the neighborhoods of Eugene had the dubious privilege of waking to my shrieks and hysterical cackling for many mornings in April because of Tom Wolfe. Towards the end, I had to listen in private, so that my sobbing wouldn’t embarrass the neighbors or lead to a meltdown at work. Mixed results. Wikipedia told me that Wolfe modeled his writing after Thackeray and Dickens. It seems so obvious after you say it, but rather than realizing that, I just kept thinking, I've never read anything like this before. It was something entirely new to me. And it is because it is a book that feels so current and urban, while it clearly has classical structure and the involved plotting of Dickens and Thackeray. When I started, I thought it would probably be too dick-lit for me because it was clearly shaping up to be so hardboiled and because I think of Wolfe being in a whole gaggle of male authors who want to talk about how tough it is to have a penis and be so emotionally unavailable. Boo hoo. I have very little attention for that type of thing. But, this, this. This was wonderful. And it was dick-lit, but it was not in the least self-indulgent. It was even cruel, it looked so hard, and so carefully, at masculinity and cowardice. But, the structure of the plot was like a machine, just in the way that the plots of Thackeray and Dickens are. I could feel the sweat and grease of the writing process on the page, or, rather, hear it in the audio track. This book lives in the foundries of humanity; it is crafted from the fires and steel of the human heart. For the most part, this book looks at three horrible men and how their egos and senses of puffed-up worthlessness control and destroy their lives. There are a few brilliant recurring themes in the book that I could not love more – the white whale, the Masters of the Universe. This book actually uses He-Man as a recurring metaphor to this beautiful moment where a character, steeped in his own awesomeness yells out in his head, “I have the power!!” So, so, so, so, so, so, so wonderful. And the courtroom scenes!! Oh, the courtroom scenes. Devastating swoon over those. They made all the hairs on my body stand on end. How can a person describe what happens in a courtroom? Like THIS! This book is what happens in courtrooms. This book is what happens in criminal justice. It got everything just right. The belts and shoelaces, the defendants demanding rights, the defense attorneys running in late because they were in another courtroom, the hot jurors, the underpaid DA. And oh my god, Kramer’s sternocleidomastoid muscles! Remember that?? It made me die laughing every time that came up. I swear to god there is a DA like that in Lane County. And the part where Martin and Goldberg have to give Sherman his rights. Oh my god. So wonderful. And Judy. So, I have nothing insightful to say about this book because . . . just read it. Practically the minute I started reading it, it made me think of a dear friend of mine because of its urban steel and fire, so I will say something about that association because I can clearly only swoon and sigh and flail about when it comes to the book itself. Like the men in this book, there is something strikingly normal about my friend when you first meet him. He is white office shirts, a neat haircut, and clean hands. He is success: a house in the suburbs, two blond children, and a wife who, with a stern hand, makes the family take annual pictures in matching clothes. And then you talk to my friend and find out that he is an evil genius, who has an opinion about everything and a hilarious story about everyone he’s ever met. But, you also know that the suburban thing, the normalcy, is true, too. The layers of his personality include fire and steel, and also funfetti cake, white office shirts, and Kraft singles. I think this book captures something of that kind of layered humanity in Sherman’s office decorum, American aristocratic habits, and bloody knuckles. It shows Kramer’s powerful sternocleidomastoid muscles with his shopping bag and running shoes, Peter’s head in an egg and landing of the white whale, Reverend Bacon’s noble speeches and greedy maneuverings. I think what I’m trying to say is that it struck me recently, probably at least partly because of this book, that the characteristics we show the world are us, and are not us all the same. None of us are inherently suburban or aristocratic, but our choices to appear those ways reveal something about who we actually are, who we are in the caves and recesses of our souls. Sherman is equally the shallow, self-involved Master of the Universe and the jungle fighter, but he is neither of those. My friend is urban fire and steel, and he is suburban success, and he is neither of those. Wolfe writes the show of humanity in a way that hilariously stages the show, and then digs and hammers into the caves and fiery core of who people are beyond it. Are we the dog trained to fight or the social x-ray in a party hive? The little girl sculpting a rabbit or the little boy commanding an office? Yes and no to all of that. Who we are is something different entirely, but always there, underneath the show - the force behind it. And the way Wolfe builds it all and then tears it all apart - I would never ask so much of a writer, but I am so glad this exists. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 30, 2013
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May 07, 2013
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Mar 30, 2013
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Audiobook
| ||||||||||||||
| 030726999X
| 9780307269997
| B007NB94GA
| 4.24
| 735,757
| May 2007
| May 23, 2010
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it was ok
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I find this entire series very unenjoyable, but I appreciated what I felt were academic analyses of consent and power in the first two books. Because
I find this entire series very unenjoyable, but I appreciated what I felt were academic analyses of consent and power in the first two books. Because this third installment failed to present any academic point, there was really nothing for me here. The attempt was clearly to say something about how, traditionally, women have actually fought in wars, not stayed on the sidelines fainting and tending to wounds like, I don't know, some people expect, but really the story was more about how cool women want to be BFFs with Blomkvist and have sex with him. I didn’t really get anything out of the interjections about the Amazons, which appeared at different intervals throughout this book. And I don’t happen to care about who wants to have sex with Blomkvist – I find Blomkvist abominable – so this was terrible. I know that all of the books have been about how the chicks dig Blomkvist, but they also offered something smart and academic that this one lacked. The other thing up in this ol’ book was that just about every five pages this conversation would happen: “Remember how awesome book 2 was?” “Yeah, that was so cool. We were so badass. Remember how you were all Aaaaaack, and I was like neeeeeeer, and then it was like whoooooaaaa, and bang bang?” “Yeah, then my favorite part was like hacking computers and taking down the system.” “Totally. And it was like, mystery guys and punching and guns and stuff.” “Do you think the prime minister knows how cool book 2 was?” “We should definitely tell him. And we should tell like chiefs of police and ambassadors and other important people.” And then everyone goes off to describe book 2 to important people, and they all have that conversation OVER AND OVER. Like, whoa, dudes. You are so cool. But mostly Blomkvist is cool because badass warrior chicks want to have sex with him and it doesn’t even bother him that they are stronger and smarter than him. Yeah, what a man. Big pat on the back from this corner that you’re not offended that women are cool. His fucking humility is really why he’s so fucking cool. What a douche. And Lisbeth Salander is hanging out in bed this entire book. And then, in the end, there’s a “trial,” where they re-tell book 2 for the eleventy millionth time, and there is ONE hearsay objection, which happens basically the ONLY time a statement isn’t hearsay throughout the entire “trial.” And after the objection, no one reacts, the judge doesn’t rule on it, and the questioning just continues like nothing happened. I object to that. Here’s the thing about the crappy trial: I know that Larsson has the capacity to do research and not be a total moron about technical matters, so there’s really no excuse for what goes down there. And it was so out of control that it was painful to read. Not that ALL OF THE REST OF THIS SERIES wasn’t, also, COMPLETELY PAINFUL to read, but at least most of it wasn’t stupid. This was stupid. My Cousin Vinny and Legally Blonde do a better job at adhering to trial practice rules, AND are more entertaining. Ugh, and then there’s this tacked on ending-ending where Lisbeth goes to Blomkvist’s house to make up and be BFFs again (or he goes to her house, I can’t even remember). And they make up, awwwwww. Whew, too, because that was what I was really worried about in this book about slavery, rape, and oppression. I was REALLY fucking worried that one of these women wouldn’t want to be Blomkvist’s friend. Because that’s what rape and slavery stories are mostly about: douchey guys getting the hugs they deserve. This sucked. I hate all of these idiot people. I’m so glad it’s over. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 06, 2013
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Mar 14, 2013
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Mar 06, 2013
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0143142984
| 9780143142980
| 0143142984
| 4.03
| 146,064
| Jan 01, 2008
| Jan 01, 2008
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it was amazing
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I think an alternative title for this book could have been something like Women and Love or What Women Mean When They Talk About Love. Something like
I think an alternative title for this book could have been something like Women and Love or What Women Mean When They Talk About Love. Something like that. It was so beautiful in this delicate, fine-art way, and I was so surprised at this book’s beauty, that I feel totally inadequate in trying to describe my reaction to it. It is that type of beauty I feel when I think about the improbability of our bodies being alive or of Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel or of microscopic images of snowflakes. There is no way the universe could conspire so delicately for those things to work in such a way that their beauty is not so improbable as to be obscenely contrived, but somehow it does work. It is beautiful. And now that I’ve compared this book to the Sistine Chapel, there is no way anyone could go into it liking it. It’s like that time this douchey guy told me that Bright Eyes is the new Bob Dylan. I mean, Bright Eyes is not great anyway – talk about being in love with your own mysterious allure – but, compared to Bob Dylan, Mr. Eyes is just embarrassing. So, here I am ruining this book for you like that. At the same time, after reading this, I understood a lot more why someone would write a book like Olive Kitteridge, using multiple, somewhat unrelated, perspectives strung together by a common theme. While that one just seemed ridiculous, this one soared for me, and I can see how, as an author, you could want to aim for this kind of delicacy in weaving together stories. I listened to this on audio, and it was like hearing someone describe every way a woman’s love can be beautiful and painful, harsh and delicate. Some books will make me cry, but this book brought me to tears, which is the same thing but more elegant because of this story’s elegance. The reader’s voice was lovely, and the only fault with listening to this on audio was that there was so much I wanted to hear and follow that I know I missed a lot. I usually choose audio books based on the idea that it won’t matter if I space out during the book (because I space out a lot while I’m walking to work and listening to them), so I normally choose a book that I’ve read before or something I don’t think I’ll love that much. I was surprised at how much I loved this one and how much I felt I missed by listening to the audio. It is not a difficult book, but it definitely contains subtlety and passages that I would probably have read over again if I were reading it on the page. This is not a very exciting review, I think, because it doesn’t contain an exciting story. I have the most wonderful job in the world right now, at which the most amazing things happen, but I can’t talk about it on the internet. And, no, my job is not Fight Club. If I could, I would tell you about how this has probably been the best year of my life so far, and about all of its beauty and fullness, and about how pain is as much a part of the beauty as comfort or wonder are. And I would tell you about the women I have seen and the ways they are with the love in their lives. But, instead, I will just be vague, and say that this book resonated with me both in the year I have had and in the life I have had. It talked about the right things and in the right way. And, of course, it was about a book, which I imagine is the universal symbol of love. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 04, 2013
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Mar 21, 2013
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Feb 04, 2013
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Audio CD
| ||||||||||||||
| 081299499X
| 9780812994995
| 081299499X
| 3.29
| 131,876
| Sep 30, 2014
| 2014
|
really liked it
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Who doesn't love Lena Dunham?! Seriously, who doesn't? Because I will go find them and tell them what's up. Lena Dunham is so fantastic, and I want to Who doesn't love Lena Dunham?! Seriously, who doesn't? Because I will go find them and tell them what's up. Lena Dunham is so fantastic, and I want to be her life coach. If you are reading this, Lena Dunham, not that you need any help being super successful and powerful and awesome, but I can help you feel all of the greatness, respect, and love that other people feel about you. Promise. I'll give you a phone call coaching session for free so that you can check it out. Schedule your session here and we will talk about one issue that is making you feel anxious or stuck. I will show you exactly why you are feeling that way and give you at least one tool to feel better. I will also tell you about the programs I offer to my coaching clients and we will talk about whether they would be a good fit for you. If you aren't Lena Dunham, I will also give you a coaching session, just for the love of Lena Dunham you are showing in reading this review. But, also, send her an email and let her know I want to coach her! One of the many fantastic things about this book and Girls is how they normalize the humanity of women. What I mean by that is that women who show up and live their lives have always been associated in society and literature with the body and a sort of base, petty kind of imagery (think the virgin/whore dichotomy). If women have sex, they are broken. This is old news, and I'm not telling you anything new about it, but Lena Dunham is. She is showing these women whose platonic relationships with each other are more dynamic and beautiful than anything they experience with the men in the show. They all have terrible, sometimes grotesque sex, and they all show up with their own, individual version of grand beauty. I'm not saying Lena Dunham is the first to bust the virgin/whore myth. But I really think she might be the first to be this honest about how women experience sex and relationships. I know that Sex and the City is supposed to have something similar, but I just don't get the truth of the women's relationships in that. I heard once that Sex and the City was written by gay men, and it definitely feels like a gay man's idea of how women are with each other, to me. The relationships in Girls resonate much more with my friendships, and also my judgments about other women. She normalizes all of the weirdnesses, pettiness, and self-centeredness of the women so well that I love them all despite the fact that I can see how they are terrible people. Lena Dunham is definitely "a voice of a generation." I know the criticisms of her are that she's not intersectional enough. Which, I'm just not going to argue with anyone who uses the word "intersectional." I for sure think there need to be more shows written by and about people of different ethnicities and skin colors. I also think commandeering the voice of a different ethnicity is a real problem, and I'm glad Lena Dunham doesn't overextend. She writes what she knows for sure. And I support it. I also know this book had that scandal where everyone was arguing about whether baby-Lena sexually assaulted her baby sister. I pretty much think that's up to her sister to decide. I love Girls more than I loved this book, but the book was great, too. I read it on vacation in Palm Springs by the pool. Pretty good choices all around. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 21, 2014
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Oct 27, 2014
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Jan 27, 2013
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1442405937
| 9781442405936
| 1442405937
| 3.57
| 836
| Aug 28, 2012
| Aug 28, 2012
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it was ok
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There are many facets to the experience of reading a book beloved by a friend. There are probably others that these, but the ones I can think of right
There are many facets to the experience of reading a book beloved by a friend. There are probably others that these, but the ones I can think of right now are the friend, the friendship, society, the book itself, and the reader. The experience of reading seems tied up in all of those parts, but also, I think they are all individual experiences. I read this book because it is beloved by a friend, and I love the way it lets me know that friend better and what it says about our friendship that she would want me to read it. So, when I talk about this book, and how I did not enjoy it, I’m really only focusing on my experience with the book itself. I felt like I needed to make that clear before I start tearing up the dance floor. This left me with a feeling of . . . huh. It was partly magical, partly sad, and above all else very, very troubling. Reading this book reminded me of this time when I lived in New York, and one of my roommates said to me, “Is everyone in Oregon like you, or are you weird there, too?” It was very alienating and, again, troubling. This book tells the story of a girl who, most of all, more than anything else, struggles with her weight because the people around her are obsessed with her weighing five pounds more than the normal weight for her age. There is also a fox in here, and maybe the fox has PTSD. I found it . . . really odd and, again, troubling. There is a 95% chance that I didn’t get it. The basic plot of this story, like I say, is that everyone around Abigail Walker is really, really mad about how much she weighs, she meets a magical fox with PTSD and a man with PTSD, and then she learns to ride horses, cast off her fears, and be happy. But, there are a lot of things that happen along the way that were (if I haven’t already said this) really, really troubling to me. And there are some other things that were just confusing. I guess I’ll talk about the confusing things first, then the troubling things. Confusing things : 1. These are my awards, Mother. The PTSD man explains to Abigail that he met his ex-wife in Peace Corps, and then he decided to go into Army because he thought it would pay for college. But, you have to have an undergraduate degree to go into Peace Corps, and I’m pretty sure that’s been a requirement for a long time, so that was weird. And it kind of undermined that whole character to me. Why did that guy really go into the army? And why did he say he was in the Peace Corps if he didn’t have an undergrad degree? Suspect. [image] 2. Bread makes you fat??!! . Abigail’s family is emotionally abusive about her weight, which is 105 lbs. and appears, from the internet, to be five pounds over the normal weight for girls her age. FIVE POUNDS! So, we’re not talking unhealthy, even. But, the parents are so creepily fixated on it that her dad doesn’t take pictures of her anymore and stares her down across the dinner table. So, the one time the family eats dinner in the book, Abigail’s mom makes pizza. (Sidebar: that is another sub-level of confusing for a mom who is a history professor and always lost in her books and detached from the reality of the family, but, whatever, maybe she also loves to cook and isn’t just trying to be more stepford-creepy than she otherwise appears to be, despite being educated and scholarly. I don’t object to the idea of a professor being a Stepford wife, but I kind of wanted more description about how that actually worked. Also, I’m not meaning that cooking is creepy, just that the mom is kind of creepy in, well, A LOT of ways. “Don’t fight, now, kids! Fighting bad.” “You MUST go to the mean girls’ house, Abigail!” “Your father just yells at you about dieting because he loves you!” brrrrr.) Anyway, the mom makes cheese pizza for Abigail and sausage pizza for the rest of the family. And it’s like the part in Silence of the Lambs where he keeps saying to the girl in the pit, “It rubs the lotion on its skinnnnn.” The whole family fixates on her, warning her away from even reaching for a regular salad dressing. It eats the cheese pizza and no other pizza!! But, that’s weird, right? Because how much healthier is plain cheese pizza than sausage pizza? Answer: not at all healthier, and they have basically equivalent calories. So, chill out, Mom and Dad, you creepy assholes! [image] 3. How am I supposed to get into Harvard if I have no wilderness skills?! After Abigail ditches her creepy friends, who also want to watch it rub the lotion on its skinnn, she makes friends with a nerdy computer girl. There is this confusing subplot about how Abigail needs to research all of the animals Lewis and Clark saw on the Oregon trail for the PTSD man, and the nerdy computer girl helps her. Mostly, the nerdy computer girl helps her because Abigail is incompetent at googling. The nerdy computer girl warns her, however, that she will NEVER GET INTO COLLEGE if Abigail doesn’t learn how to google from said nerdy computer girl. Okay asshole: again, chill out. You are in SIXTH GRADE!! You might get into Harvard, even if you have no wilderness skills. If not, I’ll take you upstairs, throw you out the window, and if you catch the branch of a tree, I’ll be your witness. So, those were the things that made me feel like, who are these creepy assholes??? Confusing. Next, I’m going to talk about the things I thought were actually troubling, not just confusing. Troubling things : I don’t have fancy gifs for this part. This part is just about how the overall premise of the story seems somewhat messed up. 1. Bullying. I remember once, in fourth grade, I didn’t want to be friends with this girl anymore because she would only talk about boys, and because her dad freaked me out. I, being a fourth grader, didn’t deal with it really well, as you might imagine, and at one point the situation culminated in a group of girls sort of making a wall around me and telling my friend that I didn’t have to talk to her if I didn’t want to. I remember feeling both like, “This seems accurate. I shouldn’t have to talk to someone if I don’t want to,” and also like, “This seems really mean and extreme, and I don’t know how to diffuse this situation.” The girl was so upset that her parents talked to the principal about it, and I think my parents ultimately got called into the school because of it. Years later, I would run into her every once in a while, and I always wanted to apologize for that, but, does that make it any better? We were really mean to that girl, even though to us there was some kind of self-preservation aspect to it, but it wasn’t really okay. But, what do you say to apologize and does an apology only make it worse? I’ve been watching Buffy with my roommate, who is a PhD student in early intervention in special education. When Cordelia first came on the screen, my roommate commented that it’s so funny how TV always shows characters like Cordelia, when, in real life those situations don’t ever really happen. Like, people who have as little social inhibition as Cordelia probably have Asperger’s, and probably don’t have a lot of social power. But, in Buffy, Cordelia is such a great character because she is a shorthand for a mean girl, but also she is a caricature, so her mean-girl power is completely undermined. I think that creates a really great social message because, yes, it sucks to have someone be an asshole, but assholes only have as much power over our lives as we give them, and the Buffy gang doesn’t give Cordelia any power. So, partly I think it makes sense to simplify an experience of bullying, but that was not what I felt was going on here. (I have to admit, though, that I read A Monster Calls right before I read this one, and I thought the way that discussed bullying was so beautiful it made my brain self-destruct, and I am making an unfair comparison between the two books, my own experience, and Buffy.) Nevertheless, in Abigail Walker, it felt like the mean girls were some kind of physical manifestation of a person’s own self-loathing thoughts. All the lurking and skulking around Abigail’s house, and then the weird plan to videotape Abigail eating candy. It was so weird and pathetic that I’m struggling to really wrap my brain around anyone being scary who was stupid enough to want to do that. I mean, the girls are creepy little assholes, but all of the threats seemed like things that would be scary when you thought them in your head, but if you actually said them out loud (or wrote them down) you’d realize how stupid and not scary they were and how uninterested everyone ever would be in watching a video of a girl eating candy. My point is that I don’t get these bullies. They don’t seem like characters to me, and to the extent they are physical manifestations of somebody’s personal demons, I really don’t like the idea of giving them so much voice in this story. I mean, everyone has to fight their own monsters in their own way, but giving your monster the dominant social voice in your book seems like a way to nurture your monster, not fight it. 2. Being Normal. Probably the dominant theme of this book is that it’s okay to not be normal, which is a wonderful theme. The way it was executed, though, was another troubling thing to me. Abigail feels like she is not normal because she is five pounds over the normal weight for her age. So, that in itself is tainted with all the creepy assholes around her and seems super creepy in itself. She makes friends with the PTSD man’s son, who also feels not normal. The boy feels not normal because his dad keeps him on this farm and won’t let him leave the boundaries of the farm for any reason because he might get hurt. He is homeschooled by participating in the great Lewis and Clark study. At one point, the son compares his situation to Abigail’s. He says that Abigail's mom is wrong for saying she’s not normal because she’s too fat. And then he comments that maybe his own mother is similarly wrong for wanting him to be in a school instead of being homeschooled in the country with his mentally ill father. Sooooo . . . . That raises a lot of issues for me. Like, this kid’s mother was a Peace Corps volunteer, and somehow in a custody battle her mentally ill husband got custody of their son? What is up with that? And, like, really? It’s the same to be five pounds overweight as to be trapped in the country acting as a caretaker for a mentally ill person??? This is kind of outrageous to me. I realize it is a kid who makes this statement in the book, but the kid has a pretty strong voice within the story and is sort of built up to be wise. When he says maybe he and Abigail are actually both okay even though they are not normal, you can tell that statement is supposed to carry the weight of wisdom. I just have a big problem with both the comparison and the idea that it is okay for this kid to be trapped on a farm caring for his father. Very stressful. 3. Weight. I guess I kind of want to talk more about weight, but I’ve probably talked long enough. Maybe all I will say is that I think this book perpetuates the idea that being fat or thin is based on a mindset or emotional change. Abigail walks up the hill to the PTSD man's house the first time, and she huffs and puffs. The second time, though, she is less sad and self-condemning, so she can just run up the hill with no problem. I feel like that is a really negative message to perpetuate. I think that taking care of our bodies is like taking care of anything else and involves responsibility and eating enough food for our bodies, not just eating less food. I feel like the idea is not rare that if you have a healthy sense of self, being athletic and thin will become easy. That really bothers me both because it's clearly false, and because I think it creates this idea that good people are thin and bad people are fat, which is a very troublingly false idea, as well. Also, I've been using the website myfitnesspal.com to lose the weight I gained in school, and I've come to believe that with people who perpetually gain weight, overall it's probably not so much that they eat to much food, but probably more that they eat too little, sending their bodies into storage mode for when they eat too much. That has at least turned out to be true for me. The way the entire world in this book only wanted Abigail to eat less, not for her to be healthy, was really troubling. I think those are all of my issues. I found this story very distressing to read. While Abigail seemed to have a somewhat strong sense of self despite the creepy monsters around her, I couldn’t really get where that sense of self was coming from. She clearly had no adult or peer support, so when she would make some kind of self-possessed statement, it always felt shaky because how does a sixth grader resist wanting to punish her body when everyone around her clearly does? A lot of this seemed like the written manifestation of imaginary monsters, and that freaked me out not a little. I don’t generally enjoy an author exorcising demons through writing, and doing so in a children’s book, in a way that felt more like nurturing than exporcising, makes me feel even more uncomfortable. This one was not for me. _________ The publisher provided me a copy of this book, but I did nothing in return. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
|
Jan 22, 2013
|
Jan 26, 2013
|
Jan 22, 2013
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0345803485
| 9780345803481
| 0345803485
| 3.66
| 2,611,456
| May 25, 2011
| Apr 03, 2012
|
did not like it
|
[image] This was like reading a jackhammer. This was like if Hannah Montana tried to write an erotica novel. The popularity of this book makes me need to [image] This was like reading a jackhammer. This was like if Hannah Montana tried to write an erotica novel. The popularity of this book makes me need to move to a different planet. I am making the assumption that it comes from people not actually liking to read, but liking to have their self-destructive cultural values reinforced. Girls don’t like to eat. If you do whatever he says, he’ll turn into a handsome prince. It’s not his fault he’s abusing you, it’s only because mommy was mean. To have good sex, a girl has to start out not wanting it. Women have to teach men how to be human. If that’s not what it is, then maybe this book is an outline of a fairy tale and the sex scenes are what people are really looking at. Poor girl is asleep; rich prince is an asshole; they kiss and it wakes her up and turns him nice. We’re so used to the story that we don't need to hear any actual story again, but a shorthand is enough to awaken all of the comforting memories of being taught that if we stay with our abuser, he will change. It’s like this Jack Handy Deep Thought: “I remember the first time I ever saw a shooting star I said, ‘What the hell is that?’ But nowadays when I see one I just say, ‘What is that?’ I leave off the ‘hell’ part. Maybe when I'm old I'll just say, ‘Whazzit?’” Fifty Shades of Grey is the “Whazzit?” in a long line of stories about girls learning to be brainless to please their abusers. So, maybe the Whazzit story has become so common that it is a neutral color and a reader who enjoyed this book would really be focusing on the sex scenes. But, then, is the sex really worth focusing on here? It uses the annoying euphemisms of typical romance novels and still manages to be even more prudish than usual about descriptions. I hate the “apex of my thighs” business, but that’s common enough. But, “he touched me There”??? That is just dumb. Another reader pointed out to me that if you search for the word "cock" in this book, it is never used to refer to a penis, but used about forty times to describe someone "cocking" their heads. It is used so much, and so oddly, that Ana even comments on all the head cocking that goes on. Not a super sexy use of a cock. Also, the sex scenes are very logistically difficult to follow, which does not make for hotness in my book. I had no idea what happened during the one with the plastic tie. She somehow hooked her wrists on a bed post? Was she suspended away from the bed post? So confused. But, the weirdest one to me was the first bathtub scene. So, they’re in the bathtub, and she gives him the A+ blowjob, wherein we learn that she has no gag reflex. But . . . how much water was in the bathtub? How did this actually happen? Did they just have a couple of inches of water in the tub? That doesn’t sound very relaxing. If they had a normal amount of water, did she have to do an underwater bj? Did he have to float while she gave him the bj? Did he sit on the side of the tub??? If I don’t even know what’s going on, how am I supposed to consider whether it’s hot or not? Even aside from being confused by the sex scenes, for me, most of this story was strikingly repelling. And I’m talking, like, I think even Pleasuring the Pirate was hotter. I imagine this can’t be true, but it’s possible that this book hits every turn off for me: (1) “Baby.” Don’t ever call me a baby, unless I am actually being a baby. Also, never say “laters” before you say “baby.” The words “laters” and “baby” should never be used individually, and certainly not in the same sentence. Also, never say that like a million times and then discuss how original it is to say it. That makes me puke. (2) Stick insects. Christian Grey appears to be some sort of stick insect with freakishly long tentacle fingers. I am not attracted to stick insects. (3) Contracts. Not hot. (4) Bossiness. I loathe bossiness. Why can’t people just do what they want to do, and also avoid being jerks? Why push everyone around? Unattractive. (4) Boring snobbery. I just can’t abide it. It makes my skin crawl. If you want to be a snob, be a snob about something interesting, not wine and classical music and cars. Be a snob about stage makeup or teacups, or something. I don't know what. Be a snob about your own thing. Why is it cool to be a snob about boring things and nerdy to be a snob about something different? Wine/opera/cars snobbery is so expected. Plus, wine snobbery is impossible to listen to. I like wine, don’t get me wrong, but when people turn their nose up and start to talk vintages in a fake British accent, it is obnoxiously ridiculous. This didn’t actually do that, I imagine because James might ultimately know very little about wine, but it gestured at it as though she wished she could talk bouquets and oaks and vintages. Those are the turn offs I can think of now, but I’m sure there are more. Oh, sitting in a bathtub of menstrual blood is, it turns out, a turn off for me. I knew about the tampon scene, and whipping a tampon out to have sex does not freak me out the way it seems to freak some people. One of my friends got totally freaked out by a part where something similar (though more clearly and eloquently, and also maybe a little more creepily, described) happens in The English Patient, and I remember finding it a little haunting and creepy, but sort of beautiful, there. BUT THEN, in Fifty Shades, SHE DOESN’T PUT A TAMPON BACK IN!! And they go and hang out in the bathtub for a little while. So, that’s disgusting and unnecessary. I am not in favor of hanging out in pools of things that come out of my body. Turn off. Oh, seeing life through the POV of an anorexic – turn off. Locality annoyance: say, “I-5.” “The Interstate 5”? Please. I’m not even going to talk about the subconscious and inner goddess because that is just facially crazy talk. And annoying. Also: [image] The only good thing about this experience was that it allowed me to vent my anger as above, with my Christian Grey Ryan Gosling tumblr. Setting aside all of the distracting writing and the way my personal lady parts shrivel up and hide at all the details of this story, it really is the fact the relationship here that is the worst thing. People have talked this to death, but much of the sex and violence Ana experiences are sex and violence she acquiesces to because she’s too scared to lose a boy, not sex and violence she asks for because she wants them. That is very, very annoying to read about. It’s like listening to a nauseatingly long restraining order hearing while knowing the whole time that it won’t be granted. If you want to sacrifice your life with the hope that a man will change, it’s your life. But, don’t whine to me about your stupid choices. Every single part of this book was terrible. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 03, 2013
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Jan 09, 2013
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Jan 03, 2013
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1442450274
| 9781442450271
| 1442450274
| 4.21
| 3,750
| Aug 01, 2012
| Aug 28, 2012
|
it was amazing
|
It has been previously mentioned once or twice that Olivia is my favorite. It is true. Olivia rules. In this one, my particularly favorite part, other It has been previously mentioned once or twice that Olivia is my favorite. It is true. Olivia rules. In this one, my particularly favorite part, other than the end, which is awesome, is the Martha Graham page. Also, good use of the words "corporate malfeasance." And Ian Falconer's drawings are, as always, amazing. Ranking: 1. Olivia And The Missing Toy. It has the fold out page, including the surprise, and that is difficult to beat. Plus, it has a premise that is compelling to for all ages. Or, maybe just me because I lose stuff all the time. 2. Olivia. A classic. Especially the parts where she moves the cat. 3. Olivia and the Fairy Princesses. This is ranking at a high third! Congrats, fairy princesses! Again, a compelling struggle, use of outstanding extra-textual art, and good vocab! Also, the use of additional characters as Olivia's audience is always really genius. Like, at the beginning, when Olivia is depressed, the way the cat and dog are watching her, concerned, really creates the sense of depression I think Olivia is looking for. This is where I get a little fuzzy. I think my next rankings are: 4. Olivia Helps with Christmas, 5. Olivia Saves the Circus, 6. Olivia Forms A Band, and 7. Olivia Goes to Venice. "saves the circus" and "forms a band" are mixed up in my head right now, though, so I am having trouble remembering what happens in them. Christmas is a good one, and I think there's another page in the middle that folds out, which is always a win with me. "Goes to Venice" didn't have the pathos of the others, in my view. Olivia is the best. ________________________ I received a free copy of this in exchange for nothing. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, me! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Dec 29, 2012
|
Dec 29, 2012
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 9780756622893
| 3.45
| 193
| Oct 16, 2006
| Oct 16, 2006
|
liked it
|
Har har, puns! Although the phallic image on this cover has to be the male equivalent of vagina dentata. Brrrr. I feel two ways about this book. First, Har har, puns! Although the phallic image on this cover has to be the male equivalent of vagina dentata. Brrrr. I feel two ways about this book. First, it's a good idea, and there are some cool patterns in here that are more masculine than you see in your typical knitting book. Most pattern books clearly live in active fear that you will fall into that tired sit-com stereotype and knit something awkward for your boyfriend. Look at these patterns, they say, they are 1920s themed or have kittens! Do not show them to a man, for their eyeballs will melt. Anyway, this has some decent ideas. I really like the beer cozy idea, though I haven't made it yet: [image] I also like the Not-So-Rugged Scarf, but you will have to look at this book to see pictures of those because I can't find an open copy on the internets. Most of these patterns assume that any man who would use this book is more than 50% gay. And, fair. I made this manly scarf for my office-mate who is approximately 83% gay: [image] My only real issue with this book, other than the vests, is that the directions are not immensely clear, especially if you are a new knitter. They use a lot of abbreviations that did not seem to be well indexed in the back, and some stitches that were not explained in the front of the book. That seems like a bummer if this is supposed to be, as it is billed, "a hands-on guide." At least youtube can basically translate really clearly and easily any stitch you are confused about, but I did have to reference youtube a couple of times while making that scarf. Sometimes, I sadly wonder if knitting books are a little obsolete and blogs or knitpicks.com aren't really the way to go for patterns. Merry Christmas, my 83% gay office mate! ...more |
Notes are private!
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4
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not set
not set
not set
not set
|
Dec 22, 2012
not set
not set
not set
|
Dec 22, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 9781470832483
| 3.87
| 13,784
| Sep 13, 2012
| 2012
|
it was ok
|
Resumes are possibly my least favorite thing to write or read . . . or maybe my second least favorite, after cover letters. It’s so difficult to land
Resumes are possibly my least favorite thing to write or read . . . or maybe my second least favorite, after cover letters. It’s so difficult to land in the right place on the scale between unqualified/disinterested and fake/braggy, so I always aim for straight accuracy. Did I do that thing? If yes, then I will include it. If it’s a stretch, I’ll probably leave it off. I have definitely swung from one side to the other as I’ve tried to navigate the spectrum of resume writing, but I feel most comfortable if I just aim for accuracy. As resumes go, Argo landed a little closer to the fake/braggy line than I like. Ben Affleck, as you probably know, made the main story in this book into a movie recently. I haven’t seen it yet, but I imagine it was somewhat more successful than this book is. I got trapped in a room with an older lawyer the other day, and he backed me into a corner telling stories about his legal practice. Listening to this book kind of felt like that, too, except it’s an old CIA guy telling stories about doing CIA stuff. Ultimately, in the last 10% of the story, he goes to Iran and saves some Americans who were hiding out during the hostage crisis that lasted from 1979-1981. It seems like that would be more interesting than it was, just like it seems to me like an older lawyer telling stories would be more interesting than it typically is. And the thing that always kills them for me is the fishing for an ego stroke that goes along with a lot of those stories. The stories go like this: I was sitting in my office smoking and looking like Don Draper, but above all being very humble and never telling anyone about the amazing work I was always doing. Suddenly, my manly secretary (not manly because of her attitude, but manly because she was a spinster) came rushing into my office with a telegram. It said, ‘The world will end unless you solve the rubik’s cube.’ I recalled that Stephen Hawking worked down the hall from me, in the office next to Jesus and kitty-corner from Shakespeare. When we weren’t saving the world, we liked to taste scotch together and goof around. Jesus was always asking me for fashion advice, and couldn’t tie a tie to save his life – that rascal! Wow! You know Batman, Mr. CIA? I bet you have one million Aston Martins and just as many This book is actually even more humble-braggy than that, but it sort of gives you an idea. I know a girl who can’t stop name-dropping and reciting her resume, as well as the resumes of her mother and this federal judge she knows. Like, she is in some kind of perpetual tailspin of resume reciting. And sometimes I wonder if that is a mental disease many men contract as they get older. The saddest part to me is that there are probably a lot of good stories underneath all that humble-bragging, but I can’t hear them because I am too annoyed. I mean, if you just think of reading a book about a CIA agent saving Americans during a hostage crisis, it seems like it would be a fun story. But, this wasn’t. Mendez deserves any praise he gets, I’m sure, but I just can’t abide fishing for compliments. Ego is the easiest way to interfere with any good story, whether the ego takes the form of showy humility or bragging. Argo seemed to be some kind of extended, convoluted resume, and I think it would have been a better policy to just aim for accuracy rather than getting so caught up in the accolades Mendez deserved or didn’t deserve. Humility and arrogance both make a story about ego, rather than about the story, and ego ruined this one for me. Also, the reader’s voice was strikingly nasal. I would say this is the second worst audio book I’ve listened to, after Three Cups of Tea. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 08, 2012
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Dec 22, 2012
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Nov 08, 2012
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Audiobook
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0545530490
| 9780545530491
| 4.05
| 367,958
| Sep 18, 2012
| Sep 12, 2012
|
really liked it
|
You guys, I gotta tell you. I need to send some kind of apology letter and fruit basket to Maggie Stiefvater for my review on Shiver and how boring I
You guys, I gotta tell you. I need to send some kind of apology letter and fruit basket to Maggie Stiefvater for my review on Shiver and how boring I continue to find it. My roommate loves books where nothing happens, and I think Shiver would be perfect for her. But, this Ravens series!! This is for me! This has all kinds of crazy-fun stuff going on! You got psychics and tarot and lay lines, and it's not all messed up by whimsy. It stays very rational and blue collar. I think I might love The Scorpio Races more, but when you love something this much, why treat it as a competition? It's like choosing between your two boyfriends. No need to compete, you guys. I remember rating this book way back in ye olde days before I wrote this review, and I can only imagine I rated it at 4 stars because I decided I loved The Scorpio Races more. That is the only reasonable explanation. And, past-me was such a reasonable girl that we must assume that was the case. But, present-me is more open minded and willing to have two boyfriends, as long as they are books and make no demands on my time. So, in my heart, this is five-stars, too. It's like I'm Ben Higgins. Okay, what do you want to know? You probably want to know about how I'm learning tarot, like the ladies in this book, and I'm becoming a pretty fantastic tarot reader if I do say so. The cards love me, and I love the cards. I have a very beautiful deck, and I've been following Biddy Tarot for all of my tarot questions, and it's so fun! If you want to know less about me and more about the book, it is a treasure-quest, but with star-crossed lovers and magic. And assassins. Who doesn't love assassins?! Such a good type of monster. The main character's name is Blue, which is awesome and not lame, so don't question it. Her mother says that in the tarot deck, the page of cups represents her. Which, that seems so sweet and mysterious to me. Like she is the messenger of new creation and love. So cool! Also, one interesting thing about this book is that she is one girl in a group of guys, so you would think it wouldn't pass the Bechdel test, but it does because she lives in a house full of women who love each other and act very reasonable. So, highly recommended! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 28, 2013
|
Oct 03, 2013
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Oct 19, 2012
|
Audiobook
| |||||||||||||||
| 0803734735
| 9780803734739
| 0803734735
| 4.00
| 118,409
| May 01, 2012
| May 01, 2012
|
it was amazing
|
Oh, Kristin Cashore, I would trust you with my life. This series breaks my heart and patches it all back together again. This book was so different fr
Oh, Kristin Cashore, I would trust you with my life. This series breaks my heart and patches it all back together again. This book was so different from the first two in pace, but somehow, and I say this almost reluctantly, that made the end more meaningful to me. I am all about editing in stories, and for the first half of this book, the redundancies seemed unnecessary and boring. But, I don’t actually think they are now. I think they had some purpose, though I don’t know that I could articulate it for you. I was wrong in what I thought this ending would be, and I’m glad I was wrong. It was so much more brutal than I expected, but more meaningful in that way. Are there more of these? Are you going to write more books for me, Kristin Cashore? I love your people, the evil and the good, the sins of our fathers and frailty of our mothers. I love them. This story picks up with little Bitterblue, now the queen of her empire. If Graceling borrows somewhat in spirit from Aliens, Katsa is our Ripley and Bitterblue is Newt. And now Newt comes into her own with the responsibility for a nation that was totally fucked by her father, by the lies he told and his control and manipulation. She doesn’t even know how fucked her nation is because after you’ve lived in lies for so long, how does anyone know what the truth is? And is the truth more dangerous that willful ignorance if what you’re ignoring is an abomination? Ugh. Beautiful, awful choices. And forgiveness! And stories! Oh man, beautiful. Just the idea of figuring out how to repair a nation from violence and lies is beautiful. But, anyway, and Katsa/Ripley has taught Bitterblue/Newt how to fight and protect herself, and where Graceling pointedly tells the story of a woman fighter, a survivor, Bitterblue makes no point of Bitterblue’s completely human, normal ability to defend herself. She just can kick an ass if she needs to, and other times she can’t. Her strength is not a super power, it’s just human power. This book, in contrast to the first two, felt more high-fantasy to me. It uses the conventions of alternate languages, involved descriptions of coded communication, and a lot of walking (which, to be fair, the walking is in the other two as well. Fantasy, man – bring your Nikes). It is not actually high fantasy, I’m sure, so don’t get all excited if that’s your thing. It is not my thing, but the incorporation of those conventions seemed fun to me, not annoying. It kept enough of a super-hero feel that I tracked. Now I’m going to talk about where this series really resonates with me. I always think, you know, women are raised that a man on a white horse will come, swoop us up, marry us, and that marriage will magically solve all of our problems. When that doesn’t actually happen, we think, Oh, it’s because if we have children, that will actually solve all of our problems. When having children doesn’t solve all of our problems, we think, Oh, if we run off to an exotic island and have a romantic Eat Pray Love affair, that will solve all of our problems. I think men are in basically the same position – if he finds the right girl and marries her, she will decorate his house, and always be there with a smile, a hug, and a plate of cookies, and that will solve the problems. Then, when that doesn’t work, it’s basically the same with the children and the affair. But, in the end, we are always left with ourselves. Marriage and children and lovers don’t take us away from ourselves and fix us the way the stories promised. I love the way the Twilight saga exaggerates those promises to the point of absolute absurdity, but I love even more the way this series exists entirely outside of those promises. This series doesn’t try to deus ex machina our guilts, doubts, and shame away, but it presents characters working through them, living with grief, and learning about their power. I think it is a second-wave feminism phrase to say a woman is empowered or disempowered, and I’ve been thinking about the use of that word lately because someone I’ve been around a lot routinely uses it. I kind of don’t like the word “empowerment,” I think. It seems somewhat inaccurate to me, even along the lines of the promise that our problems can be magically solved by some kind of social convention. “Marriage didn’t magically solve your problems? Well, then, empowerment will magically solve them.” I don’t think everyone means that when they use the word “empowerment,” just like I don’t think everyone who gets married or has kids thinks that will magically solve their problems, but I think both avenues can lead to that expectation. The idea of empowerment or disempowerment just sounds to me like somehow you can subscribe to something outside of yourself that will magically take away your problems. It indicates that the power wasn't there all along, but if you follow the treasure map right, you'll find the magic problem-solving solution. But, along those lines, I love the message in this book, like in The Hunger Games series, that we need to discover our own power - that it was there all along, and that life was never about finding a magic that lets us take the easy way out. In Mockingjay, everyone around Katniss reminds her of her power until she recognizes it. Here, similarly, this story is a journey of Bitterblue realizing her power. It is beautiful. It is the work that we all face that is bigger than marriage or children or politics or career. It’s the self that we are left with when the world is on our shoulders and we have no shoulder to lean on ourselves. This story is full of so much hope and so many dreams. I love it. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 08, 2012
|
Nov 11, 2012
|
Oct 17, 2012
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0143144022
| 9780143144021
| 0143144022
| 4.12
| 85,828
| Sep 1994
| Aug 20, 2009
|
it was ok
|
This was TERRIBLE. Terrible!!! Why are you here book??? Why do you exist?? Why do you suck SO MUCH??? Ugh!! I was listening to this while walking to w
This was TERRIBLE. Terrible!!! Why are you here book??? Why do you exist?? Why do you suck SO MUCH??? Ugh!! I was listening to this while walking to work in the morning, and I’m pretty sure I was waking up whole neighborhoods with my loud, “UGGGGHHHHHHH”s because I could not refrain from reacting to what a bitch this book is. This book is such a little bitch. It is not SO bad to start out with, just your normal Anita Blake bitchiness, like, “girls shouldn’t wear pink; girls shouldn’t shop; girls shouldn’t be feminine; girls shouldn’t like boys.” And then the boys like her sooooo much because she is such an asshole. So, don’t worry, slatherings of male approval if you don’t wear pink. OH MY GOD. UGGGGGHHHHH. And THEN, after you trudge through Anita’s complete lack of personality and LAME sense of humor, why not throw on some racism, homophobia, and a huge helping of ableism? WHY THE FUCK NOT?? UGGGHHH. I want to punch this book in its smug little curly-haired kisser. It makes me figuratively puke. According to people who have read beyond this book, at some point, Anita starts having sex with random monsters, which . . . whatever. I don’t even care about that because she is so obnoxiously prudish in these first two books. And, the thing is, if you don’t want to have sex with a vampire, more power to ya girl. But THEN the simpering self-congratulation about it. It makes me crazy. You suck so much, Anita Blake. You are everything wrong about anything to do with gender. I figure there are numerous ways women can react to sexism when they realize it is there, so I’ve made a little chart to illustrate my thoughts on the matter: [image] As you can see, in my mind, all choices except doing whatever the fuck you want lead to a woman’s life being basically sacrificed to sexism. And this probably works the same with masculinity, too, obvs. I feel like I've forgotten another manifestation of women accepting sexism that looks almost like feminism, but I can't think what it is. And Anita Blake, all through this stupid book, is calling herself a feminist. You know she's a feminist because all the boys think she a spunky little hottie. Puke. This fake bullshit is such an easy justification for people saying they aren't feminists. But, how can you say anything is feminist that hates women and only seeks male approval? Puke. On the one hand, I am so grateful to the women who came before me and forced people to recognize their skills and abilities so that hopefully in the future this stupid conversation will never even happen. So grateful. On the other hand, I think it is disgusting that the lives of capable women are sacrifices to either some kind of awkward attempt to be men or to a fight for the mere survival of girls because they are girls. I would consider someone like Lisbeth Salander an example of a woman who is painful to read about because her life is totally sacrifice to the mere survival of women. I don't think that's bad on Lisbeth's part, just depressing. I would consider Anita Blake a grotesque caricature of a woman trying to prove she is a man. Ugh. So uncomfortable to watch and annoying to hear about. Dude, just let girls wear pink if they want to wear pink. Pink is just a color, so dislike it if you want; but, also, pink is our childhood. And girlhood is not bad, so to the extent pink symbolizes women at our most innocently feminine, it pains me to hear women criticize it with the weight of rejecting their own innocent femininity. Again, like or dislike pink. Whatever you want. But, there is nothing noble or professional about hating the decorations of girlhood. Aside from that, oh my god, the ableism in this book is absolutely disgusting. There is this whole section about a prostitute in a wheelchair, and Anita is like, “OH MY! KINKY! That is disgusting that anyone would want to have sex with a woman in a wheelchair!” No, you are disgusting, Anita Blake. This is totally just a personal pet peeve, but it also really, really annoyed me the way Hamilton imagined being hardened to crime. Anita is hardened to crime here, so that means that she tosses around body parts at a crime scene and dares police officers not to puke in a room where the carpet is soaked in blood. (Sidebar: it only really bothers her when she sees the dead bodies of children. Which, okay, I agree that it is, for whatever reason, exponentially more disturbing to hear about violence to children than adults. In a room soaked in blood, however, it strikes me as weird that she would not be bothered at all by a police officer jiggling a boob attached to a bloody rib cage, but a child’s hand would make her swoon.) I have been privy to some pretty hilarious I-work-in-the-criminal-justice-system jokes lately, and, here, Hamilton did not even come close to what those sound like. Because they are only funny if they are respectful, if they have some kind of hope that some good will come of all of the criminal justice bullshit. This was so disrespectful. Not even close to funny. This link is totally NSFW, but it is How You Do criminal justice system investigation comedy. Hamilton's jokes are stupid, and her protagonist is stupider, and her snotty attitude about everyone who isn’t a 5’3”, 107 lb., curly-haired sprite is stupidest. Gross. UGGGHHHH. I hate you, book. The audio reader was still good, though. I don't know how she managed reading this whole series. Voice of steel. Ugh, puke again on behalf of the poor reader. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 24, 2012
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Oct 09, 2012
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Sep 24, 2012
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Audio CD
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|
|
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my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 3.71
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 04, 2017
|
Jun 02, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.43
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 2015
|
May 28, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.18
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 29, 2016
|
Feb 16, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.87
|
did not like it
|
Apr 2015
|
Apr 02, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 3.95
|
liked it
|
Feb 18, 2015
|
Oct 27, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 28, 2013
|
Sep 28, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 3.75
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 2013
|
Jun 19, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 4.06
|
it was amazing
|
May 19, 2013
|
May 19, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 3.90
|
it was amazing
|
May 07, 2013
|
Mar 30, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 4.24
|
it was ok
|
Mar 14, 2013
|
Mar 06, 2013
|
|||||
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| 4.03
|
it was amazing
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Mar 21, 2013
|
Feb 04, 2013
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|||||
|
| 3.29
|
really liked it
|
Oct 27, 2014
|
Jan 27, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 3.57
|
it was ok
|
Jan 26, 2013
|
Jan 22, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 3.66
|
did not like it
|
Jan 09, 2013
|
Jan 03, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 4.21
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 29, 2012
|
Dec 29, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.45
|
liked it
|
Dec 22, 2012
not set
not set
not set
|
Dec 22, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.87
|
it was ok
|
Dec 22, 2012
|
Nov 08, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 4.05
|
really liked it
|
Oct 03, 2013
|
Oct 19, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 11, 2012
|
Oct 17, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
it was ok
|
Oct 09, 2012
|
Sep 24, 2012
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