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5/9/08 15:59If only someone had warned me that "The Art of Racing in the Rain" was a Starbucks book.
It is exactly like you would expect a Starbucks book to be: stretches of acceptable-to-very-good prose that unexpectedly swerve to the depths of smugness, sanctimony, sentimentality, and the urge to strangle the narrator and his human.
Manifesting what's in front of us, indeed.
Speaking of bad books, a Christian dating book (Why do I read them? They're more consistently funny than Jon Stewart!) advises me that I might be a tease if I
a) lean back on my palms when I'm sitting on the floor
b) sit on the floor with my legs crossed in front of me.
No, if I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor with my legs crossed, I might be shelf-reading. Or roleplaying. Or at the kind of fancy Japanese restaurant with tatami floors and low tables. (Yeah, I know how you're supposed to sit, but my knees are not so good lately.)
I'm not so good with receiving signals, or sending signals, but somehow I can't see how this kind of paranoia is respectful to men or women. It reduces men to the status of incorrigible pets (if they jump up on the counter and eat a whole stick of butter, you shouldn't have left it out there in the first place); and women have better things to do than to be constantly self-policing for the stupidest things. I just don't spend time thinking about how guys are going to perceive me, unless I'm dating them or want to be dating them.
And for the bad-books trifecta, I think I'm going to have to start over from scratch. Following dead ends is one way to find out what you should be writing, and sometimes it's a necessary thing, but it's never fun.
It is exactly like you would expect a Starbucks book to be: stretches of acceptable-to-very-good prose that unexpectedly swerve to the depths of smugness, sanctimony, sentimentality, and the urge to strangle the narrator and his human.
Manifesting what's in front of us, indeed.
Speaking of bad books, a Christian dating book (Why do I read them? They're more consistently funny than Jon Stewart!) advises me that I might be a tease if I
a) lean back on my palms when I'm sitting on the floor
b) sit on the floor with my legs crossed in front of me.
No, if I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor with my legs crossed, I might be shelf-reading. Or roleplaying. Or at the kind of fancy Japanese restaurant with tatami floors and low tables. (Yeah, I know how you're supposed to sit, but my knees are not so good lately.)
I'm not so good with receiving signals, or sending signals, but somehow I can't see how this kind of paranoia is respectful to men or women. It reduces men to the status of incorrigible pets (if they jump up on the counter and eat a whole stick of butter, you shouldn't have left it out there in the first place); and women have better things to do than to be constantly self-policing for the stupidest things. I just don't spend time thinking about how guys are going to perceive me, unless I'm dating them or want to be dating them.
And for the bad-books trifecta, I think I'm going to have to start over from scratch. Following dead ends is one way to find out what you should be writing, and sometimes it's a necessary thing, but it's never fun.