Saturday, December 5, 2009

MHIBTY Book Club

I love books. I love to read. I love to see the movie. I love to tell people that the book was better than the movie. Since this blog is about me, my life and what I've been up to, I'm going to review some of my most recent reads. I am in no way qualified to review these books, besides having actually read them, but, a lack of qualifications rarely stops me.

Music for Torching
A. M. Homes
She is one of my favorite authors. She is an artist. A sick, twisted, honest, brilliant and non-apologetic word artist. In this novel, she tells the story of a couple stuck. And while there were no obvious parallels between her protagonist (which I thought, more than once, were also the antagonist) and myself, I couldn't help but feel like she knew my darkest fears and my deepest hidden secrets. Paul and Elaine live in a re-active state. When there is nothing to react to, one evening, when there are no dinner plans and all their friends are busy, they set their house on fire. And that's the first chapter. They both struggle with being honest with one another and themselves - rarely ever succeeding unless they're high/stoned. They pop pills like they're candy. They both let outside people (near strangers) fuck them. Literally and figuratively. Through an intricately weaved series of events, they eventually realize that they've lost all control in their life and that they need to take the reigns again to bring peace and normalcy back into their family, but this happens with about 10 pages left. And a LOT happens in those last 10 pages. Another book of hers I highly recommend is "The End of Alice."

The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold
A 14 year-old girl is murdered and then tells the story from her point of view from "her" heaven. Whitney recommended this book because the author has imagined heaven to be uniquely different for each person in it, where sometimes certain parts of heavens overlap and at others don't. That aspect of it is what really pulled the entire novel together for me, because other than that it was just a tragic, terrible story about a family that is ripped apart by an asshole kid-rapist and murderer. Well written and beautiful, but tragic and sad none the less.

The Marketplace
Laura Antoniou
If you hate sex, do not read this book. This book was the closest thing to a boyfriend I had for about 2 weeks (I'm a slow reader). It was always there for me and made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside after a long, hard (hehe) day. The Marketplace is, indeed, a marketplace for S&M types to buy slaves. Yes, it's S&M smut-literature. Yes, it wasn't the most intellectual book I've ever read, but dammit - it was HOT. The story follows 4 "applicants" that want to be trained to be high caliber slaves - good enough to be sold on the Marketplace. I believe there are an additional 4 more novels that make up this series. So, if anyone wants to buy me book two (and a pack of AA batteries), feel free.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
Tucker Max
For entertainment value only, this book was awesome. His drunken stories of debauchery, near death experiences and crapping/vomiting all over himself, his friends or his bed-mate made me laugh. The book had a nice mix of stories, though I liked his "pre-fame" adventures more compared to the ones after he became infamous around college towns. My brother bought this book in the hopes of reading it before he and his friends went to Lawrence to see the movie. Needless to say, he only got a couple chapters in, I read the whole thing.

Dora's Halloween Adventure
Sarah Wilson & Steve Savitsky
While, indeed, an adventure, the plot line was predictable and stale. "Oh No??? Boot's Candy has been stolen? Map, where is Boot's Candy?" Everyone knew (except the 18 month old triplets I was reading the book to) that Swipper took the candy. Big effing surprise. Next time I'd like to see Diego stuffing the sweet stuff down his throat... at least then it could segue into "Diego get Diabetes" and serve as a multi-purpose education tool for kids.

Read them all and I'll pull a "BookIT" and buy you a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.