So far so good...

(And I love this cover. So pretty.)

ooh books books books!

Ooh, a little interview has been posted on indigo.ca with my second favourite teen author!

Q: In The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks Frankie is changed by the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. It is kind of an unusual choice, do you think that your readers will understand the literary reference and what does this say about the character? Did you read Wodehouse as a teen?

EL: I read Wodehouse as a teen. Exhaustively. In my 20s I was a member of the Wodehouse society. They're books about 25 year-old men cavorting in a club and romancing girls and getting into trouble. They're hysterically funny. No reason many teens wouldn't love them. But I don't expect my readers to know Wodehouse already. There's a pretty exhaustive explanation of what the books mean to Frankie.

* I also caved and bought 3 more Louise Rennison books today. I've been taking them out of the library, but someone had book 7 the last few times I looked for it, and now it's winter which is when I'm too coldy to go to the library on my day off. So I expect to be royally entertained veddy veddy soon. (Though I will, sadly, read them all in a couple days. At least I still have 3 more Lockhart books to read.)

We have a staff special this weekend on bargain books, so I also bought Martha Beck's last book, Steering by Starlight. She's one of the life coaches I quite like.

better entertainment than Colleen

I'm reading The Girls of Riyadh--a sort of Sex and the City, but with 20 year old Saudi women. I didn't get into it the first time I tried it last year, but now I'm really enjoying it.

I haven't had a chance to watch my sweathogs yet! Fernando is home after spending 4 weeks helping his sister with her kids while she had a third. Yikes! So we were chatting away when I got home from work.



Fave Songs of the Moment:

I asked a musicky guy at work last week: What should I be listening to right now? His reply was this guy, Mamer. It's beeeooootiiiful. (Play his myspace songs while you're browsing the nets!)


I resisted this new Norah Jones single, but now it's been playing at work and it's so cool I had to cave.

old teevees

When you grow up on a show and you think it's good, you don't really know if it was good until you see it in reruns 10-20 years later.

* The Hulk: boring as hell, can't watch one episode
* Wonder Woman: surprisingly uber feminist, but boring
* Emergency: sooo slow moving, the camera follows the truck all the way from the station, through the neighborhood, to the site of the fire!
* Dallas: still hilarious
* Dynasty: never watched it when it aired, but I quite enjoyed watching two seasons while catsitting! So holds up.
* MASH & Miami Vice: Well I was too young to really appreciate them when they aired, and very much enjoy them as an adult.
* The A-Team: A modern classic. Just because the 4 characters they created are really great.
* Welcome Back Kotter: When I caught this again in my 20s I thought it wouldn't hold up, but was quite surprised. Like the A-Team, it stands up (for me) because you have a group of funny characters, who have good chemistry with each other. We got in season 1 at work and... I'm afraid I'm going to have to indulge... Mister Kot-TER!

Kitty toyahj

Halzebub has a favourite toy--a laser pointer--and when she gets in a fruity mood and wants me to use it for her this is what happens...

- runs around the apartment
- comes to livingroom and stares at me
- she often knows where the pointer is (I always knew she recognized the sound of me clicking the on button, but tonight I realized she knows what it looks like)
- and if reach my arm out towards it, she comes rushing forward all excited
- I've just tried 5 times to reach for it while her back is turned, and each time she quickly looked 'round (like Dramatic Hamster) and eyed me hopefully

Heavens!

She's tired of being teased, so she's gone to sit on the floor... but each time I reach out my arm her ears perk up and she flicks her tail. Time to stop teasing, and go play with her.

to cheer myself up... Shitmydadsays

"I don't need more friends. You got friends and all they do is ask you to help them move. Fuck that. I'm old. I'm through moving shit." 2:00 PM Nov 16th from web

(100% there with you, old man.)

"I hate paying bills... Son, don't say "me too." I didn't say that looking to relate to you. I said it instead of "go away." 2:27 PM Nov 3rd from web

“The whole world is fueled by bullshit… What? The kid asked me for advice on his science fair project so I’m giving it to him.” 4:31 PM Nov 27th from web

How much longer? Oh, how much longer? (465 pages longer? Nooooo!)

I sat around reading Colleen McCullough's Pride and Prejudice sequel today: The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. This quote from facebook pretty much sums it up:

"Colleen has lost her marbles along with her eyesight, can't believe an intellectual powerhouse wrote this drivel! Its dreadful."

It was so bad, I actually had to finish it. I had to speed-read the boring bits--of which there were many--but I had to be careful not to skip some fresh new stupidity.

McCullough has said (a) that she never cared for P&P--she thinks it reads like a first novel. Which is ironic because Mc's sequel reads like 15 year old fanfic. But anyway, why would you write a sequel to a book you didn't love??

(b) Because she says she wanted to piss off the literati. Which is just self-important. I can't throw a pen in the Fiction section without hitting a P&P sequel. They're a dime a dozen, and the literati do not read them. The only reason I chose this one was because of my faith in McCullough. She's just a really good storyteller! If she'd written this as her own original novel, then maybe she would have developed the characters properly, and plotted it evenly, and then her ridiculous plot would have been a rollicking good time.

My shock doesn't stem from what she did with P&P's character, but with her unbelievably horrible writing! Horrrrible. Read-out-loud-and-laugh horrible. Teach-new-writers-every-rule-on-how-not-to-write horrible.

Ridiculous Plot: She takes the plain and pompous Mary character, 20 years later, turns her into a raving beauty full of independence and feist, and sets her out on a road trip. Along the way she is attacked by a highwayman called Captain Thunder. Then she is kidnapped by a little old man who lives in caves with 50 little children, simultaneously running a religious sect as well as an chemist's shop. Mary isn't even rescued by some fantastic escape plan, or rescue plan--the little old man blows up some of the tunnels, which jars open her jail door, and out she walks.

The Ladies of Missilonghi is a fantastic little jewel of a story, with a plain but sexed up heroine, and a good revenge plot. It, and Tim, are two of my favourite romance novels. And of course I loved the romance between Maggie and Ralph in The Thornbirds, and genuinely cared about the zillions of characters in it.

The last book I read from her was Morgan's Run, an interesting adventure about the convicts brought from the UK to found Norfolk Island. It's worth reading if only for the description of the ship passage (similar to what slaves went through on the Atlantic passage.) Très Bryce Courtenay. And apparently her Rome books are recommended reads in Washington, because the politicking is so spot on.

So what happened?? Insanity.

Here's the first line that had me worried... on the very first page: "How much longer? Oh, how much longer?"

Holy crap. I could go on and on about the horrid writing and characters... but I will stop. My problem now is: What to read to cleanse the book from my mind? Another Regency, better written? Get my hands on a Georgia Nicholson? Something with really, really sharp excellent writing? I don't know. I could probably pick something blindfolded from my shelf and it would be better.

Ah! Ahhh!

***

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Wretched Book, August 13, 2009

By	Shannon Farhat - See all my reviews

Had Jane Austen known that someone would write something like the The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett in response to Pride and Predjudice, I suspect Pride and Predjudice would have gone unwritten in order to spare the world the unhappiness that is T.I.o.M.M.B. .