At the pool I currently go to, one of the regulars is a woman with Down syndrome .... Odd is the great satisfaction I take whenever I beat her from one end to the other.
"I won three out of four," I told Hugh the first time she and I swam together. "I mean I really creamed her."
"Let me get this straight," he said. "She's obese. She's as old as you are. And she has Down syndrome?"
"Yes, and I beat her. Isn't that great!"
This is the kind of crazy stuff one can find in this collection of essays by David Sedaris. What really gets me is that he only won 3 out of 4 races! As I was reading this book, a clear departure from my typical fare, I found myself making little notations on my bookmark of page numbers and anecdotes that were my favorite. Sedaris doesn't write about anything exceedingly extraordinary like climbing Mount Everest or learning how to play the piano with his toes, but he does turn the normal events of his life into quirkly, sometimes hilarious reading. One of the snippets that had me chuckling out loud in the middle of a silent study hall was his observations on the Stadium Pal, an accessory he had purchased:
It was my search for something discreet, masculine, and practical that led me to the Stadium Pal, an external catheter currently being marketed to sports fans, truck drivers, and anyone else who's tired of searching for a bathroom....
The subsequent analysis of the uses of the Stadium Pal at a long public reading, on an overbooked coast-to-coast flight, or when you just didn't feel like looking for a bathroom, had me in stitches. Combine this delightfulness with the anecdote about telling his parents about his double major in patricide and matricide at Princeton and his adventures in quitting smoking, and the dry humor of this piece of work is just that - a piece of work.
Some of it is vulgar. VERY vulgar. Complete with everything from F-bombs to the N-word, the language of this book can leave the sensitive reader reeling. It would be easy to hold this against Sedaris if the bulk of the book wasn't so freaking hilarious. I do wish he would have included more pieces on his family since the part about their babysitter, Mrs. Peacock, demanding that he and his sisters scratch her hairy, sweaty back with a plastic monkey hand on a stick was just too good. I definitely would have preferred more focus on his quick-witted sisters rather than on his somewhat mundane boyfriend, Hugh. He got a little boring after a while.
The verdict on this one? Read with caution. It's off key, tasteless at times, and very weird. It's also very, very funny.....to some. I will end by sharing what was probably my favorite moment from the whole book. While discussing how modern society has drastically changed its view on smoking from previous generations, Sedaris writes this excerpt. It's so horrible I was almost peeing my pants I was laughing so hard:
It seems crazy to cut smoking mothers out of textbooks, but within a few years they won't be allowed in movies either. A woman can throw her newborn child from the roof of a high-rise building. She can then retrieve the body and stomp on it while shooting into the windows of a day care center, but to celebrate these murders by lighting a cigarette is to send a harmful message. There are, after all, young people watching, and we wouldn't want them to get the wrong idea.
I was given a copy of Coming Attractions by Robin Gunn to review by the publisher as part of a blog tour. The first thing I noticed when I got the book was that it was part of a series, the Katie Weldon series. I don't know about you, but I'd never heard of that series (or Gunn's other series, the Christy Miller series) before so I was intrigued. I'm a sucker for a good series so I was pretty excited when I first started reading the book.
I was given The Last Woman Standing to read for a blog tour that happened a while back. I didn't get the book until the actual week of the tour so I got caught up and couldn't read it until this week. I finished reading it in two days (it's a pretty easy read), but I'm not sure if that's because I couldn't put it down or because I just kept hoping that something exciting would happen.
I admit it. I read the Twilight series, all of them, in about a week because I was hopelessly addicted. I wanted to hate them because my 12 year female students were absolutely obsessed and I was convinced that my literary tastes were far more evolved and there would be no way I could even get into such juvenile writing. Well, lo and behold. I read them and enjoyed them.
I haven't had a chance to read this book yet but it's on my nightstand (I just got it) waiting to be read. Based on the back cover I'm excited to read it but just didn't have time before this blog tour. I will post a full review of the book later but for now, here's a quick synopsis-
As a rule, I try to always finish a book once I have started it. You never know when you'll hit that magic moment where the story suddenly grabs you and you are transported into the author's world. Unfortunately, I just couldn't do it this time and I called it quits on this one before I had made it five chapters.
but this one didn't grab me.
to fully appreciate the care with which Nattel presents Victorian-era poverty. Or perhaps I am weary of the 'most men are bad' theme. Nattel is a good author and I am disposed to like her work, this one just didn't do it for me.
I read my first book by Sarah Dessen while I was taking a juvenile literature class in college. I got to pick out 20 (maybe more) juvenile literature books to read during the semester and Dessen's books were highly recommended. I read one and loved it so I thought it was about time to pick up another book by her. 
