Size Twelve is Definitely Pissing Me Off

Meg Cabot, Big Boned
The most recent book in Cabot’s series starring Heather Wells, an overweight ex-popstar who now works as a dorm manager at an Ivy League New York school.
Cabot has dabbled in a lot of different genres:  she’s done historical and contemporary romance, sci-fi/fantasy, books for adults, teens, and younger readers, and now she’s [...]

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Paying a tithe to hell

Okay, this isn’t about a book, or a movie, or anything that has to do with entertainment.  This is about…public transportation.
 Oh, yeeeeeah…
I don’t take the Metro very often, for the simple reason that I live in a mass transit dead zone and the closest station is twenty minutes away.  By car.  So, approximately four thousand minutes [...]

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Life is not a narrative; also, publishers lie like dogs

Annie Choi, Happy Birthday or Whatever:  Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters
I read this book because Meg Cabot told me to.  Don’t think I’m weak-willed:  I’ve never done anything else simply because Meg Cabot told me to do it.  I mean, I love Meg Cabot, but I think she would be the first [...]

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Kung Fu Hustle

My review of this movie consists of:  “Omigod, that’s RIDICULOUS!  Also, I think I just wet my pants!”
 There is no substance to this movie, and very little style.  However, it is unspeakably, unbelievably funny.  Also, unlike many genre spoofs, this one is actually still completely hilarious even if you’ve never seen a single kung fu movie.  [...]

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Yes, I AM judging you

I should probably preface this by reminding you that not only am I on the rag, I am wickedly, horribly, TERRIFYINGLY AND PAINFULLY on the rag.  I am so on the rag that this morning, when the sweet old lady I work with innocently asked me how I’m feeling (I had to take the day before yesterday [...]

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Maus in the haus

That is the lamest fucking title ever; sorry about that.
I can’t review this one without “spoiling” it a little, but let’s be honest:  this is a memoir about the Holocaust, and the author is pretty upfront from the very beginning about who dies and when.  I’m not going to tell you anything that you can’t figure [...]

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Why Atonement is kicking my ass

I have never gotten past the first chapter of Atonement, for the simple reason that the epigraph McEwan placed at the beginning of the book fills me with a rage I cannot quite articulate.
McEwan pulls from Jane Austen, who is almost always an excellently wry, witty choice–except when you’re writing a deep, meaningful literary novel [...]

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For the record…

Now that it is that blessed time of the month when I pop Midol like other people pop M&Ms and moan and clutch my heating pad to my stomach and just generally behave like a walking advertisment for why The Red Tent needs to make a comeback, I wonder:  what did Diablo Cody do when [...]

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A Heartwarming Holiday

Well, this is cheating because A.) when I wrote this, Transformers had just come out; and B.) Transformers is a movie, not a book.  But whatever.  That shit’s old now, and that’s all that counts!
I think I can safely say that my family sucks at holidays. It’s not that we have big fights or quietly [...]

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How I Spent My Summer–I Mean Winter–Vacation

This Christmas, I did what all good Christians do:  I read.  A lot.   And so, a rapid-fire review of everything I plowed through during that week. 
Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death; Strong Poison
These are both strong, witty, workmanlike mysteries (although, as a Brit, it probably would have killed Sayers to be described as “workmanlike”).  The [...]

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