I read An Abundance of Katherines before I even knew who John Green was. Remember - I’m 1,000, so cut me some slack people! Over the past several years it has come to my attention that almost everyone else considers this to be the lesser of all of the Green works, which had me questioning my mental state (or whether or not I was intoxicated) the first time I read this book.
Okay, so I’ll grant you the premise is kinda snooze-a-rific. I mean, a former child prodigy who has been dumped by 19 chicks named Katherine who wants to develop something like this . . .
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(*hooooooark* Ugh – just looking at that math gives me dry heaves)
in order to be able to predict who will be the dumper (or dumpee) in any relationship and when said relationship will end is not the most exciting story to be told.
And maybe Colin was a sitzpinkling anagramming weirdo who moped around feeling miserable about getting dumped by the umpteenth Katherine in his life, but without him I would have never had a chance to meet Hassan. Oh Hassan! I’m pretty sure he’ll go down in history as one of my favorite supporting pals. He completely stole the show. If you’ve not yet read Katherines, think of Hassan as younger, less dickholey, and more Muslim version of Trent from Swingers . . .
Hassan is a riot, he can woo the ladies without even trying, and he refers to himself occasionally as “Daddy.” He’s the only person who was able to stop Colin from “lying facedown on the carpet” . . .
If I were to be 100% honest, Katherines might not be deserving of all 5 Stars this second time around. . . but I’m not changing the rating. I love this book unapologetically and it’s still my favorite John Green – even if I’m the only one who feels that way. If nothing else, this book gave the world the following quote:
“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”
And that may be good enough for a ½ Star bump on its own.
Maybe Colin wasn’t a “relatable teenager” (whatever the F that means), but at least he admitted that Holden Caulfield was a self-absorbed loser. My generation grew up with a different John who wrote characters like these . . .
If so, House of Leaves might be right up your alley.
The simple synopsis (and the only one you're going to get from me) is this is the story of Will, Karen, and their dream home, told through various narrators.
I read House of Leaves before I started "writing" (a/k/a imaging) reviews. I don't make a habit of going back and posting something for a previously read novel, but occasionally I make an exception. House of Leaves is a book that deserves a review - mainly to justify the 3.5 Star rating.
To begin, reading this book is a daunting task. If anyone ever tries to tell you that House of Leaves was such an "easy read" you should immediately never talk to them again because they are huge liars. I'm not going to bullshit you. I mean, just look at a sample of what you're expected to wade through . . .
After all of the flipping and turning around of the book and wading through gazillions of footnotes and endnotes and probably banging your head against the wall more than once, you might be like me and find yourself left feeling a bit confuzzled with your final reaction (or find that you found half of the story to be worthy of 5 Stars while the other half ranked maybe around a 2.5). However, when it comes to those "100 Books to Read Before You Kick the Bucket," I think House of Leaves is one books that EVERYONE should push to the top of the list and I wish it would pop up on more of those lists.
It's very rare that I have this type of reaction to a "scary" (kinda? sometimes???) story . . .
“Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie forFind all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
“Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic. Didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.”
You’re probably reading a Chuck Palahniuk sex story.
The premise of Snuff is simple enough – a world record is about to broken. This is the story of a day in the life of 600 dudes, including an aging porn star . . .
Each of these shank-shuckers/baby-barfers/tadpole-tossers or whatever you want to call them anxiously awaits their turn at a bang session with the queen of the adult film scene, Cassie Wright. While waiting in the wings the jizz-juicers/sock-soakers/bone-beaters or whatever you want to call them will kill time popping little blue pills, watching some classic films for inspiration such as Sperms of Endearment, Angels with Dirty Places, Lay Misty for Me and the ever-popular The Handmaid’s Tale . . .
It’s okay Kanye. That was funny – and the public flogging you’ll receive by the members of Goodreads for laughing at that will only hurt until the bruises fade. The ceiling-spacklers/weasel-teasers/willy-wankers or whatever you want to call them will also let some skeletons come tumbling out of their respective closets . . . .
with this one. It almost makes me want to go raise my rating for Beautiful You. Almost. If you have nothing better to do and want to say you read something by Palahniuk since he’s soooooo edgy, don’t let this review stop you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though. Oh, and if you think I read everything wrong (and spend all day talking about how I’m related to Lucifer and/or trolling), go read Kemper or Ed or Bill’s reviews instead since they all found it to be equally as “meh” as I did.
First things first, yes I am going to use gifs even whilst reviewing a real modern day clFind all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
First things first, yes I am going to use gifs even whilst reviewing a real modern day classic. Don’t like it? Suck it.
Okay. Now that that is out of the way let me ask you all a question: Are you a lunatic like me and sometimes actively seek out something in hopes that it will make you feel bad? If not, let me ‘splain things. I was born with a bit of a deficiency . . .
It takes a lot to make me have any emotion aside from happiness or anger. The combo of a new position at work, Spring springing which equals a busier kid schedule and also snotty-faced allergy head for me, the time change effing with me for several days, and then OH NO MY PERIOD! other stuff that made me all . . .
Had me looking for an excuse (in the form of paper) to mope around about. The only problem was the combo of all of the above made it take forever for me to get through this book. There’s a real good chance this could have been 4 Stars (or on the flip side 2) if I would have been able to power right through it. But since I could not, a 3 is what it shall receive.
The Round House started off great for me. There was the storyline I knew about that had drawn me to the book originally – that of a Native American mother who was brutally raped. (Since I’m me that was the extent of my knowledge about this story before beginning.) I appreciated that there wasn’t much mystery surrounding the identity of the bad guy and I really appreciated the mother’s realistic reaction to the life-altering attack . . .
Can’t you get up? Can’t you . . . come back to life?
No, she said immediately, as if she’d thought about this too. I can’t do it. I don’t know why. I just cannot do it.
(That’s probably the part where normal people cry, but alas I am a robot and had zero feelings.)
I also loooooooooooove a good coming of age story and Joe’s narration most definitely brought that to the table. I didn’t even mind the lack of punctuation (since I suck at punctuation it makes me feel better about myself when authors eliminate it altogether). But then the story went from simply adding in some additional plot points or twists and ended up getting a bit too far off the rails for me. Obviously the whodunit it had to be explained, along with the why – but I really didn’t need to get sidetracked with Native American folklore or a million and one ancillary characters and their personal histories. I wanted Joe and his friends' story. Period. Once I started hearing about Linda and the priest and Mooshum and on and on I was like . . .
I’m sure I read it wrong. After all it won the National Book Award and errrrryone knows awards are never handed out to anything other than books which should be 5 Starred by the entire universe. I'll stick to Sherman Alexie stories from now on if I'm looking for Native America coming of age.
EDIT: To give credit where credit is due. I grabbed this from the library after reading Erica's review a few days ago. Just note that she usually does an even worse job than me at reading things right (if you can imagine), so take her 5 Stars with a grain of salt : ) ...more
Oh how I love the magic which is Tobias Fünke, Mr. Show, and Cross’ stand-up shows. Like myself, David is a member of the last generation to exit the womb not immediately butt-hurt and his comedy stylings prove it. If you are easily offended, steer clear ‘cause Mr. Cross takes issue with just about errrrrrrrrrry sensitive subject, including race, religion, sex, etc. If are of the crybaby sort, I have a feeling Cross would react kind of like this on a good day . . .
Okay, I’m seriously NOT as old as the following statement would lead you to believe, but I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid and they were huge Andy Rooney fans. If you’ve ever read one of his books or forgone all of the newsy parts of 60 Minutes but tuned in for the last five which consisted of Rooney’s commentary, you might enjoy this book. Cross is as curmudgeonly as Rooney and his couple of page rambly entries have a similar delivery to Rooney’s as well.
Due to a severely not cooperative gastrointestinal system I never developed the habit of reading while on the crapper. However, if you are of the sort who likes to have a variety of reading materials at the ready to peruse during your morning constitutional, this would be a great choice. Filled with everything from random lists to epic rants, Cross covers nearly every topic you never thought you were interested in reading about. And he does so with such a could give a shit attitude that I was all . . .
3 Stars because this is definitely a book served best in small doses and because Cross made the monumental mistake of responding to a bad review (on a blog written by someone who most definitely appeared to be the a-hole in the situation right up to the point where Cross went to her site and told her she wasn’t entitled to have an opinion - even if said opinion was of the ermagherd everything offends me variety). Dear Darling David, 99.99999% of the human population probably had not even heard of the twat who took such offense to your Romney/Mormon jokes, but when you went and commented she most likely got a shitpile of undeserved attention/praise. Stay away (far far away) from those who don’t appreciate your brilliance – or at least be aware that when you go to someone else’s house and shit on their carpet, it is YOU who ends up looking the troll : ( ...more
Hmmmm, I wonder what my friends thought of this one????
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^^^^^“This should end well,” said no Mitchell ever.
Let me begin by swearing to all of you that I’m not becoming one of those “rage reviewers.” You know who I’m talking about. They are the people who seem to only choose books they know right from the jump they will hate and then write up a huge rant only to repeat the process over and over and over to infinity and beyond.
Fallen had actually been on my TBR since its release – along with eleventy billion other books and since it was YA and part of a series (which I have zero more evens for) it just kept getting bumped further and further down the stack. But thennnnnnnnnnnn 2016 rolled around and those damn “must read” lists started popping up all over my Facebook (this was on a "soon to be a movie" list) and they are my kryptonite and I get all “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” I also unapolagetically liked The Twilight Saga when I read it and this was supposed to be for “fans of Twilight” (I know boo hiss, whatevs) so I figured what the hell.
I did not realize the salespitch "for fans of Twilight” meant I was going to be reading Twilight 2.0. I mean Fallen followed the plot points of Twilight to a T. From the not-so-meet-cute between Bella and Edward errrr, I mean Luce and Daniel in the cafeteria . . .
We are talking this book was nearly a complete regurge of EV.ER.Y.THANG. Now, there were a few differences – like stuff actually happened in Twilight, but jackshit happened in Fallen. Bella and Edward errrr Luce and Daniel also attended a reform school rather than regular high school (but no details were ever really provided explaining why – that’s how they get suckers to buy all the other books in the series) which eliminated the need for meddling parental units from the story . . .
And although the love could be described as “insta” it made a bit more sense since the two had loved and lost each other for centuries so the combo of deja vous and horny teen made it a bit less pukey. Also, the chicks who friended Luce weren’t total assholes like Jessica and Daniel wasn’t a vampire. Instead he was . . .
On any other day this might have earned 2 Stars from me, but when a story makes me appreciate the fact that an unpolished turd like 50 Shades really WAS simply “inspired” by Twilight and not a blatant ripoff I’m like . . .
To all the fangirls out there who are just waiting in the wings to tell me how wrong I am? Save your breath – I’m not interested in starting out the new year by feeding trolls so . . .
In this week’s episode of “Is Kelly Really That Dumb?” (spoiler alert – she is) let’s discuss the fact that she never read Angela’s Ashes because for In this week’s episode of “Is Kelly Really That Dumb?” (spoiler alert – she is) let’s discuss the fact that she never read Angela’s Ashes because for some reason she thought it was a book about a family in a concentration camp and was never quite in the headspace to tackle it. Then she Googled “funny memoirs” and it popped up, but since it was Reddit I figured some troll was trollin’. Turns out they weren’t (and also this obviously wasn’t anything like I had thought it was about).
The story here is about the McCourt family – who move back across the pond from New York to Ireland since daddy has more than a little problem with keeping a job and not being on the drink – told by Frank. It is somehow both heartbreakingly tragic and laugh-out-loud funny. I listened to it on audio – and be warned it is about 112 million hours long – but it made my walks so much more enjoyable and I was sad when I finished. ...more
I have owned this book since Jesus was a toddler but never got around to reading it – mainly because every time I even come close to the “puppy squisher” bookshelf, this guy gets a little antsy . . . .
I have a vague recollection of being envious of ScarJo’s magnificent boobage in the film version . . . followed immediately by what I do best once I decide to watch a movie: fall asleep. Anyway, I hadn’t really planned on ever reading The Other Boleyn Girl, but when I logged on to the library website to cyberbully the porny librarian until she finally puts a copy of Made for Love in my hands, this one popped up on the available now/recommended to you page. I planned on starting it (possibly poolside) once my family went out of town for the weekend since I had a feeling that once I started it would be like book crack and I wouldn’t be able to put it down. But I could not avoid its siren song and . . . . .
Since there are over 15,000 reviews for this sucker, I’m not going to waste a whole lotta time here. The story goes a little something like this . . . .
♪♫♫♪ Howards, meet the Howards. They’re the vilest of families. From the land of England. They’re a page right out of history♪♫♫♪
The Other Boleyn Girl takes place in the olde days of yore when King Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon and a young Mary Boleyn caught his eye. The “Howard family ambition” rules all and Mary is instructed to become the King’s mistress and deliver him a son he might claim since his aging wife is quickly approaching the dreaded change. When Mary proves to be foolish with dreams of love rather than power at the forefront of her brain, Anne Boleyn steps in . . . .
If you’re like me and your husband has had to dig an old burp rag out of the cupboard in order for you to wipe your drool after watching seven straight hours of The Tudors . . . . .
Or you have a DVR filled with the househoes of any given city or you’ve contemplated learning Spanish more than once simply so you can watch Telemundo, this might be the train wreck for you....more
It's a snow day today and since my tiny humans are to the point where my snow days are nuFind all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
It's a snow day today and since my tiny humans are to the point where my snow days are numbered since they aren't so tiny any longer I decided to stay home with them in order to read porn make cookies and hot cocoa and scream loving things out the front door like "IT'S 10 DEGRESS OUTSIDE - GET YOUR ASSES BACK IN HERE BEFORE YOU FREEZE TO DEATH!" But then I realized this book would be expiring from my Kindle in like a minute and a half so I figured I better morph my plan and get a "review" churned out right quick.
To be honest, I don't really know what to say. Geek Love has been on my TBR since 2012. I'm fairly certain I even checked it out from the library at one point and returned it without reading. When Ron 2.0 was trying to bait all us creeps with his Last Days updates someone mentioned Geek Love and since I'm an asshole I went with that one rather than Ron's choice.
Enough with the backstory, right? You probably want to know about the book. Well, it goes a little something like this . . . . .
That was Mama Lil. Lil had big dreams of being a trapeze girl, but an unfortunate accident proved that wasn't meant to be. Lil became the geek instead, catching the eye of Papa Al. With the help of some choice dope, a few insecticides and a handful of radioisotopes the two Binewskis created a very unique family . . . .
I have never read anything like it and highly doubt I ever will. I don't know who to recommend this to because it is most assuredly not a story for everyone. But if you have a taste for the unusual and appreciate writing that isn't overdone or purple, but still makes an impact . . . .
"Do you know what the monsters and demons and rancid spirits are? Us, that's what. You and me. We are the things that come to the norms in nightmares. The thing that lurks in the bell tower and bites out the throats of the choirboys - that's you, Oly. And the thing in the closet that makes the babies scream in the dark before it sucks their last breath - that's me. And the rustling in the brush and the strange piping cries that chill the spine on a deserted road at twilight - that's the twins singing practice scales while they look for berries."
You should give it a go and become one of us . . . .
I was so sad to heard of Eric Jerome Dickey’s passing last month so I decided to take a trip back down memory lane. I’m not much of a re-reader and I I was so sad to heard of Eric Jerome Dickey’s passing last month so I decided to take a trip back down memory lane. I’m not much of a re-reader and I have to admit I was a little hesitant to pick up Milk in My Coffee in case I didn’t enjoy it as much the second time around. The good news is, despite it being 25 years since this book was published, it has aged pretty well (the blasé attitude regarding using protection excluded, obviously). Dickey’s books were brought to my attention by a co-worker back when I was just a young pup. I’m sure I offered her nothing but garbage in return, but she introduced to me to Black authors like him and Terry McMillan who wrote romance with some more meat on its bones than I was used to and I am eternally grateful. Per usual, there’s no point in my attempting to write much of a review. I’m simply thankful to have read him and to have been lucky enough to always have a booknerd cohort or two wherever I’ve worked who are willing to swap recommendations (and who aren’t judgey when mine tend to wander toward the psycho side)....more
The end product is quite possibly the best coming-of-age story ever written. This is what the saying “boys will be boys” is about. It’s about going on an adventure, and saying swear words when out of your parents’ earshot, and trying a cigarette just so you can say you did, and standing up to bullies, and most of all it’s about friendship. Because really?
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?”
I decided to give this one a listen after forcing it on my oldest son in order to make sure he’s actually reading when he says he is. There’s a good chance he’ll choose to be contrary simply to hurt my feelings since even the most decent teenager is still pretty horrible. The good news is I was able to pull a double-whammy and make the youngest listen too on the way to and from his baseball tournament this weekend. He arrived a little late to the party when Gordy and the boys were getting ready to meet Milo Pressman and the notorious “Chopper” and was on the edge of his seat during the train dodge. He completely blew me away when he complained as I hit strategically hit pause at a certain point in the story so we could hear it in full the next morning. And what a morning we had! A total barf-o-rama full of cackling and full-blown guffaws.
An obvious must for any Constant Reader and, as far as I’m concerned, anyone else as well. Truly an actual contender when it comes to the “like this or we can’t be friends” option. It’s that good. And the movie is one of the best book-to-screen translations in the history of filmmaking. Perfection.
Endnote: This was my third audio book and I finally found a winner. Frank Muller’s voice was just like butter. The only thing that could have been better is if it would have been Richard Dreyfus doing the narrating : ) ...more
I (along with many other superfans of the Southern Vampire Series) was extremely disappointed. Not with the “who will Sookie end up with????” part. I mean seriously - DUH when it came to that question. I was bummed that it felt like Harris had thrown in the towel and just continued to milk that cash cow for all it was worth. I don’t fault any author for being done with a character or a series, but I do fault them for continuing on/signing new contracts/cashing paychecks when their heart isn’t in it any longer. As much as fans might bitch and moan about wanting moremoremore, it’s even worse when we get said moremoremore but find out we spent our hard earned moolah on crap.
Now, I’m not saying this series started off with goooooood books. Obviously they weren’t ever up for a National Book Award. Buuuuuuuuuut, this re-read reminded me why I got so addicted to all the fluffy yumminess . . .
going for them, though. They also had a PLOT. Better than that even - MULTIPLE plotlines and tons of action – both in and out of the sack. In Dead to the World we’re introduced to a weird little place called Hotshot, a glamazon known as Claudine, a missing brother, crossing storylines between witches and werewolves and shifters (OH MY), a cameo by Bubba . . .
Dead to the World was pure guilty pleasure that loses a star because in real life if your MOTHERF*&^ING RAPIST goes away to Peru you throw a G.D. party instead of pining for him. Get your f-ing head checked, Sookie. And also, because having all of the sexytimes interrupted by Eric calling the Queen of the Dipshits his “lover” which almost caused me to lose my sploosh. Worst. Pet. Name. Ever. Seriously. Here’s Exhibit A for proof:
Many thanks to Stepheny for letting me tag along on this re-read and to Karly for hopping in as well. You gals know how to bring the Eric giffy goods ; )
I’d say I’m going to leave well enough alone and not read any more of this series, but I’ve learned to never say never. Plus, I might get the urge to read about ol’ Bob again . . .
Kelly (and the Book Boar)
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