An Abundance of Katherines: Tasty Soft Serve Ice Cream

It happened at Costco.

I hadn't had breakfast, but I had been eating from the buffet of free samples throughout the store. My blood sugar started to drop and I started making poor decisions, such as picking up a Value Pack of Häagen-Dasz ice cream bars.

It was while I was in my low blood-sugar stupor that I passed the giant pile-o-books near the sweat pants and chocolate bars.

Because this was Costco, the books were all sold in shrink-wrapped Value Packs. On one side of the table there were shrink-wrapped series: Game of Thrones, 50 Shades of Shit, Twilight, Hunger Games; on the other side of the table were books shrink-wrapped by author: John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, John Green.

When I saw the John Green collection I thought, "Hey.. Doesn't everyone love John Green? I wonder why. Wasn't An Abundance of Katherines banned or something? Maybe I should read his stuff." I decided to pick it up, along with a Value Pack of Kinder Bueno Bars so I'd have something to snack on on my way home.

Once I got home and ate something other than a Kinder Bueno bar, I started feeling buyer's remorse. I started wondering who I could gift The Fault in Our Stars to; I really did not feel like reading that book. I was going to read An Abundance of Katherines only because it had been banned, but I had no intention of reading the other two books: Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska (though I did in the end, but that's a different blog post).

Anyways: the book.

It wasn't bad.

I wouldn't say it was the world's best book, or even one of the better books I've ever read, but it was OK.

The plot is that this guy Colin is some kind of genius, but he shows promise without making good on it. He's apparently been dumped by 19 Katherines (hence the title of the book) and is now trying to crack some bizarre mathematical Katherine-heart-winning code to win Katherine #19's heart back. Of course we all know that that isn't going to happen. Some contrivance does happen to get him to go on a road trip and then meet a girl who's boyfriend's name just so happens to also be Colin. The girl is more or less a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with some extra personality and depth of character, and things go on as you'd expect these things to go because this book has all the depth of a shallow wading pool.

Now, that said, it's a pretty cute book. The writing is well-done; it's funny; it's fun. Because it's well-written and the characters are well-developed, you get fairly involved with them, and you start to care for them as deeply as you will ever care for somewhat shallow teen protagonists.

There really is no twist to this book. It's a straight up road-trip-come-romance. There's no deep meaning, no metaphors for anything, and no insights into the human condition. It's basically the equivalent of good quality chocolate-vanilla-swirl soft serve. How this book managed to get banned is entirely beyond me.

Charlotte Street: A Cheap Ripoff of High Fidelity

If there were any justice in this world, someone would have called out Charlotte Street for the cheap ripoff of High Fidelity it is.

What blurred lines?

Unfortunately, there is no justice. Instead we have people saying that Danny Wallace was "influenced" by High Fidelity, or "drew inspiration" from it, or that Charlotte Street is "reminiscent" of High Fidelity. But believe you me, this is a cheap ripoff if I ever saw one. If this were a song, it would be on Rob From High Fidelity's List of Five Hit Songs That Were Cheap Ripoffs of Genius Originals.

Charlotte Street isn't even a clever cover or reimagining like Clueless (Emma), or 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew), or Arctic Monkey's cover of Drake's Going 
Home, or anything by Weird Al; no, it's just a cheap ripoff, like My Sweet Lord, or Blurred Lines, or Led Zeppelin's entire catalogue (let's see if anyone is actually reading this). The damned book even has the same "twists" as High Fidelity. What it doesn't have that High Fidelity does is insight, wit, character development, and excellent writing; and what it does have that High Fidelity doesn't is two-dimensional characters, a pointless road trip, a stupid scene at a wedding, and a pat happy ending.

If the book had been tremendously good or spectacularly bad, I may not have regretted buying it, but it's a mediocre book that appears to have been written for the purpose of being made into a movie script. It has all the depth and charm of The Help, but with less suspense because you've already read this book.

Charlotte Street angers me more and more as I think about it. I wish I could ask for my money back.

Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World: It Gets Better

The most heartbreaking story you can tell is that of love rebuffed, because it isn't just that the person doesn't love you back: it's that they refuse your love, and then use it against you, mocking you with it.

Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (CTatEotW) does a great job of telling the story of complete and utter emotional devastation that is love rebuffed.

Stephen spends the first seven years of his life living on a hippy commune, getting homeschooled. His family then moves to a small town where he doesn't fit in and is ill-equipped to interact with the kids in school. He gets picked on a lot until he gets a champion in the form of Mark, a tough kid who needs help with his homework. 

Cinnamon toast is really tasty, btw.

It's all going along swimmingly until a few months before high school graduation when Stephen realizes that he's in love with Mark. Then it all goes south, and fast.

It's the 1980s, so no one is out yet -- not even George Michael or the guys from Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It probably isn't even a hate crime yet to beat up people simply for being gay.  In other words, regardless of what Our Man Jeff would lead you to believe, it is not the best time to discover you're gay. 

Stephen has a terrible time coming to grips with the reality of who he is. And he feels he can't tell anyone. He doesn't know if the person he tells will be supportive or revolted by his revelation. He confides in only one person: his other best friend, Lana. But then Stephen goes down a self-destructive spiral and betrays her, leaving him even more isolated and alone than he was previously.

The real strength of CTatEotW is the way Janet E. Cameron captures what it's like to suddenly realize that you're different and that you're in love with the wrong person: the self-doubt; the self-destruction; the anger; the sadness; the heartbreak. But most importantly, the dawning that everyone knew what was going on before you even did. That sinking feeling that everyone was in on the joke except you -- that everyone has been talking about you your whole life without your knowledge.

It's a feeling that anyone who's ever come out is familiar with. That feeling of the floor falling out from below you as you realize that everyone has known and has been talking about you for years. When that feeling is compounded with the rebuffed feelings, it's so much more devastating.

But it's not all gloom and teen angst: there's fun and games and making out and telling off parents and partying with friends. And each of the supporting characters in Stephen's story are fully realized, real human beings: his mother, who had to raise him on her own; his absentee father, who is just your typical self-involved academic; Lana; Lana's boyfriend; Mark; and even Mark's girlfriend, Stacey. They all have motivations, back stories, feelings, ambitions, and regrets. None of them feel like stand-ins or place-holders. They're all characters in their own right. You almost want entire novels written telling their stories.

CTatEotW is more than just a few months spent with Stephen as he finally becomes who he is and stops pretending to be someone else. It's the story of how his self-discovery is felt by everyone around him, too, making this a really great coming of age novel.

Oh, the other good thing is that the story has a happy ending: like the song and video for Small Town Boy, he moves to a city and leaves the homophobic asshats behind.  

The Bell Jar: I Feel Nothing

The Bell Jar is one of those books that everyone tells you you need to read: "You must read The Bell Jar!" "What do you mean you've never read The Bell Jar?" "How could you not have read The Bell Jar?!"

So I read The Bell Jar. And it did nothing for me. 

In case you're like me and had only heard of The Bell Jar from references in pop culture, it's the story of Esther, a discontented college-aged woman in the 1950s. Esther's got this cushy internship at a women's magazine, but she thinks it's bullshit. She has these friend she goes out with, but she thinks they're shallow. She wants to get laid (well, actually, she decides that getting laid is something she wants to do), but has no idea how to go about it. And, finally, she hasn't gotten into the program of her choice in college.

Basically, she might as well be a character in any movie about twentysomethings ever made, except with fewer yucks and more ptomaine poisoning.

Anyways, she decides she needs to commit suicide with the same dreary determination as she decides that she needs to get laid.

After a few failed attempts (I can't decide if they were supposed to be funny or tragic or just lame), she almost manages. Unfortunately for all of us someone finds her before she's completely dead and the book doesn't end there.

This is where we get into Phase 2 of The Bell Jar where she spends some time in an asylum where she gets electroshock therapy. She meets more random people. I care for everyone even less than previously. No one seems to get better or grow as a character. I feel incredibly numb and start to wonder if I'm not suffering from depression myself. Then someone dies. And then I really hope that all the characters eventually die so that the book will end.

But then Esther starts feeling better -- or the doctors say she's feeling better -- and then the book ends. 

And then I think about how much I really do not care whether or not Esther is going to be OK.

That space invader is more compelling.

I know Esther is supposed to be depressed, but I didn't get "depressed" from her. I got "discontented". I got "trapped". I got "unhappy". But I didn't get "depressed". Esther seems to just hate her life rather than hating living. There is no overwhelming feeling of despair. And while many a webcomic shared on FB and Twitter has explained that depression is more about feeling nothing than feeling sad, I did not get a feeling of nothingness from Esther. I just felt like Esther just doesn't like what she's doing and is suffering from the typical twentysomething malaise compounded by the fact that as a woman in the 1950s she has limited choices. I get that and I'm OK with that, but it really made the suicide attempts feel like melodrama (if you've ever had a friend who wrote suicide notes on a weekly basis, you know what I mean).

She's basically unhappy.

It would have been more poignant if they had institutionalized her for being unhappy. But as it stands, they institutionalized her for trying to kill herself, which is not unreasonable.

I think my biggest obstacle to feeling anything about The Bell Jar was that I really didn't care about Esther. Esther wasn't developed enough as a character for me to care about her at all. She was like my coworker's niece's next door neighbour's cousin who lost an internship and didn't get into college and then ended up in the hospital for a psych evaluation. That's really sad, and I'm really sorry for her, but I've gotta go grab some lunch, so we'll talk later.