We Were Liars

The Resolution

I've made a New Year's resolution this year to read more. I've noticed over the past few years that my rise in smartphone usage has adversely affected my appetite for reading anything more substantial than listicles on Buzzfeed, and it's a trend that needs to be turned around as soon as possible. In order to put my resolution into terms that I felt I could comply with, I've given myself a specific amount of reading that must get done. This year, I'm going to read a minimum of two books per month. That is unless I decided to wipe the cobwebs from my copy of Infinite Jest. In which case, I'll give myself more time because that book is my Everest, and is known to take readers an entire season to finish.

So far, so good.

Image via Flickr (Abhi Sharma)

 I began the year by reading The Art of Racing in the Rain and, man, I wish I had thought to blog about that book because it made me think a lot of stuff. Mostly, I thought that I'm sick of the ol' slutty Lolita trope. It seemed increasingly dangerous in this book because a small underlining theme emerged that may lead some readers to believe that there are a sizeable amount of false rape accusations floating around, which is most definitely not true. I distinctly remember a line from Eve's mom about the girl being beyond her years (paraphrased) and someone in the court setting saying something along the lines of sometimes rape accusations are true and sometimes they're wrong and, oh dear lord, who hurt you Garth Stein? Why don't you put your protagonist in a seemingly insurmountable situation of his own making, and have him truly grow as a character by learning from his mistakes? Did you really feel that he had to be entirely blameless to be a good person? I dunno, whatevs. I still cried at the ending.

Oh yeah, the book that I'm actually here to talk about:

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Image via Goodreads.com

 I tend to wait until after I read a book to really delve into the Amazon comments. I don't want the negative ones to sway my enjoyment of the book, and I don't want the good ones to give me an overinflated sense of enjoyment. Once I was done, I jumped in to see what others thought, and I noticed a trend among the comments with the least stars; they seemed to be overly concerned with the author's use of odd prose, but, I say, do your thing, girl. Sometimes e.e. cummings work sits wrong with people, but there's certainly not a finite rule to how you write your own book. I actually enjoyed the little fairy tales interjected in some of the chapters. I'd actually like to go back and reread them and see how they truly correlate with the ending of the book, but I'm too lazy, and that would be devoting entirely too much time to an overwrought beach read.

Now, with that being said. Just because E. Lockhart can and should ignore the structure haters, it doesn't mean I didn't roll my eyes a little bit at her nouns-as-adjectives descriptions of the liars. "She is sugar, curiosity, and rain." *eyeroll* Deep. Very deep.

I also find it hard to believe that this book takes place in today's society but, instead of constantly snapchatting their friends back home and taking selfies of themselves on the beach and instagramming all the yummy foods they're eating on the Cape they're actually spending time with each other and doing things like reading and talking. This book could have easily been set in the early nineties and avoided technology, for the most part, altogether. Instead, Lockhart mentions iPads and cell phones, and we're just supposed to believe they aren't using them. I realize that this is nitpicky, and there are teenagers that can enjoy themselves today without technology, but come on.

Another critique I noticed on Amazon was that the main character, Cadence, is immature for a teenager. I didn't find this to be true at all. She had a big crush on a boy that she thought was the one, and she had her feelings hurt and was a bit overdramatic, even before the twist was revealed, but that is what teenagers do. Plus, she had a massive head injury that pretty much left her stagnate in the emotional and mental growth areas that are essential to maturity, so lay off her a bit.
Overall, I recommend this book. It was a quick and entertaining read and, as I mention below, even though I saw what was coming, I still enjoyed the ride, and was still surprised by some of the twists and turns.

Also, this is my first blog post of what I'm hoping will become a series of posts about the books I read this year, so I hope someone stumbles upon this and either agrees, or vehemently disagrees with my opinion of whatever the novel in question may be, and they let me know in the comments. Just don't be mean, k?

Spoilery Diatribe

Read past this point only if you've read the book yourself, or if you don't mind the big twist being revealed.

 Alright, I would actually like to take a poll of people who have read the book and knew the liars were dead the whole time. I am not the best when it comes to seeing ahead of the literary curve, but I saw where this was going the second she landed on the beach on summer 17 and the liars were standing away from everyone who was greeting them. Of course, she had a head injury, and all we knew was that she was found washed up in the ocean, so I was caught off guard by the actual way they died. I for sure thought that they got into a boating accident with Gat at the wheel, but no, they started the world's dumbest fire.

I'm pretty sure when I was 15 that I knew how dangerous fire was, and that gasoline only makes it that much more dangerous. Lockhart kind of gives her characters an out by explaining that they were pretty drunk, but I would have liked to bear witness to the paper-rock-scissors for who had to go to the 3rd floor. You better believe, in that scenario, that I'd peace out if I didn't get to light the match whilst jaunting merrily out the front door.

One of the things that bothered me most about the ending is that we don't have a clear resolution to how Cadence ultimately deals with the past. Do her headaches cease once she's realized the truth? Is it worse or better that she knows what happened? I must admit, I shed a tear when Gat swam away into the water to go back to wherever they were. Although, I think a more fitting ending would be for the liars to be essentially stuck in Cuddledown forever, and for Cadence to inherit her grandfather's property. She'd grow old with her friends, and would realize the isolation of holding onto objects from the past.

Thus ends my first (in a super long time) blog post.

One Stormy Night

One Stormy Night is the perfect title for a horror novel. And to my horror, I read my first romance novel. It was never my intention, but in my current residence (grandmother's house) they are literally everywhere and I love books, "And that one was hell of a dangerous combination." (That is just one of the many classic lines from this literary gem!) I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you will never read this book, so I'm going to tell you the entire story. If you plan on picking up this particular Silhouette Romantic Suspense Novel then watch out! SPOILERS!



The book begins with a married woman named Jennifer Burton (boring!) desperately searching her husbands office for something. He has always left his office locked and forbid her to enter it (like most husbands) and she has broken into his crazy office of mysteries right before a major hurricane hits the sleepy town of Belmar, Mississippi (double boring!). Perfect timing right? I mean there's no way her husband is going to come home and catch her when a hurricane has the whole town being evacu...oh shit, he's home.

But she's already found a tape with the name of a murdered 16 year old girl on it WITH the date she was murdered! Really? I always label my murder tapes "2 1/2 Men season finale", but to each his own.

Her husband, who also happens to be the chief of police (duh.), catches her with his creepy keepsake and she runs to a river behind their house? There they have what wife beaters call "a marital spat" and he knocks her unconscious, and as her body floats away he's pretty sure she's dead. He commences to set up an elaborate death scenario where she dies by accident.

She's not dead, obvs. She escapes and goes to California to recuperate at her twin sisters home. She and her sister devise a plan for Jennifer's twin sister Jessica to impersonate her and go back to Mississippi to retrieve the evidence that Jennifer can't remember anything about and to get revenge against her estranged husband. Apparently, the husband, Taylor Burton, had no idea that Jennifer had a twin sister. He knew she had a sister, but he never met her nor did he ever see a picture of her. Jennifer never even mentioned, during their 3 years of marriage, that her sister was a twin. Phew! That is very literarily convenient!

Well, like most fictional twins, they just couldn't be more night and day! Jennifer is the kind of girl who lets her husband almost murder her and Jessica is the kind of girl who would probably put up a fight until she was totally murdered.

When Jessinifer comes to town we find out that Jennifer was already estranged from her husband and living in a crappy apartment that was formely a crappy motel. There we meet...wait for it...Mitch Lasiter! (Finally! A romance novel name I can get behind. Ed. note: That's what Mitch said.) He lives in the apartment next to her that conveniently has one of those connecting doors on the inside (foreshadowing!) But, I forgot to mention that Mitch is a cop and is working for Taylor. Jennifer tells Jessica that he cannot be trusted, but he can be fantasized about as much as she wants. They immediately begin feeling the heat and mentally yadda yadda yaddaing each other. Mitch even begins to share personal information about himself with her that he has never shared. Things like his first pets name was Mitch and he grew up on Lasiter St.

At one point, Mitch takes Jessinifer to an out of the way BBQ joint owned by a friend. This is where the author makes the mistake of trying to be so politically correct that it turns around on her and it becomes mildly racist. She describes the staff of this restaurant as "ebony" more times than necessary and all their dialogue is stereotypically "sassy". It made this ivory girl just a tad uncomfortable. Sample line, "When you're done, just make sure the fingers you're lickin are your own." Looks like Jessinifer just made herself a sassy ebony friend! Ugh.

The trust thing starts to get a little annoying. Yeah, I get it, you both have crazy big secrets and it's too early in the book for you to reveal them. I guess the author just wanted to cash in on all the great final sentences of the chapters as long as she could. "And if there's one thing she definitely was, it was Trouble with a capital T." Classic!

Finally, they do it. And I don't mean reveal their respective secrets, if that's what you think. They lie with each other in the biblical sense! I won't go into detail, but it was.....unrealistic....I mean HOT! And they used protection which was a smart move, because I've heard that STD rates among senior citizen has been increasing as of lately and this is the perfect tool to get the word out about protecting yourself.




After the "act", Jessinifer goes back to her place and takes a call from her sister, who checks in on her throughout the book, and her sister tells her that she just remembered that whatever the incriminating evidence was, she is pretty sure she found it in Taylor's office. Jessinifer hangs up and goes back to Mitch who had just got a call from his brother/private investigator who told him that he just got word that Jennifer is DEAD, but she has a twin sister! Everyone at the bbq place is like, "Oh, no she didn't!"

Mitch confronts her and she admits that her sister has been dead this whole time? And she has twintuition which allows her to talk to her dead twin sister? And her sister gives her clues from the grave? At this point in the story, I closed the book and proceeded to throw up on myself. When I started reading again, I noticed that Mitch did not do the exact same thing. He was like "Okay, let's go find out what's in that office. And, oh yeah, my secret is that I work for the F.B.I. and I'm investigating Taylor and the corrupt inner workings of the police department here." And Jessica's like "Okay, let's do this thing!"

Luckily for them, there is another hurricane coming. Which as we learned earlier is the perfect time to break into your estranged husbands house and collect evidence, because surely they won't be caug...they get caught. Mitch hides Jessica in something. The author spends a lot of time describing said object, but I still couldn't figure out what it was. I think it was a giant liquor cabinet. And Mitch confronts Taylor and his corrupt deputy sheriff. While their backs are turned Jessica attempts to flee and is spotted by Taylor who chases after her. In the definition of full circle story telling they end up at the exact same section of river that Taylor murdered Jennifer in. And Taylor is really excited cause he's really good at murdering people in this particular area. So he starts drowning her.

But twintuition (lame) kicks in and Jennifer tells Jessica to fight! So Jessica grabs a big ol' rock and bashes Taylor in the head with it. And in a not so subtle moment of poetic justice, watches Taylor's body float away down the river. Then the house explodes in the background! Where's Mitch, you ask? Well, he was busy fighting the deputy sheriff who apparently attempted to set the house on fire in order to get rid of the evidence, but blew himself up instead. Way to go, Barney Fife! (I barely get that reference.) Of course, Mitch emerges from the smoke very sexily. And they ride off into the sunset.

I'm not going to act like I didn't kind of enjoy this book. I understand why people read them. As my grandmother says "You always know they're going to have a happy ending." And there's something to that. Although I will not be introducing romance novels into my regular book genre rotation, they are like a little vacation for the brain. But, my brain can't take too many vacations or it will stop working all together.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

So, it's been a little while since I posted, but I just got a new job! So get off my back about it, okay?

I just finished reading the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Which was incredibly engrossing...until the last few chapters.

(Editor's note: Don't bother clicking to look inside cause it won't do anything and I don't want you to go insane!)

I had heard about this book from a couple different friends and I have been know to have a slightly higher than average interest in the macabre, so I decided to give it a try.

I fell in love with the first three quarters of the book. She describes (with plenty of kinda too gross detail) some of the places your body can be shipped to when you decide to donate to science. I honestly cannot decide if it made me want to donate more or less. It's kind of a hit or miss thing. You're either going to be donated to something for the greater good of humanity or you're going to be a refresher course for plastic surgeons.

The part I enjoyed the most about the book, which I think a lot of people thought was too textbooky, was the history of cadavers. What they used to do to them in medieval times and even further back. I had no idea how much "testing" they did to disprove the logic that guillotines were a more humane source of disposing of criminals. Or how tough it used to be to tell if someone was actually dead.

The last few chapters were kind of a snooze though. She sends you on a pointless chase to find out if a story of a restaurant using human meat is true. Her humor is a little annoying. It's like she has to end every chapter on a lighter note, so it feels a little forced. I enjoyed her effort though.

It also made me think about how superstitious we all are. We can't let go of the idea of souls and we have a need to preserve the human body even after the humanness of it is long gone.

Since a blog is obviously a binding and legal document (duh) I'm going on record as saying I want to be turned into fertilizer and used to plant a tree. She delves into this new form of burial in a later chapter and I think it's a great idea, although this book was written in 2003 and she totes it as the possible next big thing. It has not caught on like wild fire, obviously. I think it's economical and a great way to be remembered, unless my tree gets cut down for urban sprawl, but in that case I'll just haunt the Chipotle that is inevitably built. All in all, I give this book a B-.

Stay tuned cause I'm reading my first ever romance novel. And it is...interesting.