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.

Oprah

Oprah A Biography by Kitty Kelley is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere! A "friend" lent me this book in an effort to make me hate Oprah (I say "friend" because what kind of true friend would want you to hate Oprah?). BUT, here's my beef - yes, Oprah is a narcissist with delusions of grandeur (but she is kind of grand, so maybe it's not a delusion). HOWEVER, the stories that try to make you hate her are all like "I used to work for Oprah and, the nerve, she used to ask us what extravagant presents we wanted and then GIVE THEM TO US." What a narcissistic bitch. Oprah: Do you need a librarian? Call me. I'll organize all your back issues of O Magazine. I don't think it's weird that you're on the cover of every single one!*

This book could have used more Gayle & Stedman though. I think we all know that they're really the ones pulling the strings.

3 dates with Roger Ebert out of 5.

*Ok, it's a little weird.

The Help and Mockingjay - a Books with Birds on the Covers Twofer

So you'd *think* that these books have nothing in common. One is the final book in a trilogy about an emo girl with badass archery skills fighting an evil government, the other is about...holy crap as I am writing this I realize it's about an emo girl with badass writing (interviewing?) skills fighting an evil social system. My system of pairing books together based on the animals on their covers WORKS.

Anyway, the battle against the evil social system that was segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s was definitely the more compelling of the two. The Hunger Games trilogy could not have ended on more of a whimper. One of the evil forces Katniss had to fight against was black goo. GOO. Goo doesn't have the villainous charisma of a pudgy bigoted socialite like Hilly Holbrook. Anyway, read the first two Hunger Games books, spare yourself the last one which is fighting goo but mostly just sitting around like a whiny B saying "Gale, Peeta, Gale, Peeta". Read Battle Royale instead - now *that* was a book about high school students fighting each other to the death!

Oh, just see the movies when they come out.

Mockingjay: 1 sad-sack emo angst-filled teenage inner monologue out of 5 (except really 5 out of 5 of those because that is all the book is! But also, it's terrible. So, 1 out of 5).

The Help: 3 WASPY bridge parties out of 5.