january books: why i have not posted

yeah, it's a bit of laziness, but mostly it's reader's depression. i finished the twilight series in january and i have not been able to devote serious time to reading since. i'm very annoyed by this predicament and i hope to kick-start my enthusiasm with the two christopher moore books my sis got me for christmas. nothing like a well-formed comedy to dislodge depression!

below are a few spoilers, but really, does it matter?

twilight by stephanie meyer

• twilight (dec)
  
• new moon (dec-jan)
  
• eclipse (jan)
  
• breaking dawn (jan)

i snyopsized the first book in the december posting and suffice to say, nothing really evolved in the latter 3 books. first thing first: i understand that this is a juvy-lit book geared to tween girls. now on to the rest:

i was once a tween girl and this would have insulted my intelligence way back yonder. meyer writes like a tween. simple sentences, mostly dialogue, telling not showing. i swear, she had a wheel of euphemisms for lovey-dovey situations and would simply spin it to see which one to refer to when say, discussing edward's bizarre skin or jacob's muscles. it's great that edward's skin glowed like a million diamonds. you dont need to use the same turn of phrase every 5th chapter. it's boring and loses the effect (see demetri's timely example below).

Important Things with Demetri MartinWed 10:30pm / 9:30c

Timing - De Veers Diamonds

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• meyer neglects to give bella, our heroine, enough background information on which to base her decisions. the result is that i have no sympathy for her or her "plights." i have no idea why this mousy girl would possibly decide to up and move to a rainy climate. i have no clue why she's referred to as an "old soul" when she's constantly pouting and carrying on like ... (gasp!) a teenager. the plot is decently executed but the characters fall flat on their 2-d tushies. and ironically, the only character meyer flushes out is the one who's fate ends up being the most unbelievable. jacob's history and feelings are laid out nicely with both dialogue, allegory and plot. his issues are nicely tied up with a pretty bow at the end and i'm left feeling empty about this plot "resolution." everyone else's rosey-warm-pretty-pink-with-ruffles endings are just fine by me - they never had enough clout to pull off anthing more emotional than that anyway.
• anti-feminist. even though bella is supposed to be an independent woman with her own head, ALL of her actions and thoughts are influenced by and dependant upon one, if not two men at all times. dont call her a strong woman if she's really just a flaccid excuse for a human.
  
• i really wanted to throw each book against a wall many, many times. horrible foreshadowing, extremely melodramatic moodiness that went on for chapters (seriously - she was channeling heathcliff) and pretty gross, rediculous plot twists (even for a vampire book) made me want to just plow through the pages at top speed. NOT, mind you, because i was so thoroughly engaged as i had been with the his dark materials series. no, but because it just needed to be over. done. fin.
  

i do have other reasons for disliking this series but i'd probably just be bitching. so... yeah. i do not recommend this series; i'm glad i'm done; i'm angry that i'm depressed about reading as a result of this exercise.

hopefully february's list will be a bit more cheerful! only one more week to go!

peeeek!

"how did you find me!? now i must EAT you!"

can you tell i'm in a sour mood?

turns out if you park on a main street in chicago overnight where they've posted the 2 inch snow rule, they really do ticket. bastards!!

i figure i could have posted that on my facebook status, but i am choosing not to. see, here i can expound a bit more about my frustration. it's not good enough that i have to keep paying for little tidbits on my aging jetta, but i also have to pay to park when there are zero spots in my neighborhood due to lousy snowplowing. and i find it horribly ironic that i had parking issues because they plowed the plow route but did not plow the side streets. sigh. today i heard on the radio that it costs il taxpayers 300 million dollars a year to pay for our government's corruption. and i think the reporter stipulated that this is in cook county alone.

oh, it's also only 16 above zero today.