Books 29, 30, 31, 32

I think from now on, I'll just post the title and author of the books, say what I liked about them, and then move straight into the nitpicking. YAY!

• Book 29 was Wake, by Robert J. Sawyer.

Much like the other books of his I've read:

1. Gets lots of points for originality, interesting themes, explaining science/technology without making the reader feel talked down to.

2. His characters, sadly, were only meh-ish, which brought the overall score down a notch or two. I mean, the people had interesting traits, but I didn't feel like they were developed much.

3. The main character is blind, and it's interesting to read about her adaptations to life in a seeing world. Last summer I read a bok with a deaf character, so a year ago I was walking around with my hands clasped over my ears, toying with sign language (I can say "milk" *) and reading forums for deaf people**. This time I was walking around with my eyes closed, bumping into things. Fascinating stuff.

3. The main story happens in Canada (go beavers!) but there's a secondary story taking place in China at the same time. It's interesting, but then halfway through the book it just... stops. It doesn't really get connected to the main part, and it doesn't get properly resolved. Huh?

5. My nittiest, pickiest nitpick: One character is overweight, and the author constantly makes little comments about his heavy breathing, furniture creaking under his weight, etc., or makes little snide comments, like how he was so eager to get to work that he only had 2 helpings of dinner, or whatever. Like, really? Does Robert J. Sawyer have some sort of weird grudge? Was his pet chihuahua crushed by an chubby person or something? HUH?? IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?? And is said problem just me, being paranoid?

6. Other than that, good up until the ending. I know this is the first part of a trilogy, so it has to have a somewhat open ending, just not that open.

• Book 30: Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie

Chick lit. Entertaining, light, good characters. Like watching a romantic comedy, only more explicit (side note: if someone fed me six donuts I would probably feel like throwing up, not like ravaging them and having an all-night sex marathon, but that's just me).

My only complaint is that roughly 90% the dialogue consists of witty one-liners. It gets a bit old.

• Book 31: Anyone But You, by Jennifer Crusie

Chick lit again! Yep, I spent half a week reading Jennifer Crusie. After the previous one, I didn't feel like reading anything serious. Again, it's entertaining, light, with good characters.

My stupid, catty nitpick: everyone is glaring at each other all the time. Someone will make a small joke and the other person will glare in response. I mean, a glare here and there is a healthy things, but it gets used constantly and seems like a bit of a strong response to a clever quip made by your romantic interest. It was bugging me so much at one point that I started counting (yes, I'm petty), and it was used once on each page for three consecutive pages. Finally it was replaced with "an icy stare". Agh.

Maybe "glare" doesn't mean what I think it does. Maybe it's a look of annoyance: a short, playful squint of the eyes accompanied by a pursing of the lips. Maybe it's not a death stare, like I've always thought it was. VOCABULARY POLICE!!

Anyway, all that aside, I'm noticing a few patterns in Jennifer Crusie's books:

1. There's no real doubt that the main character will pair off with Prince Charming (or in this case, Hot Doctor From Downstairs Who's Ten Years Younger Than The Main Character), which is refreshing. It's the how and when that's interesting.

2. The off-beat best friend(s).

3. The fixation with some sort of junk food. In one book it was donuts, in this one it was Oreo cookies and ice cream milkshakes.

4. Main character has an average body, but her friend(s) are thin and beautiful.

• Book 32: Home From the Vinyl Cafe, by Stuart McLean.

I read this book once before, a few years ago, and was careful not to read it again until sufficient time had passed. I didn't want to wear it out, like when you watch a sitcom episode too many times and it stops being so funny. Or like eating varenyky too often so it stops being quite so special (varenyky only happens on my birthday).

Anyway, I love the Vinyl Cafe podcast, and I love this book. No complaints here.

* I learned other words, but promptly forgot them. To say "milk" in Mexican sign language, you mimic milking a cow. No, really!

** Apparently some deaf people only date other deaf people, and feel very strongly about it. Who knew?

Whipped cream? Nope.

My sister Reenie's birthday was last Friday, but we didn't celebrate (read: eat birthday pie) until today. That's because on the day after her birthday she was scheduled to stand up in front of 100 or so people in some pants and a tiny, midriff-exposing top, and when you're a fitness instructor, you want people to see your muscly abs and not a fleshy sack of half-digested cake. YUM!

So today we had our aunts, uncles and cousins over and ate birthday pie. It was chocolate tofu pie, which sounds weird but is reeeeal tasty. I went out to buy whipping cream to top said pie with, only apparently whipping cream does not exist south of our local Costco. I didn't have time to go to Costco (ages away on the bus), so I looked in the nearby grocery stores and cremerías (shops that sell dairy products, ham, and related stuff) and NOBODY HAD ANY. Sheez.

I bought some vanilla-mint gum instead. Mmm.

***

I started running more frequently when I got my SEXY NEW SHOES!!! and now my feet have baby blisters in several places, and the skin on the back of my heels is all tough and manly. I'd forgotten that happens. Ugh. Now I'm always paranoid being barefoot during Body Balance class, like the person behind me will glimpse my roughed-up tootsies during the swan poses and get grossed out or something. Ridiculous (?), but still true.

Book 27, 28

My posts keep getting longer and longer. Back in the day, it was a few paragraphs tops. So I'm publishing just the books in this post so that it's easier to skip over when I'm going through the archives, reading old posts.

Eee hee hee.

Book 27: Nation, by Terry Pratchett

Plot: A giant wave swallows up a bunch of islands from an archipelago, and kills almost everybody who lives on them. Mau, a native guy, survives and befriends Daphne, an English girl who was shipwrecked on his island. Eventually survivors from other islands join them, and they form a small community. Human nature, loss, religion and so on are common themes.

I realize I make books sound unexciting at best. I'm sorry about that. There's a much better review here, anyway. Basically, I really like it because: It gives you a lot to think about, it's mostly serious with just the right amount of funny, the plot is good, the narration is good, it seems pretty well-researched, and the characters are absolutely marvelous (not like the Airborn ones, as I'd mentioned before. Ugh).

I picked up this book because it was lying discarded on the kitchen table after my mom read it. I nearly finished it but didn't want to read the last chapters, because (spoiler!) it was pretty obvious by then that Daphne was going to sail off ad probably never return to the island. Nooooo! Mau and Daphne would have made such a great couple. Sigh. After bracing myself and finishing the last chapter, I was ready to toss the book down and throw a tantrum, but the epilogue stopped me. Now that was a good epilogue! (Pay attention, Scott Westerfeld. The Peeps epilogue was the only bad part of your book, IMO).

On a related note: There were so many passages of Nation that I liked and should have bookmarked to think about later. I didn't, because it was too good to put down in favor of a Post-It hunt, but I really should keep a little notebook with me to copy down phrases. I'll try to, from now on (and will probably fail. Shush!).

Book 28: Kitchen Chinese, by Ann Mah.

We got this book from my sister, who picked it up at a discount shop and passed it on to my mom when she visited her. Thanks, Izzy!

I didn't expect much from this book, to be honest, but it was better than I expected. 3.5 out of 5, I'd say. Nice bit of light reading, and adequately entertaining.

Pros:

1. Some interesting characters (the main girl, her sister, her friend, her boss).

2. Takes place in China, which was interesting.

3. The workplace and job-related scenes were good. Nice dynamic going on with the coworkers.

4. Features food. I like food!

Cons:

1. The romantic conflict was annoying: it is OBVIOUS from the start that she'll dump the macho-guy (whom she repeatedly says she doesn't like anyway) and end up with the charming, successful upstairs neighbor. It felt forced, could have done without it.

2. Some characters were under-developed (mainly the romantic interest).

3. She uses "e.g." instead of "i.e." twice (yes, I'm lame and care about this). But that's an editing thing.

4. Sometimes the descriptions get a bit... er, boring. Going on about the lovely pillars which draw the eye up to the nice thatched roof and whatnot.

5. The timeline was a bit weird. She doesn't really say how much time passes between scenes, so I was surprised when it was mentioned that nearly a year had passed.

Sushi, dad, shoes, book 26

Huh. I'd started to write another post and then abandoned and forgot it. I'll go back and finish it when I'm done this one.

My dad came back from a business trip to Spain two days ago. I woke up the exact moment he arrived home, because despite the fact that it was early in the morning (by summer vacation standards: sometime around dawn) the dog* went ballistic and started yapping because she was so happy. The dog loves my dad. Loves him. The first time in her life that he left on a trip she sank into a deep doggie depression and refused to eat ("Well, maybe a piece of grilled chicken stuffed with caviar. If it's been marinated in white wine. And served with truffle oil. No, leave the bottle.").

Anyway, Dad was in a good mood so we went out for mexican sushi (you can tell it's mexican because it has cream cheese in it, for some reason) and a bit of mall roaming. Several times during the meal he would fill lulls in the conversation with a micro-speech that always starts with "Now, I just want everybody to be happy and enjoy this outing, now that we're together…". That's just a thing my dad does. Like he wants to nip bad vibes in the bud, even when there are no buds to nip (this sometimes has the effect of creating bad vibes. Imagine you were having a regular old conversation with someone, and they kept going "Whoa, stay cool, man, stay cool!").

Stores are having summer sales now. And sports stores have sneakers at affordable prices now. Shoes that my sister and I would lust after cost less than half of what they normally do. So when you've got a happy dad with money to burn who's smiling at you and asking what it is that you want, and there's beautiful, beautiful sneakers in the same building, you can guess what happened.

My old sneakers are over a year old, anyway. So, you know, it was time.

Photo from www.runpals.com

I own and love pair of these now. Nike Air Max Turbulence+ 16, in pink (pink is cute). They're really great! It's like wearing pillows on your feet. Pillows that do all the running. All you have to do is swing your arms and let them do all the work.

When I wore them for our first run together, the first four miles were great, but the last two were a bit uncomfy because the arches are a little bit too far in front. So it was like running on aggressive pillows. And today, the day after, my hip hurt a bit in the morning but it's fine now. I'll see how this develops.

But I still love them. And they were cheap(ish).

I don't suppose anyone is much interested in the placement of the arches of my feet, so please enjoy this photograph of one of my sisters and me, circa 1996. Or 1995. Or 1997. Er, of my sister and me in the 90s.

I'm the one that doesn't look ecstatic, just generally content (i.e., I'm the one with short hair).

Book time! Book 26 was Mexican High, by Liza Monroy.

It's about Mila (shortened from "Milagro"), a teenage girl who moves to Mexico City in the eighties. She starts out relatively innocent, but since she goes to a school for über rich kids she picks up a few habits: a lot of smoking, a lot of drinking, a ton of drugs and some sex here and there. Seriously, she's high or drunk or both about half the time. The rest she spends hung over.

The book itself was just okay. None of the characters are developed much, save for Mila and her mom (some people are introduced and talked about for short while and then just disappear forever. Poof!), and the climax wasn't really much of a climax. The timeline was a little odd. But none of that really matters, though, because I read it to pick on it! For example, she mentions the "sweet smell of the bougainvilleas". Directly after typing that sentence, I went outside into the garden and literally stuck my nose inside three different bougainvillea flowers. Those things do not smell at all.

Oh, and in another part of the book she mentions that none of her mexican classmates had ever heard of or eaten string cheese. Um, hello, Oaxaca cheese?

Of course I'm being nitpicky just for the fun of it. Being mean brings me an odd sense of satisfaction that has a lot to do with my lack of friends unique personality.

* When I say "the dog", I mean Maxie. We have another dog (Reyna), too, but she's like a permanent house guest or something. Which is to say, my mother accidentally called me "Maxie" once or twice, but would neve confuse me with Reyna… I think.

Happiness, that elusive bastard

I suspect I'm not quite well. But then, nobody is really happy, right? I mean, whatever "problems" I might have, or fancy I have, well! That's just small potatoes! There's people around me getting kicked out of their homes, and people who are scared to come out of the closet because their family is freaky religious, and people who have depression, and eating disorders, and are living in a strange city and feel like they don't fit in, and people whose dad died out of nowhere. I mean, I didn't just make those all up.

But just now I've realized that I've been... I don't know. I'd repeat the previous paragraph to myself every time I felt bad, small, insignificant, uninteresting and lonely. I haven't felt too happy since my last year of high school. In fact, I don't remember all that much of my last year of high school, except that I felt miserable a lot. They made us take like 5 different psychological tests (those horrible ones that take hours to complete and are hundreds of questions long) and the psychologist called me in to discuss my results because I came out unhappy.

I'm wondering if I plan to publish this post. I meant to at first, but now it's getting a bit embarrassing. I have a whole bunch of private-ish posts that sit unpublished.

Anyway, she held up the results of one test that evaluated... I forget, but there were five or six things, and one of them was sociality. I still remember that she held up my chart and said, "Look! Your social bar isn't there! It's a zero!". We talked for about an hour (well, she talked and asked questions and I went through her Kleenex), and she said she'd like me to go back but I never did.

My self-esteem remained pretty low until... Well, let's see. There was a little spike where I felt a bit better around December before last, while I was on a trip with a group of students. We were in Europe, and I could let loose a bit there. We were in sort of forced cohabitation, so it was easy to hang out with other people, get to know each other, and so on. Then the trip ended and I don't remember anything much after that, except that I became really irritable. Like, I though everyone else was being annoying and stupid. And then I realized it was me (and started crying in the library. Luckily my friends are not asses like I am, and patted me).

I'm just going to briefly mention again that I feel really stupid writing this. Wait for the end.

Anyway, I finished high school feeling sick of everyone (and feeling guilty and mean for it). Oh, and I felt fat because I'd gained like 5 kilos during the last year and especially in Europe, where they force-fed us pasta, pizza and fast food. My jeans did not fit. Also I had a brief stint with a dude who was an ass (he wasn't mean to me or anything, he was just dumb and had some weird sort of god complex. I mostly hung out with him because we hadn't known each other very long. Then I got sick of him, too, and sort of stopped talking to him).

Then I got into university. Yay! I was determined not to fuck this one up! I wanted to make friends! Be proactive! Hurray!

So I sort of sat by myself until one very talkative girl in my class spoke to me one day and I got very slowly sucked into her social circle. It took me ages to actually be comfortable talking to the other people. Like, months. Like, pretty much the whole semester. Even now I still don't know what they're talking about half the time because I'm out of the loop so much. But! I'm there. And the talkative girl is basically my best friend at university.

Then what? Oh, yes, holidays after my first semester. We all hung out once, just as the semester was ending, and then I lost contact with everyone. I stopped charging my cell phone because nobody was texting or calling anyway. I mostly hung out by myself and didn't do much.

Don't get me wrong, every now and then I'd do something with my cousins or my sisters (one came to visit. We sat on the couch and talked a bit). But mostly everyone was busy and I, um, wasn't.

Then I started my second semester at university. Oh gosh. My second semester. Well. I wasn't in any of the same classes as my crowd from first semester (except for one girl whose name I barely knew –I told you I was out of the loop– and whom I've since gotten to know much better). Luckily after a few weeks we realized that a lot of us (the crowd, I mean) finished our classes at roughly the same time several days a week, and we'd meet up at the end. I got rides home with my friend, and eventually befriended another guy in my Biochemistry lab team who'd give me rides home when my other friend couldn't.

That guy is awesome. My friends were all disappointed because he's both gay and good-looking ("But why?! Are you sure he's gay??"). He's just one of those people who you sort of click with, even if you're quite different, sappy as that may sound. I've come to associate the feeling of being in a cigarette smoke-impregnated car full of garbage with being in some sort of safe little cocoon. And when I had a bit of an eensy panic attack once and was hyperventilating manically into a corner, he showed up out of nowhere and hugged me and suddenly I felt so much better. I mean, that won't work coming from just anyone.

I'm going to take another moment to remind you that this is really embarrassing for me to write.

Anyway, meeting my friends at night and riding home with my friends were about the only decent times I had for a good chunk of the semester. The rest of the time I felt like a piece of shit, pardon my french. I couldn't concentrate in class, no matter how hard I tried. I walked around aimlessly in my free time with nobody to talk to and nothing to do. I'd randomly burst into tears (in the library, in the lab, sitting on the grass, in class...). I lost my appetite (and, thus, some weight!). For the field trip for Algae class we went to the beach. Everyone else ran around all happy in the sand and went swimming an, you know, had fun. I was just sort of on automatic. The only pictures I have of me are the ones I took on the last day because I realized I wouldn't have any to show my parents, otherwise.

It got worse, until I wasn't just feeling crappy at school. I was feeling crappy at home, too. And then I started to feel crappy at home and not care much if my parents saw me feeling crappy. And then I started to feel crappy at the gym. The gym! The gym is where I was always happy! My mom said I'd get over it, and my dad –oddly enough– sat down with me and we talked a bit. Also he bought me stuff.

It sounds awful, but that made me start to feel somewhat better.

For the first four or so months of the semester I didn't want to go see the faculty's psychologists because I was afraid of making them bored. I was convinced that if I showed up and said that I wasn't feeling well, they'd think "Oh, geez, another bored, whiny kid who thinks they've got problems." When I finally decided to go for at least one appointment, I figured it wasn't worth it anymore, because I was able to concentrate in class and was feeling pretty much okay.

So why was I feeling so bad in the first place? I have no idea. I know that way back in high school it was because I felt that there were so many things that I couldn't control, first and foremost that trip to Europe. It was done on the terms of some egomaniac bossy ladies. The psychologist I mentioned figured that one out, that I felt bad because I couldn't control any of it. And then, built on that, I felt so, so, SO stupid and guilty, because come on!!! I'm unhappy because I'm going on a fucking trip to another continent? Um, hello, how many people would love to have that, on whatever terms? And that's sort of a theme throughout the last two years. I felt stupid and guilty for feeling sad. But I have so many things going for me! My family is complete, we've got money, I'm in university studying something I love, my grades are okay. Or what's more, there's clothes on my back, food in my stomach and a roof over my head.

How could I be so selfish? Why on earth would anyone feel unhappy, having all that? God, I don't know. This is all messed up. Anyway, on to the epilogue.

I made conscious decisions to be more open, to talk to people more, to adress things that bugged me. I learned corny, useful things, one of which I remind myself about often: Happiness is not a destination, but a journey. As in, you don't wake up and say "Finally! I'm happy!". It's a process. And I'm working on it.

Oh god oh god oh god, am I going to publish this? Aaagh. Okay, must not chicken out. Nobody reads this blog anyway, it'll be like saying it out loud... to my pillow.

Summer Holidays, Book 25

My summer vacations started about a month ago, and there's still another month to go. That's actually a lot of vacation time, a fact that my Biochemistry teacher quickly noted and whined about. He likes to complain about the school administration, not without reason. Anyway, the weeks scheduled for final exams were free time for me, since I only wrote one final (and did okay).

My grades this semester were the best I've had since middle school, and while I'm not really sure how I managed to scrap a 9 in Algae & Protists, I'm not questioning it. I'm terrible at algae (nasty, slimy, stinky things) but am just fine with protists as it turned out. Anyway, my overall average is like 8.6 or 8.7 now, which is not mediocre. Hurray!

***

I spent the first few weeks of my holidays socializing, but then stopped answering text messages, e-mail and Facebook inbox thingies. See, I like other people and all, but get tired of them very quickly. And then I get all sad because I'm all alone (yeah, I know, it's my fault. Whatevs).

Some friends from my first semester and I held a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. We tried to do one last semester, too, but ended up watching Disney movies because half of the attendees strongly objected to reading subtitles. Instead of watching Aladdin with the others, I helped the host cook dinner by repeatedly flinging pasta onto his ceiling until it stuck there and I had to ask him to unstick it (this guy is really tall). See, I don't care for kids' movies*.

Anyway, we planned a LotR marathon with the extended DVDs, but decided that this time non-subtitle-lovers would remain uninformed of the event so as to avoid Disney-hijacking. So it was just me, two friends, a guy that tagged along because he had a crush on me (let's call him Crush Dude for now), the host and his girlfriend who came over later in the day.

Funny side story, Crush Dude poked me awake in the wee hours of the morning before leaving and asked if I wanted to go out later.

Crush Dude: So... you want to go out later today?

Me, bleary-eyed and wanting to go back to sleep: No.

[Pause]

Crush Dude: Oh. You sure?

Me: Yes.

[Crush Dude stands there for several seconds. Goes away.]

I mean, who thinks it's acceptable to poke people awake unless it's necessary? That's rude, right? Blah.

Back to the movie marathon, though: history repeated itself, and we ended up watching only the special features for the second movie and Disney's UP. I don't mind UP because I like the dog and the kid. And the bird.

I'm not sure I'm being totally coherent here. I think I'm just skipping around subjects randomly. I just hope that when I read this in 40 years I'll be able to know what I meant at the time.

The next morning it was just me, the host and one of the aforementioned friends, because everyone else jumped ship. So the three of us had breakfast (well, I had tea and they had Corn Pops with crushed Oreos mixed in. I'm not sure if any of that is a real breakfast) and then vegged out playing video games. I managed not to lose all of the time– I was competent! Even when we were joined by the hosts 15-year-old brother I managed to mostly not lose. I consider my video game abilities to have reached their peak.

* About kids' movies: They bore me and I don't like the humour (it's all crass and slapstick-y). The exception is Brother Bear, with the commentary by the comedian dudes who did the moose's voices. I watch that... every two or three years.

Book time! Yay!

Book 25 was Bill Richardson's Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast

Lovely book. It went perfectly with this summer, which is RAINY AND MISERABLE. I don't mean to say that the book is miserable –it's really good–, but rather that it made me go on walks out in the rain and appreciate the crap weather instead of staying in bed and being mopey.

Seriously though, what up with the weather? It's s'posed to be SUMMER, for f*ck's sake!