Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day

By Ann B. Ross.

I've only occasionally read Miss Julia books (I'm not even going to attempt to find previous reviews of any), but this seems to be a side adventure in the same world anyway, presumably early on in the series.

Etta Mae Wiggins is ambitious but poor. She owns her own car and trailer, where she frequently annoys her landlady, Miss Julia, with calling about complaints. She's had two ex-husbands where the relationship went sour. She works as a home health care aide, where she met Mr. Howard Connard, a rich man who's had a stroke. Well, they've hit it off and Howard has proposed. However, his son Junior plans to chuck Howard into a home ASAP, which would throw off Etta Mae's wedding plans. After being fired from her job, Etta Mae realizes she's going to need to sneak around and elope with her potential third husband ASAP.

Yes, Etta Mae is an unapologetic gold digger, pretty much. Not so much that she craves millions, just enough to be able to not worry about money any more. She does, however, admittedly want the respect of the town if she's Mrs. Howard Connard rather than little ol' Etta Mae. She likes Howard and cares about him and doesn't want him in a home (or his kind manservant, Emmett, to be out of work), and she is definitely willing to get sexual with him. Yes, that's at least somewhat intimated as to exactly what Howard can get up to. It's a good bargain, and after her previous husbands she doesn't care about being in love so much any more anyway. So we've got a gold digger who we kind of root for to get to the aisle, you know?

But at the same time, her first ex-husband Skip shows up--he's got a winning lottery ticket and of course there's two thugs chasing after him for it and he keeps trying to hide at Etta's. That's also bad enough, but when she comes home and finds Junior knocked out bloody with a concussion in her trailer, the cops certainly wonder about that one. Did I mention that Etta Mae has another ex-boyfriend, Bobby Lee Moser, who also takes an interest in her and her case/issues?

Anyway, mostly the book is a frantic rush to get herself and her potential third to the church on time, as it were. The girl can hustle and cover her bases, I gotta say, and it was a compelling read to me. Despite the subject matter, I actually didn't mind the whole gold digging thing--she's clear eyed as to what she's doing and why and she seems to care about her future husband, and you really want Howard away from his relatives. However, the ending....well, I'll have to cover that below the spoiler cut. I guess I will say that the ending is of course inevitable, and yet kind of fizzled a bit too fast.

Three and a half stars. 

Things You Save in a Fire

By Katherine Center.

"So, to succeed in my new job, I basically need to be an asexual, androgynous, human robot that's dead to all physical and emotional sensation." 

Cassie Hanwell is a female firefighter. She's extremely good at her job and gets along great with her coworkers in Austin, and has even won an award...But when the guy who did A Very Bad  Thing* to her as a teenager turns out to be the guy giving her the award...and then he gropes....well, Cassie suddenly beats the shit out of him with said award in front of everyone. 

• You can certainly guess what this was, though the actual word isn't said . 

Cassie was on the promotion track, now she's on the "possibly gonna get fired for that" track. However, around the same time her mother's told her that she's lost vision in one eye and needs Cassie to move to the Boston area to help her out...but only for a year. Cassie's been estranged from her mother since her mother left her dad for another man on Cassie's 16th  birthday and of course she says hell no, but clearly the universe has set things up to make Cassie move anyway.

Before she goes, her female captain gives her huge warnings: Cassie's only been in places that wanted her, and her new captain straight up hates female firefighters, but he's desperate and had 2 people retire. The captain gives her the rundown: nothing feminine about you whatsoever, don't cry, don't date, don't do anything further to remind people of your gender. Uck, but there it is.

Actually, the job isn't too bad at first. Sure, the guys are grumbly about having to hide the porn, and they do pranks (well, she's fine with that, used to that), and the station is rundown as heck and missing useful medical things, but it could be worse. However, there is the rookie. Who is gorgeous and sweet and enlightened and adorable, if it a bit easily squicked out by the medical aspects of the job. Cassie's paired with him pretty frequently and even though she tries to avoid him, she fell at first sight when she's never loved anyone before--she's never gone there after That Guy. But oh dear god, she can't date him or even be slightly partial to him.

Of course, this is a romance, so...suffice it to say she starts heading towards that ledge, in a manner of speaking. But then when budget cuts hit and one of them has to get canned--someone starts giving Cassie the hazing/stalking treatment she was warned about, and then there's a significant fire...I'll discuss more below the spoiler cut, but suffice it to say that the last section of the book really heats up, plotwise. I love how Cassie calls out these guys, saying that they're supposed to be heroes, but instead someone's throwing a brick through her mother's window. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book (I got it from the library and am getting it for Christmas as a keeper). I love Cassie and how she's turned herself into a buff lady who nobody should ever be able to mishandle again. She's avoided all relationship stuff since age 16 and she's still openly resentful of her mother for leaving in the way that she did. Her mother acknowledges  that she did wrong, but there were extenuating circumstances going on that forced her hand, more or less. There is definitely some dynamics going on about being a "man's woman" (i.e. "technically I'm a girl but let's try to forget that?") at her job, vs. being around her mother and her mother's best friend, who are crafters. While Cassie doesn't go full softy necessarily, she learns that it's okay and safe to have a more womanly side when she wants to--and I enjoyed that the guys at her work realize that too by the end. 

The rookie that she falls for....well, I think it's pretty weird how she literally tries to avoid learning so much as his NAME (it's a little ridiculous that we don't find out his full name until like 180 pages in!). I certainly get trying to avoid him for her own career safety, but the name thing's a little dumb. Btw, I would like to say that between this book and What You Wish For, the author writes "love at first sight, but we still have more plot to go through and things don't just start easily" very, very well. The rookie is SUPER sweet and adorable and totally worthy, and isn't it nice to see a guy who's actually worthy of someone?

I'll talk about the end below the spoiler cut, but this is highly recommended by me. Four and a half stars.

What You Wish For

By Katherine Center.

This book is amazing.

Backstory: Librarian Samantha Casey has epilepsy, which literally made her father decide to ditch her forever. She basically lost her family over this.. Later, she worked at a school in California and fell madly in love with Duncan Carpenter, a totally wacky, happy, enthusiastic guy who was always wearing crazy outfits and doing amazing things in the classroom. (He sounds like great fun, I gotta say.) But she never got up the nerve to really interact with him, someone else asked him out. The one time they had any interaction, he asked her to cat-sit and when she found herself reading through a notebook of his, she was all, "This is Too Much," and she got another job in Galveston, Texas. 

The new job in Galveston has been heavenly. It's a little patch of hippies in the middle of Texas, and Sam lives in the carriage house of the school founders, Max and Babette Kempner. She adores Max and Babette and feels like she's a second daughter/found a new family with them--even if their actual daughter Tina hates her for this. (I note that Tina is married to Kent, a complete jerk who runs the school board, and has a sweet kid named Clay who thankfully takes after his grandfather.) Everything there is really great.

And then Max drops dead while dancing at his party. Everyone is devastated. And it's even worse when Kent takes over and hires a new principal.... which turns out to be Duncan. At first Sam is delighted--he'd be a new Max all over again!--except Duncan HAS CHANGED. He's now a boring suit guy. He's no fun at all. He's completely obsessed with safety above all else. And he pulls out a painted squirt gun in the middle of a meeting to scare the shit out of everybody. THE FUCK?!? AT A SCHOOL?!?!

Soon everyone hates him and his memos about firing the security guard, canceling all field trips forever, canceling the playground, and painting all walls gray. On the one hand, this sure helps Sam get over that crush she had. On the other hand, this guy has turned hella awful and she openly declares him her enemy and the rest of the school feels the same way.

So what happened to Duncan? You the reader will have long since figured it out before Sam does as to what happened to him to make him suddenly change into a guy who's literally all about nothing but school security--I can only assume that's Idiot Ball sort of logic to put off a big reveal. That said, I did really enjoy HOW it came about, i.e. Duncan needs someone to give him a ride/watch him after surgery that gets him high and amnesiac about everything he blabs about liking Sam, as well as what happened to him.

After finding that information out, that changes the plans, and Sam and Babette and company come up with a plan to improve Duncan/get him to have fun again/get him into therapy, not get his ass fired, and it's all very sweet. 

The relationship between Sam and Duncan is pretty damn adorable, even if the whole "you shouldn't be dating your boss" thing is utterly ignored in this one. (I guess private schools...don't care?) You definitely feel they are Meant To Be, even if it took some time. And I love how Sam came out of her shell after being a boring dresser when she originally worked with Duncan--after her epilepsy came back, Max encouraged her to do things that made her happy, like dressing colorfully and having pink bangs. (I don't have pink bangs, but did have pink hair for awhile.) Though even though Sam seems like she mostly is over her own stuff, she does get triggered about her epilepsy and whether or not it will drive someone away like it did in the past. 

Anyway, I found this sweet and adorable and inspirational and four and a half stars. I got it as a library book, I may need to purchase it to keep. 

Quotes:

• "One flower hat can't fix all my problems." "No, but it can sure help." -Sam and Max
• "The point is to be happy anyway. As often as you can." -Max
• "I might never drive, but dammit--I had a fun wardrobe." -Sam
• "Fuck lunch duty." -Sam
• "I bite and scratch and claw my way toward happiness every day." -Sam

The Midnight Library

By Matt Haig.

Nora Seed is 35 and feeling fed up with life. She never made anything of herself, she never got married, she lost her job, her cat died, blah de blah. However, upon presumably attempting to do herself in, she ends up in "The Midnight Library," a space in the world between worlds or something like that, run by the memory(?) of an old librarian, who tells her that she can try out all the different lives she didn't live and see if there's one of them she'd like to move into instead.

Sounds fun, right?

"Want is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live." -Mrs. Elm. 

Nora tries out the lives you'd wonder about: 

• What if she'd married Dan and settled down to pub life with him? Dan's still not happy and cheating on her. (Dan never pans out, really.)
• What about her cat? Well, he was going to die either way.
• What if she'd become an Olympian? Some things are better, some things are worse.
• What if she'd become a rock star? Some things are better, some things are worse.
• What if she meets another "slider" doing the same thing?
• What if she just keeps trying out lives for eternity, realizing that you'll never find the ideal life?

Sometimes people's lives change--they may stay alive longer or die anyway--depending on what Nora did or where she was. Some relationships improve and some devolve. She goes through The Book of Regrets and the more lives she checks out, the less regrets she ends up having any more. She also realizes that she was trying out lives for other people--what if she'd done X or Y like someone else wanted--and then starts to vary it up.

But once you try a life and reject it, you can't ever go back to it, and when Nora finds a pretty good life with a nice husband and child--will she stay? Can she stay? 

In the end, I think you kind of know how things are going to resolve, even if Nora doesn't necessarily know that. I'll discuss the ending below the spoiler cut. Overall I liked this one, in a chill, quiet, interesting sort of way. In the end, she realizes it's the regret that gets to you more than anything else, but "most of what we'd feel in any life is still available." It was very profound. 

Four stars. 

Problem Child

By Victoria Helen Stone.

Previous book here.

Every review I've read of this book says "It's not as good as the first one." I disagree. Sure, it's not a revenge tale--if anything it reminds me of whichever Dexter book it was where he realized his stepchildren also had Dark Passengers or whatever--but I still enjoyed it, thought it was fitting Jane, etc.

Anyway: a few years or so later, things are going well for Jane in her relationship and she's having a good time screwing with (but not screwing) a coworker who keeps trying to take her credit and whatnot. Then her boyfriend Luke is starting to want to move in together and maybe rethink the no-kids thing, and Jane freaks out. Around this time, she gets a phone call from one of her her deadbeat convict brother's babymommas, who appears to be the only one concerned that his 16-year-old daugther Kayla has been missing for like a month. Jane obviously wouldn't normally give any kind of a shit, except for a remark that Kayla is like Jane.

Another sociopath in the family? Sounds likely. Jane is intrigued enough to go to Oklahoma--which is as awful as you'd figure--and deal with her relatives again (ditto). It helps to get to run away from her relationship stuff too, and Jane certainly enjoys detective work. I'm still not clear on why wind turbines were A Thing in the mystery here, but there is a hilarious scene with a guy named Derrick--and how she manipulates him WITHOUT putting out--that is goddamned hilarious. Eventually Jane finds Kayla and while Kayla is certainly up to some bad shit, Jane thinks she has potential to make more of herself if she's mentored. And Jane is intrigued enough to want to give this a shot. 

It is implied at the end of the book that maybe this might be a bit tricksier than Jane originally thought, though. Is Kayla moldable, or will she be independent enough to cause serious trouble that Jane can't deal with? We shall see, assuming there's a book 3. I confess I'm with Jane on the "hm, this could be interesting, let's see how it goes" category. Finding a mini-me must be intriguing, right?

Anyway, I enjoyed reading Jane's voice again and hanging out with her, and look forward to her future exploits with a teenager in tow. Four stars. 

Jane Doe

By Victoria Helen Stone.

Jane (last name unknown, duh) thinks she is a sociopath, though maybe she's not as bad as she thinks. She had a traumatic, neglectful, abusive childhood in Oklahoma and learned to shut down most of her emotions, so she feels a lot more remote compared to most people. However, she had one best friend in the world, Meg, who she loved and cared about. Unfortunately, Meg got into an abusive relationship while Jane was living in Kuala Lumpur, so Jane was only so aware of what was going on beyond the constant breakups and getting back together. And then finally, Meg killed herself because of her "soulmate" abandoning her. 

Now Jane has taken two months leave from her job and returned to Minneapolis where they went to college and gotten herself a data entry job under a fake last name (unrevealed) at Meg's ex Steven's business. She's blonded up her hair and bought a bunch of cute girly flowery dresses and lacy bras to peek out from  under them. She's going to be catnip to Steven, he will pursue her, and then she's going to take him down. Maybe she'll kill him--at least, she certainly ponders it--but her overall plan is to figure out what he loves the most and take it away from him. Pretty straightforward plot there! You want a revenge fantasy, there you go.

Jane has studied people since she doesn't get them, and she can read Steven like a book in his shitty push-pull behavior. I think any woman who's ever been in an abusive relationship or suspects she is in one should read this, because this book makes it clear that that kind of shitty man behavior is a PLAYBOOK. Steven negs Jane about her weight--she's a size ten and perfectly fine with that, thank you very much, but he'll switch between "You're a good eater" and "Do you REALLY want that dessert?" behavior.

Steven has a very obvious "every woman in the world is a dirty whore" complex, which presumably comes from (a) being raised evangelical Christian by a pastor dad and (b) his mom having an affair and leaving when he was 15. I feel sorry for him on those two points, but by now he's a manipulative asshole whos' the sort that always wants to make a woman dependent on his approval, which he'll yank away semi-frequently for his own amusement. Happily, Jane gives absolutely no fucks about Steven's approval or feelings or whatever, so in her head she's being all, "Really, dude?!" while outwardly she's pretending to be distressed by him calling her a whore again. She "makes mistakes," she plays him like a fiddle. It's brilliant. Seriously, all women should read this to know what these fuckers are like. 

But Jane's not all bad. She adopts and is fond of her (also nameless) cat. And then she runs into Luke, a brief boyfriend she had in college who's very happy to see her again. While she's "dating" Steven, she also dates Luke, who is genuinely nice, comes from a somewhat similar shitty family background, and he enjoys just like, hanging out and reading. Luke thinks Jane is perhaps a bit autistic or something, but he finds her restful compared to his mama drama that he grew up with. It's adorable. 

There's only one thing I thought didn't go as well, which I'll discuss below the spoiler cut. But I did love how the takedown went on and what she did to do it, and the ending was as good as it could get, I think.

Four stars. I really enjoyed this and recommend it.

Here are some other reviews I enjoyed reading. I also agree with this SMTB review:

As I read this book I thought, what if Jane is not a sociopath, but rather an example of a what a woman can be when all the baggage that comes from being a woman is stripped away–the doubt, the irrational sense of familial duty, the self-criticism? She has such immense power in that way. What if all women were like that? What a terrifying world that would be for so many men.

I admit that's something that also appealed to me about The Rook: what if all the shitty baggage of being yourself/a woman was stripped away and you didn't feel it and weren't affected by it any more? 

Sex and Vanity

By Kevin Kwan.

(Disclaimer: I'm going to spoil the whole plot here. I just don't see the point in holding back in this one. Also, I'm writing this up on the day of the Harry/Meghan interview and the half-PoC stuff coming up here seems super relevant.) 

Lucie Tang Churchill is what she sounds like: a half Chinese Churchill from THOSE Churchills. Her mother Marian is a lovely person (and apparently a genius geneticist!), but since Lucie is the kid that takes after her in looks--her brother Freddie came out white-looking--she gets off and on weird racist shit like being called a "China doll" by her racist grandmother and gets asked if she feels more Chinese or more white. Lucie has been raised fairly well white and does her best to blend in and assimilate and whatnot.

At age 19, Lucie goes to a wedding on Capri with her older cousin Charlotte as chaperone. While there, they meet the SUPER generous--if a rather kooky dresser--Rosemary Zao and her extremely hot, serious teenage son George. We don't get a whole lot of personality development from George, probably because unlike everyone else in this world, he's not too into the title words (and indeed, calls them out in his biggest speech in the book). Lucie reacts on a weird soul level to meeting George, in an "I'm repulsed and yet super attracted to you" sort of way. He's not the sort that she wants, but somehow she's still fascinated. And when a guy has a heart attack and falls into Lucie's lap while she's at a cafe, she freaks the hell out and runs away because it reminds her of her father's death. George understands her pain, they have a few moments, and finally they start giving into their passion. George goes down on Lucie...and then some assholes fly a drone camera over them, capturing the moment. While the drone/video situation is thwarted, Charlotte chews Lucie out for what she got up to, think of the consequences, and well, the implications of a half-Chinese girl getting involved with a Chinese guy in their world....

Five years later, Lucie and George meet again in NYC, right after Lucie has gotten engaged (very public proposal-y) to Cecil Pike, a white rich social climber guy who's financially generous, into sexual role play (this was a bit eye-rolly!) and gets super triggered out by running into snobbery, like being around Lucie's relatives. He absolutely loses his shit for a few pages when he shows up at a club with a shirt without a collar, and he's frequently spectacularly rude to Lucie's mother and brother, both of who are perfectly nice to him. At one point Cecil absolutely slams the idea of asking a celebrity guest he knows to go to Marian's benefit, scoring the idea that the celebrity would EVER go to something as puny as Marian's event. Freddie uses "six degrees of separation" to invite the woman, who accepts enthusiastically. After this, Lucie is literally "Ew" at the idea of becoming "Mrs. Cecil Pike" (something that made me gag every time I read her bragging about it) and she peacefully and tactfully ends the engagement. 

Marian and Rosemary become fast friends, forcing Lucie to deal with George and their attraction rearing up. (And at one point, bizarrely, their oral sex/drone incident actually MAKES IT INTO SOMEOBODY'S MOVIE, THE FUCK?!) George pleads his case, it's very romantic, Lucie rejects him....and then forges a shitty-yet-kinda-amusing letter to the co-op board from her mother when Rosemary wants to get an apartment in their building. Rosemary, as it turns out, is very forgiving and understanding once she finds out that George has been coming on to Lucie against her will. 

This description I just wrote is a whooooole lot more interesting than the actual book. That's about why I got it--the plot sounded at least somewhat interesting, However, much as I know Kevin Kwan loves to snob about and make snobby comments that are amused at snobbery and whatnot, he could have used a bit less of this and a bit more love story. I feel like this is supposed to be a romance novel, more or less, but the romance needs more building. George and Lucie have inexplicable attraction, but they don't spend all that much time together to build upon it. There is LITERALLY no scene in which the two of them finally get together--the big climactic scene is Lucie talking to his mother, and then we cut to an island epilogue in which they're together, and that's it. The fuck? I felt like I was eating half-cooked baked goods.  Also, while Lucie is nice most of the time, she gets a bit shitty to George and especially his mother on that co-op letter, and I was all yeesh, girl. I liked Lucie dealing with the racism she got brought up with, when that happens, but it's not as much of a plot element as you'd think. 

I rather liked her mother and brother (I wouldn't mind if the brother was in the sequel, but alas, he got a girl offscreen at the end) and Rosemary and Charlotte aren't so bad, but there's just not all that much to this one. Two and a half stars. 

The Little Paris Bookshop

By Nina George.

I read this because my therapist told me to. It wasn't bad, just kind of in the "probably wouldn't have read on my own, not exactly for me, but sweet in its own way" category.

Jean Perdu runs a floating bookshop in Paris off his barge, which is pretty cool. He's a "literary apothecary," who has a knack for being able to recommend a book based off your mental state and what you need. This trait is why I checked out the book from the electronic library in the first place, but sadly, this isn't really going on any more past the beginning of the book (though the author does have a list of books she'd prescribe in the back at the end). I really would have liked to have seen more of that, and it is genuinely startling when Jean dis-recommends a book his neighbor wrote, telling Catherine, a lady who's just been dumped by her husband that this is NOT the book she needs to read right now. (The author, Max Jordan, is of course rather upset by this.) 

Jean, per his last name, has been mourning the loss of the love of his life for 20 years or so, refusing to even think her name, and he definitely hasn't read the letter she left behind, which he reasonably assumes was dumping him. The lady, Manon, was of a polyamorous inclination and loved both him and her husband, but I guess being open about loving two dudes wasn't okay in the 80's/90's. Anyway, Jean assumed she dumped him to go back to her husband. But upon finding himself attracted to another woman--the aforementioned Catherine--and her ending up briefly in possession of the letter, he opens it.

And it's the worst of news: Manon told him she was dying in the letter and wanted to see him. And it's twenty years too late. Jean snaps, releases his boat from its holdings, and takes off down the river to go see what remains of Manon. The aforementioned Max Jordan, having a writing crisis, hops on board as well, and they pick up a third guy later. On the slow train there, Jean looks for the author of his favorite book, who wrote under a pen name. Very eventually, he makes it to his love's husband's house and works out his mourning issues.

It's a slow feeling book to me. Everyone in it's sweet, but it isn't exactly about a book detective, or a romance exactly (there are romances ,but it's all pretty brief), mostly just Jean finally resolving his issues and moving on. Which I'm sure appeals to some folks. It's not bad, it's all very nice, but I think in the end I'm just not going to find it very memorable, and on December 31, 2021 (if I'm still alive then, one hopes) when I go to look at the list of books I read within the year, I'll be all "I don't remember reading that one?"

Three stars. 

Not Pounded By Anything While I Practice Responsible Social Distancing

By Chuck Tingle. 

WRITTEN BEFORE I START READING THIS:

I do not claim to understand the man/myth/legend/whatever that is Chuck Tingle. Is it real, is it not, is it all some odd act, I have no clue. I do appreciate that Chuck Tingle is on the side of the good guys in politics and obviously has a sense of humor about things like Hugo nomination. On the other hand, I do not have any kind of fascination with buttsex (I watched "Bend Over Boyfriend" and that's about all I felt like doing of that), and frankly, his spelling and grammar in like literally every interview/Twitter post of his I have ever seen pains me greatly to read, which also leads me in the "is this real?!?" direction. I've been told that someone ("son name of Jon") edits these things so they don't read like that, but I am still suspicious.

For those two reasons, I have so far avoided reading a Tingler.

However, given my general fascination with weird Internet shit, I did say to myself that if there was ever a free Tingler that doesn't involve buttsex, I'd read it. And guess what, there is one. So.... let's see how this goes. 

THOUGHTS I HAD WHILE READING THIS:

• As per rumor, this book is written in usual grammar and syntax and not making my eyes bleed, thank god. Otherwise this experiment would have been over in paragraph one.
• This book features a "trotting plague," which is about actual trotting and not having a case of diarrhea, thank god, which is what I kinda expected from seeing this word.
• Our narrator, Bill, decides to practice handwashing and responsible social distancing, canceling going to events and cafes, doing elbow bumping, and no longer gong to the "yearly hug party" his grandparents are throwing.
• I winced at "hug party" and got sad.
• Actually the writing style is very nice, kinda lyrical even. Is the same guy doing the interviews that does the writing of these things....?
• Direct quote: "Do I really need to avoid content with everyone? I was only gonna skip the spit contest and the hug party." 
• Bill oopses that he forgot he had a scheduled lunch date. WITH A DINOSAUR. Where does one find a dinosaur to date? Dare I ask?
• "I know we were going to pound each other tonight, but right now I can't be pounded. I'm socially distancing."
• "I just trotted a bit and now I think it's best for me to postpone the bone."
• Bill also had a date with Mario and Amber, the "bigfeet." Again, where are you finding these dates? I'm sure there has got to be SOME interesting website for that.
• Also, Bill was going to date AN ENTIRE UNICORN BASEBALL TEAM. Good god, I can't imagine the ass soreness from literally all of that pounding you....and I'm glad I am not gonna read about it, to be honest.
• Bill's dates are very polite about the whole thing. 
• Bill decides to date himself and make himself lasagna. 
• I shudder at the "finely aged chocolate milk from the eighties." Hope you don't die of that, Bill! 
• Now everyone's out of quarantine after a month or so (I go off to cry in the corner for a bit at this) and Bill and all his dates meet up together. Amber learned magic while in quarantine and Mario learned three new languages. 

The actual story is about eleven pages. The rest of the 21 pages is just all Chuck Tingle titles. I will restrain myself from typing them all out, but they are as ridiculous as you'd expect.

Things I have learned from his list of titles: he has categories.

• Dinosaurs
• Unicorns
• Bigfoot
• Living Object
• There are, in fact, lesbian tinglers.
• And also, a category of No Sex Tinglers. I mean, beyond this one. Go figure. 
• There's also trans and bisexual ones
• And guides to life
• And role playing games

MY OVERALL REACTION AFTER READING THIS.

It was better than I expected. Albeit I still wonder where one finds an entire unicorn baseball team to date, not to mention THAT OLD of chocolate milk. 

WHAT DO I RATE THIS?

I dunno, three stars? It's all right. Well written, polite, short, not terribly disturbing and I'm fine with that. 

WILL I EVER READ A TINGLER AGAIN?

I dunno, maybe one of the non-sex ones someday. 

Daisy Jones and the Six

By Taylor Jenkins Reid.

I haven't been able to read much since you-know-what happened. I decided to reread "Red, White and Royal Blue" after finishing it and it took me like three weeks because I couldn't get through more than about 3 pages at a time. I've at least improved on reading this book, which I think I got through in maybe a week?

This book is an oral history of "Daisy Jones and the Six," a band that was briefly super hot in the 1970's before splitting up. I've heard that this book is inspired by Fleetwood Mac's drama, and yeah, you can see that. In some respects, it feels unoriginal because of that. I can't say I'm terribly interested in drug addiction stories and cheating stories, which is to be expected by any band and especially one in the seventies. Really, there is only plot thing that didn't happen than genuinely surprised me--well, that and the ending note. See below the spoiler cut for commentary on that. 

I also don't really get why there's six people in the band, because really, the focus is only on about half of the characters in this group. I am fairly sure that there are guys named Rod and Warren in the band and one of them was gay, and that's all the personality I can think of for them. Pete was the one with Jenny the girlfriend. That's about as much character depth as those three got. Eddie gets slightly more depth as The Resentful One Who Hates Billy. But really, did this band need six? Nope, didn't really.

The main characters are:

(a) Daisy Jones, a gorgeous, independently minded, does what she wants, drug addicted songwriter who eventually gets recruited into the band after a duet she does with Billy hits the big time. Daisy and Billy do not get on, but she gets more attracted to him as they write songs together. However, he's married. 

(b) Billy Dunne, the band's "star" before Daisy, who hates/resents the fuck out of Daisy even though he's attracted to her. Billy is madly in love with his wife Camilla and goes through a drugging/cheating phase at the start of the book, which he improves on after that, and it's clear that watching Daisy get wasted 24-7 is also a factor for him. 

(c) Graham Dunne, Billy's little brother, always the eclipsed one. Graham is secretly in love with Karen, but it's not exactly mutual.

(d) Karen Sirko, an independent woman dealing with sexism who may care for Graham, but the last thing she wants to do is settle down and have a family like he would.

(e) Camila Dunne, Billy's "soulmate" wife who is also quietly strong-willed and is definitely going to Make It Work with Billy, regardless of whatever shit he goes through.

Naturally, there's relationship drama, addiction drama, songwriting drama (note that the book actually has the lyrics to all their hit songs in the back, good job!), and a lot of musings on the song chemistry of Daisy and Billy, in a "will they or won't they" sort of way. 

If I think a lot of the plot seems unoriginal, what did seem fresh to me was the female characters, who I really liked. Camila and Karen are women to respect. You feel for Daisy, being as fucked up as she was during most of the novel. Even Simone, her best friend who's in and out, is someone I respect. I really liked a lot of the lines out of the ladies in this one. 

The book seems to semi-argue that Billy and Camila may be soulmates, but so are he and Daisy, in a sense. I continue to think them as a pairing is a whoppingly bad idea--at least during the period of time in which they knew each other--but the author does write them as having stage chemistry (and offstage rivalry) well. Billy is such a Wife Guy, though. Again, I have some more thoughts about this that are going below the spoiler cut. 

Quote Corner:

• "Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people." -Karen
• "A lot of my girlfriends were looking for guys that could afford a nice ring. But I wanted someone fascinating." -Camila
• "That's the glory of being a man. An ugly face isn't the end of you." -Karen
• "She said, "You got a record contract?" That's when I knew, right then. That Camila was my soul mate. She cared more about the record contract than anything else." -Billy
• "I felt like Jim was basically saying that nobody cared what I was singing about as long as they could get a good look at me." -Daisy
• "I wanted to write songs and get high." -Daisy
• There's a story about Camila offering to make everyone a big breakfast, then everyone else says they want burgers, then Camila says she'll make them burgers and sends Billy out for food, then says later that the burger meat didn't look so great, so she'll just make breakfast... "All of it tasted great and no one ever noticed what she had done except me. That's what I loved about her. She was no wallflower. You just had to be paying attention to see it." -Karen
• "I said one time, "Maybe while you're gone, you could tidy up or something." -Billy. "I said, "All right." And then I proceeded to not clean a single thing." -Camila
• "It didn't seem right to me that his weakest self got to decide how my life was going to turn out, what my family was going to look like. I got to decide that. And what I wanted was a life--a family, a beautiful marriage, a home--with him. With the man I knew he truly was. And I was going to get it, hell or high water." -Camila
• "Let me take this opportunity to be clear about one thing: I never slept with David Bowie. At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't." -Daisy
• "So I had this plan to sing my part like I wanted to believe him but maybe deep down inside I didn't. I thought that gave the song some layers." -Daisy
• "Billy was writing songs trying to tell himself he had got it all under control, that decades out he'll still have his sobriety and his wife and his family. And in about two minutes of singing, Daisy pulled the tablecloth from under the dishes." -Karen
• "I think Daisy was just very unexpected for Billy." -Graham
• "I did not understand what Billy had against me. I came in and I made the song just a little bit better. What was there to be upset about?" -Daisy
• "I wore what I wanted when I wanted. I did what I wanted with who I wanted. And if somebody didn't like it, screw 'em." -Daisy
• (On Daisy) "I suppose I probably should have hated her for it, but I didn't. I loved her for it. Because it meant she was less inclined to take the shit I'd been taking for years now. And with her around, I didn't have to take that shit either." -Karen
• "And it didn't matter how much of an asshole I thought Billy was. When you can sing like that with someone, there's a small part of you that feels connected to them. That sort of thing that gets under your skin and doesn't easily come out. Billy was like a splinter. That's exactly what he was like." -Daisy
• "I asked her if she was a natural blonde. Lesson learned. Not all women think that's funny." -Warren on getting well deservedly slapped by a stewardess.
• "How come you've never made a move on me?" "I don't take shots I know I'll miss." "I don't think you'll miss, Dunne." And then as soon as I said it, there was a dial tone." -Karen and Graham
• "But some people, they glow. Billy was like that. I mean, offstage, no. Offstage, he was sullen and sober and he barely had any sense of humor that I could see. At that point, I thought he was sort of a bore, to be honest with you. But onstage he looked like there was no place he'd rather be than standing right there with you."-Daisy
• "You know how sometimes people will describe other people and say they make you feel like you're the only one in the room? Billy and Daisy could both do that. But they somehow did it with each other. They each seemed like they thought the other one was the only person in the room. Like we were watching two people who didn't realize thousands of people were watching them." -Karen
• "In general, when you have drugs to spare and a nice cottage to do them in, you're probably not attracting people that care about you." -Daisy
• "It's not my responsibility to not turn them on. It's their responsibility to not be an asshole." -Daisy
• "I'm not singing an entire album about your wife, Billy." -Daisy
• "Every single one of those songs is about the pills in your pockets." -Billy
• "You can't keep writing apology songs to your wife and making the band play them." -Daisy
• 'I used to care when men called me difficult. I really did. Then I stopped. This way is better." -Daisy
• "I think I've rolled my eyes about five thousand more times in my life just on account of Billy Dunne." -Daisy
• "We have to be able to tell the truth to each other, to really be honest about ourselves. Otherwise, how can we ever write anything?" -Billy
• "There's just as much to hate about you as there is to like about you. And that's annoying." -Daisy (according to Billy)
• "It's like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams." "That's a song, right there." -Daisy and Billy
• "I was paying the price for the parts of himself that he didn't like." -Daisy
• "I don't change for anybody." -Daisy
• On Camila: "She was very good at knowing what everybody else should do and she had no problem telling you. It was really annoying. How right she always was. And she would tell you "I told you so." You'd do something she told you not to do and it wouldn't work out and you'd find yourself bristling around her, just waiting for that "I told you so" to come." -Karen
• "If you come to me and ask me for advice, and then you don't take my advice, and it blows up in your face exactly like I told you it would, what do you expect me to say?" -Camila
• "Oh, the tangled messes I've created in my life." -Daisy
• "I'm in love with a woman that I am starting to think doesn't love me and I'm not telling a single soul about it and you don't see me asking for intermediaries to save me from my own brand of crap, do you?" -Graham
• "What's gonna sell more copies? Billy Dunne used to be an alcoholic and now he's reformed? Or the two lead singers in this hip new band loathe each other? It was no contest. The world was filled with Billy Dunnes. So many men in this world missed their daughters' births or stepped out on their wives or whatever else he did. Sorry to say it but that's the world we live in. But not many people are so creatively in sync with someone they despise. That was fascinating." -Jonah Berg, journalist
• "If you went to a Daisy Jones and The Six show thinking they hated each other, you could find some damning evidence for that. And if you went thinking something was up with them, that the hatred maybe masked something else, you could find evidence for that, too." -Rod
• "When you find yourself high on the roof of a hotel with a husband who doesn't outright say that the two of you shouldn't jump off, you start to realize you have a lot of problems." -Daisy
• "Some people will never stop being themselves. And you think it drives you crazy but it is the very thing you will think about when they are gone. When you don't have them in your life any more." -Billy
• "We were two halves. We were the same. In that way that you're only the same with a few other people. In that way that you don't even feel like you have to say your own thoughts because you know the other person is already thinking them." -Billy
• "She was always the person I loved the most. She was always the person I would choose. It is Camila for me, always." -Billy
• "Don't count yourself out this early, Daisy. You're all sorts of things you don't even know yet." -Camila
• "I appeared to be the only person who didn't have his panties in a bunch about something." -Warren

Overall I give it about three and a half stars. It's surprisingly compelling and I got more into it as it went on, even if I think there's some weaknesses (too many Sixes) and I don't know what the hell I feel about Daisy and Billy's relationship. My best guess is that they have one of those fucked up twin flame relationships? It's interesting, albeit I didn't root for it because it all seemed so self-destructive. But I really like the women in this, and I do kind of wish they were all real so I could find more about what happened to these people. I recommend it.