Because I am a Book Nerd: Out of Print Book Tees for a Good Cause

Because I am a Book Nerd: Out of Print Book Tees for a Good Cause

I know I have been slow-moving with the darn summer reading list.

Summer is almost over! 

But I haven't forgotten, and John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

is sitting at my house just waiting to be ravished.

Anyway despite my procrastination

I am a self-proclaimed book nerd.

and when I saw these sweet shirts from Out of Print

which feature, you guessed it,

out of print book covers on tees

my little black heart skipped a few beats.

Add to that the fact that for every shirt you buy

a book gets donated to an African charity

and woo-wee I need to get me one of these babies.

P.s. for the fashion focused, these tees in  my opinion are always flattering

and feed into the whole "I'm really not trying which is exactly why I am so cool and look so good" style. lol

Did I mention they have a blog?

Yeah, like I said, they are bad-ass.

A Litte Summer Reading List: Book One Review

A Litte Summer Reading List: Book One Review

Little book readers out there, my apologies.  Never have I had such a difficult time finishing a book as I have with Charlie Huston's The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. If anything I am usually the crazy recluse who shuts herself in her room until the last page is devoured, ignoring responsibility and the bfs pitiful pleas that I see reason and go make a meal. I'm the annoying kid at the front of the class with my hand up at the end of the day answering questions the teacher hasn't even asked yet, much to the annoyance of my classmates who would like to leave the confines of those little desks.

Not this time ladies.

This time I couldn't even pick it up without cringing. I came up with excuses not to read it. But in the end I gave in, I do have blog readers counting on me and all lol.

Why folks did I dislike this book? (If you couldn't tell all that harrumphing was meant to convey my dissatisfaction with the read lol) I didn't love this book because of two main reasons.
1. I felt the author may have an uncontrollable urge to make love to himself & possibly marry himself. and
2. What plot?

So like I was saying, after reading five minutes into this book I got the distinct feeling that the author was having an affair--with himself.  Now this could just be a reflection of the personality of the main character Webster Goodhue who is a self proclaimed "dick". Mr. Goodhue really is such a "dick". Why? Well because he won't shut up about it! We get it, something really bad happened to you and your defense mechanism is sarcastic smart-ass humor, but seriously there is only so much I can take. I mean the amount of times the man calls himself a dick, someone else calls him a dick, the word asshole is used both by & against him. It's mind boggling.

So why am I taking this out on the poor author? Well for one he wrote the nonsense and secondly the amount of witty banter going on made me feel like I was in a witty banter contest with the author trying desperately to prove to me how he is the king of said witty banter.. Does anyone remember that show Gilmore Girls? How at first you are impressed at how quickly they chat with each other & how clever their comments are, but by the end you are saying wow please stop this is just getting tiresome.

Part two of my complaint about this story is the slow-moving plot. Now its not like I need something happening every second of the book. Maybe it was because of my preexisting frustration with the dialogue that I felt the plot was lacking. So within the first half of the book we know there is this guy Webster Fillmore Goodhue who used to be a teacher. Something traumatic happened and now he sleeps all day & mooches of his wealthy hippie mom & his tattoo artist best friend Chev who he lives with.

Everyone is fed up with his bs. So he takes a shitty job (literally) with the Clean Team, a group of roughnecks who clean up crime scenes & dead things (and by things I mean people). Classic tale of competent guy avoiding life after a tragedy.He gets involved with questionable girl (Soledad) after cleaning up her dads suicide.At this point SPOILER she has been kidnapped by another group of roughnecks who are after her brother for a  business deal gone bad. Did I mention this deal was over almonds? Apparently almonds pay a pretty penny. Oh yeah and Soledad may or may not be involved in this suspicious business.

Ok so it sounds like a lot is happening, but granted it took getting 3/4 of the way through to get to this. And it's ridiculous.And not the kind of ridiculous I like.

On a positive note if you are an Angeleno you may like this as it references a lot of areas around L.A.Kind of fun. Also the Clean Team plot line is interesting but I'm pretty morbid so I like those types of things. I was thinking it would be more about that business.
I still believe there's hope for it being a show. . .if they just focused a little more on the lives of the people whose remains he handles. . .much more interesting. Like Six Feet Under.

All this negativity aside much respect for the author. I could never get a book down on paper so I can't be too judgmental :)

Anyway I'm not even done yet. . .agh! but I'm so so close. . .just wanted to post this for those who are done to let them know the next book is  

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

so if you are ready go ahead & get reading that! I loove John Irving. I'll post the new book in the sidebar when I finish the first one! I promise by this weekend

A Little Summer Reading List, Book One

A Little Summer Reading List, Book One

So if you read my blog on an anywhere-near-regular basis you know that I have grand ideas that many times may or may not come to fruition 

I blame this on  my mom.

I don't know how yet, but I know it's.her fault. She probably didn't feed me enough leafy greens or something.

Damn that woman. lol I kid, I kid. Obviously she did something right because here I am living and breathing.

Ok back to the point ( sorry it's Friday or as I call it "Everyone has ADD Day"), I had a little project in mind that you probably thought I had forgotten, given-up on, danced-around or burned at the stake with all my other failed projects.

If you thought that, you were wrong!

In the time you spent eating your daily meals, getting your nails did, and thinking I was a flake, I have been scouring the earth for a good read or two.

I'm sorry that's a lie. Do you want to know how I found the first book in the Little Girls Summer Reading List?

I will tell you my secret if you promise not to think less of me.

I found the book that you (some of you) agreed to join me in reading, on one of my favorite celebrity gossip sites.

I know, how embarrassing!

Anyways I was reading somewhere that HBO was coming up with a new series based of yet another book. Now since I am a fan of almost all things HBO I thought, great I can finally get a chance to read the inspiration before they produce the show!

And if any of you watch True Blood you know that HBO series can be full of cheese & great subject matter for a lite summer read. 

So my first book that I will be reading and you will be pretending to read following along with, is 

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

"With a style that is razor sharp, an eye that never shies from the gritty details, and a taste for stories that simultaneously shock, disturb, and entertain, Charlie Huston is one of a kind. And The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is the type of story–swift, twisted, hilarious, somehow hopeful–that only he could dream up.

The fact is, whether it’s a dog hit by a train or an old lady who had a heart attack on the can, someone has to clean up the nasty mess. And that someone is Webster Fillmore Goodhue, who just may be the least likely person in Los Angeles County to hold down such a gig. With his teaching career derailed by tragedy, Web hasn’t done much for the last year except some heavy slacking. But when his only friend in the world lets him know that his freeloading days are over, and he tires of taking cash from his spaced-out mom and refuses to take any more from his embittered father, Web joins Clean Team–and soon finds himself sponging a Malibu suicide’s brains from a bathroom mirror, and flirting with the man’s bereaved and beautiful daughter"

Read the entire synopsis here

So ladies, it's your challenge if you are willing to accept it. lol. It sounds a bit outrageous and macabre, but that's my fancy. Did any of you like Six Feet Under? I read somewhere that Charlie Huston uses black humor & I said to myself, sign me up! I love postmodernist absurdity. I'm hoping this will read something like a John Irving novel but it may be wishful thinking. Oops don't want to give too much away because book number two might be a John Irving classic. ..

P.S. I am only sharing one book at a time because I'm coming up with them as I go along lol.

So is life.

I will have the participants posted on my sidebar ASAP since the reading list is officially starting!