whako jacko

book: on michael jackson

author: margo jefferson

completion date: 18/10/10

Method: purchased

This is another pop culture book. As in another book I had to read for class. I don't know if it left me with any more knowledge about Michael Jackson though. He remains a compelling character. I don't know if it is possible to learn more about his life, because he was such a mysterious person. In her book, jefferson touches on his family life, and how he is not the most bizarre one in the family, he is just the most public.
What I find difficult about Jackson is that he was almost doomed to fail. He was severely abused as a child and began his life in showbiz so young that if he had turned out to be happy and healthy it would have been truly shocking. What I find tragic about him is that he was so set up to fail and to end up a freak of showbiz and we all just waited for his failure.
She mentioned something about jackson's transformation that I had never thug of before- that jackson's transformation was for us. He disfigured himself so that he became more what we wanted from him. He dangled prince Michael over the balcony for us. Because we, the mob were calling for blood. I don't know if there is a way to see what was going on to Michael or what happened to him and I don't feel that I know any more about Jackson than I did, I just feel worse about what happened to him.
xo- ellebee

naughty leap 2: my first venture into harlequin

book: honeymoon with the boss

author: jessica hart

completion date: 18/10/10

method: stolen from work where it had been abandoned.

we found this book in a drawer at work. from what we could tell, it didn't belong to anyone who worked there, but that could have been because no one wanted to take ownership of this harlequin romance. so i decided to adopt it and see what these books were like. i don't know why i was disappointed in it, i think i expected too much...

the main problem with this novel in my eyes was the complete and utter implausibility of the plot. i found myself actually getting angry at the idiotic premise. i shouldn't be angry at this, i knew that the plot was going to be contrived, but i was hoping for more. maybe a plot that was semi believable. the whole point was to get these characters to fall for each other. thats great. totally what we want from one of these novels, but i wanted at least some reality.

the boss character, successful and not traditionally handsom tom claims to not have noticed imogen, his frizzy haired betty of a PA before he decided to invite her on the honeymoon he was going to take with his wife before she left him for her best friend. problem a) tom is a workaholic. he didn't like the idea of taking more than 1 week off work, never mind 3

problem b) if you were a young woman, would you go to an island (where you would be totally alone for 3 weeks) with your boss who you barely knew?

problem c) although tom is rolling in the coin, the island was very, very expensive and he probably could have got some money back. some, not all.

problem d) why would he take his PA? he didn't even like her that much

sorry, i feel like this is futile. the story was everything i expected it to be, and i can't help but feel that i'm not being totally fair. it was a harlequin romance. i don't think i'll be going there again.

xo-ellebee

naughty leap

book: sappho's leap

author: erica jong

completion date: 15/10/10

method: borrowed (mum)

now, i was a little shocked by this novel. i was expecting this book to actually be a little bit dry, but was hoping that it might be filled with sappho's poetry. however, i was shocked at how sexual it was. the entire novel was about sappho's sexual conquests. which i was surprised by. i mean i know that almost every greek story is about sex, and lots of times it is inappropriate (oedipus anyone?), but this seemed a little excessive. it was filled with more sex than that harlequin romance i just read (review to follow).

i did enjoy leaning more about her life and reading her poetry, which was beautiful. i don't have a ton of experience with her poetry. however, the great love story within it, i don't know if i believed it, for the same reason i had problems with the disappeared. sappho, although she did not remain loyal, she remained in love with alcaeus for her whole journey and was always thrilled to reunite with him. now i did like that she didn't just go along with everything he wanted. she was not a useless heroine at all. she did what she wanted to do and i respected that, but it was so up and down. i enjoyed this novel, but i didn't love it. it was a but like a trashy beach novel with legs actually. how do i put this, it as a beach novel in disguise as a great greek novel.

xo-ellebee

Wha..... Why?

Book: alias grace
Author: Margaret Atwood
Completion date: 03/10/10
Method: borrowed (debbie)

I don't really understand why this book was written. When I finished it and read Atwood's research at the end and what was true about grace and what might have been fabricated i didn't really get it. Grace as a figure of Canadian history wasn't really a compelling character, especially not enough for a book of this size or length.
Now I understand a little, after hunting humans, our fascination with serial killers and murderers and I even understand the desire to fictionalize and romanticize their lives. We make them into romantic, tragic figures-especially women, when in reality they are just killers. Just like the men. This book seemed to want to be a biopic of sorts, similar to the josephine boneparte books, but grace is not a figure I would ever consider or think about. I had never even heard of her prior to reading this novel, and haven't really thought about her afterwards, either.
Now normally I love Atwood. I have found her writing in the past to be compelling, frightening and very witty at times too. I enjoyed most of her books, but is one just felt lazy to me. Grace was boring as a character, the wasn't enough to her, the doctor who attempted to understand her was likable and interesting, but his storyline is all but abandoned and we never hear from him again.
I feel like one of the main problems with this book is it count decide whether it wanted to be more fiction or more fact. I know that most, if not all of Atwoods books are exhaustingly researched but this one was too much of both. It was too real and at the same time not real enough. The further I get from it the less I liked it.


Xo-ellebee

Finally

Book: the kite runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
completion date: 08/10/10
Method: borrowed (Debbie) recommended (joss)

Now this is the first time I have credited two people in one entry, because when i was first getting going, this book was highly recommended to me by my landlady. I never grabbed it from the library, but when it came in the latest pile of books from Debbie, I felt it deserved two mentions.
Now I read and finished this book on the greyhound to London and the trip took four bloody hours. Now this was irritating and frustrating, but it mention that I got a chance to talk to the man next to me. Now there are very few books that people have felt the desire to talk to me about when I've been reading in public places. Kite runner was one of them evidently, although I feel that this was a bit of a special case. This man told me that not only was he born and raised in Afghanistan, but he ran kites as a child. He told me all about building his own kite, fighting them and the sheer glory to be had if you captured the winners kite. It was so wonderful and fascinating to talk to someone who lived a similar life the the man in the novel. He was born and raised there, immigrated with his family and faced the difficulties of parents who could not adjust to Canadian life.
I see why so many people lend this book and suggest it to people. It is compelling and sad but very beautiful at the same time. It is a completely cyclical story that allows for the possibility of redemption. It's very sad and tragic and takes you on an emotional roller coaster, but there are very few books that can allow for such a complete circle without feeling too cheesy. I did find moments slightly far fetched, but not impossible. I just found that i really enjoyed myself the entire way.





Xo-ellebee

Poker Face

Book: pokerface- the rise and rise of lady gaga
Author: Maureen Callahan
Completion date: 05/10/10
Method: purchased

This is another book I had to read for my popular culture class. There are currently a surprising number of books on lady gaga and her career (which is relatively young). I found this one to be quite compelling in all honesty.
Gaga is an enigma. She is the biggest thing in pop music and also the strangest. We know she can sing (her acoustic versions of pokerface, speechless and paparazzi) and play the piano pretty well, but we don't know what she is really like under everything.
Gaga has always promoted herself as a freak. She never fit in, she was always an oddball. Much of her work is demonstrating how painful it can be to you on the outside and the inside when you try to fit in and just don't or can't. Her costumes are always bizarre and at times painful. So the discussion I always seem to have is this: is she a carefully manipulation creation of the record industry, or is she the next great performance artist who lives her artwork.
In the novel, the author mentions that gaga was told early on in her career that the didn't think she was pretty enough. She was no great beauty and thus wasn't a guarantee. She was directly told this, and then decided to use and exploit her creativity and began creating gaga as we know her.
What I really enjoyed about this book is it didn't feel like a fan piece. The author is unraveling the mystery of gaga, which it turns out is a compelling one.
The only thing I really feel like I learned about gaga is that she is a perfectionist, and knew from the get go that marketing 'stephanie' was not going to cut it. What we needed was a goddess, not a mortal and this is what she has succeeded in creating. All celebrities are larger than life, and gaga is larger than them.


Xo-ellebee

sometimes i wish i could erase my mind

book: hunting humans

author: Elliott Leyton

completion date: 27/09/10

method: purchased

reading this book reminded me of reading helter skelter. I wanted to read that book so badly and i wished for it and asked for it for so long, and finally when i got it and when i read it i wished i hadn't. i really really want to forget a lot of what i read in that book, and its similar for this one. reading very graphic descriptions of what ted bundy or david berkowitz did to their victims.

this book was another book for school, and really works to combine the celebrity and the serial killer. leyton writes about the frenzy people feel around serial killers. especially how some of them exploit this frenzy. getting caught is another part of the rush. they killers get to relive every kill, every rape. it allows them to relive their heyday so to speak.

what i could have done without in this book is the graphic descriptions that leyton wrote. he was very graphic, almost totally overly. i did skip a number of pages... sometimes i got to the point when i just had to put down that book and pick up another, less horrible, novel. however, i kept reading. because just like everyone else (albeit not as intense as that woman that had ted bundy's baby) i have that sick fascination with serial killers. there is no way to know why this happens to people. or what will make a killer. this book was terrifying to me because of this reason. it doesn't have anything to do with having a shitty childhood or an abusive spouse. these things don't help, but many people recover from these abuses, or horrible traumas, so there is no reason why some people could recover and others decide to kill white, pretty college girls and leave them in a ditch.

hey. way to start a day.

xo-ellebee