India

India, originally uploaded by ter -ri -fic!.

She's the sweetest thing in my life at the moment.

Her favorites: tummy rubs, yarn and feathers, lap naps, and a clean litter box

Dislikes: vacuums, slamming doors, too many treats, and being chased.

1 year, 2 mo.

Her previous name was JUJU Bee.ewwww.

This set of short stories weren't as exciting as I expected them to be, but they were still entertaining and a bit awkward in terms of plot and relationships between characters, but that's always a good thing in my book. In one story, the kid gets an erection from his mother that sleeps next to him in the nude, but they believe he's the son of God. Another is a giant frog that lands in a guy's living room and asks to fight the worm underground to stop the earthquake. Yea...err. The best is still "Honey Pie"... they all have something to do with the earthquake...but yea.. hrmm ahhh I think it's missing something... like insight? depth? mmmhmm

Darryl suggested this book, and my other girl pal loved his first book. I liked the photos and graphics and play with space and images, which made this book more entertaining that not. It's about a 9 year old kid in Manhattan, who is inventive, intelligent, but obviously traumatized about what happened in 9/11. He finds this key in his late father's closet and searches the burroughs of New York to find where the key belongs. Along the way he meets a handful of New Yorkers who all have their own interesting stories to tell. You also get to learn about his family ties (like his grandparents relationship), which isn't the most charming aspect of the book. This left me feeling more sad, then engaged with their family and his quest to find out about his father. My favorite parts have to be the 9 year old's inquisitive dialogue and correspondence with his hero Stephen Hawking.

Matilda rules. Dahl rules. This reminded me slightly of lemony snickets cause the adults are evil and assume that a child knows nothing. In this case her parents are nitwits and Mrs Trunchbull is the devil and a child abuser! Thank goodness there is Miss Honey who actually believes in Matilda. More so I wish I was Matilda and that I had the mental capacity to read Dickens and all the classics by the age of 5, possess the power to outsmart people 10 times my age and levitate things with my mind, and instead of crying and complaining when things don't go my way, I get even!

What a tripped out novel. So apparently this author has some kind of following, and his latest book received the national book award. I was able to pick up Jesus' Son for 10 cents at the craft depot by my apt, but only got to read the first story, which was insane... it was a hitchhiker that was picked up by a family and survives a car wreck. I think I'm saving these stories form some occasion or mood. Not sure what.

I found this one, which I read right away (rare!) and I could not put it down. A guy - Lenny English" who failed at hanging himself, travels to a town where men cross dress and women are mostly lesbians. He gets hired to be a detective, as well as DJ for a radio station. He spends his time with Leanna - churchgoer/lesbian/subject of his detective work; then searching for a missing son/artist; and trying to get by. He's odd to everyone around him and feels like he already died, but is likeable and you can't help but feel bad for the guy at times. I'm sure I am missing a lot of the underlined meaning and its filled with plenty philosophical, funny, and also too smart for my ass remarks. But one of my favorites is:

Leanna came back to his mind. She liked to put her head on his chest and listen to his heart. "How could one person ever hurt another after doing this?" She'd ask him the first time. "But we do".

After finishing Cathedral and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, we ran out of his books, and I want more! I don't know what it is about him that resonates with me. His stories are not the happiest, nor do they take place in any big city or near the coast (yes middle america here), but they are realistic and tell the most about people emotions, intentions, tendencies, etc., which I think is refreshing. They are absurdly funny at times too. Luckily, my coworker/friend who turned me onto Carver, also recently copped his last stories, which is only in print in the UK and let me borrow them. I have to say that they are a bit more dark and gloomy, but they all hold a lot of truth to the situations each story contains. I really feel like it's what I needed... it fills two voids..one the time it takes for a different Carver book to be sold back to us and two, which is reading something a bit more down to distract me from other happenings (like below). What do I read next? they say Cheever, Chekov, and then there's always Murakami...

What the hell

As dumb as it is that I am blogging about my fucking breakup, I don't have much of an avenue to dump this on. I hate it. All the energy, time, and emotions for nothing. We can go through the cliches: take and apply all that you have learned, there's always something more out there, etc. etc., but I hate it. I'm sick of self medicating or trying to meet this person or trying to put myself out there. What for? Just to get all worked up and throw a couple of decent years away.

Before the Hunger Games, Collins wrote a series of these books, which is about a kid who falls through a vent into a underland with killer rats, giant roaches, spiders, and bats. He also gets to find where is lost father has been all these months. I think it's a pretty interesting setting, it's also so predictable, but I think that's what happens with a book for 8 year olds or some age group like that. Her writing is still smart, but even though I copped the second one at the thrift store, I don't think I'll be reading onto the fifth, unless something really superduper interesting happens... sigh.

With my short attention span and curiosity, I copped this from work. I am usually against the "sampler" type of book, but I tried to take it more as "short stories" and I really did not want to dedicate myself to murakami and his plethora of books, but I did want to discover what all the hype was about. I am glad I checked this out. Not only did I find out what books I did not care about reading, I found a bunch that I want to check out, and my goodness is he a great writer. So really every story in here has been interesting and extraordinary, with the exception of the first part of the lieutenant story from the Wind up Bird Chronicles, which I think I will not pick up, but the second part that mentions the skinning alive of a soldier and the details being thrown into a well and pissed on was alarming. I don't think I'll be a Murakami ultimate fan so I'm into the mixed bag of stories in here. Really, he seems to convey something different in each story, and it seems you really can't get the gist of him from one stinkin' novel.