I Failed to Make a Moby Dick Reference

When you walk into a bookstore and realize you can get four books for the price of one, you’re probably opening a mental bottle of champagne. However, when you start reading a book and realize you’re facing a four-in-one situation – there’s little reason for celebration.

Call Me by Your Name is a four-in-one book. I’m going to lean heavily on the conclusions my reading buddy and I have reached during our ordeal.

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Book One: ADHD

At first, the attention span of the narrator (Elio) seems kind of cool – because he’s a kid and of course he’s gonna be all over the place. But it gets really old really fast. Nothing is finished, and some things are not even given an opportunity to start.

Book Two: Ritalin

In book two there’s actually more than one complete scene. I managed to take a breath during some dialogues and events. Some things that were meant to be cute and lovey-dovey were a bit rapey and Elio has been walking a fine line between an infatuated youth and a creepy stalker from the beginning.

Book Three: Ritalin Overdose

In part three we suddenly have maximum concentration in detail with a bunch of unimportant characters and events which hardly give anything to the story. It only serves to further disrupt the rhythm of the book.

Book Four: What. The. Fuck.

Book Four is painful and melancholic. It’s the only part of the book that jogged my synapses and made me care about Elio and Oliver. Here we find out that Aciman can write. We get to meet an author who can focus and convey depth of feeling that shakes the reader. But we also learn that he is not aware that he had not written a story about a love that transcends time and space and is never to wither.

If their relationship corresponded to the feelings expressed in the last part of the book, Call Me by Your Name would have been one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.

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Call Me by Your Name

I did not get the most important thing that’s supposed to define the depth of the relationship Elio and Oliver have. “He’s more myself than I am”, Aciman quotes Bronte. Let’s expand on that:

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and we were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

vs.

“till he said, ‘Call me by your name and I’ll call you by my name,’ which I’d never done in my life before and which, as soon as I said my own name as though it were his, took me to a realm I never shared with anyone in my life before, or since.”

I rest my case.

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Is this even English?

“I smiled right away, because I caught his attempt to backpedal, which instantly brought complicit smiles to our faces, like a passionate wet kiss in the midst of a conversation between two individuals who, without thinking, had reached for each other’s lips through the scorching red desert both had intentionally placed between them so as not to grope for each other’s nakedness.”

We have two individuals, ok? They are having a conversation and there’s a scorching red dessert between them. The metaphorical desert is there because they want to grope for each other nakedness, but at the same time they don’t want it. The desert is meant to stop them from groping. Now, all you need to do to understand this moment is to imagine a passionate wet kiss in the midst of this “over-the-desert” “nakedness-groping” conversation.

Only then will you understand the depth and meaning of the complicit smiles Elio and Oliver shared. Or not.

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The Peach Scene (Elio has sex with a peach, sex defined loosely)

I was going to skip referring to this, but I cannot because this is where the book fails irrevocably. I can shrug off dubious consent. I can explain away pretty much everything that irked me in this book, but I cannot forgive describing a “rape victim” as “loyal” nor can I forgive that the said rape victim was “struggling not to spill what [Elio] left inside”. I know it’s a peach, but dude, you should have used another comparison or you should’ve used your words more carefully.

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But I Digress

I was tempted to draw yet another parallel with Moby Dick (it would be my third after Moby Dick, In Space and Of Blindness, Rabies and Whales) but I came up with the “Call Me Ishmael” angle too late and was too lazy to develop the idea having already written this long-ass post. On another note, I’m reading “How to Write Short” so maybe there’ll be less long-ass posts in the future. Although I honestly doubt it.

 

Of Blindness, Rabies and Whales

I had another accidental exercise in reading preferences – very similar to what happened to me while reading Crazy for Vincent/Intimacy.

I started reading Saramago’s Blindness alongside Borislav Pekić’s Rabies (Besnilo), having no idea what Blindness is about (I like knowing as little as possible about a book). Turns out – again – the books are eerily similar, yet completely different.

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Moby Dick Syndrome

Some books are just…no. Simply no. Blindness is one of those “No-Books” for me. Reading it was a torture, and I still cannot grasp what pushed me to finish it. Maybe it was the Moby Dick Syndrome. Let’s just say, I know there is a white whale somewhere on those pages, but not only did I not catch it, I did not even hear it.

Blindness did manage to pull me in at the start. Lack of proper names, difficulty of discerning who was speaking and the seamless transitions between sections blinded me. It made me feel like I was a part of the epidemic and it foreshadowed an amazing immersive experience (which it failed to deliver).

In Rabies, Pekic’s wild and erratic style makes you feel mad, teetering on the edge of sanity (and humanity). And even though I had a lot of difficulty navigating through it (it took two tries), I got my white whale in the end and I loved every minute of the hunt.

Truth? I decided to refer to Moby Dick just so I can use this gif.

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What a Difference a Style Makes

Blindness is smelly, languid and apathetic. Rabies is violent, intense, and bloody. The destination of both is the same, but the paths they take are different. Rabies escalates, Blindness withers.

While it’s not hard to deduce what Blindness is about, I really didn’t get it while I was reading it. Having thought about it, I assume the point was to show:

• The fragility of the human condition/society;
• The ephemeral nature of what we see as humanity;
• “Reality” is arbitrary (especially when faced with severe adversity);
• The agility with which society turns out those who are different, afflicted, unwanted….

I just did not see it – I was too busy being irritated. I did not have any “there-she-blows” moments – it was all a struggle.

Rabies, with very similar allegorical tendencies, resonated with me with no problem whatsoever. Pekic has written a thriller, a clever crime story (with a hint of supernatural) with real people you come to hate/love and care about, a story which successfully led me to the white whale.

I’m going to quote myself here because I’m so cool:

Pekić is very ostentatious, very aware of his prowess and he’s putting it out there. It’s pretty much like this: “uuu look at me, I handle words the way you cannot handle oxygen, and I know it, and I want you to know it.” And I know it. And I loved it.

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It’s Not That It’s Bad – I Just Hated It

Around 100  pages into Blindness, I had no empathy left and I didn’t give a fuck about the horrible reality the characters were subjected to. But it’s hard to tell whether that was a result of Saramago’s intention to show me I’m a part of that “humanity” (which is in essence inhumane) or was it the result of me hating the book.

There are more things I appreciated in Blindness, like Saramago’s ability to write about violence, blood and murder and still making it all seem lethargic and passive. Saramago is a magnificent writer. Blindness is not a lousy book; it’s just that I hated it.

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What Now

Honestly? I don’t know. Having examined Blindness in more detail makes me think I was unfair in giving it a one-star rating. But I really hated it, I really did.

Should the aftermath matter? Or should the reading experience itself be the basis for a rating?

One swallow does not make a summer…

…and one amazing book does not make a writer amazing. Ok, it does, but it doesn’t make all his books amazing.

Benjamin Alire Saenz: The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

ILML has lovable characters and their relationships are as flawed and lovely as they are. Everything is a combination of perfect imperfections, which I really enjoyed. Up to the point where I started struggling against it and then finally rejected it completely.

The Narrator

Salvador is the narrator of the book which deals with people, family, friendship and pain which invariably comes when you love. Like any other teenager (and a lot of adults) he’s having a hard time dealing with the changes which are out of his control. I liked Sally at the beginning when he still had a semblance of a person. As the book progresses the reality of him seeps away and he becomes nothing more than a narrator of a poorly constructed story.

The Writing

The flow of words is not effortless – quite the contrary. It seems forced and artificial. In a story which deals with everyday things, the artifice ruins everything. In ILML you can tell in advance when the author is preparing to give you a deep thought or a beautiful sentence. And there are beautiful sentences and quotes worth jotting down.

The Story

The story is what I minded the most. I know a lot of people have to deal with a lot of shit in their lives, but I think it really was not necessary to wreak havoc on every single character in this book. This only added to the feeling that everything was less than honest, because some of these tragic events seemed uncalled for which was most evident in a flippant way they were treated.

The End

The worst thing is definitely the ending. All the pain, loss and confusion are neatly resolved in the final chapter which is a lecture written by a 17-year-old Salvador Silva. Lazy.

 No bueno.

The Art of Welding

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot like a book. Sorry, Andy. I really loved The Martian, as can be seen here, but Artemis is nothing more than a disappointment. I really wanted to like it, not only because it is your second book, but also because it is the first book after a long time my reading mate and I took up together.

Artemis had everything going for it. I liked where the plot was going, I liked the characters (ok, Jazz was obnoxious at times, but not insufferable). Soon, plot, character and relationship development gave way to welding. Real important stuff, this. Yeah. You know you want to read 20 pages about welding. Fun stuff, that.

I’ll steal a bit from the Martian review I wrote in which I stole a bit from WSJ, quoting Mr Weir as saying:  “If you get down into the deep details, the science tells you the story,” he said.”  He spent “three years working out the details”. I’m sure he spent a lot of time researching the Moon and how life on Moon would look like, but he seemed to have forgotten about it due to serious welding obsession (except for Moon’s gravity). YES, I GET IT. IT’S ONE-SIXTH OF EARTH’S GRAVITY.

There are around 30 mentions of moon’s gravity in Artemis:

“It’s only one-sixth Earth’s Gravity.”
“…remember the gravity here.” (like you’ll let me forget).
“Gravity”, I said. “Sex is totally different in one-sixth G.”
“Sure, they have six times the gravity to deal with.”

The word “weld” is used 62 times.

“When you’re in a vacuum, getting rid of heat is a problem. There’s no air to carry it away.”
“When you weld aluminium, you need to flood it with a nonreactive gas to keep the surface from oxidizing. On Earth they use argon because it’s massively abundant. But we don’t have noble gases on the moon, so we have to ship them in from Earth.”
“The city requires all sorts of extra inspections if you weld to the inner hull.”
“Flint and steel won’t work in a vacuum.”
“A welding flame is just acetylene and oxygen on fire.”

For more on welding, read Artemis. If you need more on lunar gravity, you should find a hobby.

For me, the science worked in The Martian was because it was fun and relatable, it was useful for the story (which was rather simple – no cartels there). We cared about Mark and his survival, and science was keeping him alive. Science made The Martian feel more real, or at least more possible. What the fuck is the purpose of all the welding in Artemis? Why would an average reader want to know so much about welding?  

As I was nearing the end of Artemis, I became painfully aware of it having certain characteristics of a “first book in a series”. Primarily, because there were a lot of cool characters (pretty much everyone except for Jazz) who were neglected and could have contributed to the story – immensely. Shockingly, while reading Mr Weir’s Interview I found out that he wants to write a series of books about Artemis, one of which would include Rudy, the most underused and the coolest character in Artemis.

Stop writing installments. Start writing books.

For an actual review of the book (spoilers included) click here: Lacus Oblivionis.

Raw Liver & Melted Vanilla Ice Cream

The decision to delve once again into the American Gods was only a matter of proper incentive. The premiere of the TV show seemed like a good one, and, boy, were my reading buddy and me right about rereading this one.

I’m not sure who’d read American Gods in 2013, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. I have been taken aback by every major turn of events. The review itself is, however, in line with what I feel about the book, although I think it was too vague, so let’s list the three things I loved the most about American Gods.

1. Coercive Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief and the type of willing suspension the author requests from me is the most important part of the book. It’s the deal breaker. Halfway through American Gods, I’ve realised that, for me, Gaiman’s quality as a writer comes firstly from the fact that I haven’t even realised that I was suspending disbelief. You simply have no choice in the matter. It comes as easy as breathing and it’s not willing – it’s compulsory. I think this is achieved by presenting the impossible as mundane, and mundane as extraordinary; snow is something to write home about – talking to your dead spouse is an afterthought.

2. Intelligent Design

Nothing in this book is accidental. Every adjective and every metaphor is carefully placed. It’s all so deliberate; far from being effortlessly beautiful. Even though I’m a big fan of effortless beauty, it is impossible not to appreciate the way Gaiman structured and planned everything to make you believe.

3. Raw Liver and Melted Vanilla Ice Cream

When Neil puts in an effort to put that beauty onto the page, he does so magnificently. The thing I really liked is the way he treats the colours. I might forget some of the characters (I already did),  but I will not forget Mr Wednesday’s suit which was the colour of melted vanilla ice cream, nor will I forget the room which has walls the colour of raw liver. I’ll take the colours with me.

“He perceived the pain in colours: the red of a neon bar-sign, the green of a traffic light on a wet night, the blue of an empty video screen.”

Five to Four

However, there is something of a downside to rereading. First time around, I gave American Gods a five. This time around – it’s a four. The ending was anticlimactic this time and the Laura-Shadow relationship was not something I felt was as game-changing as it was meant to be. I needed a bit more convincing.

P.S. Still haven’t delved into the TV show. But I love the idea of Ian McShane as Wednesday. But then again, I love the idea of Ian McShane as pretty much anyone anywhere.

Homo Mensura

The Flanders Panel
Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Part of the infamous and no-longer-neglected Mini Book Club (featuring moi and Lukre)

Throughout most of the effort of completing the Flanders Panel, I genuinely hated the thing. I despised its inability to give depth to its characters, its inaction and unnecessarily long-winded philosophical musings. Reading it was a horrible experience. Truly, an excruciating feat. There’s nothing happening in this book. There are characters which talk a lot about what’s happening (which is nothing). It’s a jumbled mess of art, chess and dime-store philosophy which only dabbles in mystery.

But (I’m still having difficulty accepting there’s a but!), having completed it, it seems that the objective suckiness of the book has been misplaced by what I have decided it was lacking,

My participation in the recreation of the story has rendered it not-so-horrible. My irritation with the lack of proper emotional response of the characters to the atrocities in the book has, inadvertently, infused them in my mind with exactly that. Even though the flat protagonist Julia has failed to be appalled and heart-broken, by noticing her failure and purely by thinking about how she should have felt, I have somehow redeemed this bad piece of writing. This does not happen often, and I don’t know why it happens with some books, while not with others, but I ended up not giving a one-star review.

I’m a bit distraught by this, but at the same time I love it because it reflects that which I love about books – the words they contain and the stories they tell are subject to endless interpretation of the reader and how much that reader dedicates himself or herself to the process. The whole process is so delectably unstable and open – beautiful.

As I usually do, I rummaged through Goodreads in search of positive reviews which only confirmed that we only think we are reading the same book because it has the same content.

The Flanders Panel still sucks, tho. It’s one of those books that should have been good, because it has all the ingredients. However, as we all now, it’s crucial to know just what to do with those ingredients.

One damp afternoon, Arturo Perez Reverte sat down at his usual table in the quasi-artistic cafe El Museo, somewhere on the way from La Navata to Madrid. Quasi-artistic because its clientele comprised of art enthusiast and connoisseurs. Salvador Dali, who would meet his demise in January next year, never sipped absinth in the dim, smoke-infused interior while pondering the finer nuances of artistic expression.

Arturo was looking through the newspaper he found lying languidly on the table. He looked up briefly when the waiter inquired of his beverage of choice.

“Gin”, he replied, smoothing out his moustache, “with a twist of lemon, if you please.”

He went back to the newspaper, stopping at the art section. Apparently, there was a possibility of Spain housing the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

August Thyssen, the founder of the Thyssen family’s financial empire and a passionate art collector would not be found in El Museo, Arturo thought, without malice or envy. He liked El Museo. He liked the reproductions which hung on the wall and the quiet discussions about art and an occasional game of chess which included more pensive stares than actual moves on the board.

The lanky waiter set the lemony gin on the table with a polite word or two, prompting Arturo to look up and smile. His smile froze beneath his moustache when his eyes caught a game of chess being played under the reproduction of the Arnolfini Portrait.

Being one of those art enthusiasts, he had a vague idea about the Flemish school and Van Eyck, but his knowledge of the 15th century was far from vague. All those bits and pieces of information, some larger, some smaller, coagulated in his brain to form an idea that will take the form of The Flanders Panel.

Carry On, nothing to see here

Rainbow Rowell – Carry On (2016)

You can tell Rainbow adores Simon, Baz, Penelope, Agatha… she truly loves them all. Makes you love them. The kink is, she doesn’t really love the plot. Rainbow just wanted to have some reason to put her beloved characters together, and she was forced to come up with a plot.

The plot is introduced somewhere mid-book. Occasionally she completely forgets the plot-thingy, goes on a binge with character development, subtle comments about life and reality, with her subtle style which has underlying respect for readers’ capability to get a hint.

Oh. SHIT. She forgot the plot.

And then the plot comes back again, and it is supposed to explode. It is supposed to go overboard and overwhelm. But it doesn’t. It somehow flickers pathetically, and you can feel that Rainbow just couldn’t let it die, so she poked it every now and then with a stick.

Maybe the biggest fault of Carry On is the fact that it’s supposed to be fantasy. There be dragons, but dragons don’t make a fantasy book. They make a book with dragons in it. Not many authors are capable of migrating through genres seamlessly, and a fanfiction-ish, fantasy-ish book doesn’t really seem to be Rainbow’s cup of tea (yet?). I respect her for doing it, but for me this is what she does best (excuse my being a bit self-referential):

Well, Rainbow Rowell summarily executes willing suspension of disbelief by making you the protagonist of her books. She makes you feel like a hero, makes your life seem worthy of a book of its own. Because, most of us can find some portion of our lives, as small as it may be, that a little imagination and some wordplay can make into a good, maybe even a great book. And that’s what Rainbow tells you, what she reminds you of – your life is interesting, you have great friends, there is excitement behind that very corner, you just need to see it.

 

 

Disturbed

I’ve read plenty of books that left an impression on me. 1984 and In Cold Blood come to mind. I’ve been seriously affected by these books. You can imagine how surprised I was to learn that Grey will be another book which I will include on this list. I did not expect to include it on any list, except on the Reasons-to-dislike-E.L.-James list.

Having mustered through cca 150 pages, I was simply unable to finish this book. Not because it is badly written (though it is), not because there is no chemistry between the main characters (though there is none), and not because the characterization is not worthy of Teletubbies (though it is, barely, but it is). I can read bad books. If you stumbled upon this blog before, I’m sure you are aware of this. Grey takes “bad” and it fucking owns it.

It is a deeply disconcerting book. It disturbed me in a way I have not been disturbed for a long time. In Grey we get to meet the adored Christian Grey. But this is not your attractive, rich, renaissance man we came to know  in FSoG, oh no. This is a rich, controlling psychopath who is only inches away from becoming a rapist and a serial killer. In Grey we come to learn that Christian Grey is not a Dominant. He’s not a guy with troubled childhood and run-of-the-mill psychological issues. He is just a sick, disturbed man who needs to be institutionalized to ensure the safety of those around him. He’s got power. He employs thousands. He owns many cars and a helicopter, and he can find you and be there real fast. You should be afraid, very afraid.

“It places the lotion in the basket.”

At the same time we get to meet a new Anastasia Steele. An inexperienced, bookish girl who stumbles into the orbit of a man who will have her under the scrutiny of a private investigator, who will punish her for writing “It was nice meeting you”, a man who does not want to dominate her – he wants to hurt her. He wants to earn her trust, and this he wants after making her sign an NDA.

The repetitive nature of Grey’s internal monologue only adds to the feeling that he’s not all there. He keeps thinking and saying things like “Oh, that smart mouth” and “Fair point, Miss Steele“. He feels inexplicably threatened by unimpressive kids and, even though he notices that Ana likes him at the very beginning of the book, he keeps noticing it as something new, always revelling in this “discovery” in the same way. The fact that there is no chemistry between them only enhances the level of disturbance because his insistence on making her his is simply unfathomable.

Christian is horribly fragmented. His thoughts are all over the place, mixing dialogue with internal monologue. He takes a moment to talk to himself and then he talks to people –  but not out loud. Remembering it makes me shudder. It is creepy beyond reason.

Essentially, Grey takes “badly written” to a level I did not believe possible. It transcends genre and reads like a psychological thriller. I kept expecting Christian to kidnap and murder Ana or Kate (or both). Then we would get introduced to some very cool FBI agents who delve into the mysterious ritualistic murder of a young woman (or women) following a trail of evidence back to a rich CEO. There might even be some introverted profiler who’d try to get into the murderer’s mind…. and find Christian Grey while he’s finishing his fava beans and drinking a nice chianti.

Saying that a book is “the worst book ever written” is ungrateful because it would imply I have read every book which was ever written and it might imply that I’ve actually read Grey. So I’ll just phrase it this way: “Grey is the worst book I have ever tried to read“. The statement lacks decisiveness and it’s tepid (much like Grey) but it’s the truth. I mean, come on. She tried to write a sexy adult novel (one she has already written) and all I could think about while I was reading it was the following five things:

1. That poor, poor girl, I hope she manages to get away from him.
2. My God, this man is really disturbed, this is just so creepy.
3. Dear Lord, this man is really disturbed, this is just so sick.
4. I should really read Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs again.
5. Will Graham is one of the hottest characters ever.

I hope I’ve managed to show you just how many shades of fucked up Grey really is (hint: it is not 50).

To hell with niceties. This IS the worst book ever written.

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Remember the Rain

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a sweet, unpretentious take on life and on what it means to be human. It made me wonder about the inner life of boys, something I’ve always believed was non-existent. I know it sounds a bit nasty to say that, but, growing up, I always thought boys had it easy. It lingered, I guess, as a force of habit, something I’ve never felt necessary to reassess.

While reading Aristotle and Dante, I was forced to re-examine those notions and I loved the journey. I loved the first few steps, when I was still thinking that Benjamin Alire Sáenz was putting depth and complexity where they had no place. I enjoyed carefully treading into the territory where I will be struck by sudden realization that I’ve had my narrow-sighted glasses on for too long.

Finding myself in a place where all bets were off – change of viewpoint pending – I realized I was in love.  I fell in love with the simplicity and ease with which my preconceived ideas were shattered into billion pieces, shimmering under the new-found light.

I was reminded that discovering the secrets of the universe means unlearning innocence and playfulness which made me feel morose. What I admire the most about this book is the fact that there wasn’t a single sentence in it which made me think that someone older than 17 was writing it. I think amazing talent and excruciating effort are behind that, behind keeping your years and experience at bay.

I have to admit when I started reading Ari and Dante I was pissed that I had in my hands yet another book with first person narrator. Don’t get me wrong, I think 1st person narration is awesome but it takes skills to pull it off. Thank God Benjamin got skillz. The result is Aristotle, one of those characters that you inescapably fall in love with. He’s a guy who sticks around on the edges of emotion and memory and comes back every once in a while to remind you of sweet melancholy.

At one point, Ari writes:

High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you, but when you graduated you got to write yourself.

That’ll keep me awake at night, because I still feel someone else is writing my novel, I still feel I need to take that pen and start writing my own story.

Read Ari and Dante. It’s profoundly beautiful. And don’t forget to remember the rain.

A/N: This book is the latest addition to the MiniBookClub. You can read my book buddy’s take on the book over at Anatomy of Reading and Other Demented Things.

Two ‘Easy’ Pieces

If you’re looking for something light and sugary to read this summer (or any other season for that matter) you should pick up either Attachments (1999) or Fangirl (2013) (preferably both). They’re just so damn sweet. To be clear, these books, as sweet as they are, have a certain gravity to them, making them a perfect blend of bitter and sweet.

These are romances. However, there are no blushing, innocent virgins and no tall, dark, mysterious, 29-year-old billionaire-multinational-CEOs here. These are regular people with regular stories. You and me, and that guy we had a serious crush on back in school. You know, the guy that was brainy and clumsy, and seemed like he liked you but had even less balls than you to do something about it?

These are situations we’ve been in. The dialogue is witty and hilarious, and you’ve surely had that discussions with your friend. This is us, trying to pry out of a rut we’ve been stuck in for years, but a rut we’ve grown so used to we think we like it. This is you, a student, convincing yourself you actually prefer books to people, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re petrified to get out there and stop being socially awkward. It’s you and me, it’s Everyman and Everywoman.

So why should you read either of these books? After all, how can it be exciting reading about something you’ve experienced?

Well, Rainbow Rowell summarily executes willing suspension of disbelief by making you the protagonist of her books. She makes you feel like a hero, makes your life seem worthy of a book of its own. Because, most of us can find some portion of our lives, as small as it may be, that a little imagination and some wordplay can make into a good, maybe even a great book. And that’s what Rainbow tells you, what she reminds you of – your life is interesting, you have great friends, there is excitement behind that very corner, you just need to see it.

The overwhelming familiarity of it all gives you strength and fortifies your belief that anything is possible. Anything.  You need a right set of circumstances, some guts to step out of your routine, and just wait for things to change, develop, and possibly turn absolutely beautiful.

Despite their similarities, Attachments and Fangirl are fairly different. Both deal with relatively new (at the time they were written) social changes which stem out of technological development. Fangirl is categorized as a YA novel, which I do not like, because YA makes me think of Twilight and Hunger Games, and Fangirl is nothing like those…things. It’s a story about a girl in college, in reluctant search for her place in the social order. Attachments deals with old people (30) who are stuck and are only realizing they haven’t really found themselves.

Obscure movie references are another thing these two books have in common, and you cannot help but feel like you have some kind of inside information, because there must be a whole bunch of people who didn’t get that “single-white-female” reference.

Even though Attachments should be more up my alley, and even though it’s a solid 4* book, I still preferred Fangirl (5*). Attachments is a fun read but at times it felt more like an exercise in writing than a complete work of fiction. It doesn’t lack closure, but it lacks a clear sense of direction, something Fangirl has in abundance.

I don’t usually  copy quotes from books because for me that’s the equivalent of dismembering a body, but sometimes it’s hard to resist, so here’s a one from Fangirl:

He made everything look so easy… Even standing. You didn’t realize how much work everyone else put into holding themselves upright until you saw Levi leaning against a wall. He looked like he was leaning on something even when he wasn’t. He made standing look like vertical lying down.

And another from Attachments:

Have you ever seen The Goodbye Girl? Don’t watch it if you still want to enjoy romantic comedies. It makes every movie made starring Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock lash itself in shame. Also, don’t watch The Goodbye Girl if it would trouble you to find Richard Dreyfuss wildly attractive for the rest of your life, even when you see him in What About Bob? or Mr. Holland’s Opus.