Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

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1. Kare Goucher, the runner, continues to break my heart. That woman is a beast and trains so very hard, but it seems like every time she feels ready she misses her goal by seconds. She ran the Olympic Trials for the marathon in Los Angeles last weekend and missed qualifying by so little! And she cried, which made me sad for her. 

2. While on the topic of running, while I've decisively sidelined half marathon plans indefinitely (I was considering doing the Disney in September before Surf City), I think I'm going to really focus on improving my 5k of 10k times (so 3.1 or 6.2 miles). I think my feet can handle that and the training is much  more doable with my life. It'll also allow me to do more cross training, which I'm excited about. I got on the bike yesterday and have been doing more yoga, so I'm pleased with that. 

3. This is my new favorite shirt:

4. I read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian last weekend and really enjoyed it. I don't read YA, but I am an Alexie fan, so I gave it a try. More than anything, it made me want to read more of his adult fiction.

[Alexie]

5. I'm also reading The Scarlet Letter for my senior IB class and I'm liking it way more than I ever have before (I think this is the fourth time I've read it?). The language is still very tedious, though, and it's really heard to read when I can't completely focus. We will be comparing it to Kate Chopin's The Awakening, which should be interesting (well, for me, anyway). I wish there was a prequel, though. What the heck went down between Hester and Dimmesdale? They were praying together one day and BAM! crazy baby Pearl was made? 

6. I also just started Notorious RBG, since it seemed like the timely thing to do.

7. Four years ago I jumped out of a plane. How stupid. 

8. I've been thinking about looking into taking some sort of creative writing or literature class through the UCLA Extension program, just for fun. Mostly because I'm always like, "hey, I'm so bored, I need more things to do and items to put on my to-do list."

9. My child's new love is to sit in cardboard boxes and color in them. This keeps him busy for chunks of like twenty-five minutes, which is impressive in toddler time. I'm going to have to keep ordering things online to make sure he has the necessary supplies.

10. Holy shit, this churro cake.

Reading Margaret for the First Time as an Adult

Somehow, I missed the memo as a preteen that I was supposed to read and identify Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I read some of her other books, but this one somehow slipped through the cracks. I saw Blume speak a few years ago at a festival and mentally put the YA novel on my wish list (for the record, it's the only YA book on there) but, once again, overlooked it. I finally picked it up this summer after grabbing her newest adult novel, In the Unlikely Event, and seeing other bloggers, like Rory, revisit this classic. So, I decided I'd read about twelve-year-old Margaret for the first time at thirty-one.

One thing that stood out to me the most was the lack of technology. I loved it! These kids had to work at finding out if someone liked them- they couldn't just jump on SnapChat. They had to use house phones and look people "in the book." They experienced boredom. They had to go outside and run in the sprinklers to cool off instead of streaming a movie on Netflix in the air conditioned indoors. Oh, and they use encyclopedias for school work (and to look up male anatomy, naturally). It's all so endearing and refreshing. 

Another thing that struck me was Margaret and her friends' extensive conversations about boobs and periods. Maybe it's just me and my total disgust with bodily functions, but I never ever remember talking about those sorts of topics with anyone when I was that age. It's probably a good things I have a son.

I did love how religion was handled in this book. Margaret's parents aren't practicing, since their parents had conflicting ideas about such topics before they married, yet she is still very interested in religion and embarks on a school project to invest her options. Honestly, after reading this I decided that everyone should wait until they're an adult to pick their religious path. So often people are Catholic or Methodist or whatever because that's how they were raised and haven't really thought about it for themselves. But anyway, I digress. 

[source]

It was a super, super quick book that I read in snippets while keeping one eye on the kid. It was nice to see what all the fuss is about, but I'm guessing I'd feel a little more warm and fuzzy about the whole thing if there was a nostalgic factor for me, which there is not. I do think this is still a great book for the ten-twelve crowd, though! 

Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

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1. I don't understand hand washing your dishes when you have a dishwasher. It turns out a lot of people I know do this. I don't get it. We had to wash and dry our dishes growing up and it was horrible.

2. Last night, for shits and giggles, my husband and I created the plot for a YA novel, based on every cliche we could come up with (illness, unrequited love, guilt, familial issues, trusty sidekick, etc...). I'm fairly confident we could get it published... under pseudonyms, of course.

[source]

3. I can't believe Sandra Bullock is fifty. Good for her. I don't want to like her, but I do.

4. My Alama Mater was under water. Poor Pauley Pavillion.

[source]

5. I made my to-do list for the next week and a half until we go back to work. One word: shit.

6. Every time I complete a journal (here's a post explaining my life-long habit) I go back to the beginning and see what life was like (usually a year or so in the past). I'd say 90% of the time the worries I had then had completely resolved themselves. A year ago I was worried about not being able to get pregnant, the pressure of getting my IB students through their senior year, and who knows what else. Now, those things are water under the bridge. I hope and pray that the current worries I face are resolved by the time I finish this volume.

7. Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker or someone needs to create individual servings of of brownies and cakes for those of us who don't want to make a huge batch. A little packet you add water and maybe a tablespoon of oil to, pop in a ramekin, and then back for fifteen minutes. It's genius.

8. This video of the obviously very over-tired little girl is both sweet and hilarious:



9. Whoever invented the Summer Sleep Swaddlers deserves a prize. They obviously sprinkled sleeping powder in those things- Sawyer has been putting himself to sleep ever since we started using them and just slept through the doorbell ringing, the dogs barking, and the door alarm beeping in the laundry room where he's napping (it's dark and cool, okay?). He knows he can eventually bust out of it when I just use a blanket, so he works himself up instead of knocking himself out. The day I have to stop using them will be a sad day indeed.

[baby burrito]

10. I have to reread Catcher in the Rye again (for the fourth time in my life). Will there ever be a point where I can just jump into teaching a novel, or will I always reread?

The Fault in Our Stars- My Thoughts

I need to preface this review-of-sorts with a few things:

1. I don't read YA. Like I really, really, really don't read YA.

2. I'm not a fan of overly-sappy books.

3. I listened to this on Audible.

4. I decided to give this book a fair chance because of the movie coming out, the fact that some people I truly respect like it, and because I felt a smidge bad telling probably forty students they couldn't read it for outside reading over the past few years.

5. We can still be friends if you like it.

There are some popular books I refuse to touch, the Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Grey being examples. Other books I've given into the hype about and have come up with mixed feelings, such as These Lovely Bones, The Casual Vacancy, The Hunger Games and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Series. After the aforementioned reason number four, I decided to give John Green's The Fault in Our Stars a try.

First off, I will say that I have an inkling that it probably is one of the better written, or at least thought-out, YA books. There are some heavy themes dealing with life and death (and supposedly existentialism... ha!) that can at least get people to question their own mortality and I appreciated that he handled the love story aspect pretty tastefully. Yes, they're teenagers, so there are lines about how Augustus is "hot" and the normal back and forth "do I like him?" nonsense that I see every day at work. I also must say that John Green seems like a decent guy, after listening to the interview at the end of the audiobook, as well as from his preface and afterward.

All in all, I don't think this is a literary book by any means (and I know most people don't necessarily consider it one, but I have heard the argument that for YA it is literary), nor did I really enjoy it. First of all, it was beyond sappy. I swear, there was crying by one character or another on at least half (or more) of the pages. I know, I know, cancer is sad. But still, the level of weepy drama was too much. Hazel's poor dad's only purpose in this text is to cry. I hope they buy Kleenex at Costco in bulk, for crap's sake. While I thought Hazel's character was slightly more realistic, there were times with Augustus Waters was just too much- I work with teenagers all day, every day and while I have no doubt he was one smart cookie, I just felt like he was often a bit unrealistic. The writing was absolutely mediocre and at times, from what I can tell from listening to the audiobook, anyway, the script aspect was annoying ("Mom: blablabla Me: blablabla").

The lesser characters were quite flat, and some of their little subplots were just so underdeveloped and seemed to be an afterthought (I don't want to give anything away, just in case I was in fact not the last person on the planet to be exposed to this book). The entire premise of going to the Netherlands to seek out an author without really solidifying any plans seems a bit contrived. I did appreciate how drunk and crazy he was, though. His reappearance later in the novel at an event that I will not divulge made me laugh out loud. Sure he'd really attend. Suuuuuuure. And I'm sorry, the obsession those two have with the ending is just ridiculous. It's not even that big of a cliffhanger.

Oh, and I thought the ending was extremely predictable. Green was obviously trying not to come across this way, but in his attempt to mislead the reader throughout he ended up being obvious. I felt that as a whole he did try a bit too hard with this text; there's isn't a natural flow to it.

I completely and understand the draw people have to it; it has the teenage angst that some people love, it has travel, it has a love story, it has drama, it has tragedy. For me, it simply did not work. 

You loved it, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!?! Tell me why.