"An old unresolved confusion gathered like asthma in Denise. She felt a need to get away and cook."

So what, we're on week ninety billion of The Corrections readalong now?

I think this will come to be known as, at least in my brain, the week I gave up on The Corrections with my soul. My eyes and my brain will still be reading it, but my soul is pretty sure that there's no hope for it ever getting, you know, actually good. Or of any characters being great. Or of anything happening that I remotely care about. I just... don't.

I got really bored this week, was the thing. For the last two weeks, I've been pretty much going 'ewwwwww' or 'OMG I hate you' or 'WTF, talking poo?!' but this week I just couldn't summon up the energy to care about anything that even happened. I had high hopes for Denise's life story, but that pretty much boiled down to 'she has an older dude complex because she lost her virginity to an old dude, and also she's probably a lesbian.' Which, I'm sure could have been interesting and complex if the whole time I was reading I wasn't thinking 'I bet this is how Franzen gets himself off...'

I know.

As to whether I still like Denise or not... I don't know. I know I don't hate her (she's not even interesting enough to hate) but she definitely has some loose morals going on, and Franzen's included stuff like this: "There was never much satisfaction for Denise in competing with girls" which makes me haaaaaaaate him because OMG obviously girls who are really good at things don't like competing with girls because ALL OTHER GIRLS (except his character) are bad at things. But Denise is good at things because she comes from his brain and he's a man (in fact, he's Jonathan fucking Franzen) so that's ok. 

THIS IS NOT HOW WE OPERATE, SHUT YOUR DISGUSTING SEXIST MOUTH I HATE YOU.

Let's see, what else, what else? Well, I'd love to have gone on Denise's food journey across Europe because HOW AWESOME DOES THAT SOUND (minus, you know, the proposition from the married man at the end, WHY DO ALL THE MARRIED MEN WANT TO CHEAT ON THEIR WIVES?!) and also I kind of want to be the head chef at my own restaurant? Minus the shagging the owner's wife, of course. Important question- is Brian even allowed to fire Denise for having sex with his wife? Because... it kind of seems like he isn't? I want to bring the Citizen's Advice Bureau into this. 

I don't know, other things probably happened, but I stopped caring about 50 pages in? Oh, wait, Alfred is alive somehow! I completely predict a change of character in the last section, where he nearly died so he's all grateful to be alive. Has to happen. And Chip came back! I'm sure we were all really glad about that, am I right? I really really skimmed the Lithuania stuff, but I did pick up on a couple of things:

"If his sister was on her way out as a lesbian... then she could definitely now use the support of her Foucaultian older brother, but Chip wasn't ready to go home yet, and so he assumed that his memory had deceived him and that her phrase had referred to something else." 

Oh really Chip? You're going to do whatever you want instead of being there for another human being? HOW SURPRISING.

Also, this:

"Chip put his arms around his friend... He felt as if he were hugging himself, feeling his own primate shoulder blades, the scratch of his own woolen sweater."

As if we needed any more evidence that Chip is in love with himself.

Official theme song for this book. 

Devouring Books: Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

I can't remember whether I read the book or saw the movie first, but both versions of The Devil Wears Prada I like quite a lot. I mean... How can you not enjoy Meryl Streep acting like an utter bitch and looking amazing and being the best person in the world? (Also Anne Hathaway is good, too). The movie is awesome and the book is great because it has almost supplementary information that wasn't included in the film but really underlines how awful the whole experience of working for Anna Wintour Miranda Priestly must be.

Since reading The Devil Wears Prada, I've read a couple of Weisberger's other books (Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston) and... I've been underwhelmed. They're fine, but fairly standard chick lit stuff, and it's hard not to think that maybe Weisberger is just better at fictionalising her own experiences* than she is at making stuff up. After reading Revenge Wears Prada, I'm pretty sure that is EXACTLY the case.

This book is really bad. I don't know if it's bad purely because Weisberger has taken Andy's character and completely fucked it up, or if it's actually bad, but I kind of hated reading it. Why did I carry on, I hear you cry? I think I thought, 'well, this can't be all there is to it' except that it was and suddenly it was the end of the book and I hated myself for reading it. It's honestly the worst sequel I've experienced since Sex and the City 2, and that movie is a fucking abomination.

Ok, so here's the story with this book- it's ten years after Andy quit her job at Vogue Runway and she's set up her own magazine, is marrying the man of her dreams and is best friends with her ex-colleague Emily for no apparent reason other than that Emily is a great character that Weisberger didn't want to get rid of. She's pretty much leading the life that you would have wanted for her and that should be awesome, only it's not because Andy is kind of terrible now. It's possible that she was always terrible and I just didn't realise it, but I don't think so...

Here's the deal- Andy is kind of whiny and complains a lot, when it doesn't really seem like she has anything to complain about. It's made eventually (sort of) clear that she's not as happy as she should be, but the woman is running a magazine, lives in Manhattan, and basically has everything anyone could want in life, and yet this whole book is like 'why is Miranda here where I am? Why doesn't my mother in law like me? Why does everything bad happen to meeeee?' and it's just like, dude, stop being a dick, no one wants to hear it.

I feel like some of this might be a perspective thing- in The Devil Wears Prada, Andy really was treated appallingly, so her whining was sort of justified and I sympathised with her. In Revenge Wears Prada, basically nothing bad happens to her and yet she still thinks it's ok to whine about everything all the time? That's just not cool. And if you lose sympathy for Andy, you lose pretty much all interest in the whole thing because it's just her. Sitting around and moaning. For a whole book.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that, either. There's some semblance of a storyline, but it feels like Weisberger found it really difficult to think of reasons for Miranda Priestly to appear in this story, and since she's really what this is all about, it was really disappointing. It's even more disappointing that she's not even that mean to anyone (that we know of) because the whole point of the Devil is that, you know, she's a massive bitch. I don't even get the title, really, because revenge is so not a part of this story- Andy doesn't get revenge on Miranda, and Miranda doesn't care enough about Andy to want revenge on her, and it's just ridiculous and stupid and I hate it.

Basically, this is a sequel to a book that never needed a sequel. If it had been good in any way, it probably would have been fine, but it wasn't good in ANY way. It was so bad it's kind of sullied my memories of The Devil Wears Prada (the book, not the film) and I'm not sure I could ever read it again knowing what Andy is going to turn into. It's not pretty. If you haven't seen it, I totally recommend you watch The Devil Wears Prada, and you can even read the book! Just don't. Read. This.

*She was Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue. I... don't know why I expected you to know that.

Devouring Books: The Kid by Sapphire

Remember when that film Precious came out and it got nominated for loads of Oscars and was totally critically acclaimed and I watched it and cried all over my face and was fairly grateful I'd watched it alone?* Well, that film was based on a book- Push by Sapphire (which I also read around the same time) and The Kid is the sequel to that book/the film. I'm glad we got that sorted and also can you tell that I'm stalling here because I sort of don't want to talk about this book so much? Because that's what's really going on here.

Ok, so. I really liked Push- it's written in a really interesting way, to show Precious's growing literacy and empowerment and all sorts of things like that, and above all, it leaves you with a sense of hope- that, even if bad things happen to you, even if some of the WORST things happen to you, you're still allowed to do everything you can to rise above all of those bad things (to Push your way out of them, if you will). So, it's horrible but there's kind of a purpose to the horror, and it at least doesn't leave you feeling like you want to die (or at least not so much...)

The Kid, on the other hand, starts with Precious's death (oh yeah) and goes rapidly downhill from there. Before I even start, I really have to emphasise how upsetting Precious's death is- all you want when you read Push is for her (and her child, Abdul, the kid of the title) to be ok, to escape the ridiculously horrible circumstances of her upbringing and live a long happy life. She dies when she's 27, so yeah. It's horrible. What's really clear from the outset is that she's raised an intelligent, curious, fairly sweet nine-year-old boy, and even though she's dead before the book even begins, her influence is clear in him, at least to begin with.

So it's all... Not good, but at least bearable, until Abdul gets taken into care and everything turns to shit. At every single facility charged with his care, he's failed by all authority figures, he gets beaten, raped, all the possible bad things, and he spends his first years of puberty being raised by Catholic priests who very much conform to the popular image of Catholic priests these days (child rapists, that is). And it's SO horrible, and there's a whole thing about how he's being redeemed by dance, but I was still trying not to throw up after his great grandma explained her rape as a 10 year old so I kind of missed that bit.

Here's the thing about this book, though. While with Push I very much felt emotionally connected to Precious, and while there were bits that were shocking, they had a purpose- showing the things that Precious has to overcome to become who she wants to be, with The Kid... it was really difficult to feel connected to Abdul because of the things that he does. The whole theory behind this book is that abuse begets abuse, I think, but when that means that Abdul rapes a child because he thinks that's the only way to show his love... I just don't know what to do with that. Because he's smart, and he knows what he's doing, and I just... That is SO not what Precious would have wanted him to become, and it kind of hurts to read.

But it more than hurts to read, it's gross, and to very little purpose, it seems. There's no situation I can imagine where a great-grandma would tell her great-grandson about the time she was raped (in detail) and, I mean, does Abdul have to be raped in every situation of care he's in? Is that really that likely? I mean, stop me if I'm being truly naive about the care situation in New York City, but it has to be better than that, surely? And yes, I understand it's for, you know, dramatic emphasis, but does that mean it has to be so graphic and horrible and just... hopeless? Are difficult situations only escapable for a tiny amount of time before you have to return to them? Am I ever going to stop asking questions?

Basically, I don't even know how I made it to the end of this book, and I have a feeling I only finished it to go 'DON'T read this, but you can definitely read Push, or, at least just watch Precious.' Because Precious had a lot of the same things to say, but did it in a more concise, less horribly disturbing and much less hopeless way, and The Kid was just not a pleasant experience in any way. Which I realise it wasn't supposed to be, but that didn't make it any better to read.


*You definitely don't remember my part in this, because it was pre-blog. Otherwise, I would have had to write a post immediately, going ZOMG EMOTIONS.

Devouring Books: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

I was trying to write my reviews in order because I'm a sensible kind of person like that, and then I read The Fault In Our Stars and couldn't contain my... Anything. And if you think that means I'm about to gush about it like 99% of the reading population, then clearly you haven't been following me on twitter.

This book. It's kind of terrible. And it shouldn't have been as terrible as I found it and I might be exaggerating its terribleness even to myself because of all the INSANE hype that surrounded it (remember last year when you couldn't swing your bag around the book blog world without hitting someone going 'OMG IT'S THE BEST THING I'VE EVER READ!') but I really didn't like it. And it was set up as something it seemed like I'd like- there was the book-within-a-book thing (we'll get to that later), the cancer thing (not that I like cancer BUT I have a certain interest in the topic and I'm not against reading something heartbreaking), and the thing that's like 'I don't want to make anyone like me because when I die they'll be sad', which is a really depressing but interesting way to be thinking, I think.

But. I hate the characters. Haaaaaaate them. And it's not even that I hated the way they spoke (which was annoying, let's face it), but I didn't feel like I knew them well enough to actually care about what happened to them. It was kind of like reading an obituary of someone you didn't know at all- it's vaguely sad, and you're not happy that they're dead, but you can't really care because it doesn't personally affect you. This book did not personally affect me.

Unimpressed

I didn't care about Hazel (the main character- a cancer sufferer, but one who isn't dying just yet) any more than I care about other self-centred teenage characters who believe that their way of doing things is the only way of doing things. Seriously- this girl allows herself to feel whatever she's feeling and that's the only right way to feel it, whereas everyone else's feelings- about her disease, about how they grieve, whatever- are wrong because they're not hers. I'm not saying that's not a very teenage way of acting, and maybe Green's point is that she's allowed to act like a teenager even though she has cancer (which is fair!) but I think it's more 'This girl! Look at how awesome she is. LOOK AT HER.'

And then there's Augustus (I mean, Augustus. Compute on. This is not the last days of Rome. I'm about to get loads of angry comments from Augustuses, aren't I, except NOPE, there aren't any.) I actually liked Augustus (Nope. Can't do it. We're calling him Gus.) in a way that I didn't like Hazel so much, BUT he's not real. At all. There is nothing about this kid that would exist in any way in the real world because he is ridiculous, and not in a good way. (Alley called him a Manic Pixie Dream Boy in her review and I am SO JEALOUS that she's already said it because she's completely right.) And this is just one example of his incredible ridiculousness: He puts cigarettes in his mouth. And doesn't light them. So as not to give the thing that could kill him the power to do so. 

*

You know what, that IS bullshit. It's 'a metaphor' and I get it, but metaphors are really only found in words and not so much in real life, and all I can think when he says that is, 'so, dude actually wastes money buying cigarettes that he doesn't smoke, thus handing over money to the corporations behind millions of deaths? Smart!' And if that had only come up once I'd probably be over it, but it's used again and again in the book as a motif for how awesome Gus is, but if you didn't find that awesome? It's just a constant reminder of how annoying these characters are.

What else? Well, the writing isn't as good as everyone claims it is (it might be good for YA, but I'll take Rainbow Rowell any day) and it kind of disturbs me that someone would read it and find it the most profound book they've ever read. To me, a lot of the things Green says about illness and life and death, I've seen elsewhere, better expressed, and without characters that made my eyes hurt from rolling them so much. In general, the writing kind of swings from authentic** teenage narration (lots of 'likes' and stuff. WHICH was actually really annoying and is it that annoying when I do that in reviews? Please say no!) to a more highbrow way of saying things, sometimes in the same paragraph and WHAT IS THIS? Please choose one way of writing and stick to it. Please?

Now, for the book within the book. There's this book that Hazel really likes (An Imperial Affliction) which sounds like the book John Green wishes he'd written (meooow) and is all meaningful to her and stuff. All of which is cool and I was sort of excited about this plot point. But then, even though it's a big part of the book, it's... kind of a shitty storyline. It turns into a 'never meet your heroes' sort of warning, and then ends with a teenage girl giving a grown man advice that she is in no way qualified to give. The point is, this. At one point, Hazel says to this grown man 'I think you're a pathetic alcoholic who says fancy things to get attention like a really precocious eleven year old.'

That's not what you and your boyfriend have been doing the whole book then (apart from the alcoholic bit). Ok, cool, glad we sorted that out. And here endeth the story of how I snorted during a sort-of funeral scene.***

Oh and by the way, did you know that Gus is really super hot and Hazel thinks she's not at all pretty but he thinks she's the most glorious person ever? Surprise!

I shan't bother you with my anger for much longer, but I will just say this: just before I started reading, I read the glowing praise on the back (SUCH glowing praise...) and the two authors blurbed were Marcus Zuzak (he of The Book Thief TERRIBLENESS) and Jodi Picoult, who I have read exactly two books by before realising they were all going to be the same, and who I am still mad at for the ending of My Sister's Keeper. This set off all sorts of alarm bells in my head, but I read it all the same, and hence I have learned- trust your bookish instincts. 

But if you want to read this whatever, you can probably do it in a few hours and it won't hurt your brain much as long as you ignore the emotional manipulation regarding characters you've been given no reason to like (cancer is not a reason to like someone). 

*NOT the (500) Days of Summer gif I wanted. But it'll do.

**Authentic in terms of the way teenagers actually speak.
***Needless to say, I didn't cry. FULL DISCLOSURE: I did get a lump in my throat towards the end because CANCER IS SAD OK, but I refused to make the same mistake I did with The Book Thief (tricked into crying)