we feel fine book update!

OMG guys! so in case you didn't know, a photo i posted on this very blog is getting published in the upcoming book "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion".



you can read the whole story about how this happened by clicking here!

and you can read the original blog post they found my photo in here.

you can check out the preview of the book by clicking here, and can preorder a copy here.

i'm just a chock full of superexcited links! hooray!!!

hot air balloons and rocks

i've been thinkin a lot lately about hot air balloons and rocks, and how we all get to choose which one we are.

which one are you?

when bad stuff happens, do you deal with it, rise above it and move on, or sink into the depths and let it ruin everything from that point forward?

i try as much as i can to be a hot air balloon.

it's funny that i've been thinking about this a lot lately, and then on the drive in to work this morning i heard on npr that a movie's been made of push by sapphire. they named the movie precious, so be on the lookout.

i read push about 10 years ago, i'm not sure how i found it - i think it just looked like a badass book cover, which is how i tend to end up reading any of the books i don't previously know about. it's a semi-autobiographical story along the lines of i know why the caged bird sings - a story about an illiterate teen in new york from a seriously effed up family and all of the horrible aspects of her life. and how she eventually overcame it.

like a hot air balloon.

it is not the feel-good story of the year for sure, but it spoke volumes to me when i read it. i am really glad it got made into a movie, mostly because i'm not sure how many people know about the book and it's one of my favorite reads ever.

this was a bit of a serious post. tune in tomorrow, when we talk about the best way to sneak swear words into your graphic design projects!

hearts and laserbeams book report: confessions of a shopaholic

ok i picked this book up at the las vegas airport on the way home from... vegas! shocking! gayle and i went out there last summer for a few days and had a blasty - when we were heading home there were big chunks of time on the horizon and i had left omnivore's dilemma in my suitcase instead of throwing it in my purse.

honestly i picked this one because i knew it'd be an easy read, something i could read for a few hours on the way home and then put on a shelf until i'd finished omnivore, the kind of book where you could pick right back up where you left off like a month or two later and not feel lost because everything about reading it is just so easy. plus, i hadn't seen the movie yet and i always dig reading the book before seeing the movie. and with that, i give you:

hearts and laserbeams book report: confessions of a shopaholic by sophie kinsella

ok I LOVED THIS BOOK. super fun read, super fast read, and before you know it you're done reading! the main character rebecca is just so flighty and lighthearted, just la la la la la shop shop shop hooray!

but the weirdest thing started happening as i was reading this - while i was having the time of my life reading about her shoppy adventures, as a chick who's pretty non-shoppy and has lots of living paycheck to paycheck experience, this shopaholic girl was seriously stressing me out!! i'd be reading about her going deeper and deeper into debt, and throwing away late notices and my inner old-lady monologue would scream things like, "YOU'RE RUINING YOUR CREDIT RATING!"

which is a completely uncharacteristically absurd thing for me to think while reading anything. but seriously, girl was freaking me out. other things my brain screamed while i was having a grand ol' time reading this book:

omg you did not just lie on your resume and say you're fluent in finnish!! they're gonna check that!

omg you're poor why are you buying coffee at a coffee house every day! make that shit at home!

omg you did not just do that on your date what is your major malfunction!

omg no you did not just blow off the meeting with the bank when you're gonna start sorting your shit out!

basically, i think part of the fun reading this book was how much it made my practical side sweat. i'll probably pick up another one in the series sometime soon when i need another fluffy feel-good read! (me thinks that may be the case after my next book report selection, the bell jar by sylvia plath. yup, i'm back on the high school reading list stuff!

ratings:
hearts: 4 hearts - really fantastically fun read, well written and funny!
farts: 1 fart for keeping my inner monologue yelling at me throughout the 350 pages.

***

so it's giveaway time! you want my copy of confessions of a shopaholic to check out for yourself? it's easy, just leave a comment here about anything at all before monday, october 19 at midnight and you'll automatically be entered to win! one entry per person, suckas!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the omnivore's dilemma

ok so you know how i go back and forth in my book reports - i'll do some books that are classic high school reading list pieces, some fun chick lit, some nonfiction brainy stuff...

after reading ya ya's in bloom, which i loved by the way, i really was needing something a little more thinky if ya know what i mean. i'd heard from a few peeps that omnivore's dilemma was good so i made that the next read on my list. (i think it's interesting to note that this book was such an intellectual read that i went right back to the other end of the spectrum afterwards and am now reading sophie kinsella's confessions of a shopaholic.)

hearts and laserbeams book report: the omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals by michael pollan

so the omnivore's dilemma the title refers to, it basically is people have so many choices in food we don't know what the hell to eat anymore. food overload. i mean there's more to it than that, but that's the general idea.

if you're into food this book is for you. it basically follows four different food chains from start to finish, with finish always ending up as your mouth. he looks at corn, cows (both commercial and grain fed), and the hunting and gathering lifestyle. and this whole book pretty much makes you want to curl up on your couch and never buy anything from a grocery store ever again.

and it makes you start thinking about effed up the system is.

here's one of the big things i took away from this book, something that bugs the shit out of me:

farm subsidies are given to farmers because they can't sell enough crops to pay their bills. they can't sell enough crops because prices are too low. in an effort to make more money the only thing to do is grow more crops. which equals an even higher market surplus and even lower prices.

there's a huge corn surplus, and every day They (whoever they are) finds more ways to shove it down our throats. one way is to process it so it's kinda corn-flaky and feed it to cows. sounds like a great idea, corn fed cows are supposed to be real tasty. problem is it's a myth; cows aren't even supposed to eat corn and get sick from that diet. so farms have to drug up the cows with antibiotics to keep from getting sick.

another way the corn surplus is shoved down our throats is through value meals at fast food places. you don't need that much food. you don't need a 5 gallon paintbucket full of soda or a 12 pound hamburger. stop it.

basically i got really angry at these parts of the book, and then in the following chapters it talks about a farm that grows all kinds of crops and has all kinds of happy animals living on it in a perfect symbiotic system (thanks to the farmers help), and it made me want to run away to georgia and make all the food josh and i eat. those chapters made me so happy, i am not kidding you.

i loved the last section that was all about hunting and gathering, and i kinda wanna try catchin my own yeast to make bread with... i wonder what it would taste like?

and that's pretty much it - book about food and pretty non-biased but still very much an expose on the system. if you like brainy stuff, and long descriptions of different kinds of food totally turns you on then this book is for you the end!

ratings:
4 hearts: really good stuff to think about, and also it gave me some ideas josh and i can put into practice now
1 fart: it took me a really long time to read this - i'm a busy woman, dammit!

sorry i'm not giving away this copy, my buddy gayle already asked to read it when i was done - but stay tuned, i'll totally be doing a giveaway of my confessions of a shopaholic book.

we feel fine about getting published!!!

a while back (a LONG while back!) i had gotten an email from the website www.wefeelfine.org. their website is all about exploring emotions on the internets, and they had decided to create a book.

and they had discovered this blog post on the livejournal version of my blog, and could they use my middle finger picture in their book?

what's that you say? make my middle finger famous? YES PLEASE!!!

months and months and months went by, enough that i totally forgot about their exciting email. then yesterday i got another one from them, saying "hey sorry it's been so long since you've heard from us, your section of the book got cut but we liked it so much we found a way to put it back in - so you'll be in it!"

and there you have it! my middle finger will be in the book we feel fine, in stores december 1. you should probably go get a pre-order copy from amazon!

hearts and laserbeams book report: ya yas in bloom by rebecca wells

ok it has been AGES. sorry about that folks. the only thing that's been constant lately is change, and lots of it - transitioning into having a full-time job again and still keep hearts and laserbeams alive has been a trick and a half but i'm workin it out and it's all startin to mesh, which is awesome.

plus i'm bloggin 3 times a week over at oc weekly now, did i tell you that? if ya click here, you can read all the gettin' made posts i've written thus far. and if you check out the one about twisted handmade and comment on it before midnight friday night you could win a set of courtney chesley's awesome telephone-wire bracelets!

so anyhow, i may have been missin from this blog but i haven't been neglecting my book reports, here's one i've been putting off for weeks! i've had my copy of ya-yas in bloom for a couple of years now and finally got a chance to read it!

hearts and laserbeams book report: ya yas in bloom by rebecca wells

ok did you read the divine secrets of the ya ya sisterhood? did you see the movie at least? both effing awesome.

ya yas in bloom was like those designer imposters at rite aid - did you like ya ya sisterhood? you'll love ya yas in bloom! the same, but a little cheaper.

like it was a fun girly summer read, and i LOVE the characters and getting to enjoy more of their adventures and shenanigans... but like most sequels, this one was a little weak.

ummmmm i was gonna write more but there's 2 problems.

number one, i finished reading this book like weeks ago and should've written about it when it was fresh in my mind.

number two, there wasn't a whole lot of substance or anything heavy to report. some crazy southern gals get together have lots of drinks and madcap mayhem results.

so uh, sorry this is so short but that's pretty much it... let's get to the ratings!

hearts: 3 hearts - these ya ya books are so much fun to read y'all; they make me wanna move to the south immediately!

farts: 2 farts - there was so little thinking going on while i read these that i kinda missed my dense high-school reading list books that usually have to come with a cliff notes for me to get through em.

hearts and laserbeams book report: into the wild by jon krakauer

ok so this last weekend josh, brittanie and i went to minnesota for my brother justin and his girl ashley's wedding - we get to the airport and talking to my sister brittanie, she had a sexy vampire book while i had nothin' to read at all and this aggression will not stand!


while josh usually sleeps through flights or listens to tunes and movies on his ipod, i like takin those big long chunks o time as an opportunity to do some reading, cuz honestly there's just not enough time for stuff like that. so off to the airport bookstore i go - and i saw into the wild on one of the tables. i always wanted to see the movie, but never quite got around to it. and i like readin' the books before i see the movie of the book, cuz i like seeing the contrast between what i play in my head while i'm reading and then what they actually do with the film when it's brought to life. so there you go! read on to the end (or just scroll down to the bottom of this post if you're in a hurry) and find out how to get your hands on my copy of into the wild, complete with a little note from me to you and a hearts and laserbeams doodle on the inside cover!



hearts and laserbeams book report: into the wild by jon krakauer


ok lemme share with you the premise of this true story is really super appealing to me.



if you didn't know and haven't seen the movie, this book is a journalist's telling of how a kid named chris mccandless graduated from college, then gave away all his money, packed up a few possessions, and ran off to see america for 2 years. his adventure culminated in one final big hurrah when he went to alaska for a few months to live completely off the land, and he died after like 112 days or something in the alaskan wilderness.



the part i love about this idea is just picking up and going. camping, livin' off the land, gettin the hell outta southern california and seeing real places that don't kinda kill my soul. i can't wait to move to georgia someday where we're in a more rural setting and have the option to grow most of our food and fish at our own place and just be left the hell alone.



that being said, i should wanna hang out with this chris mccandless dude. but i totally don't.



number one, he died over 10 years ago and i'm sure he's pretty smelly by now.



number b, with all due respect to all the cool things he did do and see over his 2plus years of adventuring across the u.s., he really comes across as a bit of an arrogant douchebag. just the way he changes his name to alexander supertramp, for example... love the name supertramp, but if you're actually a for reals hobo, and you give yourself the name supertramp, that pretty much means you're king of the tramps and you should probably be smarter than thinking you can just prance off into the alaskan wilderness with not enough gear and not enough experience to actually make that happen successfully.



there's lots of letters and excerpts from postcards chris wrote in this book, along with highlighted passages from books that he had with him when his body was found, and all of those just kind of add to the man this kid was kinda a jerk feeling i got while reading it. ok awesome you like reading old books about nature, but don't get all i'm better than you about it and don't demand that other people live your hobo life or else they're stupid. i'm a very live and let live type, and when people shove their own beliefs or way of life down my throat it's a huge turnoff.



the end of one letter to a friend of his was written juuuust before he went up to alaska. it ended with a sentence that was something to the effect of "i now walk into the wild". and at this point, i put down my book and told brittanie and josh that this dude annoys me just as much, if not more, than emo kids.



so yeah... i don't know if we would've been friends if we met.



but his personality aside, wow. WOW. who wouldn't want to just walk away from the 9 to 5 and just drive away, and hike everywhere and canoe at the beach and just live life every day without worrying about when the next rent payment's due? i kinda can't wait to rent the movie and see how this all plays out. did they use the actual bus that supertramp was found in? that would creep my shit out.



i was totally into how well this book was written - even though i wanted to punch the hobo in the face i was still totally riveted to the story and i honestly can't say that about many nonfiction books. total page-turner. until you get to the end. then you pretty much stop turning pages.



ratings

hearts: 4 hearts - really solid good book, would definitely recommend it to my friends even though i generally hate non-fiction.

farts: 1 fart - i really spent most of that book wanting to punch the kid in the face. and also, probably he should've taken something a little stronger than a .22 into the wild for the purposes of obtaining dinner.



so on to the giveaway! What would your hobo name be if you were to pull a chris mccandless and leave town to live a hobo life on the road exploring? mine would be The Venerable Hobo McTootPants.



leave a comment tellin me your chosen hobo name, and i'll pick a name at random from all entries received before midnight friday june 19th. the winner gets my copy of this book!

hearts and laserbeams book report: born standing up by steve martin

i don't know if you know this, but there's a gem of a website out there called goldstar that sells discount tickets to all kinds of shows. you can sign up for their email newsletter and get periodic updates on what cheap tickets are available in your area, and it's awesome the stuff it has available sometimes!


their newsletter is how we came to see steve martin play the banjo.


apparently steve martin's been playing the banjo since he was like 17 - i saw a tiny clip on tv years ago of him pickin' and grinnin', and i have to tell you it was magic. so when i saw $15 tickets to see steve martin play the banjo i told josh immediately if i don't go to this show i will die.


so it turns out that this concert's a fundraiser for the los angeles public library - and i'll tell you what, there are some major differences when a concert is put on for the library. number one, before the show there's people reading. number two, the opening acts are folks in suits talking about the library.


the show itself was freaking amazing. the first chunk of it was dave barry interviewing steve martin about his banjo playing, and then the second part was steve martin playing a bunch of songs off his new cd called the crow. if you dig bluegrass music like i dig bluegrass music, even if you don't dig bluegrass music you should give it a listen cuz the shit is GOOD!! and since it was a benefit for the library when we picked up our tix at will call we were also given a free copy of his latest book, born standing up, which leads us to:



hearts and laserbeams book report: born standing up by steve martin



i have to tell you i've always been a huge steve martin fan. one of my fave movies as a kid was roxanne, the song "king tut" will stay with me forever, one of my fave books is pure drivel, and i can even forgive the movie where he's got a dozen kids or whatever it was. (cheaper by the dozen? that sounds about right.) is that gonna bias this book report?



probably.



i get really nostalgic when i see steve martin movies, like kinda fuzzy-hearted and if it's a really good one like my blue heaven or planes, trains and automobiles, i may even get a tiny bit weepy. i heart steve martin because he has always just felt really genuine and real to me, like he's not playing a bit. like if you met him in real life, he'd be exactly the way he is on stage, in movies, whatever. i am convinced if josh and i met steve martin in real life, not in any kind of fan/celebrity sort of way, we'd be friends.



this genuine realness totally comes through in born standing up. it's a memoir about steve martin's time doing standup comedy, from the time he was working at disneyland starting to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, through his development as a standup comedian, including lots of chunks about his family and how that helped shape his future.



while it exposes the painful parts of his past, it doesn't exploit it. he lays it out for you without throwing anyone under the bus and i really respect that. it's not a tell-all, it's a tell-some.



and the way steve martin writes is the way he talks. so as you're reading the book, it's not really like you're reading at all. it's like he's sitting right there in the lunchroom with you just chatting with you about his life and his comedy while you eat your stouffers macaroni and beef microwavey lunch goodness.



i remember i saw steve martin on the jon stewart show a while back, and he was asked at what point did he know he was big. he tells this story about how at one show, at the end of the show, he took the entire audience outside and there was an empty swimming pool there. so he told everyone to get in the pool. and then he swam over them, crowd surfing style, doing the crawl. and the excitement he gets on his face when he's telling this story - you can see it when you're reading about it in the book; you can totally tell this is one of his favorite memories.



the end of the book came full circle - it started with him giving some background on how his family started him down this road, and it closes with thoughts on making peace with his past. and it kinda made me tear up quite a lot, guys. good good stuff.



anyways, i can't give away my copy of this book because i loved it too much and i'll probably read it again soon, but stay tuned - i'll be doing a giveaway of another good book i read recently, into the wild, soon soon soon! in case you didn't guess, here's how born standing up rates:



ratings

hearts: 5 hearts - you're gonna be hard-pressed to get me to say anything bad about steve martin, sorry charlie! (except uh... please no more cheaper by the dozen sequels)

farts: 0 farts - yeah sorry see above... except for cheaper by the dozen you got nothin' on this guy the end!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair

ok so i figured i'd do another high school reading list selection this time, and i went to the barnes and noble classics section at uh... my local barnes and noble to see if anything caught my eye and dragged me fifteen feet. ended up walkin out with the jungle - wasn't sure i'd wanna read it, cuz from what i knew about it, there's some pretty graphic nasty talk about how our meat used to be handled back in the day. but then i read how this book was a milestone in american history, and that because of this book the pure food and drug act was passed. so i thought i'd give it a go - make sure you read to the end to see how to get my copy of the jungle and the cliff notes for it for free so you can read it for yourself!



hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair



dude did you ever see the snl skits about debbie downer? like there's a big group of happy people hanging out and they're talking about cool stuff and then debbie downer pipes up with some shit like "I'll tell you what the Pilgrims did bring: smallpox."



seriously, that's what this whole book is. it's a big fat huge debbie downer. it pretty much made me wanna kill myself in a lot of parts. (not really. but it DID make me want to drink)



so basically the jungle is not all about the meatpacking industry - that's a tiny part of it that really only takes up a couple chapters of the 400 pages. the overall story is there's this poor lithuanian family who comes to america in the early 1900s to make a better life for themselves.



and they get crapped on over and over and over and over and over. by the end of the book, a couple of em are dead, one of em's run off and abandoned the family, the kids are all effed up, one of the family's a morphine-addicted ho, the list goes ON AND ON.



you just keep reading about how crappy everything is, how everything's a swindle, everyone's out to rip everyone else off, everything's a lie,and holy crap guys this book was super depressing. cuz we are jerks!!!



and then i got to the last few chapters of the book and had lots and lots and lots of problems finishing the book because it was all politics. you know how i am about politics - SNORE!!! i honestly couldn't really tell you much about it except for the fact that the main dude jurgis finds out about socialism and it solves all his problems the end!



say it with me now - WHAAAAAAAAAAAA???



so as i'm reading the cliff notes on this thing, it turns out the jungle is only partly about the meat-packing district and all the bad tuberculosis infested meat being churned out back in the day. the entire book is about how capitalism stinks, and how it fucks up everyone that isn't top dog and how it's all corrupt, and how awesome socialism is.



and upton sinclair was a socialist! and he ran for governor in california as a socialist a couple of times!



WHAT THE EFF!!! how come i never heard about this part of the book? (if i'd have known it was all about politics i would've just rolled over and taken a nap instead) apparently when the book came out mr sinclair the social socialist was pretty upset because the whole socialist slant of the book was lost in the OMG WHAT THE EFF ARE THEY DOING OVER THERE IN THE MEATPACKING PLANTS!!!



so basically, here's the book in one sentence: the jungle isn't so much about bad meat as it is about bad politics. it's pretty riveting though, and until i got to the last 3 chapters that were all about socialism it was pretty much a page turner!



ratings:

hearts: 3 hearts - this wasn't my favorite book to read, it was pretty depressing and the last 3 chapters could be lovingly called "boring as all hell"

farts: 2 farts - it was actually pretty good, didn't so much like reading about diseased meat and REALLY didn't like reading about politics.



and there you have it! wanna check out the jungle for yourself? i'm givin away my copy along with the cliff notes to the first person to comment about this blog post! be quick, though - i post my blog on 5 different sites so the first one from any of them wins!

I'M BLOGGING!!! omg lol wtf!!!

ok i have been all but m.i.a. on the internets for like 3 weeks, popping in long enough to check emails and take care of a couple of worky things here and there, and of course to play my turns on facebook scrabble and twitter like a mofo.

(in keeping with that mofo comment, tonight i went to the twittergrader website where they gave me a 99.3% (which i believe is a solid A, and means i get to stay up late tonight AND have ice cream for dinner!). and if you scroll down there's what they call a "tweet cloud" which is just made up of the words you twitter the most or most recently or something. i was laughing my ass off because number one it is very apparent that i'm a bit of a swearer and also a TON of my twitters are directed at jenn aka @swirlogirl.

oh shit i had a open parenthesis there. better close it.

)

there. i feel better.

ok so here's all kinds of updates on what i've been up to! number one, i started a temporary freelance gig onsite for 3 months down in mission viejo. this means wearing pants to work is actually a requirement for now, until this summer when i'm work from homegirl again. it's been good! i've been getting really solid in my indesign skillzzzz and that's been nice. the people are cool and the drive isn't as bad as i thought it'd be, and i feel fortunate that this particular gig came along because freelancing has been terrible slow lately.

so there's that - i also recently discovered the massive importance of having more than one method of backing up your work on the computer. especially if everything you do is on the computer. a couple of weeks ago, i was working late on some tee designs, and my dog comes walking up only wanting to say hi... but in the process he got tangled up in the power cords for my laptop and external hard drive and pretty much threw my external hd on the ground. rendering it useless. josh took the hard drive in to work so some of the computery guys there could try and recover all my files - they're trying a few more things before we have to send it to an actual data recovery place that's gonna cost buku bucks to get my stuff off of the drive... this is basically all my artwork that i've done over the past year and a half or so. and loads of photos. and hi-res scans of paintings that i've since sold.

basically everything i've ever done. i'm still kind of freaking out about it, but i've had the past two weeks to calm the eff down so i'll just share that if all the art is gone i'll start fresh and make more art, and that you could learn from my mistake and back things up 2 or 3 times. going forward i'll be saving everything to dvds and uploading to an online backup service. this will never happen to me again - i hope it never happens to you, either!

there has been good news - number one, i got featured on a blog! you can check it out here, she asked me a bunch of questions all interview style!

also, our dog has lost weight! it was only 3 or 4 pounds, but when the dog weighs 47 and drops to 43 that's losing almost 10% of his weight! i won't say he was tubby, but boy was getting tubby. jimmy's been discovering the joys of full-speed sprints chasing birds at huntington beach dog beach, and it's really been helping. i've been trying to help him drop the extra weight for MONTHS and nothing's worked!

what else, what else... if you're not doing anything tomorrow hearts and laserbeams will be at the de portola boutique in mission viejo! mention you heard about it on my blog when you visit my table and get $5 off your $25 dollar purchase!

i'm working my way through the jungle by upton sinclair for an upcoming hearts and laserbeams book report and that shit is DEPRESSING. are there any highschool reading list books from back in the day that aren't about people getting screwed over or dying? honestly, i wanna know if there's such a thing as an american classic novel that falls in the humor genre. and shakespeare doesn't count because even his comedies are tragedies. THE END!!!

ps if you can think of a funny high school reading book i will send you a free bookmark! first responder only, cuz listen up i don't have a ton of stamps!

hearts and laserbeams book report: derby girl

i got this book for valentines day from the huzzzzz - what can i say the boy knows me!

for those of you that don't know, josh and i manned a hearts and laserbeams booth in the vendor area of a couple of l.a. derby dolls matches last year. then we went with some friends to see a multi-game roller derby extravaganza put on by the oc rollergirls last march, and when we actully saw a match we were hooked. hooked may not be the word. but full-on obessessed may be a little strong... anyways, moral of the story is we had to stop getting booths at the derby dolls games because all we want to do is watch. and drink beer. roller derby is the fucking bomb!

derby girl is a novel written by shauna cross, who used to skate for the l.a. derby dolls under the name maggie mayhem. according to the inside cover of this book, she "is obsessed with flea markets, the art of the perfect cd mix (even though cds are so over), and pretending she still lives in her hometown of austin texas."

i would also like to add to this that she likes long romantic walks on the beach and candlelit dinners from mcdonalds but i don't actually know her so i'm not for reals adding that at all.

according to my extensive research (i.e. josh mentioned he thought this might be the case and then i double checked imdb which never lies), this book is where the story for the upcoming roller derby movie whip it came from, with the screenplay also written by shauna cross!

hearts and laserbeams book report: derby girl by shauna cross

ok i got through this book in one day because i couldn't stop reading it - which is a stark contrast to the ambrose bierce travesty (check out yesterday's book report)! if you're looking for a superfun read this is it - it's kinda a bit like reading a teen girl's diary, and no chapter is longer than like 3 or 4 pages.

love love LOVE the cover. i know that's got zero pull in the merits of reading a book, but dammit i'm an artist so that shit matters. the cover's got a cool pulp art kind of feel and i totally dig it.

don't read this book trying to learn the rules of roller derby cuz it's not that kind of book. i can't quite put my finger on what it reminds me of - maybe juno a tiny bit but not really... ghost worldy maybe! just very much a book about a misfit teen who's rebelling against a mom who's trying to make her a beauty pagaent winner and all the madcap mayhem that results.

i can't wait for the movie of this book to come out dammit!

and no i'm not giving away this book cuz number one it's about roller derby and number two it was a gift from the huzzz! but the next book i will, i swear! i think i'm gonna start passing on the books i report on so someone else can have a read...

ratings

hearts: 4 hearts - i totally had a blast reading this book! it's really fun to do more lighthearted books in between the high school reading list type stuff i've been getting into lately, and this was a much-needed break! i will probably read this again sometime!

farts: 1 fart - as a roller derby fan it was kinda confusing to see l.a. teams and players referenced in this book set in texas mixed in with other teams from other places and it kinda left me scratching my head at times. but really, that's the only complaint! pow!

super fun, super fluffy, no cliff notes needed, read 40 pages of it in the morning and came back to finish the job later that day!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the complete short stories of ambrose bierce

ok so my little brother brandon is the reason i picked up this book - he totally digs this guy, especially the story "an occurrence at owl creek bridge". and since my bro has good taste, i figured i'd give this author a shot.

so i went through the titles they had at barnes and noble, and i figured go big or go home, i'd get his complete works! i don't think there's an author out there i've read all of outside of jim davis' garfield books so it'd be kinda cool to say i'd read every single short story this dude has written!

and with that i give you my book report!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the complete short stories of ambrose bierce by ambrose bierce

SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i could end my book report right there, but that may not be quite informative enough... so here we go -

this guy is cool, i will give him that - check out this pic:


image from http://bierce.thefreelibrary.com/

dig that 'stache!! no wonder my brother likes this dude - he's got kinda a mark twainy feel about him. (another favorite author of el brando)

ok so on to the actual book - this book is split into 3 parts: part 1, bierce's horror stories. part 2, his war stories. part 3, his tall tales.

the best thing about old-timey horror stories is that they're nothing like today's scary shit! can't handle the hostels, the saw 1-2-3-4-however many of em there ares, the snakes on a planes? make way for the horror stylings of ambrose bierce, where every story reads like this!

"ok there was guy, see? and he was travelling through the woods one night - and he meets this mysterious stranger, and they start talking and it's just kinda strange! and then after they part ways and he gets where he's going, he later finds out HE WAS TALKING TO A GHOST!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"
(that's my scary ghost noise)

i gave this book a shot, i really did, but MAN this book could not hold my interest! and so, after my valientest of efforts, i gave in an gave up on this book about 119 pages into it. (it's 496 pages long).

so uh... i guess i don't really have anything else to say about it! lemme know if you wanna give ol' biercey a try and i'll send you my copy, maybe you'll fare better with it! first come first served! (remember i post my blog on a bunch of different sites, so be quick if ya want this book!)

ratings:
hearts: 2 heart - i am pretty sure this guy had a formula and it seemed to work for him cuz he wrote a ton of short stories!
farts: 3 farts - but MAN i could just not get into it!

hearts and laserbeams book report: sew darn cute

ok i have to tell you i'm a total fan of jenny ryan. number one, she's the brains and brawn behind felt club. number two, she's super duper nice. these are two huge things in my book, so you better believe that when i found out she wrote a sewing book i preordered that shit post haste!

and look how cute the cover is!



hearts and laserbeams book report: sew darn cute by jenny ryan

ok i aint gonna lie to you, this book is chock full of super cute fun projects; all of which would be great gifts for friends or family and cover a multitude of occasions! housewarming? check out the embellished kitchen towels or recycled coasters! baby shower? check out the spumoni quilt and squarebears!

these patterns aren't written to be followed strictly as is and i love that - there's pattern pieces to be sure, but there's plenty of encouragement to branch out and make your own remixes. everything's written in a very welcoming friendly style, like you're sittin and chattin with jenny ryan over a cup of coffee. if you're familiar in your sewing skin, you can skip the intro pages and get right to the nitty gritty but if you're a beginner there are LOTS of awesome helpful sewing tips to get you started!

i decided that since this isn't really a reading type book, more of a how-to book, i'd do one of the how-tos as part of my book report - i chose the reversible headband, mostly because i didn't feel like searching through my oodles of supplies to find the interfacing or stuffing that's needed for a bunch of the other projects!


i decided on this totally sweet multicolored bird fabric i got at michael levine months ago, and a clean off-white fabric for the reverse side.


i also decided my dog jimmy the greek should join me in my crafting endeavors!


got all my pieces cut out, and did some sketches on cute embellishment ideas!


started stitchin some outlines of stars onto the birds side while watching the bachelor (my secret guilty tv pleasure!) check it out, someday i'll teach you how to airbrush a supremely shiny forehead in a photo... you totally can't even tell i had one!


check out my flying fingers of fury!!


i ended up with a bunch of stitchy stars on the birds side, and some fun felt flower appliques on the reverse side! i had so much fun just messin around the other day i just kept adding more and more little tiny stars and french knots to this thing and i love how it looks! i'm a big fan of retro-y stardust effects!


sewing the pieces all together! lookit my face, this takes serious concentration!


and voila! the finished product! i love how it turned out, but if i could do it over i would've taken a liiiiitle more time attaching the ties to the main piece... they didn't quite match up just right... but on the upside the way i normally wear headbands that part'll be hidden by my hair.


modellin one side,


and the other!

basically this book is just as awesome as its author, and you should get your copy immediately!

ratings
5 hearts: love love love all of the projects and the book design! jenny gets extra points for calling me "shitlips" in her autograph to me from the book signing the other night, too. FTW!!!

0 farts: nuff said!

hearts and laserbeams book report: skinny bitch

when we got to the airport on the way home from our savannah trip this new years, i realized that i had zero reading material for the 6+ hours of travel ahead of us. i ducked into the airport book shop to see what they had in store for me, and came out with skinny bitch.

i am a new year's statistic; before picking up this book i'd planned to make this the year i actually start taking better care of myself with workin out and eating better and not drinking soda anymore, etc etc etc. couple that with the fact that it was slim pickin's at this partcular airport bookstore and that this book was the only one that looked like it would be remotely interesting to me, and there you go.

and without further ado...

hearts and laserbeams book report: skinny bitch by rory freedman and kim barnouin

this book, i have to admit, started out strong. it's billed as a no-nonsense approach to getting healthier and eating better and blah blah blah, and the first few chapters really do deliver some good information on reasons you should and shouldn't eat certain things. thanks to the first few chapters i will probably stop drinking soda alltogether.

as you get further into skinny bitch, it turns into full-on vegan propoganda, featuring all the reasons we were never meant to eat meat, a chapter on slaughterhouses, how you're a fuckin stupid a-hole if you ever eat this stuff...

and it just snowballs from there. once it starts on the VEGAN OR DIE message it does not fucking shut up, just keeps going on and on about all the conspiracies surrounding the fda and how the completely animal-products free lifestyle is the only way to be unless you wanna be a murderer, you dont want that do you?

here's some of the problems i have with the book - number one, the entire thing is written to make you feel completely shitty about yourself and it WORKS. for about 4 days after reading it i really actually felt like an a-hole every time i ate something this book said was terrible. number 2, there are messages in the book that are flawed - they basically believe that there are only two kinds of eaters out there as far as animals are concernec, meat or veggie eaters - and that since we have flat teeth and no claws we are not supposed to be eating meat and we're fucking with nature every time we do. BUT; why do we have incisors and such in the front of our mouths - y'all are forgetting about omnivores, and that doesn't fit into the meat is murder message so i understand why ya left it out. they make it sound like if you don't buy your fruits and veggies organic-style you are fucked because it's gonna kill you.

AND their main way of helping you to become a vegan is to gross yourself out every time you eat something, like thing of all the shitty ingredients the thing contains, think of something that will make you vomit, and then don't eat that thing. that is an AWFUL way to eat.

basically the book sucked ass and i would not recommend it to anyone. it is the only book i've ever read in my 31 years that ended up in the trash:



also, one of the things josh and i talked about after i read this was that you gotta keep in mind that it was written by a former model and a former model agent - models aren't supposed to eat anything at all, so it's basically a how-to guide for someone who only wants to eat the bare minimum to survive and not actually ever really enjoy food. eff that shit.

so i will not be following much, if any, of what this book suggests. i will from now on only buy cage-free eggs and milk that says it's got no horomones in it, and eat more fruit and veggies. but i will also continue enjoying cheese and ice cream and coffee and salmon and hamburgers and steak and french fries and non-organic veggies and fruits because dammit who can afford to buy EVERYTHING organic??! not in this economy thank you very much! i am much happier enjoying my food than worrying about every single solitary thing i eat and giving up shit i love.

and that's that. we at hearts and laserbeams do not recommend or endorse this book and if you read it please promise us to have a big ol ice cream sundae afterwards!

ratings
1 hearts: it did make me eat more fruits and veggies i aint gonna lie to you

4 farts: if i start to tell you all the things i hated about this book i will get all pissed off again so just don't read it.

hearts and laserbeams book report: i know why the caged bird sings

i don't know if i've told you before; i heart maya angelou a ton. i'm not sure exactly what it is about her, but number one i could listen to her talk all day, and number two i wish she was my grandma.

she was the keynote speaker at scad the year before i graduated, and because my buddy trav was a year ahead i was there to hear her talk in person and i would be lying if i told you i was not all choked up and kind of crying like an ass a little by the time she was done.

on a sidenote, the next year when i graduated our speaker was nora ephron. i was kinda really peeved about that at the time, because how do you go from someone as freaking AMAZING as maya angelou one year, to the writer of you've got mail the next? but looking at that imdb page i'm being a little harsh... she also wrote my blue heaven and that movie is effing amazing so all is forgiven. also, i got to shake hands with bernie casey at my graduation and that may be the most badass thing ever in the world. he's best known for being the leader of the black fraternity the nerds join in revenge of the nerds, and he is a total badass.

but i digress! without further ado, the latest hearts and laserbeams book report!

hearts and laserbeams book report: i know why the caged bird sings by maya angelou

i can sum up this book about maya angelou's life from childhood through about age 18 in one sentence: girl has seen some shit.

if i liked her before, i love her now. three reasons: anyone who opens a book about their life by telling about how they almost peed in church, anyone who lived in a junkyard for a month, anyone who taught themselves to drive stick shift the very first time they've ever driven so they can get their drunk parent back from mexico to california because the parent is passed out drunk in the back seat - anyone who has shit like this to talk about is all right by me.

as i was reading this one, josh would periodically ask me "do you know why the caged bird sings yet!??" and i'd be all no she didn't say! i don't know if there's a sequel or something where they disclose this shit for real, but at no point in this book did she actually say "hey that caged bird sings because _____ fill in the blank. what a ripoff!!! it was one of those titles that is supposed to make you think!

my best explanation of it is the caged bird sings because that's all it has - birds weren't meant to be cooped up, and if they didn't sing their lives would be completely drab and pointless. all of the shit this woman's been through and the crappy situations she was stuck in, if she didn't dream of someday having a better life and work towards that end then hope would die and what the hell would be the point.

honestly this may be one of the best books i've ever read - it reminded me in a way of push by sapphire, which i also loved. but what's so significant to me here is that you can go through the completely crappy things maya angelou's been through, and still turn out to be someone like maya angelou. and that right there should be hope for anyone in those situations as long as they're willing to work to rise above it.

ratings
5 hearts: this book was totally freaking amazing and if you've never read it you totally effing should, the end!
0 farts: if i said anything bad about maya angelou i fear i may be struck by lightning, sorry folks.

this may have been a deeper book report than you're used to, but this book was effing awesome. stay tuned, cuz tomorrow i'll review a book i read that i flat-out hated and that one'll be much more full of swears and crap!

also, if you've never been to the bolsa chica wetlands before, you totally should go! i went with my sis and her kids this morning and it was rad - you can see pics here!

hearts and laserbeams book report: merle's door - lessons from a freethinking dog

oooo it's been a little while since updating again! sorry folks, was outta town in savannah for a while with the huzz and his mom carole, visitin our buddy jenn and getting into all around southern shenanigans! we're home now, had the art reception for coming clean last night and it was really fun! thanks to all that made it out, you're the bomb-diggity!

while we were flying out to savannah i found merle's door in the airport bookstore. the subtitle, lessons from a freethinking dog, is what caught my attention and made me read the back to find out what it was about. anyone who's met our dog jimmy knows that he is absolutely one of those dogs with their own opinions and agendas. so anyhow i ended up buying and reading it, and loved every minute of it.

merle's door: lessons from a freethinking dog by ted kerasote

this book is completely atypical of what i usually read - i'm not into actual real life stories for the most part, gimmie fiction every time! so anyhow, this one was cool because it was a memoir telling about how the author met a stray dog while rollin' down the river with his buddies one day, and he ended up adopting him. or the dog adopted the dude, that's more what happened.

so long story short, this guy talks about all kinds of dog behaviors and how dogs are related to wolves and all sorts of different ways people think about dogs as pets. and through his experiences with this particular dog, about how some of those ways of living with a pet don't necessarily lead to the most fulfilling life for them. and it really really really makes me want to live in a house with a yard, cuz there's no way jimmydog's gettin anywhere near the amount of exercise he really needs to be happy...

but anyhow - the main message i got out of the book, that really spoke to me, is that it's totally important that your dog understands how to behave in certain situations, and that knowing the sit, stay, down, come, is really important, but that they're not robots, and that they want to share leadership instead of taking orders all the time. living with our dog i can totally get behind that - he's always tryin to not so much tell us what to do, though he does definitely get jackassy, but he definitely has ideas on what his favorite walks are, and when he's bored with sitting and watching me work stand by cuz he always lets me know.

so really, the book was all about learning to help your dog have a full happy life exploring his environment and becoming an active partner in your relationship with him, instead of the robot that does nothing but what you tell him to do.

i dont know, i think i'm rambling here - but after reading this book i've let up on jimmy a little bit on our walks, and sometimes i do let him stop and smell the trees as long as he wants to, and he really seems to be enjoying it more the end!

also, spoiler alert the end of the book SUCKS because it's all about the dog getting old and dying. josh kept telling me to stop reading it because i was full on bawling and i kept telling him i only have like 3 more pages and then i'll be done hold on a sec.

ratings
4 hearts: the book was totally rad, except for:

1 fart: the effing dog dies, not old yeller style but still pretty effing sad.

hearts and laserbeams book report: are you there, vodka? it's me, chelsea

if you watch the e! channel a lot, maybe you've seen the chelsea lately show starring chelsea handler, and if you've seen it, i'm sure you'll agree that hells yeah this is one of the funniest late night shows ever! she, her gang of hilarious guests, and her sidekick chuey (a mexican midget and yes that is every bit as awesome as it sounds) never fail to send josh and i into hysterics!

last month josh saw chelsea's second book in barnes and noble and picked it up and, well, i beat him to the punch in reading it! i highly recommend it, and lemme tell ya we'll probably pick up her other book too (my horizontal life).

*****

are you there, vodka? it's me, chelsea by chelsea handler

this book, in a word, is fucking awesome. if you'd like to read a tell-all book about all the trouble someone's gotten into throughout their life so far, including getting pulled over for dui with hilarious results, partying with a midget with hilarious results, and getting a massage at a seedy massage parlor with hilarious results, then good lord this book is for you.

i laughed my ass off all the way through it, the end!

there's really nothing else to tell. it was 264 pages of booze, dope, midgets and hilarity!

ratings:
5 hearts! this book could not have been any better, it was all-out funny start to finish! it made me wish there was a 24-hour chelsea handler tv channel!

no farts! see above! the end! game, set, match!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the great gatsby

ok lemme tell you a little story about my history with this book. when i was a junior in high school, i took honors english with one mr. hohl. and it was a cool class, the teacher reminded me a little of a more refined educated chris farley.

while i was generally a really good student in school, for whatever reason i was SO not into reading the great gatsby when it came up as our next book. it's quite possible i decided it was boring from the cover art, cuz the copy i picked up at barnes and noble has the same painting on the cover and SNORESVILLE. i ain't gonna lie to you, i totally judge books by their covers. it's what hooks me in when i'm wandering through aisles and aisles of fiction. who's got cool cover art, i'll check out what that one's about.

so anyhow, apparently no one else in the class was doing the reading either, and our teacher caught wise. one day we all walk into class and get the news that shit, we're having a pop quiz on the great gatsby. and it's an essay question. shit shit shit.

i think there maybe was one or two people in the class tops that weren't pooping their pants as they sat down and stared at their blank sheet of paper. what the hell do you write about a book when all you know is it has a stupid looking cover?

a few minutes into the pop quiz, mr. hohl left the room for some unknown reason. and at once, EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE CLASS whipped out their copy of the book and proceeded to write the essay using the book's description printed on the back cover. pure comedy gold. everyone finished their essays before the teacher came back, he collected the essays, and we never saw them again...

come to think of it i don't think we ever really talked about that book again, either...

so anyways, as part of my steph's not reading enough campaign, i thought i'd read the great gatsby to kind of make up for the whole not reading it before and then cheating on the test, thing. and what the hell, i TOTALLY should have read this back then it was dope!

the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald

ok so this book is about a dude named nick carraway - he was from the midwest, minnesota i think, and wanted to leave to go be glamourous in new york. so he decides he's gonna learn to sell bonds, and while i have no effing clue what that means, he does and that probably makes him a financial type dude. he possibly yells buy buy sell sell all day long into an old-timey phone, because this took place back into 1922 and the technology just wasn't that good yet.

so when he moves to new york, he lives on west egg. do west egg and east egg actually exist, or were they made up for this book, does anyone know? apparently the snooty old money lives on east egg, and the flashy ooooo that's my shit that's my shit new money lives on west egg. so nick decides to rent a house on west egg with a dude he met, but something fell through so he's livin there all alone.

it turns out he's living next to this jay gatsby dude, who throws crazy effing parties every weekend. like CRAAAAAZAY parties every weekend. i don't mean every saturday night, i mean they are all weekend long parties. the awesome thing is the people at these parties have no effing clue who gatsby is, and they make up all kinds of wild shit about him. kind of like those snl sketches about bill bradley, remember those? where those dudes sitting in a bar would yell things like "TO BILL BRADLEY!!! HE ONCE SWALLOWED AN ENTIRE BEAR WHOLE BECAUSE HE SKIPPED LUNCH!!!"

anyhow, moral of the story is no one really knows who bill bradl- i mean jay gatsby is. like they heard he's an oxford man which is a fancy way of saying he went to school there, but they also say he's killed a man and is into bootlegging and all kinds of crazy crap.

so getting back to the west egg east egg thing, i guess no one really hangs out together from those two neighborhoods, but nick has a cousin daisy who lives on east egg with her husband tom. nick goes to meet them for lunch and meets daisy's buddy jordan. jordan's a golfer, and kind of a jerk, i guess in her first big golf tournament she cheated to win... but in her defense golf sucks, so i guess i don't blame her.

so nick and jordan start hanging out, nick meets gatsby at one of his crazy parties and they find out, small world, that they fought in a battle together during wwI so they kind of know each other - i don't remember how gatsby knows nick is related to daisy but he concocts a scheme to meet daisy at nick's house...

before he went to the war, apparently gatsby slept with daisy - it's been five years and she's married now but he's totally living in the past and wants her back. so he invented his whole identity to be all high-falootin, with wild parties and a huge house and cars and servents and on and on just to impress her cuz her family had tons of money and that's all she cared about... she was kind of a jerk, too...

so gatsby and daisy start having an affair, and eventually her husband tom finds out, and he's effing PISSED. which is awesome because he's cheated on her all throughout their marriage and that was totally fine. so there's a big fight when everyone's taken a trip to nyc together, and when they're all heading back to their west/east/easter egg homes they're taking two cars - tom tells daisy and gatsby to drive together cuz he wants to be all macho they can't hurt me...

but then on the way home, daisy is just a shitty driver to begin with let me tell you, daisy is driving and accidentally runs over myrtle, who is tom's mistress. daisy and tom are all freaked out and so they keep driving, and then when tom's car (second in the 2 car caravan home) gets to the scene of the accident he freaks out, and the mistress' husband freaks out, and there's just general freaking out all over.

wilson, the mistress' husband, decides to find the hit and run car. because back in the day there was like 2 cars on the road. so when he heard oh it was yellow he asked around a tiny bit and found out it was gatsby's car... actually i think tom told him that. so wilson goes to gatsby's house, where he's lyin' on a raft in his pool, shoots him and then shoots himself! action packed!!!

and then since nick was one of gatsby's only friends, he was in charge of the funeral... and no one came to the funeral, and it sucked, and nick decided new york sucked and he moved back to the midwest the end!!!

hearts and laserbeams book report: white oleander

ok so when my buddy justin found out i was reading this for my second book report he point blank asked if i was only going to read boring novels, and where was the explosions and fire. AND whenever he asked if i was done with it yet, he'd call it white boreleander.

listen up buddy, just because it was an oprah's book club selection doesn't make it a snoozefest! read on:

white oleander by janet fitch

ok so this book is fundamentally about a superbitchy mother and her daughter learning that her mom's a jerk.

so the mom is super obsessed with being a hoity toity snooty poet and loves making fun of people behind their backs because they're not as pretty or smart or cool as her or whatever, and she feeds this crap to her kid constantly.

she meets this dude barry who likes her a lot and he starts showing up at parties and poetry readings she's at all stalker high school style and she won't get with him because he's fat and uglee and whatever.

i don't remember what changes, it happens pretty early on and this book was like 450 pages long which isn't as much as the unabridged version of the stand but is still pretty long... anyways all of a sudden they do hook up and she's all into him and oh shit did i tell you this mom is a total ho and has all kinds of one night stands with guys because they're hot and then writes poems about it after? yeah she a ho and she doesn't ever try to hide that from her kid astrid.

ANYWAYS, so the mom's going out with this barry dude and then finds out he's a player and that he's started seeing someone else.

AND SHE EFFING MURDERS HIS ASS.

so then she winds up in prison, right? the awesome thing about this book is that it wasn't about her and her effed up brains, it was about her kid that got left behind in foster homes. this kid, you feel so bad for her because her mom pretty much effed up her brain and she doesn't know how to deal with this shit and she ends up in some pretty messed up situations.

throughout the book she's in 6 different foster homes and all of them are shitty! even the one that was good ended up shitty cuz the mom killed herself! good lord! are all foster homes really that messed up? cuz daaaaaaaaayum!!! one foster mother shot astrid! pow kablammo!

so yes. long story short it's about astrid going through foster care, but more so about her realizing who she is while she's free from her mom's craziness. it's about her realizing who her mom is, and separating herself from it, and it was awesome. end of the book is really good, i ain't gonna lie to you.

if you dig stories about people in shitty situations learnin how to deal and getting out of it this book's for you!

ratings:
4 hearts - there wasn't much to hate about this book at all! loved it! pow!!

1 fart - there is some pretty fucked up shit that happens to the kid astrid... so there's that. pow pow!!!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the sun also rises

ok so my new thing is i'm trying to get back to reading, and i thought maybe i should share with you the viewing public what i've been reading and what i think about each book, and it's gonna be awesome, with a rating system and everything! and away we go!

the sun also rises by ernest hemingway

ok now here's what i learned early on about classic american literature. buy the cliff notes right off the bat because 71 pages into this book i had no idea what the hell i had just read. so i got the cliff notes (actually they're called "spark notes" if you buy em at barnes and noble these days) and read the chapter summaries of everything i had just read, and turns out the main character's weener doesn't work cuz it was shot up in world war 1.

ok maybe it wasn't shot off. but it doesn't work anymore. that's the main thing you need to know about main character jake barnes. then when the author subtley says "his ding don't dong no more", you'll know "oh, see his weener got hurt in the war, probably from carrying heavy artillery." (yuk yuk yuk)

so basically, this book is about jake barnes and his slutty girl friend brett. not girlfriend, mind you. she doesn't wanna get with him because he can't sleep with her, so she just sleeps around and then when she gets her heart broken she hangs out with him and picks up the pieces. and she's constantly talking about this other broke dude mike that she's going to marry because he's rich, and it's really hard to tell if she's making an ironic joke or is just delusional... in either case she talks about it so much i think she's kind of just an ass.

so the main message of this book - effed up releationships are timeless.

the other main character of the book, robert cohn, in a word, is a douchebag.

basically everyone in the book gets with lady brett ashley (don't get confused by the lady title, she's a ho)because she's the village bicycle, and it's all drunken one night stands, and then she goes away for a weekend with robert cohn and he falls for her hard and thinks it's true love and starts following her all stalkerlike even when she's hanging out with her main man mike...

there's a big fight scene where robert punches out mike and jake and then he wants to shake hands and make nice after... same thing happens with a bullfighter brett's sleeping with, except after he goes to shake that guy's hand he punches him in the face. which is totally effing rad.

also, there's lots and lots of boozing it up in this book. everyone and i mean everyone's getting drunk. except back in olden times they called it getting "tight". which sounds pretty dope.

uhhhhh what else. there's bullfighting, but it's kinda sad and gross cuz they talk about cutting the bull's ear off and things like that.

aaaaaaaaaand that's my book report of the sun also rises. if you like books about booze and sluts this one's for you! i tip my hat to you hemingway, only you could make something like this sound so damn classy.

ratings:
4 hearts - loved the boozin it up, was a fun read, once i found out the guy hurt his ween in the war i had a good time watching for subtle references about it. lots of great descriptions of the spanish countryside.

1 fart - hemingway could've been a lot more direct in telling people about this dude's weener malfunctions.