The Know It All

I just finished reading a really fantastic book that Meghan picked out for me in the Portland, Oregon airport. And she did a great job! This is a book written by a man who read the Encyclopedia Brittanica cover to cover in a year. It’s the true story of what he was reading at the time and what happened in his life. It’s written in a great way with each chapter being a letter of the alphabet and it’s not written in paragraph/narrative form, it’s written like an encyclopedia with entries for each letter. There were some really great ones, allow me to list them for you:

Bell: The world’s largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four thousand pounds. It never rang-it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a sad little story. All that work, all that planning, all those expectations-then nothing. Now it just sits there in Russia, a big metallic symbol of failure. I have a moment of silence for the silent bell.

Casanova: The famous 18th century lothario ended his life as a librarian. Librarians could use that to suck up their image.

Berserkers: Savage Norse soldiers from teh middle ages who, it is said, went into the battle naked. Hence “going berserk:. So to truly go berserk, you should take off your pants. Noted.

Climate and weather: Lightning goes up. It shoots right up from the ground and into the cloud. This is what the encyclopedia says in the section on climate and weather. I reread this passage a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t gone batty-but no, lightning goes up. To be technical, it does first go down-there’s an initial bolt called the “leader” that zips from the cloud to the ground. But the bright part, the part that flashes, is the “return stroke”, which goes from the ground back to the cloud. This is profoundly unnerving. When I didn’t know the history of canned laughter or the existences of a sexy Confederate spy, that was mildly vexing. But this is unnerving. This is a while new level of ignorance. I’ve been looking at lightning all my life, and it’s sky-to-ground direction seemed about as certain as the slightly asymmetrical nose on my face. To be confronted with this totally counterintuitive information-it makes me paranoid. What other incorrect ideas do I have? Is the sun actually cold? Is the sky orange? Is Keanu Reeves a brilliant actor?

Death: A Russian nobleman patented a coffin that allowed the corpse-if he regained consciousness after burial-to summon help by ringing a bell. Another good idea. Because that could really screw up your week-to wake up and find yourself in an airless coffin. I guess nowadays they could put cell phones in there.

Divorce: The easiest divorce around: Pueblo Indian women leave their husband’s moccasins on the doorstep and-that’s it-they’re divorced. Simple as that. No lawyers, no fault, no socks, just shoes.

Garrick, David: Famed 18th century Shakespearean actor who also managed the Drury Lane Theatre. He fought to “reform” the audience, discontinuing the practice of reduced entry fees for those who left early. I don’t like this guy. His reform in terrible. We need to go back to the old system: You stay an hour at a movie, you pay half price. You stay a half an hour, quarter price. Leave after ten minutes, the theatre has to pay you for your trouble.

Greenland: A mystery solved. I’ve always wondered why Greenland-which is basically a massive sheet of white ice-is called Greenland. Turns out the country’s name was coined by and Erik the Red, who had been banished from Iceland in 982 A.D. for manslaughter. He called his new home Greenland in order to entice more people to join him there. In other words, it was all a shady PR ploy by a felon. Shady, but smart. No doubt he got more takers than if he’d gone with something more accurate, like Bleakland or Depressingland or Youllstarveland.

Hollywood: This was founded by a man named Horace Wilcox, “a prohibitionist who envisioned it a community based on his sober religious principles”. Well, I know that a lot of Hollywood types are in AA. But other than that Mr. Wilcox would probably not be overjoyed.

James, Jesse: The greatest robber of the Wild West died in 1882. He was shot in the back by a gang member while he was at home “adjusting a picture”. That doesn’t seem right. Being shot in the back is bad enough, but while adjusting a picture? A notorious bandit shouldn’t end his life engaging in interior design. Well, at least he wsn’t crocheting throw pillows.

Urine: Dalmation dogs and humans have strangely similar urine (they’re the yonly two mammals to produce uric acid). This could be useful if I ever smoke pot, apply for a government job, and have access to Dalmations. REgardless, the unexpected connections continue to amaze.

So, there you have it. Some of the many things I learned while reading this book. Next up, the most recent Pulitzer winner.

 

Back to Good

Thank goodness for the first day of September since it means that my summer of fluff reading is finally over. Allow me to list for you the books I read this summer.

1. The entire Sookie Stackhouse series that is published so far. This is the series that the True Blood HBO series is based on about a woman and vampires. Classic trashy summer reading. (9 books)

2. The entire Artemis Fowl series. Really great children’s book series about a bad kid named Artemis and the havoc he wreaks on the hidden underground world of fairies. This was the best of my summer reading. (5 books)

3. The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. These were much better than I thought they would be and certainly inspired a lot of thought about religion and conspiracies which is all very interesting. (2 books)

4. The 15th book in the Stefanie Plum lady bounty hunter series. Now, I admit that I read this series whenever a new one comes out anyway. Autumn got me hooked when we were in college and it’s the only trashy reading I do. (1 book)

5. Lipstick Jungle by the woman who wrote Sex and the City. It was also a short-lived show on NBC with Brooke Shields. This book followed 4 women as they lived their lives in a year in New York. The problem was that I think you’re supposed to like all the women and I did not. (1 book)

6. Goodnight Nobody and Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner. Not bad. Girly and a little over-dramatic. Like watching a romantic drama. (2 books)

So, that’s it. I read 20 fluff books this summer and am glad to have finally finished all the books that Maren has bought me over the years. Fall of reading award winning books, here I come!

 

Another Confession

Once upon a time I told Maren I would have an all-fluff summer of reading. And once upon a time I tried hard to follow that rule. And once upon a time I failed.

The first two or three fluff books of the summer were entertaining and light and fun. And then the next 3 and the next 3 and the next 3 and I started to go a little book crazy. Because they are so easy to read, I have read 16 fluff books this summer but have never been so displeased with such a long string of books. It’s not the books fault. I’ve enjoyed the childrens books and even the others as well, but I missed learning. I missed being shocked by events in a story. I missed stories. And so I decided that I cold read one non-fluff book per month of the summer. So, in June I read Jane Austen’s Persuasion just because I was watching so many BBC films that I found I was yearning for some good ole Austen. Then in July, I decided to read the Anti-Fluff. And what could be more anti-fluff than Ayn Rand? Absolutely nothing.

So I read We The Living, which is her first novel and one that she claims is as close to an autobiography as she will ever come. I loved this book (as I love all Ayn Rand that I have read) and was sad to see it end. And, it was only 400 short pages long as opposed to the behemoth 1000 pagers she likes to write (Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) so it didn’t take long at all to read.

Please find below my favorite quotes from the book:

1. I was thinking about the streets. The streets of a big city where so much is possible and so many things can happen to you.

2. To a life which is a reason unto itself.

3. Don’t you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: This is mine? Don’t you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it?

For her first novel, I was a little shocked to find that it was much darker and less hopeful than Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. I mean, many a person died in this book in bad bad ways and life just sucked. That seemed to be the moral of the story and yet I still loved it.

My secret anti-fluff book for August is For Whom the Bells Toll by Hemingway. I have only read one Hemingway so far in my life, The Old Man and the Sea, but I loved it so much that I have read it twice in the last year and made Zak read it as well. I think Hemingway, much like Ayn Rand is an author that you either love or hate. Very few people feel just so-so about either of them. I like that. I like Ayn’s dramatic and strong women and her I’m-not-saying-the-word-communism-but-that’s-what-I’m-writing-about style. I also love what the New York Times calls Hemingways “terse prose”. The back of my copy of For whom the bell tolls says this as part of a mini-bio on the author: “Hemingway was an aficianado of bullfighting and big-game hunting, and his main protagonists were always men and women of courage and conviction, who sufferd unseen scars, both physical and mental”. Who woudn’t love that?

Speaking of anti-fluff. When August ends and I can start reading like a real person again, I’ve decided to do the award-winning tour. I think I’ll read some of the Pulitzers that I haven’t read, including the giant, Lonesome Dove. Then I’ll read the 2008 O. Henry prize winning collection that I bought just before the summer began and read one story in before having to take up the summer books. That one story was great, however, so I’m looking forward to the rest.

In case you are wondering what I am reading now in the fluff category I am sadly reading a book called “Lipstick Jungle”. Oh the horror. I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson this summer. If your sister buys you books, you should just read them when you get them and not let them accumulate over years until you have to do your penance by having an all-fluff summer. Note to selves.

 

BBC to the Rescue

In my continuing summer of fluff reading that has been killing me softly, I have had to find other ways to try to enrich the brain with literature and thus I have discovered the BBC mini-series based on classic british novels.

And thanks to Netflix and their watch instantly program, when I am yearning for actual literature I can watch some. It’s not the same, but it’s been helping a lot. So far this summer I have watched a Jane Austen, an Emily Bronte and a Charles Dickens novel. They have all been great. And since I love all things victorian and any movie/book where people visit one another for months at a time and women die of colds and people say “tis and twelvemonth and michealmas” I have been happy in my viewing.

Let me tell you about my favorite one so far called “He Knew He Was Right”. It’s based on a novel and is about this man who is jealous of his wife’s godfather who visits her everyday. He gets so jealous that he demands that she never see the man again and she yells at him for not trusting her. Things deteroriate so much that he sends her away and tries to take their child from her and then runs away with the child to Italy. Then when she finally tracks him down, he’s dying and still won’t believe her. But she finally convinces him to come back home with her and on his deathbed he tells her he believes her that she did not cheat and then she kisses him and he dies! How great is that? I mean, can you imagine reading that and how mad you’d be when you got to the end?! I so wish I had discovered it in that fashion, but seeing it was pretty awesome, too!

I can’t wait to get back to reading great books like this one. September 1st cannot get here soon enough for this reader! I think soon I will make a list of the book I am going to read when I can read good ones again. I’m thinking of doing an award month like on AMC when they only show Oscar winning movies in the month of August. I think that September might need to be Pulitzer, Mann Booker and National Book Award month for me. Or perhaps it should be classics month and I should read Crime and Punishment and For Whom the Bell Tolls and Madame Bovary and  A Tale of Two Cities. Oh dear, I’m getting excited about both of these options and I still have four weeks of reading hell to go through.

 

The Da Vinci Code

As the fluff contines:

I read the Da Vinci Code this week. Having seen the movie for the first time about a month ago I was pleased to find that the book was much better. It’s nice to find that even in less than intellectual fiction, the book is still better. I’m glad to know that this is a universal truth.

The thing I enjoyed about reading this book was that it took place in the parts of Paris where Zak and I spent a lot of time and so I could vividly picutre where they were and what things looked like. The only things that was negative about this was that I felt a little guilty about spending about 10 minutes in the Louvre instead of the many days it deserves.

This book also reminded me how interesting the history of religions is. If you haven’t read Under the Banner of Heaven which is a history of the Mormon church, you should. After the summer of fluff, I think I’ll do some non-fiction reading and look into the history of more religions. It’s all so very very interesting and sneaky and sometimes very bloody. I mean, more blood has been shed in the name of religion than in the World Wars combined and then some. Those crusades were pretty brutal and in the name of religion. I think I could read about this stuff for a long time and not tire of it. I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.

I can’t wait for my summer of fluff to be over. There are so many books that I want to read. My amazon.com wish list is growing by the day and it’s starting to wear away at me. What if I’m getting dumber by the second. What if that part of my brain that is used to read better books atrophies during this summer and I have to do some sort of physical therapy to get it back in working order. I mean, what if I have to start with really good children’s books like the Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where the Wild Things Are and then work my way up to the Pulitzers and Mann Booker winners of my past. Oh dear, this summer could cost me a lot more than I originally anticipated. Maybe to make up for summer of fluff, I’ll read all the books on Time Magazines top 100 novels of the 20th century. I’ll have to look up that list and see what’s on it before I commit to it.

Oh, that reminds me. In 1998 AFI (American Film Institute) came out with a list of the top 100 movies of all time. Zak, Maren and I decided to watch all of the movies on the list starting with the last one and working our way up. We made a little progress in high school but haven’t worked on it since then as we were separated for a long time. But, now that we are back together, we are starting the list up again and we are pretty excited. Up next #85 Duck Soup and then #84 Fargo. I’ll keep you updated on our work through the list and I can almost guarantee that after we are done with all 100 we will make our own list and pass that along as well. I know, you can’t wait. In order to give you a hint of this, I can guaratnee that while Willow does not appear on the AFI list, it will definately appear on ours. In case you weren’t sure, this list is less about great and moving films and more about our favorites of the past.

 

Fluff Positives

So, I’ve just finished another of my Summer of No Substance books. It’s called (take a moment to prepare for the sheer ridiculousness of this title) “Dead Until Dark”. Yes, that’s right. It’s the first book in a series of books about vampires. Yes, vampires. It’s the series of books that the HBO show “True Blood” is based on. Amber got me the series for Christmas, but I had yet to read them.

And, of course, as will all the other fluff so far this year, I liked it. I mean, vampires, small towns, mystery deaths, cemeteries, fangs-what’s better than that? I’m hard pressed to come up with anything right now. I’m really starting to understand the benefit of seasonal reading. I have always seen Pride and Prejudice as a spring book and I read Winters Tale in the winter, but other than that, I have never read seasonally the way many people do. I think I finally get it. I mean, when it’s so humid here in the summer that I fear my hair will suffocate me in the night, I can see how I wouldn’t want to use up too much more energy with thinking about heavy literary topics.

I have found thus far in my reading of nothing of substance that there are some positives to this endeavor:

1. you can read one of these books in a day. if that.

2. i have yet to cry for any of these characters

3. i think i might be sharpening my csi: crime solving abilities as every one of the books i have read so far (even the childrens books) have involved some sort of murder/mystery.

4. now when the rest of the world talks about reading the DaVinci Code, I can join in this book conversation-this ability to communicate with the masses is useful in that i don’t seem to do a lot of things that the rest of the world does. i don’t do facebook, i don’t listen to the radio or watch mtv, i don’t watch american idol. There are people on the covers of magazines that i couldn’t pick out a line-up, let alone guess why they are famous. Point being, maybe having a little something mainstream to discuss isn’t so bad.

Yesterday I was watching this video about this old man who had contributed a lot to special needs children’s education in NYC and he said something that has gotten me to thinking. He said that he has always read everything he can get his hands on because that’s the best way to learn. And damnit, I agree with him. However, in my acquiescence to this point, I think I may have to stop being such a book snob. That’s a terrible thing to let go of and I think it will be difficult, but I’m going to try to broaden my reading horizons. I don’t think this will ever involve a lot of the overly popular books, but I will try not to judge a book before I have read it. I mean, it’s hardly fair. Books in and of themselves aren’t bad. And I certainly don’t want the repuation of being someone who would throw books into a fire if given the chance. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I can think of a great many I’d toss in if I had to make a list.

So you see, dear blog readers, even thought I didn’t plan on it and didn’t mean to, I think I have accidentally learned something from reading fluff.

I think this is a good lesson for us all. After all, what is my blog but pure fluff. There aren’t great discoveries made here or world problems solved and it’s hardly fantastic prose, but if you keep reading, I bet you’ll learn something. I mean, who knew about that guy with his 888 kids?

 

Fluff Continues

After reading Angels and Demons, I went back to the children’s book series, Artemis Fowl. I just finished book two in this series where the main character is an evil, scheming pre-teen. What I love about these books is that while I like all of the characters, I don’t love them the way I do the Harry Potter characters. Nor do I often feel the need to cry or yell or run screaming from the book the way HP often makes me want to. The other great thing about this series is that you can read a book in a day if you wanted to. But it’s not so light that it’s not entertaining. I even occassinaly laugh out loud.

My summer of fluff is going okay except that I keep seeing other books that I want to read that I have to add to an ever lengthening list and I’m starting to yearn and I mean yearn for some weightier books and I’m only two books into my summer of fluff. Oh dear, I fear this will not end well.

 

Marmen is on her way!

How fitting is it that Maren Stefanie Genow, who made me promise to read books of no substance for the summer is arriving in New York later today, the very day in which I finished reading my first such reading endeavor. Yes, this morning, I finished Angels and Demons. As I previously predicted, I like it. I mean, it’s an action movie in book form. Who wouldn’t love that? And it involves religious conspiracies and secret societies. That’s the stuff dreams are made of.

Reading this book has made me want to read lots and lots more about secret socieites, like the FreeMasons, but then it also makes me not want to because of one very paranoid fear that I have:

 Namely that these secret organizations that you read about do exist and thay they monitor your book purchases (throught your credit cards) and they then monitor your email and BLOG posts and thus they know when you are onto them and they come after you and you will likely find yourself in a Turkish prison or jumping out of a helicopter to save your life only no one will belive what you say because they will have somehow messed with your credibility and you will end up like those people who claim they have been abducted by aliens who no one believes and everyone thinks is crazy!

I think the lesson here is that I will take some time to really think it out before I dive head first into some conspiracy theory research.

In only slightly related news (aliens) I watched Independance Day over the weekend. Yes, Dad, it was on and I was hungover and needed the distraction and I watched it. And, let’s be honest, loved it. As I do everytime that I watch it. I mean, I am Steve Genow’s daughter, how could I not. It also got me to thinking that I should memorize the speech that Bill Pullman gives right before they go off to fight the aliens in case a similar situation arises and I might need a similarly inspirational speech to rally the troops to fight off whatever we are fighting-Freemasons, aliens, monsters from the deep, you name it.

And in case you weren’t quite sure before, I think this post has proven that I think some really strange things when reading books and watching movies. Perhaps this is why I’m such a big reader, I mean, with thoughts like these rolling around during a read, who could possibly put down a book?

 

Books I Hate

As promised, you will find below a list of books that I hate and why. There are some shockers in there. These are in no particular order:

1. The Invisilbe Man: Let’s take a moment to talk about books that ramble and ramble and ramble and make the same point 1600 times. Also, I was reading this book for class in high school when a giant tornado hit our town and we were out of school for 4 days and I was 200 pages behind where we were supposed to be so I tried to read most of the book in one sitting (mistake) and hated it. I know it makes good points about race and I’m not a hater of the topic or the importance of it, I would just rather eat paste than even think about reading this book again.

2. The Scarlet Letter: I think my hatred for this book is purely situational. We had a teacher in high school who talked about this book everyday as the benchmark against which all uses of symbolism in literature should be measured. She talked about this book like it was better than sliced bread-although oddly, she never had us read it. So, in college, I finally did. And hated it. The whole point of the book is who knocked up Hester Prynn when it’s pretty obvious from about page 3 (of about 400) who did it. So then there is this giant reveal at the end but by that point I had already been bored for 397 pages. This is one of those things where I know that it was absolutely SHOCKING when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote it but is now basically a children’s book (okay, not quite, but certainly not shocking). The only positive about it is that it did indeed have great use of symbolism. Way to go, Nate!

3. Hamlet-Yes, I said Hamlet. Senior year of high school, we read Hamlet and our teacher went on and on about how Hamlet is a Hero. What?! If by hero you mean got carried away by emotion and led to a mass slaughter of family and friens and the ruination of lives, then yes, hero indeed. And so, being me, when we had to write an essay about Hamlet’s heroism, I did not. I wrote an essay detailing my thoughts to the opposite and was give an F on that paper. I am still pissed about this because while it didn’t agree with her opinion, it was well written, damnit! My beef with Hamlet is the same beef I have with all of Shakespeare’s tragedies. I think the moral of every tragedy he wrote is “ask a question”. In Romeo and Juliet, before killing yourself, ask a question (Romeo-are you dead? Juliet-are you dead?). Moral: All the heartbreak could have been avoided if one of them had merely asked a question before killing themselves. In Julius Ceasar if Brutus had only asked Ceasar if he was evil then he wouldn’t have had to kill him. Moral: before killing your leader and friend, ask a question. In Othello, if Othello had simply asked his wife is she was cheating on him he wouldn’t have had to kill her. Moral: before killing your wife, ask a question. I’m just saying. People are always talking about the brilliance of this man for other reasons, but I think he was brilliant for writing so many stories that are all basically the same story and being praised as a genius for hundreds of years. Well done, Will!

4. Love in the Time of Cholera-this book was one where I didn’t like it when I was reading most of it, liked it for a second when I read the end and have since come to hate the more and more I think of it. I mean, “Love”? in the time of cholera? That’s not what the book is about. Obsession in the time of cholera would have been more appropriate. I hate books and stories like this where one person pines for a million years for the other person and finally when that other person is out of all other options, they return the love. What kind of crap is that? Who wants that? How is that love? It’s the Ted Mosby’s of the world (fictional character from How I Met Your Mother) that think that that’s romantic, whereas I think it’s sad and a little insulting to the person who was pining the whole time and a mark of their very low self-esteem. I think it also hurts me here in that I don’t believe in love at first sight or fate and those are pretty much the foundations of this book.

5.  Catch 22-This is another example where the author feels the need to make the same point for 500 pages just to make sure it’s been thoroughlly beaten into your brain. And while I get that that’s sort of the point overall, it still drove me crazy and I hurried to finish the book just so I wouldn’t have to keep reading it. And yes I do realize that having to keep reading a book that I hate in order to stop reading the book that I hate is in itself a Catch 22 and that is ironic and funny but I didn’t appreciate the humor.

6. Haunted-this book was written by one of my favorite authors, the guy who wrote Fight Club. Sadly, Chuck sold out with this one and instead of being great new work it was really his short stories (which I had already read) worked into a new and boring story arc. Boo!

7. A Prayer for Owen Meany-This is the book that Simon Birch the movie was based on where there’s this strange little kid and he accidentally kills his best friends mom and what happens after that. Except that I cannot tell you what happens after that because stupid John Irving won’t tell me. It’s been hundreds of pages and nothing really happens and he keeps flashing forward to the future life of the kid whose mom it was and he’s a priest and he’s so boring and just talks and talks and talks….and I confess, I started this book in 2005 and still haven’t finished it. It’s still on my shelf and I sometimes think about going back to it but just can’t torture myself in that way.

Okay, here’s the big one:

8. To Kill a Mockingbird-Yep. Hated it. Hated the story and the discussion and the work we did on it and the movie. And I have a secret dislike for Gregory Peck because of the film. Sorry. But leave it to me to hate the book often called the greatest American novel ever written.

Those are the only ones I can think of right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with more and I’ll let you know. Now, this may seem like a big number, but for someone who has read 50-75 books a year the last 4 years, it’s really a very small percentage. And most of these did not even come from that period of time.

Also, my dislike for many of these stems from the larger issue that I’m not going to like something just because it’s a “classic” and I’m supposed to. Not going to do it. Several of these book fall into that category.

P.S. If any of you want to share about the books you hate, I’d love to hear about them.

P.P.S My apologies to those of you who are angry about two straight days of book blogs. And my your welcome to those of you who liked it-Grandma and Erica!

 

Book Confession

Okay, this really isn’t a confession to anyone who has ever heard me talk about books. I’m a book snob. Big time. I think that people who only read The DaVinci Code and Oprah Book Club Books* and The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Eat, Pray, Love are not in fact readers. That they are making the rest of us book lovers look bad. That they and the authors they read are sullying the good name of book. That they and the romance novel readers of the world should be locked away from the rest of us. (Don’t you love that I always have such strong opinions? While it might seem annoying at times, you’re rarely ever confused about how I feel about anything which I think is probably refreshing, right?)

(*Okay, confession within a confession: I have read and enjoyed many an Oprah Book Club Book. Fall on Your Knees, The Road (which I read 6 months before she picked it), The Secret Life of Bees were all great books selected by Oprah. In point of fact, it’s not actually the books I have a problem with in this case, it’s that there are people women in the world who only read books that Oprah tells them to read. This makes me nervous because it’s just one more fact that points to the secret truth that Oprah runs the world and controls the minds of millions of Amercian women. Many moons ago when Oprah endorsed Obama what did I say? “There goes Hillary’s chances, Obama will win”. And who is in the oval office now? The guy that Oprah picked. I’m just saying…)

This tiny book snob opinion of mine has long been a point of contention with me and several people, but particulary Maren who has  read all of Dan Brown’s books (DaVinci Code guy) and has given me books as gifts that I have not read because of my aforementioned book snobbery.

 Alas, when we were driving back from Oklahoma on day 2-the longest day ever due to a slight mis-calculation on our parts-Maren somehow got me to promise to read The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons and to read all the other books she has bought me that I haven’t read. Ahhh!! How did this happen? I blame Pennsylvania! If we hadn’t been trapped in that state for a million years, I would not have become so bored and mentally fragile and open to suggestion.

WAIT!!!

 On the way to Oklahoma I was telling Maren and Jeff about my final project for my psych class that was about suggestion and how people confess to things they didn’t do and will agree to things they didn’t do and what causes this. Is it then a coincidence that Maren was then able to get me to agree to something I would not normally agree to or was she using my own lessons against me? I think Maren is much tricksier then she seems on the outside. I think beneath her cute giggles and shy demeanor she’s an evil, scheming, dirty whore (that’s right!) and she has fooled me! I bow my head in the shame of it all…or do I? For if Maren has finally learned the tricks of getting people to do things that they don’t want to do hasn’t she just finally learned what I’ve been trying to teach her for years? The skill that I’ve been using to my own advantage since I was a little girl? So, if you think about it, there’s no need to hang my head in shame. Rather, I should be giving myself a parenting high five and saying a heartfelt Way to Go! to Maren.

Way to Go, Maren!

 (p.s i know maren is not a cat, but figure she’d enjoy the cat giving a high five picture)

And back to topic-this summer will be a summer of reading that I won’t want to write home about, but I will be honest and blog my true feelings. The thing is, I’m sure I will like most of these books. There are very few books that I dislike (I think I’m going to have a whole separate blog post on books that I hate) and I’m sure that if Maren likes these books they will be, at the very least, entertaining. Since I won’t be reading anything of substance this summer, I’ve decided to take it all the way. I will read all of the Dan Brown books and the other books Maren got me and then I will also read only childrens literature or books about vampires. In fact, if there is a life lesson to be learned, a tear to be shed, a life decision to be re-though, I will have no part of it this summer! That’s right, it’s all fluff reading for me! You know, go big or go home!