Year in (Book) Review: In Cold Blood

I read Breakfast at Tiffany's a few years ago, because I so adore the perfect, classic movie. It's on my list of those films that stop me midstream whenever it's on. I have to stop and watch. (Side note: By that "midstream" standard, I discovered today Top Gun is also one of those movies. Huh. Did not know that about myself.) So, being the literary girl I am, I thought it was important to read the short story that gave us Holly Golightly and Moon River and Cat. It was the first thing I'd ever read by Capote, though I knew quite a bit about him from both of the biographical movies that came out around the same time a few years ago. (Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Oscar for his portrayal of Capote, and he was absolutely brilliant. But in terms of the overall movie, I actually liked Infamous better. I don't remember why. It was a long time ago. You'll just have to take my word for it.) He was quite a character, that's for sure.

Either way, both of those films highlighted the time in Capote's life he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood.  I'm almost at a loss for words. (That's never true.) Everything I write sounds like me. I don't know if that makes sense to people who don't write, but it basically comes down to this, and I think everyone can back me up on this one: if you want to write interesting, believable characters, they have to sound interesting and believable. It doesn't matter if they're real people or not. Which means whenever I try to write anyone who's not thirtysdflasfh year old spectacle with a chip on her shoulder and a penchant for melodrama, I'm screwed. So the idea that the same person who penned Breakfast at Tiffany's could also write the journalistic explosion that is this book floors me. But maybe that's just it -- it barely feels journalistic. It feels like you're reading a novel, with characters and a plot written by one of the most talented writers, ever. He can describe everything from the Clutter family farmhouse to the size of the hands of the woman who works at the post office in their torn-apart town, and they seem equally important to the story. It's a horrible story, to be sure, although in this day and age I feel like we're almost immune to it.  Just as I was finishing the story, a man in Connecticut was finally convicted for the brutal, unthinkable murder of a mother and her two daughters -- the family's father was able to escape and survive -- in a case that drew obvious comparisons to this one.  It was even worse.  Why does everything have to keep getting worse?  What does that say about people today? What was I talking about?

I think it's important to read books that the world deems historically important. I don't think it's important to like them all, but it's important to read them. This is unquestionably one of those books.

Year in (Book) Review: When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home

Okay. I get that chances are slim anyone will run out and pick this one up. I'm not even actually sure you could. It's super old. But there was an old tattered paperback copy of it in the cottage on vacation last month, and I picked it up to leaf through it.  Such a good decision.

Erma Bombeck is my hero. She's like the pre-David Sedaris.

She had me cracking up laughing, she never wrote anything that was more than five or six pages (some were barely one), and one of her chapters was titled "Centerville, Oh." When I am old and married and have lots of kids (one out of three ain't... well, yes, it is. It's bad.) I will use them lovingly for target practice, just like Ms. Bombeck. So consider yourself warned, future husband and unborn children. I'm very excited to get to make fun of you.

The Sisterhood Code of Silence

How do you blog about a Code of Silence, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. You, if you are me, are a rat and you blog about pretty much anything. Unfortunately for you, if you are me, most of the ratting out to be done is on yourself. So, no one really cares if you blog about it.

It was Homecoming at my alma mater this weekend, and I met up with a bunch of my sorority sisters for an evening of nostalgic fun. I haven't been back to Bowling Green since a year or so after I graduated. Even the billboards were the same. Sort of creepy, but also comforting. The girls, however, have gotten nothing but better.

Ways you know the weekend has gotten away from you:

The afternoon begins with DG4 telling you "you should blog about this" in reference to fun things like people who sing curse words anywhere other than rap songs. (FYI, she was against it.) The evening ends with DGs1-6* begging you "for the love of God don't blog about this" in reference to everything that happened after around 9pm.

There was a serious discussion at one point about DG1's camel toe.

You check in to the hotel (a term I use loosely) and immediately check for bedbugs. DG2 refuses to put her suitcase on the floor for fear of things jumping into it. When you get home that night (another term I use loosely), DGs2, 5 and 6 sleep on the floor.

DGs1 and 3 hump the anchor.  Oddly, this happens before any drinking has started.

DG2 accidentally orders a beer the size of her head -- literally -- at lunch, and officially declares her night over before it has begun.

You visit the sorority house, find your composite (in the study, on the third floor, where old DG pictures go to die and young DGs go to laugh at the bad hair and makeup choices), and get invited to an after-hours party at the Delt house. Just like old times.

The nineteen year old who invites you to the house party is overheard having the following phone conversation: "I'm sitting here with some alumnae... they found scrapbooks of themselves and they're telling funny stories about when they were in the house... I invited them to the Delt party... I mean, yeah, they're old, but don't worry, they seem cool." Slightly less like old times.

DG1 finds an adorable picture of DG5 in an old scrapbook. In it, DG5 is laughing and clapping. And has a bow in her hair. DG1 passes the photo around. DG6 notices something strange going on in the background of the photo. DG3 turns a strange shade of pink, and explains that the scene in the background -- two DGs in a compromising position on a folding table in a classroom surrounded by people -- is in fact her Sneak. (Sneak is when the pledges find out dirt on all the seniors, then crash chapter one night and reenact what they learned, and everyone has to guess which senior they're making fun of. Some are really innocent -- our Homecoming queen that year got engaged and walked around with bridal magazines all the time. Some, as DG3 discovered, involve the naughtiest of numbers.)

You make a meant-to-be-funny comment about "cougaring the shit out of that town" on Facebook earlier in the week. DGs3 and 4 make good on it. (For what it's worth, those kids wanted to be cougared. They were literally begging for it. And by "it", I mean for us to buy them alcohol.)

When you leave for the night, there are two people in your room. When you wake up the next morning, there are four. Two of whom are unnameable.

At 3:00 on Monday afternoon, you notice there is still a black bar stamp on the back of your hand. Which means it's probably still somewhere on your face.

*These numbers are arbitrary and made up and really just for fun. So don't bother trying to figure out who I'm talking about.

Today's Story Brought To You By Planned Parenthood

Some things are just not funny. I won't drag us all down by naming them, but there are a few -- a very few -- things in the world that even I can't be irreverent toward.

I would have thought abortion was one of those things. But this morning, abortion became funny. Or, more accurately, the lack of one particular abortion became funny.

*Before I continue, a note. I do not care how you feel about abortion. I know exactly how I feel about it, and that seems like all I need to know on the matter. No one -- okay, no one who reads this crap, anyway -- cares.

As a writer, I eavesdrop. It's innate. I can't help it. I don't do it on purpose and if you give me enough dirty looks, I'll probably stop. If you get up and move to another table I definitely will, because I'm too lazy to pick up all my shit and move with you. It's not even that hard these days, eavesdropping. People have outlandishly personal conversations so loud they must want other people to hear them. Ride a New Jersey transit train some time. It. Will. Shock. You. In fact, I challenge you to spend an afternoon in any public place and not overhear the intimate details of a perfect stranger's life.

This one, though. This one was a doozy. Here is today's story.

Two kids -- probably late teens, early twenties; I'm of the age nowadays where that qualifies you as a kid, and also where I say things like nowadays -- caught my attention when she showed up to the coffee shop, a few minutes after him, looking nervous and guilty. Or maybe I was projecting. I was supposed to be working. He stood up quickly when she walked in and gave her a big, tight hug. By the time they settled back down into their chairs she had her arms wrapped protectively around her belly, he was clearly trying not to cry, and I wasn't trying at all to hide how enthralled I was.

He took her hands and asked her how she felt. She shrugged and I think she said "fine." Her head was down and I desperately wanted to ask her to tuck her hair behind her ears so it didn't block me out so much. I was afraid that might be overstepping my boundaries so I just scooted my chair closer instead.

"Man. I wish I coulda been there with you." Boy.
"Yeah. Well, my mom woulda freaked. Plus it seemed dumb for you to just sit in some waiting room." Girl. I'm noting -- taking actual notes at this point -- that Girl is not making eye contact with Boy.
"Did it hurt?" His earnestness was heartbreaking. And kind of hot, in a sensitive, emo way.
"Well... no." I'm suspicious of her, and not just because her sensitive, emo boyfriend is clearly too good for her. He's trying hard to get her to look at him. That hair is like the Iron Fucking Curtain. When he takes her by the chin and lifts her face gently, I am fairly sure I'm not the only one in the place who let out an audible "ohh." But I might've been. Mine was pretty loud.
"It kills me you had to go through this. I'm so sorry. We'll be more careful from now on. But it's all behind us now, right? It's over. I love you so much." Girl says nothing in response to this. Girl is an asshole.
"Girl?" Obviously, he doesn't call her Girl. I am protecting her, and protection is clearly something that has been lacking up to this point in her young, promiscuous life. By now, Boy is starting to sense something is off. Boy may be sensitive, but Boy is not too bright.
"Girl?" This time he says it with a little more insistence, and he's taken his hands off of hers. "It's over, right? I mean, you did it? You did do it, right? You went through with it, right?" Boy is less sensitive-seeming now, and more desperate. Angry desperate. Not hot.
"I tried."

I'm going to give you a few moments here to consider what you think might have been an appropriate second part of Girl's response.

I couldn't go through with it? Makes sense.
I realized I wanted to have your baby? Perfectly romantic.
I'm not morally comfortable with the lifelong ramifications to both my mental and emotional state, as well as my physical wellbeing, when it comes to making a decision of this magnitude? Seems a little lofty for this Girl, but feasible, I suppose.

Instead, she offered up this gem:

"It didn't take."

It didn't take. I missed the next few interchanges, my mind reeling to figure out what they're talking about. Clearly they weren't talking about what I thought they were talking about, right? Because "it didn't take" does not fit into the vernacular of what I thought they were talking about. All I could think was "Run, Boy, run." I tried so hard to think it into Boy's mind that I probably looked like I was trying to abort something of my own.

If they were characters, I would have to concern myself with all kinds of details at this point. Why did she change her mind? Did she ever intend to go through with it in the first place? How, exactly, does she plan on getting away with convincing him it's possible for this sort of thing to not take, like some feeble, failed attempt at a backyard garden? But they're not characters. Not my characters, anyway. And so they're going to have to sort their own shit out. I plan on going back to that coffee shop in about nine months, just to see how the story ends.

Year in (Book) Review: The Castaways

Sometimes, it's been noted, I make strange choices. Like reading a devastating, poignant book about child abuse while relaxing on holiday. This time, though, I think I hit the nail on the vacation-appropriate head.

Elin Hilderbrand's The Castaways is easy to read, enjoyable, and just the right kind of fluffy for when you need to zone in and out every few pages. As do all her books, it takes place on the island of Nantucket, so already it's hard to imagine how it could be anything less than fun. Unlike all her books, it starts off with dead people. So, while she's frothy beach reading, she also packs a little punch.

My only criticism would be that there are a few too many people to mentally juggle, particularly when you're lying on sand. The Castaways is a group of friends -- eight, to be exact; four couples -- and their children. That's a lot of main characters to keep track of, and I spent more time than I would have liked trying to remember who belonged with whom.

Two thumbs up if you're looking for a good travel book, something that will keep you engaged and interested and then leave you alone.

Year in (Book) Review: On Writing

One of the most important elements of these little book reviews, up to this point, has been all-inclusiveness. I think, thematically and hypothetically, what I review can be read by anyone. If you're a guy and you want to read The Heretic's Daughter, or a lit snob secretly reading Dear John, who are we, fellow bookworms, to judge? (Okay, I'm totally going to judge you for the Dear John one. It's so bad.)

This one might be the exception, and it makes me kind of sad. I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing, and I was none too happy about it. My gauge for a good book is that I'll read the first two thirds of it as quickly as my eyes and sleep will let me, then slow down almost to a standstill for the final third, simply because I don't want it to end. This has little to do with the caliber of author or of the writing -- I followed this pattern with the finale of the Twilight series in exactly the same way I have done with every F. Scott Fitzgerald book.

Some books, apparently, have just an imperceptible amount of crack sprinkled in the pages. This is the only way to explain Twilight. It is not a particularly well written book series, really, and the story is just weird. And yet, could you put it down? Well, I don't care if you could or not. I could not. I read, in my bed, unfed and unshowered and unimpressed by world events, for four days straight.

That is how I felt about King's memoir: half history, half mechanics ... like I could -- should -- snort the pages. Like I would -- could -- eat the words right off the page.

Perhaps the most surprising part to me? That Stephen King at one point weighed in upwards of 215 pounds. That, even in the times when he was by his own estimation light, he weighed nearly 170. Those are probably not the parts of the story he was hoping his readers would cling to. But it's almost like everything else he writes is so prolific, so profound and perfectly creative and inspiring and earth-shattering, that something as simple as realizing that Stephen King is not, as I might have imagined him had I ever taken the time to imagine him, a wimpy, minuscule kind of guy. Go fucking figure. Also, and my regular readers won't be surprised by this at all, I love, I mean LOVE, that he says fuck. A lot. All the time. For absolutely no reason. Just because there are people in the world -- people like me and people like Stephen fucking King -- who say fuck a lot. We aren't unintelligent. We aren't even uneducated. We just say fuck a lot because it fits and it sits so comfortably on the tongue.

I don't know how a book on the craft of writing will fit into the literary genre of you, my intelligent and well-read friends, who are either not writers or huge fans of the science fiction/horror genres. There are a lot -- millions, literally -- of insanely excellent books to read, and it's sadly impossible to get to them all. But this is a great book. It's a great insight to how a genius writer makes his genius work.

The LSG Explains It All

The cute thing about being the LSG in your group of friends (that's the Last Single Girl, you silly) is that you get to impress all your Old Saggy Married Friends with your dating prowess and general knowledge of the MSG. (Modern Single Guy. Please try to keep up or this will take forever.)

The most recent example of this came at a Dayton Dragons game, with one of my old (she is thirty three days older than me and looks every minute of it)(nothing on her sags, though, dammit) married friends and her seven year old son. The baseball game, a present from me to the little boy, fell on the night after what we were trying to decide was a third date or not. You know ... the third date. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and in some places just totally making shit up, but the conversation went something like this:

"Third date, huh?" OSMF.
"Oh yeah. I mean, sort of. I think. Third ... ish." Me.
We promptly set about trying to determine exactly which date number I was on. Really, though, if you read between the lines, we were trying to determine whether or not I'm a slut. I'll summarize.

First date: Group date. To a karaoke bar. (Everyone who has ever heard me sing is cracking up or cringing for me right now.) Turns out, I later learned, he had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, or that there was a setup happening. Call me old-fashioned but I'm not tallying this one up in the date category.

Second date: Just the two of us, after he politely called me up on the phone to invite me to drinks and dinner. Totally a date. By every definition, a really nice date.

Third date: This is where things start to get murky. Another big group, to a Reds game. Somewhere in upwards of 100 degrees, and mass amounts of sweat was produced by all. Kind of a date, but mostly just me and a girlfriend knocking small children out of the way so we could hog the mister fans.

Next few dates: Actually a combination of evenings, taking place at the wine bar below the yoga studio where I have a mad crush on my new yoga instructor. Seriously, she's beautiful and flexible and spiritual. I love her. Love her. A few of these nights ended, very late, with him giving me funny looks because all I could talk about was my adorable yoga instructor.

Somewhere around maybe the sixth date: I climbed his tree. This is not, as my dirtier-minded friends assumed, and as you probably did as well you dirty-minded reader, a euphemism. I actually climbed his tree. He mentioned cutting it down, he did some grilling, we went to Krogers like an old married couple, I inexplicably climbed a tree, it was my favorite night so far.

So now OSMF is up to date, you're up to date, let's continue. I should mention here this particular OSMF was responsible for the initial set up, so she's practically gloating. And right now, while her seven year old is distracted by baseball and an inconceivable amount of food, she gives me the look.

"Awww. That's really cute. I'm so happy for you." I thank her. She keeps giving me the look. "So...?"
"So what?" I love playing dumb. Or not, since she hits me hard in the arm.
"I knew it." I don't know how she thinks she knew it, but apparently, she did. Now she's really gloating. "So can I see pictures of him on Facebook?" This is not where I expect her line of questioning to go, and I am momentarily taken aback.
"Facebook?"
"Did you change your status?"
"Whaaaat? I'm not his Facebook friend, for fuck's sake." It's like she just accused me of having a casual heroin habit. My voice gets so high-pitched the plastic Bud Light bottle the man next to me is holding threatens to crack. Bud Light man gives me a look of his own, one that says I probably shouldn't say "fuck" in the presence of a seven year old.

OSMF looks at me with obvious and -- if we're being honest, here, which clearly we are -- understandable confusion. Skepticism, you may even say.

"So... wait a sec. You guys --"
"Yep."
"I mean, like, all the w --"
"Mmm hmm."
"And which date was it again?"
"Five and three quarters, I believe." I say this with the celibate pride of the well-disciplined and self-controlled.
"But ... you won't Facebook friend him?"
"Noooo. God no. He'll think I'm a clingy stalker."
"Okay."

The nice thing about having lifelong friends is that they get you. And also, they are so generally worn out by you that they just can't muster the strength to ask for clarification.

There you have it.  A brief glimpse into the perplexing world of the LSG, and her appropriate non-use of the Friend Request Button. If there is anything else I can help you understand, please do not hesitate to ask.