The Devil Wears Prada

Lauren Weisberger

This was a wretched book, and it could have been so good. It was full of inaccuracies, misstatements, ridiculousness, wretched, uneven, wildly inconsistent characterization, and some really crappy writing. But it could have been fun – it was a light listen for standing on the Precor and trying to keep myself from crying. It had Fashion! and Excitement! And gossip and silliness in. It could have been something.

And it was at first. But at the end, I found myself really fucking hating the main character. The book’s about a fresh-out-of -college unfashionable girl who accidentally gets a job working for the entirely insane editor in chief of the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine. It could have been a collision course with wackiness.

You should have sympathized entirely with the bullshit that this girl had to put up with, the unreasonable demands that her boss makes, the terrible pressure this girl is under, except that she keeps doing stupid shit. She keeps fucking up. And she keeps acting like it’s entirely unfair that she gets in trouble for being a fucktard, and I wanted to kill her and her stupid stupidness.

I laughed aloud a number of times, because there are parts where the boss is genuinely unreasonable in a wildly entertaining way. But for the most part, the book was just plain irritating, the main character’s holier-than-thou attitude towards the whole industry tiresome, and her obvious fascination with the same industry annoying as hell. We won’t even talk about the entirely forgettable, crappy side-plots about the chick’s friends, and the ridiculous and painful ending that was just so stupid. Stupid! Stupid!

Anyway. Not worth even being a trash read.

summersummersummer

One of my favorite instructors wants to work with me this summer. Came up to me and everything, said those words. I want to work with you this summer. Here’s what we’re going to do. And we agreed to a plan and sort of sketched out an idea of what was going to happen, and it looks like I’m set for my writing intensive this summer.

I am trying to not shriek with glee. I am trying to not shake with tiny little trembles of terror. Because this instructor is a secret sweetheart with a soul of pure living gold, but has a reputation of a being a hardass, which is lived up to, every day and in every way when he is in Instructor Mode and your ass will be kicked, and hard, and you best be living up to expectations.

He has a lot of expectations for me. A whole lotta lotta. Which is a whole lotta deja vu and fucking terrifying. Except this time, I’m not panicking and terrified (and it is very funny, how in that entry I talk, in a very sarcastic manner, about how I haven’t quit school, and several months later, I actually do! Ha. Ha.). I am excited. I am so excited to work with him and I am so excited to be writing again. I’ve had the urge to write, and I don’t even know where it came from, this urge, but I’m not going to argue.

I set up writing dates with my friend H., itching, burning, other metaphors for herpes to write, and I am sitting here in a café on Cole street, post-date, sipping a mocha, having just finished thirteen hundred pretty good words of stuff, and I feel good about things. Hope, I’m full of it.

baby steps and instamatic floo

For the first time in I don't even know how long, I managed to write and finish a paper not on the day it was due, not in a panic an hour, half an hour, ten minutes before class, but the night before. And my god, the relief. The relief and the pride and the joy, in my silly three page paper in which I experienced Sherman Alexie and the effect of this and that on the other thing.

It's an okay paper – I love Alexie, despite his tendencies toward didactic preaching, which is also what I admire about him, that passion and anger. It was an interesting question, and I think I had some good thoughts and good things to say and it was an interesting assignment, and except for some final editing I did this morning to make sure it wasn't a rambling mess of incoherent medicine-talk (I am so very disgustingly plague-sick, and so very medicated), it was finished in plenty time. Plenty time! I rule!

Also, I drool. Jesus, I am tired of mouth breathing, and would cheerfully ice pick my own face if it meant I could breathe like a normal person and hear. The world is wrapped up in cotton flannel, and I say "WHAT? WHAT?" like I'm a hundred and seven. What the hell kind of cold clogs up your ears? A cold that sucks.

I think I have a fever, too. Also, my mouth is wet, my throat is dry, and I'm going blind in my right eye. My leg is cut, my eyes are blue - it might be instamatic flu.

I want a nap.

Little Earthquakes

Jennifer Weiner

This was kind of silly, and very slight. Of course, it's the very essence of chicklit, and you know, thus and therefore and whenceforth. And I liked it. I did. It was kind of dumb, and frequently cliched, and frequently I wanted to shake the stupid characters because they were doing stupid things and I got irritated by the sloppy and ridiculous cause and effect kind of writing (cause: girl grows up sad and poor! effect: girl obsessed with material things! etcetera.) and I know it sounds like a terrible book that I hated, but that was all background noise.

It was a pleasant, easy read, had one or two characters which were pretty cool, and you don't really care that nothing was really wrapped up very well at the end, because, you know, shrug.

In otherwords, stationary bike reading. It got me through an hour on that fucker, and that's all I asked for.

instant gratification

Have I ever mentioned how much I like working in a library? Because I really fucking love it. Someone mentions a book somewhere, I read a review online, I have a sudden urge to read the complete works of X, and five minutes later, it is in my hand, or on its way from another library in the system.

I am a lucky girl. And holy shit, do I have too many goddamn books in my To Read pile.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Mary Roach

Dear Mary Roach,

Hello. My name is Jen Fu, and I am writing to tell you that your book that was called Stiff was a very good book. I liked it! I think that you are brave to go looking at bodies and organ harvesting, and organ harvesting from bodies. You are very funny and also very smart. Sometimes, I think you went a little off topic and that was a little tiring, but I still like you! And your book! Which was a very good book and fun to read. You would not think that a book about bodies would be fun to read! But it was!

Here is a secret: the real reason I am writing is to request that you be my girlfriend. We can hold hands, and go for walks on the beach, and you can tell me funny stories about human heads and I can make tasty meatballs for you and we will live in a house filled with puppies and awesome-looking skulls and all your journalism awards and I will tell you that you're pretty every single day because I think that is very important in a relationship.

Call me!

Love,
Jen (Fu)

p.s. I am totally willing my body to science. But only after I am dead.