The Blindfold Test, Book 4.2 of Angie and Christie's Literature and Blogging Project

Predictably, my guesses at the plot of this book weren't even close (duh). It was much better than anything I could have anticipated. So let's go through my list of I Hopes to see which were met and which were disappointed.


* I hope it's funny, and the humour is dry and/or cheesy.

It WAS funny! And the humour was kind of dark and sardonic.

* I hope the author doesn't try any pretentious "ground breaking" literary styles that'll make it difficult to read.

Check! Easy to read, the author didn't try to be fancy with the writing style. I devoured this book.

* I hope it involves a guy NOT getting the girl (or vice versa).

This was lookin' good for the home team till the very end. I was actually happy he got her, though, he'd been through enough.

* I hope the Blindfold part isn't figurative.

The blindfold was completely figurative.

* I hope it isn't set in the 1980's.

Set in 1985. My initial reaction: damn. After reading it, I changed my mind. It sort of poked fun at the 80's, and I was alright with that.

* I hope there's some disguising and/or furtiveness involved.

Disguising and furtiveness abounds! He really went the distance here. Mr. Shechter, I mean.

* I hope it isn't secret agent crap.

Ehhhhh. . . it was and it wasn't. It wasn't secret agent-y enough to ruin the book, and the secret agent-iness that did go on was really goofy.

* I hope the main character is geeky.

The main character is hopelessly geeky! He's easy to feel sorry for, especially once you know what's happening to him.



Ever been called an asshole by soda machine? Or lost your girlfriend to a tweed-wearing colleague? Has your apartment been broken into and vandalized? More than once? Has your mail been stolen, and then re-delivered to you three years late? Ever feel like the government has hired a personal saboteur to follow you around and ruin your life? Welcome to Jeffrey Parker's life.

Meet Hank Monroe, Jr. He was hired by J. Edgar Hoover to stalk one Jeffrey Parker, an average-looking 35 year old English professor with a PhD, a published book at 25, and a better-than-average intellect. Despite his credentials, he can't land a decent job at a major university, and finds himself instead deposited at the dubious Skokie Valley Community College to stagnate professionally. He's had offers from Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago, which were all withdrawn suddenly, apologetically, and without explanation, thanks to some well-placed rumours perpetuated by Mr. Monroe.

Parker, or rather, ruining Parker's life, has become Hank's life's work, and this life's work is being frustrated by the subject himself. Over the years, Parker has accepted his lot in life as a rather unlucky bastard and developed a defense mechanism described by friends as "actively unobservant". He never dreams that every bad thing that happens to him is completely intentional, and simply doesn't react to the woes that Hank puts him through. This lack of reaction on Parker's part makes Hank's work completely unsatisfying to him.

Daunted by Parker's obtuseness, Hank resorts to outsourcing the majority of his work to a company who specializes in pushing people to their bullshit-tolerating threshold, Tolerance Management. Though the plug was pulled on the program funding Hank's work, he has continued it obsessively, determined to defeat Parker's indifference.

This book took forEVER for me to get into, but once I was into it, I had no difficulty in remaining engaged. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it or not; even though I liked it a lot, I can see why others might find it tedious.

The Blindfold Test, Book 4.1 of Angie and Christie's Literature and Blogging Project

Judge a Book By Its Cover

When i picked The Blindfold Test for this category, i could'nt wait to read and find out what it's about. I mean, how do you turn down a book with a cut-out disguise on the cover?! There's only one correct answer to that question: You don't.

I've owned this book for about four months now, and i've been successful with avoiding reading the back cover or flipping through the pages (you just don't KNOW what kind of torment this has been!). But now that i'm remembering the "Write about what you expect it's going to be about based solely on the cover art" part, I'm kind of at a loss. I have NO idea what to expect. I know that any guess on my part is going to miss the mark like Helen Keller with a sniper rifle, but here we go:

I think we'll find a stalker ex girlfriend going to extremes to avoid being made by the targets: her ex boyfriend and his new girl. She's a master of disguise, blending into the background as she pursues them from place to place, waiting for her opportunity to strike.

I'm not sure how the title's going to fit in with this plot.

Or maybe. . .

A guy is kidnapped and blindfolded by corporate goons wearing cheesy disguises (you know, so they can't be identified and stuff). The goons throw the hapless guy into a dark room with a single dull lightbulb suspended from the ceiling over a table with two chairs opposing one another. In front of him are two cups of liquid, and his opinion is being forcibly solicited:

"Which one tastes better", they demand, "Which one feels better on the tongue?" "Which one has the better aroma?" "Which one? WHICH ONE?!"

He's caught in the middle of a corporation flavour-war. The ultimate Pepsi challenge has been issued, and he's not sure he's up to the task.

At least the title fits, right?

Or maybe. . .

He's been invited to a Halloween party with his girlfriend. He abhors dressing up and refuses to waste any money on something he knows he'll never wear again. The solution? Some construction paper, a pair of scissors and some string. He'll cut himself out some sunglasses and a fake beard, then raid his uncle's closet for his old army-issue trench coat. Maybe he'll get lucky and find a ridiculous hat, too. Lame? Maybe. But at the end of the night, at least he will still have his fifty bucks and his dignity. Well, maybe not his dignity.

Again, not sure how the title'll tie into a plot like that. I think i'm just going to have to face the fact that i'm shooting in the dark with blanks here. So here're my hopes for the book, which are more realistic than the expectations i've just created on the spot (honestly, i've got no expectations at all):

* I hope it's funny, and the humour is dry and/or cheesy.
* I hope the author doesn't try any pretentious "ground breaking" literary styles that'll make it difficult to read.
* I hope it involves a guy NOT getting the girl (or vice versa).
* I hope the Blindfold part isn't figurative.
* I hope it isn't set in the 1980's.
* I hope there's some disguising and/or furtiveness involved.
* I hope it isn't secret agent crap.
* I hope the main character is geeky.

Now i think i'll go read. Balls know i've waited long enough!

The Commoner, Book 3 of Angie and Christie's Reading and Blogging Project

Imagine finding someone who really clicks with you; they're accomplished, independent, educated, and very much a forward-thinking individual. You're in love, and you want to make this person the one you spend the rest of your life with.

Now imagine you're the Crown Prince of Japan. Your life is a rigid, traditional one where the things you value so much in the girl you love are seen as flaws by everyone else in your world. Making this girl your wife would mean completely destroying everything about her that makes you love her in the first place, but you can't bear the thought of marrying anyone else. Would you marry her anyway?

The Commoner is the story of Haruko, the beautiful, intelligent, athletic, headstrong, and only daughter of a wealthy businessman. Haruko comes of age in the midst of social upheaval in post-WWII Japan. Her country is rebuilding and redefining itself, struggling to arrive the modern age while clinging to the thousands-year-old traditions the war interrupted. She meets the Crown Prince during a tennis match, where, to everyone's mortification, she beats him. After this, the Crown Prince continues inviting Haruko to play tennis with him, and their romance begins.

The Crown Prince sends his trusted adviser, Dr. Watanabe, to discuss the possibility of marriage with Haruko's parents. Horrified, they initially refuse the Prince's requests, worried for their daughter's future unhappiness at court due to her low birth. Her father sends her on a trip to Europe to give her the chance to think on the Prince's proposal. It's a historic request; though their family is wealthy, they are not a part of Japan's aristocracy. She chooses to accept, beginning a long life of sacrifice and suffering.

Initially, the book is an unlikely love story between a common woman and the Crown Prince of Japan. Once Haruko accepts the role as Crown Princess, a role she is ill-prepared for, the story shifts to one that tells the difficulties faced by a person transcending the traditional caste system. Due to her rise in social stature, she loses her family and friends. Her mother in law hates her. Her ladies-in-waiting resent her for being elevated above them, in defiance of their perception of the natural order of things. Her husband does his best to shield her from the prejudice of the court, but as the future Emperor of Japan, he has little time to devote to his wife's protection. Alone, Haruko suffers decades of bullying, mental abuse, constant criticism, and perpetual pressure to embody standards she'll never be allowed by those who consider themselves to be her betters to attain.

Shortly after her marriage, Haruko gives birth to a son, who is taken from her after only a few months to be raised by a legion of nurses and tutors. The nurses, under orders from the Empress, do everything they can to deny Haruko visitation with her son. Already suffering from postpartum depression, the taking of her son is the final straw that sends her into a nervous breakdown. She doesn't speak to anyone for a year.

Twenty years later, Empress Haruko is faced with a difficult decision. Her son the Crown Prince is in love with a commoner, a successful business woman named Keiko. The daughter of an ambassador, she has traveled the world, speaks five languages, and has a bright future ahead of her. She has refused him to pursue her career. He vows to leave the country with no heir if he cannot have her. Haruko, wanting her son to be happy, knows better than anyone what Keiko will have to give up, and the unhappiness she'll suffer if she accepts.

Imagine your son is in love with someone he really clicks with. . . she's accomplished, independent, educated, and very much a forward-thinking individual. You know that helping your son make this woman the one he spends the rest of his life with will destroy everything about her that makes him love her in the first place, and so much more. It will cage her and slowly destroy her as a person. Would you choose the happiness of your son, or would you spare her your fate?

Like Water for Chocolate, Book 2 of Angie and Christie's Literature and Blogging Project

I'll do my best not to gush over this one.


This was the most interesting melding of a recipe book and fiction i've ever read. It was 12 recipes accompanied by the story of the somewhat-supernatural events in the life of Tita De La Garza. Each story begins with a recipe, and unfolds during the directions to prepare it.


Tita was born to a woman, Mama Elena, who ruled her household with an iron fist. She was raised by the cook, Nacha, because Mama Elena couldn't breastfeed. Nacha raised Tita in the kitchen, passing on generations of recipes and general kitchen know-how, developing Tita into a marvelous cook in her own right.

Mama Elena had two other daughters before Tita, and it was Tita's fate, according to an ancient family tradition, never to marry and to stay with her mother to take care of her until she died.

Tita discovered this fate on the day her boyfriend, Pedro, came over to ask Mama Elena for her hand in marriage. Mama Elena instead offered her middle daughter, Rosaura, whom Pedro reluctantly accepted as his bride. "If i cannot marry the one i love, it is best to marry her sister, so that i can be near her always," he told his father, who chided him for his broken promise to Tita to love her forever.

Tita then proceeded to ruin her sister's wedding by cooking the wedding feast with tears and bitterness in her heart, which gave all of the guests a nasty case of food poisoning. Unfortunately, the feast also killed Nacha, who after eating the cake infused with Tita's tears, dies of the heartbreak Tita feels.

After that, unable to express her love any way except through the loving preparation of food, Tita and Pedro began their 22-year unconsummated love affair.

I loved this book. It had everything- food, romance, intrigue, unrequited love, prostitution, rebellious teenagers, and the purest form of hatred: the love of a daughter turned sour toward her overbearing, abusive mother.

The one thing i struggled with was the relationship between Pedro and Tita. After his marriage, Pedro continued to court Tita, when he should have released her to find her own happiness. She was never truly free to seek the love of someone who could love her back freely and openly, and the one time she did almost find that love, he treated her badly.

I disliked him for his hypocrisy. He couldn't bear the pain of seeing Tita with another man, though he had no problems with inflicting that very same pain on her by marrying her sister. I felt like if he couldn't bear to see her with someone else, he should've waited for Mama Elena to die.

I loved this book. You should read it.

The Language of Fear, Book 1.5 of Angie and Christie's Reading and Blogging Project

I'd like to start off by saying how annoyed i am with the fact that the blog categories can include something dumb like podcasts, but not one about books and literature. HINT, HINT, Tom!

Now, on to the book.

I called this book "1.5" because it didn't quite qualify as #2. I read about 2/3 of it, and put it down for good. It's a book of short stories that i suppose are intended as horror, but simply came off as repugnant to my less-than-delicate sensibilities. I felt like Mr. James' goal was to shock and offend his readers as much as humanly possible; bravo, Mr. James! *golf clap* Mission accomplished.

The first story was about a heroin addict who tried to sell his prostitute girlfriend's toddler for drugs. He almost succeeded, but his girlfriend went over to the drug dealer's abode and got her back. This story was the best one i read, and i had high hopes for the rest of the book.

From there, those hopes were dashed against such subjects as incest, to-the-death cage fighting, wife killing at a phone prostitute's behest (actually that story wasn't bad either), more incest, teen suicide, some more incest (wtf?!), and finally, a guy killing his own dog. The guy killing the dog was the last straw for me, and i had no interest in reading any more after that.

I wouldn't call myself easy to offend. I wouldn't call myself sensitive. However, i simply don't enjoy a read where i feel like the author's entire intent is to gross me out on some level (usually more than one). If this is your bag, then this book is for you!

Madame Bovary, Book 1 of Angie and Christie's Literature and Blogging Project

The story is about Emma Bovary, married to a dull-witted, doting doctor whom she despises. Emma becomes heavily depressed and disillusioned by the banality of married life, due to her ideals of love and passion that were heavily influenced by romance novels she read during her upbringing in a convent.

As if daily life weren't already depressing enough for her, she is given a brief glimpse into aristocratic life when she and Charles are invited to a ball at the Marquis' chateau. Life only becomes more dismal and boring after the ball, and Charles relocates them to Yonville, which he believes will cure his wife of her malaise. He does not realize that she blames him for her boredom and depression. A few months after moving to Yawnville, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, whom she mostly ignores after birth.

She then embarks on several flirtations, and eventually two affairs in order to fill the loveless void in her life. As she grows bolder in her adultery, she begins incurring massive amounts of debt, which she struggles to hide from the poor, unsuspecting Charles. When the debts are called in and judgments are made against her, she opts to commit suicide by ingesting arsenic, rather than face her husband and suffer his forgiveness.

I found Emma difficult to sympathize with at times. No matter what she's given, and whom she is taking it from, she always wants more. Her appetites for love, spirituality, and material possessions are insatiable, and eventually bring about her ruin. I watched her make her inexorable march to her destruction, and it was painful to watch her sink into that kind of inevitability.

Charles was the one i had the most sympathy for. He always supported and loved Emma, no matter how badly she was treating him at the time. He did his best to ensconce her in the sort of lifestyle she expected to live in, though she was never quite happy with what he provided her with; and she never loved him nor appreciated his devotion toward her.

I love classic literature, but this one was a challenge. It took me over a month to finish it, and it was the only book i was reading at the time. In the beginning, i found it difficult to become interested in. But after sitting down with it, i found i could read it for brief periods of time, and that it was enjoyable if read in this fashion. In spite of this, i would definitely recommend reading it.

Angie and Christie's Literature and Blogging Project

It started with an email, a link and a question.

The email was from Angie, the link lead to a reading challenge (hosted by a blogspot person neither of us knew), and the question was: "Wanna do this?" I followed the link, perused the description of the challenge, and replied, "I'm in!"

Being the busy people that we are, her moreso than me, we let the subject lapse for a couple of weeks. When we got around to looking at the challenge again, together this time, we realized there were a few aspects of the challenge we just weren't interested in. Damn it.

But did we give up? Of course not! This was a CHALLENGE, after all! So we did what any pair of raging control freaks would've proudly done in our places: we took the bits that we did like, and made up stuff to replace the stuff we didn't. I mean, when it comes to uninteresting subjects, there's only so much challenge we can handle. At this point, it evolved from a reading 'challenge' to a cooperative reading effort. Once we read our book, we'll write our thoughts about the book before moving on to the next one.

These are the topics we picked, and how we selected our material (bear in mind, some of the topic selection methods were not our idea). We limited our selections to things that neither of us has read before:

1. Random Book Selection. Go to the library. Position yourself in a section such as Fiction, Non-Fiction, Mystery, Children (whatever section you want). Then write down random directions for yourself (for example, third row, second shelf, fifth book from right). Follow your directions and see what book you find. Check that book out of the library, read it and then write about it. (If you prefer, you can do the same at a bookstore and buy the book!)

Selecting this book was my task. I decided before i went into the store that i would walk straight to the back wall, and pick out the last book on the bottom shelf. This is what i found there:




2. Random Word. Go to this random word generator and generate a random word. Find a book with this word in the title. Read the book and write about it.

Angie and i both followed a link to a random word generator and generated a word. We agreed to decide on who got the cooler word, and use that to determine what book we read. I got 'anthology', and she got 'bowl'. The book we ultimately decided on has neither word in the title (cheaters!)




but it IS an anthology, so we figured it was applicable. Angie picked this one.

3. Classic Girl. Choose a sexy classic, read it, and write about it.

Classic literature is, in my opinion, forced on people too young to appreciate it. I HATED classic literature when i was required to read it, but now i like it rather a lot. I chose Madame Bovary as our sexy classic, because i've always wanted to read it.




4. Judge A Book By Its Cover. Pick out a book based SOLELY on the cover. First, write about what you expect the book to be about based on the cover art. Then read the book and write about how the book was different from and/or similar to what the cover art led you to expect.

Again, this was my task. I wandered around a bookstore, just looking at covers. You have no idea how tempting it is to pick up a book and read the back cover before deciding to read it! I caught myself going to do just that several times, but when i saw this beauty, i knew i had to read it regardless of what the back cover said:




Seriously. How can you turn down a book with a cut-out disguise as a cover?! You can't!

5. Phoning An Author. Pick a random last name out of the phone book. Find an author with the same last name and read a book by them. Write about it.

Angie and i picked up our respective phone books, which was cool, because we got two towns' worth of names to select from. We flipped open to a random White Page, closed our eyes, and poked our fingers down at a spot on the page. I got Huff, she got Mayfield. We ended up going with her name, and this is the book she picked:




6. Random Bestseller. Go to Random.org and, using the True Random Number Generator, enter the number 1950 for the min. and 2008 for the max. and then hit generate. Then go to this site and find the year that Random.org generated for you and click on it. Then find the bestseller list for the week that would contain your birthday for that year. Choose one of the bestsellers from the list that comes up, read it and write about it.

We both went to the site and entered in the parameters specified. I got 1955, and she got 1993. Her list had a better selection, so we combined the requirements and chose her list year, and my birthday week. We ended up picking




7. A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words. Go to the picture book/art book section of the library or a book store. Select a picture (or several) from an art book, and write a story about what's happening in the picture.

Angie picked this one. She didn't say how she picked it, but i'm dying to read it!




8. Help Yourself! Read a self-help book, and write about how it helped you.

Initially, we picked something entirely different. It was a spiritual book that looked incredibly interesting, but then we saw this




We're both feminist literature fans, and clearly we didn't already have enough on the list, so we added another. What's better than self-help? Feminist self-help, of course!

9. Story Book Ending. Watch a movie based on a book, and then read the book it's based on. Write about how it's similar and different, and which you liked better.

It was hard to pick something we'd both never seen or read. I ended up picking a short story and a movie based on the short story.




It's got Vinnie Jones :D

10. Public Spying. Find someone who is reading a book in public. Find out what book they are reading and then read the same book. Write about it.

Angie picked this one. One of the parents at her daughters' softball games was reading this book




Her daughter has already read it, and gives it a shining endorsement.

And that's our reading list! We'll blog about them as we read them; we don't have any particular time frame we're aiming for. I think Angie picked The Language of Fear as our starting point. See something you're interested in? Feel free to join us as we broaden our literary horizons :) I'll start as soon as Amazon.com sends The Postal Fairy to visit me!