Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

The cover says it all - pink but not cloying, an awkward facial expression, and a title expressing FOMO. This taps into the slightly nerdy, slightly superficial, completely anxious 20-something female experience like nothing else!

Mindy Kaling got her big break by writing and performing in a play based on the idea that Matt Damon & Ben Affleck were trying to adapt The Catcher in the Rye into a movie when the screenplay for Good Will Hunting fell out of the sky into their laps. What's not to love? I have seen the play and it's great, and not unlike reading this book: full of pop culture references, short enough to not get bored with, and perfect to drop into casual conversations to seem smart but not pretentious.

The fact is that by reading this I learned that taking prenatal vitamins will make my hair thick and lustrous, and that's worth the price of a hardcover right there.

4 fad dieting books with titles like "Fat Brain, Fat Body: How Thinking is Sabotaging Your Skinny Soul" out of 5.

An Analysis of the Books I Read in 2011 aka Nerd Alert IV

Books read: 55

• Average # of books read/month: 4.6
• Non-fiction: 16 (29%)
• Fiction: 39 (71%)
• YA Fiction: 4 (7%)
• Books by male authors: 34 (61%)
• Books by female authors: 21 (39%)
• Disliked:14 (25%)
• Ambivalent about/sort of liked:9 (17%)
• Actively enjoyed: 32 (58%)

By Genre:

• Sci-Fi/Fantasy: 8
• Biography/Memoir: 7
• Science/Medical: 3.5 (I’m only counting the UFO book as half of a science book. There, are you happy skeptics???)
• Mystery/Thriller: 4
• Graphic novels: 0
• Spiritual: 1
• Poetry: 0 (This is bad/It makes me sad)
• Historical Fiction: 1
• Short story collections/Anthologies: 2
• Contemporary fiction: 5
• Books about food: 2
• History: 3
• Horror: 14
• Classics: 0 (Haha take THAT Literature!)
• Romance: 0

Compared to 2010:

• I read 23 fewer! Unbelievable. I blame society, and the presence of so many excellent scripted shows on television. Also I should probably stop re-reading huge, 1000+ page Stephen King books that I have already read. Especially when he’s still writing NEW 1000+ page books I have yet to read!/Give other authors a chance, Jane! (Ok my first book of 2012 was 11/22/63, but after that’s done I will branch out, I promise).
• I liked most of the books I read this year, a 20% increase over last year! If I was a company and those were my financial results, my shareholders would be rich! Which is to say, can I somehow make money from this book picking ability?
• I was all about revealing/trashy celebrity biographies this year - Oh-ooh-oh-ah-oh-prah's taking the cake, of course. Celebrities whose biographies I will seek out in 2012: Coco (does she have one? SHE MUST), Mindy Kaling, Darrell Hammond, Diane Keaton, Lucille Ball.

Notes & Superlatives

• Repeated authors: Stephen King (2 years running! I'm sure this means more to him than all his other accomplishments), and George R.R. Martin (ironic considering he finishes a book every 10 years). Wow this list is really earning it's nerd alert title.
• Authors I discovered this year: I'll definitely be picking up some other books by William Gay, Yannick Murphy, Ben Winters, and Jonathan Carroll.
• Favorite book of 2011 (fiction): The Call by Yannick Murphy. In a year filled with genre fiction this subtle epistolary story set on a farm surprised me with how much I enjoyed it and how much I kept thinking about it after the fact. I also really liked A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I guess the Pulitzer Prize *does* mean something.
• Favorite book of 2011 (non-fiction): Bossypants! The only book I read last year to get 5 stars. Tina Fey you glorious monster, please never stop shining your light on our sad little world. I also really enjoyed Keith Richard's autobiography, if only for the pictures inside of a young, hot Keith, taken before his face turned into an old leather baseball mitt.
• Least Favorite book of 2011: Mini-Shopaholic. Maybe it was the recession but somehow I couldn't enjoy or relate to a book about an irresponsible twerp and her whiny brat shopping and having HIGH-larious misunderstandings and hi-jinks. OR Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games series. This book should have never been written. If you do want to read the series (overall I give it a rating somewhere between a slightly interested raised eyebrow and a grunted "meh") stop after the second book. I beg of you!
• Funniest book of 2011: Bossypants. Even the cover with the disturbing man arms makes me laugh uncomfortably!
• Saddest book of 2011: The Long Goodbye, by Meghan O'Rourke. It's a memoir about her mother dying. I CAN'T. I love you mom!
• Scariest book of 2011: Bedbugs, by Ben Winters. I'm still feeling itchy and thinking every stray lint ball is the scouting party of a giant army of bloodthirsty insects.
• Things the books I read made me want to do this year: Go to Papua New Guinea, try umeboshi plums, check my mattress for bedbugs (see above), call my mom, be nicer to retail employees, add more sea vegetables to my diet, watch 80s movies, write more, and read more. Read everything!

What's your first book of 2012? Authors currently hanging out on my bedside table include Glen Duncan, Dorianne Laux, S.J. Watson, Mindy Kaling, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, and Louis de Bernières. It's going to be a good year....!

In sum: I love books. You should too. I now have a Nintendo Wii but I'll try not to let Mariokart eat into my reading time. YAY LIFE!

Stories I Only Tell My Friends

This man is not aging! Lowe, what is your secret? You did not reveal it in your autobiography, that's for sure. You did; however, include many stories that followed the celebrity conceal and reveal pattern: "and that boy grew up to be...Robert Downey Jr./Sarah Jessica Parker/Bill Clinton/Justin Bieber/Lady Gaga."

He kind of skimmed over the whole underage video sex thing but I'm sure we'll learn more about that when Kitty Kelley tackles The Brat Pack (Dear Lord, please make that book happen. Thanks, Jane). He did finally explain why he named his son Johnowen: he wanted John, his wife wanted Owen - by gum it's so simple!

Rob Lowe, I enjoyed your book. I look forward to your follow-up, which will surely detail your time on Parks & Recreation (is Adam Scott amazing? Of course he is, why am I even questioning it) and finally reveal what gives you that eternal youthful glow. It's stem cells, isn't it? I bet it's stem cells.

3.5 wild nights at Hard Rock Cafe with Emilio out of 5.

The Call

I love this book. Get it and read it. The end.

Oh, fine.

Exhibit A: Farm animals and rural vet stuff. I don't know about you, but I love to read about people who have jobs that I find simultaneously amazing and horrifyingly gross. I don't have it in me to reach into a goat and pull out her kid - but by God I want to read about it.

Exhibit B: A non-threatening spaceship. None of this Independence Day "Welcome to Urf" tentacles and world domination stuff - just pleasant blinking lights. Oh, it's not a spoiler, this isn't shelved in the sci-fi section, calm yourself.

Exhibit C: A contemporary fiction book that isn't all sad people doing sad things. A first-person, journal-style contemporary fiction book that isn't sad people doing sad things! Wonders never cease.

4.5 ruptured cow uteruses (uteri?) out of 5. Ick that's so violent. How about, 4.5 friendly spacemen out of 5. Much better.

Bedbugs

Oh man. If you know me (and you do because, let's face it, this blog ain't no Dooce), you know that when I see a mattress on the side of the road I give it a wiiiiiiide berth. In New York, in Boston, in any city where students are crammed into tiny apartments where they spend their days swapping fluids with anything that moves (or so the media has led me to believe), bed bugs have taken hold. Every year, the students flee, they deposit their urine (I *hope* that's urine?) stained mattresses on the streets, and the bed bugs flex their haunches and prepare to launch onto whomever is so foolish as to walk within 2-3 feet. ALSO they never die. ALSO they can live in books. BOOKS. Bedbugs, you wound me to my CORE!

To sum: This book is scary & gross. The characters are well-developed, and there are some great twists and turns. Also if you get bed bugs, we can no longer be friends. Sorry.

4 tiny spots of blood on your pillow out of 5. Huh. Weird...

UFOs

Oh. My. GOD. Let me just say that I believe everything I read, and am also easily frightened, so I should have not picked up this book. But I did, because I enjoy having thoughts like "Can't let my leg fall over the side of the bed because the ALIEN WILL GRAB IT!"

This book will tell you all about the hundreds of sightings by people who know the difference between the reflection of Venus/swamp gas/weather balloons/balloon boys, and actual crazy metal cigar-shaped light-up hyperfast hovering ALIEN SPACE CRAFT. Aiiieeeee they're here and they're going to probe us.

Does Obama know? Does FLOTUS know? Flotus save us! Dazzle the aliens with your sparkle converse and sick dance moves while Barack herds us into the secret bunkers under the Rocky Mountains!

4 tinfoil hats out of 5.

The Panic Hand

These stories - so great. So WEIRD. They zig and zag all over the place but you always end up somewhere awesome. The story "Friend's Best Man" won the World Fantasy Award and stars a dog that can predict the future. A magic dog! Look, I can't even go into all the details beyond the psychic dog, the story with God as a housekeeper, the imaginary friend who is alive...it's all good. Kelly Link and Aimee Bender owe some big debts to Carroll - if you enjoyed their short stories I would definitely pick this up if you can find a copy.

Friend's Best Man = 5 magic Jack Russell terriers out of 5.

The rest of the book = 3.5 raging World Fantasy Awards after-parties out of 5.