Skippity's Book Eight: Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

Dan Savage's The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, is, sadly, likely to preach to the choir. I mean, what opponent of gay marriage will read it?

Dan Savage's writing style has matured, and this book got me a little teary here 'n there (shh, don't tell). It's everything you'd expect from the man who writes a sex column that encourages people to get their kink on, but it's a lot more than that too. There's genuine emotion behind everything he talks about, which ranges from retarded poodles to his mother's insistent pressure that he marry his boyfriend and "make an honest man of him." The book tells the story of Dan's mother planting the marriage seed in Dan's mind, and the twists and turns the little plant takes as it roots in the fertile soil of his intellect and reaches its tender fronds toward the light of day. Do Dan and Terry run away to Canada and get married at the end of the book? Is a frog's butt watertight?

Once I was in a bookstore where Dan Savage was doing a book signing for "Skipping Towards Gomorrah." There was an embarrassing incident with a butterknife.

I'm sleepy. This review sucks. But the book is really good.

By Popular Request....

Ok, it was just Nattie Hattie. Here's the Under-30 essay I wrote on the topic of "History of blogging: 2000 - 2020":

Roots of the Modern Internet: The Blog Revolution

The Blog Revolution was one of the most significant technological events at the turn of the millennium. Though the actual events occurred in the opening years of the 21st century, its roots go much deeper than that.

In fact, the beginnings of this revolution go back to the 20th century when the people were increasingly turning to the internet to get their information and entertainment. During that time, such services as Tripod and AOL Hometown started appearing, offering free web space and user-friendly tools for creating basic homepages. This allowed even low-level users without any HTML knowledge to have the opportunity to mark their own little corner of cyberspace.

Soon, most of the regular internet users had their very own poorly-designed homepages filled with interesting facts about themselves, animated GIFs, hit counters, and guest books. The main problem with these homepage services is that though they made it much easier to create HTML pages without ever touching actual HTML code, it still wasn't easy enough. These homepages were usually fairly unappealing aesthetically, and when a page was created it was still just a flat page, no real opportunity for interacting with others through the page.

Then, in the closing years of the millennium, a small community of what were eventually labeled "weblogs" ("blogs"), began to spring up among some of the more technically-savvy web enthusiasts. Like the higher-end personal websites that the followers of the homepage craze wanted to emulate, these original bloggers set up their own sites, updating them regularly either directly by HTML code or via their own interface.

As this community grew, new tools for easily starting and running a blog started appearing, including Blogger, and LiveJournal. The original form for blogs was focused more on cataloging content found elsewhere on the web, then giving it some context, additional information, or simply pithy commentary. This evolved as people started creating original content with blogging tools.

Blogging tools created a homepage that was easy to update, which allowed for regular (daily, hourly, constant) updates by multiple users. Many blogging tools also had "comment" features built in, which produced something that was an integration of the homepage and guestbook concepts, allowing the blog's readers to make comments on individual posts. That increased the interactivity of the site and allowed for more collaboration.

The revolution grew users were attracted to the increasingly simple tools for updating their blogs. They could make updates from any computer via email, and even could create moblogs from their mobile phones and PDAs. This ability to add new content from any location, and nearly any electronic device caused blogs to explode across the internet. Users started maintaining multiple blogs, and were writing about anything, from the minutia of daily life, to hobbies, to global politics.

As the Blog Revolution came to a peak around 2006, mainstream media started to take notice of the would-be reporters and authors that the blogging community had created. Blogging was an official part of news networks' 24/7 coverage of the party conventions before the 2004 US election. Bloggers who gained a following and sparked the interest of mainstream media started getting book deals, which drew more wanna-be writers into the fray.

Around 2009, the Blog Revolution itself was effectively over. Blogs had so saturated people's lives that "check out my blog, I just wrote about that" became an acceptable response in social situations to the question "how are you?" Thus began the Blog Reconstruction period of technological history. During this time, the blogging technology and some of its related outgrowths, like RSS feeds, podcasts, and video podcasts, had spread far beyond the hands of web enthusiasts, and into the standard repertoire of traditional media outlets and corporations.

During the reconstruction phase, everything had a blog attached to it. Labels on products listed the blogs of the product developers and marketers responsible for it. Consumers could read all the details of how the product was developed and learn funny things that happened at 3 a.m. when on a deadline for completing the project.

When the blogs on the web had grown so numerous that they were choking all of the other content, a movement of people realized that it was unnecessary for everyone to have a blog about everything and it lead to an overload of information. They banded together and formed large, collaborative communities centered on a single portal for information.

These community logs (or "clogs") had members from across the globe who shared news and information, making them a more reliable and balanced source of information than traditional media. Eventually, the old mode of local news broadcasts and papers became obsolete, because more interactions were based on clogs, not geography.

One by one, the 24-hour news networks shut down and the talking heads of the evening news disappeared, as people turned to their new community for information. Television itself was eventually abandoned completely, in favor of the daily human drama that played across the clogs. Podcasts and video podcasts became the new entertainment and news sources.

The influence of celebrities and political figures from the physical world waned as the individual gained power in the clogs. A single person sending out the right message at the right time could start a revolution; of thinking and ideals on the clogs or of people and guns in the physical world.

Strengthening the connection between the physical world and the clogs, and breaking political and social ties based solely on geographic location were the beginning steps towards the world we live in now. Now, the "old guard" of the clogs that remain after the Clog Revolution govern the people. With the reapplication of another technology from the time period of the blogs, virtual reality, life in the physical world and wired world have been blended together into a single experience, the true reality.

Skippity's Book 7: Plants and dirt and sunshine, hooray!

Yet another in what will inevitably be a long string of photography book reviews...

Ian Adams' "The Art of Garden Photography" is one of the better photo-instruction books I've read. Which, I mean, there haven't been that many yet, but it seems a lot of them are filled up by fluff and pictures the author has taken. By fluff I mean, content that reads well but that doesn't actually teach you anything, or pretends to teach you something new but just says the same thing over and over in different ways.

In addition to being written in a user-friendly tone, this book addresses a good range of subjects that crop up in outdoor photography, such as lighting, structure, angle, and even finding good gardens. Much of what he has to say can be applied to "untamed" nature vistas as well. And being a fairly recent book, it even addresses digital SLR photography. Even though it was published last year, though, it's out-of-date about that part, which is both good and bad--good in that technology is moving so fast, bad in that it's damned hard to find stuff in print about it that's not outdated from the time it's written to the time it goes to press. But that's ok in this book, because most of it is about technique rather than equipment, which is exactly what I was after. I even applied some of what I learned already.

Skippity's Book 6: A sexy romp

Tommy's Tale, by Alan Cumming, is described on the cover as "A bisexual About a Boy, only with lots more shagging and partying." Which is apt enough, I guess, only Tommy has a job and a lot more friends than that noofus Hugh Grant plays.

This is one of those books that you shouldn't really read in public, unless you like it when people glance over your shoulder on the bus and see lines like,

"Picture the scene. I have coke spilling out of my left nostril, a ten-pound note jammed up my right, her saliva dripping on to my (unfortunately very light gray) trousers from my fast-shrinking penis, and on top of it all I am being given a lecture on the evils of drug taking by a furious woman wearing a crucifix, in the disabled toilet of Planet Hollywood.

I laughed.

I never saw Pauline again."

lol

Most of it's not like that, but there's a fair bit that is, so, you know, read in public at your own risk.

This is one of those fast reads that you don't really take seriously. Tommy is 29 and trying to decide between growing up and trying to make a life with his on-again off-again boyfriend Charlie, and the partying lifestyle, which he physically can't maintain (at one point in the book he faints at work because he's ingested nothing but e, coke (not the soda kind), and water for five days straight. He also jacks off on a bus and wakes up in odd places, not really realizing how self-destructive his behavior is until his flatmates give him a shakeup. Even though he's a complete hedonistic wreck, you kinda like the guy because he's funny. I laughed out loud a lot while reading this.

And the ending is all nice and fairy-tale-ish and you're left thinking, kinda, "yeah right," but it still rings true because Tommy still talks to you in this very innocently slutty voice.

Anyway. A fun read, but, you know, not Thanksgiving dinner or anything.

Skippity's Book 5: Damn that chick is funny

I got Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy by Phyllis Diller (and that Richard Buskin dude) out of the library last week and it's a good 'un. The first, say, three-fourths of the book are depressing, 'cuz her life was, but after that it starts getting funnier. It's funny all the way through, but there is some depressing stuff in it. That Phyllis. She's a whack chick. Did you know that she had three cockroaches as pets once? They drowned themselves in their water dish. She was also married to a crazy person for a very long time. And then she divorced him and married another crazy person. Then she got a facelift. Then she kept on getting facelifts.

I wish I could laugh like Phyllis Diller.

Book #4: If These Walls Could Talk...

This book is one I actually read in one night (Tuesday, been too busy to blog this week). One really long night. Hooray for insomnia!

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about her very dysfunctional family. I have gathered that Jeannette is currently a correspondent for MSNBC.com, so the comfort throughout all of this insanity is that you know she gets out alright and is able to do well for herself, in spite of the bizarre circumstances of her upbringing.

Generally, I am not a fan of memoirs, but this kept me engrossed from beginning to end. I think it was so fascinating because I kept wondering "how can things get any worse than this?", while knowing all the time that there really was no great revelation in store where Jeannette's parents realized they were destroying their children's lives and finally, everyone would be able to live happily ever after in a nice desert home. Yeah, I know that I said it is a foregone conclusion that Jeannette ends up ok, but the first chapter of the book begins with Jeannette on her way to some fancy party in NYC, and looking out a cab window to see her mother rooting around in the trash. Basically, that says to me that her parents are not going to be improving their (or their children's) situation any time soon.

The beginning years of Jeannette's life were kind of a wonderful adventure for her. Her family moved from place to place, occasionally living outside in the desert, occasionally sneaking out of their current homes in the middle of the night to avoid the "Gestapo" or whatever other names her parents had for people they owed money to. They made plans to build a glass castle in the desert, but first their father needed to finish building the Prospector (a machine that would help him mine for gold) or whatever other money-making idea he had at the time. Her father taught Jeannette and her siblings (2 sisters, 1 brother) about the wonders of mathematics, physics, and reading at very young ages, and in spite of occasionally catching on fire, falling out of moving cars in the middle of nowhere, or taking multi-state trips in the back of a U-Haul, things were relatively happy for the family.

As the years wore on, her father's inability to hold a job and her mother's unwillingness to make use of her teaching degree (because she was going to be an artist) began to put the children into increasingly dangerous situations. Jeannette was sexually victimized at least 3 times in the book. When Jeannette tried to talk to her mother about it, she asked if Jeannette was ok, and said she knew she had raised her to be stronger than to be bothered by being groped by her uncle while he masturbated. Then she said "that poor man, he is so lonely". That kind of pissed me off. Her parents were also angry that the children objected when they discovered their grandmother molesting the brother, because that made it harder for them to keep living off of her (highly questionable) good will. Up until that point in the book, Jeanette's parents were weird, but at the very least, they were protective of their children. After that, all bets were off, and they lost every ounce of sympathy I had for them.

Her father descended into drinking, and repeatedly stole money from the family. Once, he even had Jeannette dress up real nice and took her down to the pool hall to flirt with some of the men he was trying to hustle. Then he sent her upstairs with one, who tried to have sex with her (she was in her mid-teens), and on the way home, her father compared her experience to being taught to swim by being thrown into the middle of a deep spring (his actual method, by the way).

From time to time, her mother would take up a teaching job, always with the help of her children to get all of the work and grading done. However, once she got sick enough of it (a school year or less), she would quit, declaring that she had spent all of her life doing things for other people, and it was time that she did something for herself for a change. Then she would spend a few years devoted to making her art career take off in whatever small, mining town they happened to be living in at the time.

Yeah, as I said, of course things turned out well for Jeannette (and most of her siblings, too), but through no help from their parents. They end up living in New York, the kids in apartments, going to school or with jobs, and their parents lived on the streets, refusing any help from their kids and declaring that they were finally living the life they wanted.

One of the many things in this book that disturbed me was that the whole time, her family didn't have to live like that. They had many ways that could have allowed them to live a life they way they wanted, but with such luxuries as non-maggoty food and houses that you didn't occasionally fall through the floor of.

My thoughts: I recommend this book. She managed to write it in a way that was honest and straightforward, and still packed an emotional punch for the reader. It didn't come off like a whiny "poor li'l ol' me" kind of story. She didn't vilify her parents to the level that I think they could have been because, in the end, she still loves them and wants to try to take care of them. As time progresses in the book, she goes from early childhood, where her life looks like an adventure, and her dad is really going to do everything he talks about to gradually recognizing the faults of her family and realizing that this isn't how they should live, to finally doing something to change it.

This was read for my book club, and it was the first book in a long time that I hadn't read previously and ended up liking.

Star Wars Battlefield II instruction booklet

(aside)

If I were under thirty years of age I would say blogs are an important indicator of societal trends and a thermostat for public intellect.

If I were over thirty years of age, I would say that blogs might minutely infect public opinion. If they made money, blogs would rool. (edit: ah crap, on the blogger.com landing page there is a call out to making money on your blog. Obviously, relationship marketing doesn't work on me) If you can trick people out of their money with blogs, give me a holla.

(/aside)

Star Wars Battlefied II instruction booklet is actually kind of vague and only remotely assists you with actual game play. These days if you jump in and start whacking, you will figure most of it out. I did have to read up on how to make my fleet stronger with extra bonuses and credits reaped from crushing defiant realms with brute force. However, the space simulations are more difficult than you would think, and the instructions weren't much help. Well, duh, it's space.

The end.

ps: I prefer "Stinky (sort of)." "Stinky (barely)" seems to indicate that Stinky don't care. If we reviewed wine a little more, well then.

Skippity's Book 4: Oxygen

I'm too freakin' tired and lazy to add an image to this post.

Oxygen is about a dysfunctional family in England, and it's written beautifully. Unfortunately, it leaves you hanging like sixteen-year-old jailbait at the end. Andrew Miller does this quote-unquote "clever" plot device wherein one of the characters has written a play that has an inconclusive ending, and as a parallel, the book has an inconclusive ending as well. I get it that the reader is supposed to use the knowledge that they have of the characters to predict what each of them will do in the rotten situation at the end of the book, but jeez, come on, writing right up to the denouement and then stopping cold turkey is kind of a cheap trick in my book.

Ha ha, I said "in my book."

Okay, it's late.

I did like the style of prose in this book though. Every great great once in a while, I'll read a novel that will grab me by the sinuses and make me think in the style the author uses to lay down his/her thoughts, and I found myself composing sentences and paragraphs during the time I was reading this book, about such mundane things as my commute or the scum in the kitchen sink or laser pointers. So, that was good.

Shame about the ending, though.

And hey, what the hell happened to the rest of you, 'cepting Nia and Stinky (barely)? Y'all forget how to pick up a book, or what?

By the by, Blogger's spell check, sadly, sucks. It does not know the word "dysfunctional," which, okay, but it also does not recognize the word "blog."

Seriously.

Book #3: A touching romance

Ok, so who guessed that the book that I read that was later made into a movie with Helena Bonham Carter was Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk? Anyone? Aww, come on.

Anyway, I recently saw the movie for the first time. It has only been out for 6-7 years now, you know. I mean, I was aware of the phenomenon at the time of the movie's release. My best friend's teenage brother and his friends spent the next couple of years beating the crap out of eachother and trying to build things to bring the school down. I even knew the first 2 rules of fight club, but I figured that the whole thing was just another marketing ploy directed at angry, adolescent males without any other value. After seeing it, I felt that though I absolutely loved it, it probably would have connected on a more personal level if I had fewer X chromosomes. But I liked it enough to be interested in the book that started it, which I picked up on my recent "using up my holiday gift cards" shopping day.

So, on to the book. I think it added to the whole experience. It really expanded on Tyler and the Narrator's philosophy of destruction and clarified a few bits that I was kind of fuzzy on from the movie. In some ways, it was even more violent, because you got more of a description of the pain and injuries, and the ever-widening hole in the narrator's cheek. It kind of turned my stomach, and I had to read through it because I couldn't just look away and wait until the scene changed. So it ended up being a more intense experience in some ways. The story ended differently in the different tellings, and I think that I definately liked the movie ending better, as it gave more ambiguity to it. In the book, it felt a little trite and maybe a little like a twilight zone episode. Still worth the read, though.

You may be wondering why I describe this book as a romance in the title. In the afterward, Chuck discusses the aftermath of the book's publication and movie's release, and how other people described his book to him. Some of the the ideas were outlandish, but I thought it was interesting that he really only describes the book as a romance. I guess it just made me think of when a friend described the movie Unbreakable as a romance, too. In both cases, I have thought about it and come to the conclusion "huh, I guess you're right". My question is, though, were they envisioned that way from the start? It would be interesting to find out if he thought "Ok, so there are 2 people in love, but let's make one of them suicidal with a tendency for self-mutillation and the other have a friend who is shoving him towards hitting rock bottom and is hell-bent on destroying civilisation as we know it. Oh, and they should meet by pretending to have various horrible diseases and attending support groups for them. That sounds nice."

In summary: liked the book, want to watch the movie again.

The Ground Meat Cookbook

A flash back to the days of old when you weren't sure what Grandma was serving you, but it was salty and had a lot of gravy. And the gelatin salad was only nibbled on.

This book has it all, some familiar, some bizarre. The Veal-Oyster loaf wasn't something my Grandma ever tortured us with, nor the Jellied Veal loaf (yipes). The ground cooked heart ranks a close second or third.

All in all, the 30+ page book is a nice trip on the wayback machine back to the days when using MSG was cool and carrot balls were all the rage.

The Ground Meat Cookbook

Book #2 - Naked Barbie Torsos?

Ok, ok, so it isn't really called Naked Barbie Torsos, but I think that would be a pretty clever title, an homage to a friend I had in high school. But I digress.

What I actually read for my second book was Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. Yeah, I realize that I ended 2005 with a Gaiman/Sedaris combo, but I really needed to read myself a path through the pile of books next to my bed. Also, I really like them both, so there. Stop trying to spoil my joy!!!

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book as well, it had more craziness with his family than the previous one I read. I especially liked the description of his oldest sister's home: "...the house itself had a way of aging things. Stand outside and you looked, if not young, then at least relatively carefree. Step indoors and you automatically put on twenty years and a 401(k) plan." In this book, we got to spend significant time with most of his family members and like whenever I visit my family, it made me think that though I like to visit, I don't know that my sanity could take it if I lived there.

We also get to learn about the gun laws around the US and the holiday traditions of various European countries that he has visited. I feel that the Christmas eve goodnight that Dutch children get is probably the most therapy-inducing: "Listen, you may want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming along with 6 to 8 black men. They might put candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared." Ah, the holiday magic. It just fills the air.

He also has observed just how much his home in Tuscany looks like it could easily be occupied by a serial killer from a horror movie. Really, who hasn't thought that at one time or another?

Anyway, I'd recommend this book. 8 somethings out of 10 other things!

PS: Nope, no Gaiman or Sedaris for at least 1 book. Currently, I am reading a book that was later made into a major motion picture (because no book was ever made into a minor motion picture). Who can guess what book?

Enter the James Frey fray

OK, I haven't read "A Million Little Pieces." If any of you have, may I ask the following:

1. Does the fact that he apparently lied about many of his exploits in the book lower your original opinion of the book?

2. Should the book now be considered fiction?

3. If you haven't read it, would you read it now?

4. Should Oprah kick his ass?

American Gods II: British and Caribbean Gods

So I have finished my first book for this experiment/resolution. As I have discussed in a couple of status reports, I read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

I liked it very well, which wasn't surprising. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was a little annoyed that I saw the mid-story "twist" coming from around the time that Fat Charlie's mysterious brother, Spider, was mentioned. However, the more I think about it, the less I mind. It ended up being less important to the story as I got to know Fat Charlie and Spider, anyway.

The story is: Fat Charlie has an embarrassing father (anyone who has met my father and seen him dance knows that I empathize, deeply), Mr. Nancy, who dies in the first few pages of the book mid-Karaoki. To make matters worse, his last dying act as he reached out while falling from the stage was to rip the tube top off of a woman sitting next to the stage. But, really, it's how he would have wanted to go, anyway.

Fat Charlie (who was nicknamed that by his father at a young age, and is unable to remove the "Fat" from his name, no matter how much distance he puts between himself and his father) has been living in London, and returns to his native Florida for his father's funeral. While in Florida, he learns from an old neighbor that his father was a god (Anansi) and he has a brother he never knew about, named Spider. Fat Charlie doesn't meet Spider until he returns to London and, following his neighbor's advice, asks a spider to bring his brother by.

As you can well imagine, this was not a good choice for Charlie. Spider wreaks havoc on Fat Charlie's life, dating Charlie's oh-so-sweet fiancee (while she thinks Spider is Charlie), causing him to spend a night in jail due to suspicion of white collar crime at his workplace (an accurate assessment, but misplaced blame), and generally being a poor houseguest.

All-in-all, enjoyed the book greatly. It makes me want to go back and re-read American Gods, which I will have to do once the pile of books in my room goes down a little more. It also made me think about the parallels between this book and Neil's first adult novel, Neverwhere, a topic which I hope to discuss later, because now I am too enthralled in the tawdry details of a friend's new romance to elaborate.

Still well behind Skippity

I am now at over 2/3 through Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. I am a little disappointed that I saw the mid-novel twist coming, but as that there is still plenty of story left I will not despair.

Neil has a great way of writing, describing the "pretending to be sick" voice that Anansi used in one of his stories as a "weenie, weedy, weaky" voice. As a Latin geek (different from a
Latin Greek) from way back, I giggled for a good couple of minutes over that.

Hopefully I will have a full report on the book tomorrow, when I intend to finish it. Tonight, however, I must pay attention to the cookies I am attempting to bake. I wonder how people like Cajun-style cookies.

Skippity's Book Three: The Photographer's Manual

John Freeman's The Photographer's Manual: How to Get the Best Picture Every Time, with Any Kind of Camera is just what you think it is, except maybe a little hokier. I found about 30% of it useful. But it has nice pictures in it. And man that guy needs to learn how to use a comma.

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead

What do you do when your best friend dies, you lose your job, and your girlfriend dumps you on Christmas?

Capture the burglar who's breaking in for the third time!

New York city can be tough for an actor who hasn't made a name for himself, but at 38 Jim only knows that his budding novel has been stolen and that acting is no longer his profession of choice. New Year's Eve finds Jim joining Aunt Jamima (flipping out), as he sadistically captures his burglar, ties him to his chopping block and proceeds to tease, terrorize, and tantalize his prey.

But Vito's no ordinary captive. An ex-junky that used to live among the stars, he's got spunk, stories and a big hard-on for ole Jimmy. He plays into Jim's seeming break-down and offers clarity and some really good weed to cool his captor down.

Author James Kirkwood totally gets dialogue. Funny as hell, probably erotic for a gay guy, and well-paced, I finished this book in two sittings. The ending is too sweet and, of course, his cat is dead, but I'm glad I found this book clearly written in the excess love and drug days of the early 70's.

Out of 7 Lays, I give it 5 fucks.

(Sorry, the books pretty raunchy and I've got you know what on the brain)

Beckie

5 Minute Mysteries

My nephew and I went through the first chapter of 5 Minute Mysteries.

No, it was not the butler.

The lady had to be moved into the car after she was dead because the automatic window still worked.

There, you don't have to wonder any more.

Did someone say alcohol? I think I put it on a New Year's Resolution card somewhere.

The end.

Skippity's Book Two: Chinese Takeout by Arthur Nersesian

So, this dude also wrote a book called The Fuck-up, which should give you some idea what sorts of permutations of the English language he might get up to between the covers of this one.

Chinese Takeout is told in the first person from the point of view of Orloff Trenchant, a starving artist living out of his van in NYC circa October/November 2000 (remember the election circus? Orloff doesn't; he's too busy shacking up with a heroin addict and carving a chunk of alabaster into a headstone in the shape of a Chinese takeout box). He sells used books on the street to keep himself abreast of his monumental parking ticket debt and impending starvation. The book starts with him destroying his relationship with his fiance, June, also an artist, and then there are about a hundred pages of him whining about art and how he really messed stuff up with June and how much New York City sucks sometimes and how he's trying to get into the pants of this or that artist and how she is trying to get into his pants. It gets tedious, but not too tedious because there is just enough information about the "seedy underbelly" (God I hate that expression) of the NYC art scene to keep you hooked.

And then the book gets good. Orloff gets a deal on subletting a loft space and meets Rita while he's scoping out some drug addicts to draw for the owner of the loft space (eh, it makes sense in the book). Rita's working the needle exchange program NYC has in place for its addicts. She's enough to keep the reader's interest piqued through the rest of the book. Orloff falls for her, discovers she's a heroin addict, has his life go to bits because of her, and works on various art projects involving someone swimming the East River and angels and demons tearing Rita in half. The art is described fairly well in the book, although it gets tiresome hearing someone's art referred to as "their work" (just a pet peeve of mine I guess, I don't know how else it should be referred to). (Launching ping-pong balls at a boa constrictor and filming it for half an hour does not constitute art, as you will discover if you read this.) There's enough dramatic tension to keep you reading and enough meat behind the story to keep you thinking. You honestly don't know if, at the end when Orloff is hauling his one-ton chunk of Chinese takeout box sculpture to the cemetery, he is going to make it or everything is going to end in a flaming ball of godawful doom on the 59th Street bridge. Even though you might not necessarily like him for some of the shit he does and some of the shit he whines about, you root for him.

There is also a pretty good extended metaphor at the end of the book. It's *almost* too transparent, but Nersesian pulls it off at the last minute.

If you want to read this one, holler and I'll bring it in. There is some cussin' and some sex and some poop in it. That should be enough to entice anyone. :) He also wrote a book called Dogrun, which I have, which I thought was better than this one, and which I can also loan out. Some tea exploded on it though so the pages are warped but it reads fine.

-Skippity

Nia's Current Status

As of last night (round-bouts midnight-ish), I am about 1/3 of the way through my first book, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It is a sequel (in a way, maybe more just "set in the same universe as") his previous novel, American Gods. At least once a chapter, I find myself thinking "I need to re-read American Gods," due to my previously-mentioned inability to remember anything for any reason.

All-in-all, I'm feeling on track. Except not enough alcohol so far this year. I'll need to rectify that.

Skippity's Book One: The Boxes by William Sleator

Okay, so, I have this embarrassing habit of reading JV fiction with the delusion that someday I'll write a JV fiction book and be good at it when in actuality, I just like a short, plot-filled piece o' whatever to read from time to time that isn't really going to challenge me in any way.

With that caveat, I hereby review The Boxes by William Sleator. It's the sequel to Marco's Millions, which I read a while ago. Sleator is a kids' sci-fi writer and both these books are in the same vein as all his other stuff--a kid has to solve some sort of scientifically weird or impossible dilemma with few resources, and has to hide the problem from his/her parents. Basically, Sleator uses these books as a platform to introduce principles of quantum and theoretical physics to his young readers, and, if you don't know jack about physics, his books will give you a very basic primer in the form of, imagine what this shit would be like if it happened on a level that affected your day-to-day life in a very real way--such as if time slowed down for you but no one else, or if quantum, molecular physics got big enough to form the basis of action for entire physical beings instead of particles. In The Boxes, Annie's mysterious Uncle Marco leaves two boxes in her possession and goes off on one of his mysterious trips. The boxes seem unopenable until the method of opening them comes to her in a dream, and she opens them, and then you're smacked about the head and shoulders for a while with Pandora metaphors, teen angst, and some imagery that would be much creepier if it occurred anywhere else but this book, and the whole shebang winds up with Annie slowing down time in an attempt to foul a real-estate deal. (? I don't know either.)

All in all, a quick, fun read (took about two hours)--like watching a somewhat hokey movie with a pretty main character while you eat popcorn and cotton candy.

I'll review a real book next time, I promise.

-Skippity