The “I” in “iPod”

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I love my iPod. I’ve had it for a little over a year, and it’s been a year of sweet bliss. Gone are the days of Discmans (Discmen?) that were awkward to hold, always needed new batteries, and were only good for one 80-minute CD. Now I hold 3,856 songs in the palm of my hand. I’ve got my ’80s playlist, my country playlist, my random rock playlist, my love songs playlist, my work playlist from when I was a lifeguard and had to make mix CDs that were both fun and appropriate to play at a family establishment. And I’ve got plenty of random shit like the Swedish Chef’s song, Lorelai’s painting song from Gilmore Girls that she sang when she was trying to convince Luke to paint the diner (“Grab your brush and grab your rollers, all you kids and all you…bowlers, we’re going painting today!”), and a voicemail my sister left me on my college phone when she was talking in a weird voice and telling me she was Regina Filangi (Phoebe’s standard fake name on Friends).

But as convenient and wonderful as my iPod is, and as great as it is for making time at the gym fly by, sometimes I wonder if the “I” doesn’t stand for “isolated.” There’s a Seinfeld episode where Elaine pretends to be deaf so that she doesn’t have to talk to a cab driver, but if that episode had been filmed ten years later, she could have just used an iPod as an excuse to be antisocial. Sometimes I think that people use this little white box so they can stay in their own little worlds and not talk to anyone. At BC, people were constantly walking around campus listening to their iPods, and so do half the people on the T.

Occasionally, I am one of those T-riders, but most of the time I opt to keep the iPod off, seeing as the noise of the train screeching around the tracks is so loud that it forces me to turn the volume up to a level that will leave me with hearing aids by the time I’m forty. The other day, though, I was listening to my music on the T. It was raining, and I was listening to the songs that will go on my yet-to-be-made “Rainy Day” playlist: Dar Williams’ “The Beauty of the Rain,” Billie Myers’ “Kiss the Rain,” James Blunt’s “Tears and Rain,” Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “November Rain,” etc. Standing right by me were two college-aged girls who were talking to each other. Because I was listening to my music, I only heard snippets of conversation. They were talking about grad programs in theology. I figured they were classmates, dorm mates, casual friends. But then, one of them got ready to get off the T, and she extended her hand to the other girl.

“I’m Allison,” she said.

“I’m Lauren,” said the other girl.

“Nice to meet you,” said Allison before she got off the train.

And I stood there, amazed. I hadn’t heard the whole thing, but from what I could tell, the two of them had had a very long, interesting conversation that had fooled me into thinking they knew each other when in fact they had just met. They were talking about the pros and cons of divinity school and how it was different if you weren’t going to get ordained and about the experience Lauren’s boyfriend had had with it. I wished I’d been able to hear all of it.

It reminded me of one time this summer, when I was waiting for the Blue Line at the Revere Beach stop. It was raining that day, too, actually, and while I didn’t have my iPod with me that day, I was reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Out of nowhere, this woman came up and started talking to me about how cold she was. “I’ve got a bottle of Captain’s in my purse,” she said. “If I had a chaser, I’d drink it. It’d warm me right up.”

I looked up. She was a bit overweight, and her front teeth were decaying. Her hair was dyed kind of brownish-reddish with a clip holding it in a ponytail. She told me later she was forty-eight, but I would have guessed she was about ten years older.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, noticing that I was reading. “I don’t want to interrupt your reading.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, closing my book.

And I talked to her until the T came to her stop. She never told me her name, but I learned all kinds of other things about her. The night before, she’d been drinking at her friend’s house and had woken up with a hangover that had made her late for her job at the jewelry store. She liked Anne Rice novels, and was currently reading The Witching Hour. She didn’t like horror films, she said, especially the ones with Freddie Kruger because her ex-husband’s name was Freddie. Since the divorce, she’d had a couple of live-in relationships, but no kids. She’d been with her current boyfriend for 11 years, but he’d recently gotten his own apartment because he said he needed his space. “I don’t care, as long as he’s not fucking around,” she said. But despite her man troubles, she considered herself a romantic at heart. Along with Anne Rice, her bookshelf was full of Harlequin romances, particularly historical ones.

She was such an interesting woman, but if I’d been listening to my iPod, I would have missed out on getting to know her.

I don’t know if Allison and Lauren will ever see each other again, but I bet they’re glad they decided to listen to each other instead of their music that day.

An Apple a Day…

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So last week at work I ate an apple core.

We have this intern who eats them all the time, and she was challenging the rest of us to eat one. So this other guy did, and then I did. Seeds and all. It’s really not that bad if you just start from the bottom and work your way around. You don’t even think about it.

Of course, after I’d already eaten the whole thing, she informed me that apple seeds have arsenic in them.

Further research by one of my fellow editorial assistants showed that only the organic form of arsenic is in apple seeds. And according to the intern, in an email she sent all of us later, “Excluding the peel and core of apples from the diet almost halves the amounts of Vitamin C and dietary fibre available in the whole fruit, but makes very little difference to the sugar content.” She also found this poem by Liberty Hyde Bailey:

“How to Eat an Apple”

Hold it, note its size and shape.
See the blush on its shoulder, inhale its fragrance.
Hold it to your cheek, bite it.
Feel its break and cool crisp flesh.
Know the flow of its sprightly juice
and the aroma that lies in its core.
Only then will you have eaten an apple.

So all these years I’ve been throwing out apple cores for nothing. Who’d’ve thunk?

No Gray Area

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Too often, people make things that should be black-and-white into a gray area. There’s absolutely no excuse, for instance, for cheating on a significant other— but of course people continue to justify and excuse the behavior of their darling cheaters so that they can stay in relationships with people who don’t respect them enough to remain monogamous. And there’s never a single instance where rape is not a heinous, vicious crime, but some people still continue to insist that its victims “ask for it.”

And then, of course, domestic violence. It’s such a simple concept. People in relationships do not hit each other. Period.

At least, that’s the way it should be. But people stay with abusers all the time. People at all levels of society stay with violent partners—everyone from teenage mothers on welfare to wives of professional baseball players.

So while it’s not exactly news that people stay with abusive partners, this particular case of it is. While the Phillies were in town this past summer, pitcher Brett Myers was seen beating his wife Kim on the streets of Boston. But this past week, the charges were dropped. Kim didn’t want him to be prosecuted.

I have yet to decide what the most disturbing part of this is:

1. That she’s going back to a man who has no qualms about hitting her on the street in front of people, so God knows what he does to her behind closed doors

2. That the statements of the people who witnessed the incident, and who were only trying to help, can be completely disregarded because Kim told the courts, “”There’s no violence in our family. That night in Boston we had both been drinking. I was not harmed that night. I was not injured.”

3. That the Phillies actually let him pitch the day after he was arrested

4. That Brett’s comment after his arrest was, “I’m sorry it had to go public. That’s it. Of course, it’s embarrassing.” (Because, you know, it’s perfectly fine when it’s in private and you’re not surrounded by pesky reporters trying to humiliate you.)

5. That Brett and Kim Myers have two young children who are going to have to continue to grow up in a home where their dad hits their mom

I know that it’s easy to say from the outside looking in that domestic violence is unforgivable and that violent partners should get no second chances. But the truth is, people often see only what they want to see in their significant others. We overlook incompatibilities that could destroy our relationships. We tell ourselves that just because he says he doesn’t want a girlfriend doesn’t mean we can’t be the exception. We rationalize that we must have done something that led to him sleeping with that other woman—it can’t be entirely his fault.

I realize that none of these things are equivalent with spousal abuse, but think of it this way: if we keep raising our tolerance level within relationships, how long is it before we’re claiming we walked into a door again? If we can justify someone battering our feelings, how is tolerating physical abuse any different?

I’m not too familiar with the Phillies, so I don’t know how popular a player Myers was before this incident, but I sincerely hope that his fans no longer support him. I love the Red Sox (and I love the fact that Gabe Kapler and his wife, who was a victim of dating violence in a previous relationship, work to raise awareness of the dangers of domestic abuse), but I know that if I found out that one of the Sox was beating his wife, I’d hate him. I wouldn’t care if he could break the home run record or win the Cy Young Award. As a fan, I deserve better. Fans deserve players they can admire for playing well and for conducting themselves professionally on and off the field.

But I can’t get out of my head the image I saw on the news of Kim Myers leaving the courtroom. She was wearing a white pinstriped suit and looking straight ahead, her posture stiff as a board. I think she was aiming to look strong and dignified, but all I could think of was how tiny she looked next to her husband, a former amateur boxer who, according to his bio, is six-foot-four and 234 pounds.

And it’s scary to think that Kim Myers is just one of millions of women who stay with abusers. What do they think they deserve?

Post-College Nightlife

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After college, all the rules about going out change. Suddenly, half the bars you used to frequent in college are off-limits. If you went to BC, as I did, that means au revoir to Cleveland Circle, which includes Mary Ann’s, Cityside, and Roggie’s (unless you’re at Roggie’s for late night pizza, since it’s the only place in Cleveland Circle open at two in the morning). It also means no more trips to The Kells for BC nights on Wednesdays. You have to find the bars that are more “twenty-something” and less “college student.”

This was the challenge that my friends Lindsey and Erin and I faced when we decided to go out last Friday night. We reviewed our options. Where could we go that wasn’t too college and, at 10:30, wouldn’t take so long to get to from Brighton that we’d be stuck paying a fortune for a cab when it was time to leave? (Since the T stops running at 12:30, if you don’t live right in the city, you’re kind of screwed when it comes to going to bars downtown.) We eventually settled on SoHo in Brighton Center, which a lot of college students don’t know about because it’s not on the T. You have to take a cab to get there, but in our case, the ride wasn’t very far.

The rules about the guys you check out change, too. Your first question when you talk to someone isn’t “Where did you go to school?” but “Where do you live?” or “What do you do?” And it’s not so creepy to be hit on by a guy in his late 20s or early 30s anymore. We might even welcome it. But skeezy guys exist at all stages of life, as we’ve found out.

We miss the college bars, though. Once this summer, Lindsey and I went to Cityside. In about fifteen minutes, we saw our friend Ashley, an Irish guy Erin was dating at the time(whom she actually met at Cityside), and this creepy guy named Paul, who didn’t go to BC but once tried to convince Lindsey that he did and who, after getting Lindsey’s number, left her a voicemail message in which he screamed at her to “pick up [her] fucking phone!” At the time, Linds and I had just come from SoHo, and we had with us a twenty-seven-year-old guy I’d been dancing with there. He’d never been to Cityside, and he commented that it seemed like the kind of place where everyone knew each other.

And he was kind of right. What bars near colleges lack in quality, they make up for in comfortable familiarity. Mary Ann’s, for instance, is disgusting. The floors are always sticky with beer and there’s barely room in the bathroom to sit down to pee, but you know everyone there, and suddenly, they’re all your friends. The random kid in your English class whom you’ve never talked to is suddenly telling you stories about his roommates. The girl who lived on your floor freshman year whom you’ve lost touch with is hugging you and telling you that you look great.

Cheers did take place in Boston, and I think that this city, which is full of college students, really wants what the song says: a place where everybody knows your name. Now that we’ve graduated, we’ll never have that again.

But some of us still try for it. Friday night at SoHo, when Erin and I left our table to get a second round, Erin leaned in close to me. “Don’t tell Lindsey this I told you this,” she began, causing my ears to perk up, “but we…” She swallowed hard. “We went to The Kells,” she whispered, then covered her eyes in shame. “On Wednesday!”

Experience Freedom: Read a Banned Book (In Celebration of Banned Books Week)

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My dream is that one day, I’ll write a book and it will be banned.

I’m serious. I can’t think of a better way to honor my writing. It’ll put me in good company. The Harry Potter books, The Giver, Bridge to Terabithia, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Wrinkle in Time have also been banned.

What else do these books have in common? They’ve been banned for all sorts of reasons—swearing, violence, sex, contradiction to religious beliefs (because, you know, flying on a broom and wearing an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter is possible and everything).

But the other thing they have in common is that they all get kids to think.

When I was a sheltered suburban kid, books were how I learned about the world. Number the Stars and Freedom Crossing taught me about the parts of history we wish had never happened. I’d never thought seriously about modern-day racism until I read books about it, like Iggie’s House and certain Baby-Sitters Club books. If I had a problem, like having a fight with my friends or being teased by the popular kids, I’d seek out a book with a protagonist going through the same thing. I even learned about menstruation after reading the word in a book and asking my mom what it meant.

The fact is, books, unlike TV and movies and videogames, can never be called mindless entertainment. The fact that they do get kids to think is undeniable. The books I’ve mentioned that have been banned get them to think about concepts like good and evil and the importance of choice. About serious issues like death and violence and racism. Sometimes just about the possibility of a world other than the one they live in. And because they can’t physically see the story they’re reading unfold, using their imaginations isn’t an option.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying that parents don’t have the right to tell their kids they can’t read something they don’t feel is appropriate. I’m also not saying they should. What I am saying is that parents shouldn’t take away another kid’s right to read a good book just because they don’t want their kids reading something with swears (because all kids learn bad words from books) or homosexuality (because their own kids will never meet a gay person in real life) or sex (because there isn’t any other way a kid would possibly be exposed to sexual content) or anything else that they could, you know, just talk to their kids about.

And why won’t they talk to their kids about uncomfortable things? Because they want their kids to go on thinking the world is perfect? Because they don’t want their kids to know that there are people with different viewpoints?

Sadly, there are many people like this in the world. Just check out this web site. On one part of this site, people review movies and TV shows from a Christian perspective, and basically, if it’s not VeggieTales or The Passion of the Christ, someone is offended by it, whether it’s because there’s some vague implication of “magic” (which always means the devil) or because a brother and sister are fighting (which, you know, siblings never do in real life).

I should mention that my first sentence isn’t just idle talk. I actually did write a young adult novel for my senior thesis in college, which I’m currently editing so I can send it to an agent. It’s a book that deals with some serious issues and has some swearing in it. And honestly, while I’d love for it to be challenged, I wouldn’t love for it to be banned, because that would mean that overzealous parents had successfully kept my book out of the hands of kids other than their own.

So I think what I really wish is that a kid whose parents don’t want her to read my book will read it anyway—and think about what I have to say.

If TV Is Bad For You, Why Is There One In Every Hospital Room?

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Two reasons to be happy:

1. We got student cable and Internet because my roommates are grad students. So at a really low rate, we have high-speed Internet and more channels than I know what to do with. I’ve never had the premium channels before. Now we have everything! I bet it won’t last, though. It’s probably free On-Demand for a month or something. But I’m enjoying it while we have it. Last week I was watching Bridezillas, and good Lord, that’s an unbelievable show. I can’t believe anyone would ever go on it. Who wants the whole world to know that she made her bridesmaids diet or had a restraining order put out against her after she flipped out at the florist who didn’t show up?

2. The new TV season starts this week!

I should explain something: I love TV. Love it. I wouldn’t call myself a couch potato– I don’t watch that much TV– but the shows I do watch I become obsessed with. I was a big X-Files fan, for instance, and I’m so good at Friends trivia it’s embarrasing. Now I can’t miss an episode of Gilmore Girls, even though it wasn’t as good last season. This year, there are a couple of new shows I want to check out. Here’s what I think I’ll be watching this year:

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: That starts tonight. I love Matthew Perry, so I’m glad to see him back on TV. And while I never really watched The West Wing (it was one of those shows I could appreciate for what it was but for some reason never really got into), I do like Aaron Sorkin’s writing.

Gilmore Girls: I hated the long-lost daughter plotline last season, but this is still one of my all-time favorite shows, and Luke and Lorelai are possibly my all-time favorite TV couple. I hope they bring back Marty this year.

Law & Order: SVU: I have to watch this show with my sister. We have all these inside jokes with it. The thing is, you kind of have to make fun of this show (and Ice-T, who cracks me up no matter what he’s saying) or else you actually start thinking about it, and then you say, “Why the hell am I watching this? This is the most depressing show on TV!” I’ll miss Mariska Hargitay, who’s on maternity leave at the beginning of this season, but I love this show for the characters, the plotlines that are twistier than a pretzel, and the potential it has for drinking games (every time Olivia says, “Son of a bitch,” every time Elliot mentions his kids, every “ching ching”).

Six Degrees: This one intrigues me. The six-degrees-of-separation theory is an interesting concept for a show– sounds very J.J. Abrams. I’ll have to check it out.

Desperate Housewives: Now, I do agree that last season wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but it wasn’t that bad. I still enjoyed watching the show, and I can’t wait for next season. Mike better not be dead!

Possibly CSI: I like this show a lot, in no small part due to the characters. But although I missed the season finale, I heard that Grissom and Sara got together or something. I’m completely against that, so I may not watch in protest.

Possibly The O.C.: I’m the only person in the world who started watching this show last year, when it was way past its prime (I know this because I got caught up with the DVDs). But I’m very curious to see what will happen now that the show’s most irritating character, Marissa, is dead. It could either get better (because duh, Marissa’s dead) or worse (because now everyone will be depressed). I don’t know why they had to kill her, though. They could have just had her go off to college somewhere.

I’ll tell you one thing that pisses me off: when people think that abstaining from TV makes them better than you. I think that’s ridiculous. Sure, there are terrible shows like Laguna Beach and One Tree Hill, but there are also movies like From Justin to Kelly and Gigli. But of course, no one thinks they’re superior for not watching movies. Because movies, apparently, are for the cultured among us and TV is for the uncultured. Such crap. TV shows that are done well are just as artful as good movies.

And even bad shows can be entertaining. I mean, take Bridezillas. Stupid, but an entertaining, guilty pleasure. And even American Idol, which I occasionally watch. The cheese factor of that show- especially the final episode- is part of its appeal.

One web site I regularly read and post on is Television Without Pity. The other people who read and post on this site are people who care about TV, and who like to analyze what’s good and bad about the shows they watch. But they are also some of the most intelligent people I have ever talked to, in real life or in the virtual world. They’re not just passionate about TV- they can have in-depth conversations about books, politics, religion, sports, movies, music, education, pop culture, parenting issues, you name it. From talking to them, I’ve learned about things like PhD programs, TV production, living with a disability, Orthodox Judaism, planning a wedding, being a stepparent, and music I’d never listened to before but now love.

It’s kind of ironic that the stereotype of the TV fan is the listless couch potato, because in my experience, the opposite is true. People who get really involved in TV shows tend to be passionate not just about TV, but about whatever they love. Being enthusiastic about a TV show is no different than being enthusiastic about a sports team. No one thinks it’s too weird when someone is obsessed with, say, the Red Sox. But I think most people would be surprised to learn that people who are obsessed enough with a show to discuss it in forums or write fanfic about it have many other interests and passions.

Really, I feel bad for anti-TV snobs. In their determination to look like connoiseurs of high culture, they’ve missed out on many an entertaining hour.

Katie Recommends: Why Moms Are Weird

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This is going to be a semi-regular feature. I’ll blog about a book, movie, TV show, or musical artist that I like and discuss what else I’ve been reading/watching/listening to lately. These things aren’t necessarily my favorites, just things I like that you might not be familiar with.

Pamela Ribon, aka Pamie who used to recap Gilmore Girls at Television Without Pity (one of my favorite web sites), wrote her first book, Why Girls Are Weird, a few years ago. It was an enjoyable book that I’d definitely recommend to anyone who likes her web site, as the book is essentially its fictionalized version. Recently, her second book, Why Moms Are Weird, came out. I read it expecting to get a nice romantic comedy with more emphasis on familial relationships than her previous book.

What did I get instead? Holy shit. The biggest cliche you can use when reviewing something is “I laughed, I cried,” but for this book, nothing is truer. Pamie has made me laugh numerous times, and this book is no exception- the first chapter of the book is funnier than almost anything you’ll see on TV nowadays- but she also writes things like this:

“You can fight it, you can rationalize it, and you can pretend to ignore it, but you can’t stop love. You can’t help whom you bond with, and the need we have for each other. All you can do is try to handle it with respect, and ultimately do the right thing.”

It’s worth saying twice. Holy shit, Pamie. You made me cry. You hit on a truth that I’ve felt but could never put into words.

So now that I’ve described her style– laugh-out-loud funny one minute, amazingly and originally true and insightful the next– I should describe the plot. Despite the title, it’s not about the characters in Why Girls Are Weird. It’s about a young woman named Benny (for Belinda) who flies from LA to Virginia after her widowed mother and wild-child younger sister are in a car accident. Her mother has begun dating again, which, to say the least, is awkward for Benny, and her sister has a penchant for dating criminals. Meanwhile, Benny is torn between a guy in LA whom she was just getting to know and a guy she meets in Virginia.

A million other authors would write a terrible book with this premise, but Pamie pulls it off beautifully. She has a knack for writing realistic dialogue and throwing in pop culture references without making them seem forced. But more importantly, she creates very believable and likeable characters who seem like they could be your own relatives. Benny definitely isn’t perfect, but Pamie creates her with flaws without ever sacrificing her likeability.

Yeah, it’s kind of a girly book, so it’s not for everyone, but if you like fiction that hits close to home, you’ll probably like this one.

Other books I’ve been reading lately:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: Just as weird as it is wonderful and amazing. This book has everything– it’s original, beautifully written, and hopeful. Oskar Schell is a precocious nine-year-old whose father died in the World Trade Center on September 11th. Oskar sets off on a quest to find the lock that goes with a key his father left behind. Once you get past the fact that Oskar doesn’t sound anything like a nine-year-old, you have to marvel at Foer’s skill. He creates this distinct voice for Oskar that’s unlike anything I’v ever read, and some paragraphs I just have to keep re-reading so I can appreciate their beauty all over again. He also manages to find humor even in devastating situations. But what I really love is how Foer isn’t trying to be cool by being cynical or sarcastic or self-deprecating. He’s not afraid to try to write something genuinely moving, and he definitely succeeds.

Smashed by Koren Zailckas

As I think I’ve mentioned, I’m not a big drinker. But that doesn’t mean that alcohol wasn’t everywhere in college, and that I didn’t get stuck drunk-sitting my friends. In this memoir, Koren Zailckas, who is now 26, details her descent into alcohol abuse starting at age 14 and continuing through high school and college. Her writing is vivid, clear, and easy to relate to, and you’ll definitely recognize the scenarios she describes—the awkward freshman year of college, the depressed and drunk friend. Her point is that young girls often drink because of low self-esteem, and I couldn’t agree more.

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst

Carolyn Parkhurst’s first book, The Dogs of Babel, was a well-written novel with a kind of bizarre subject: a widower who tries to teach his dog to talk to find out whether his wife died accidentally or by suicide. This one is about a topic so obvious that I can’t believe I’ve never read anything similar: a group of people on a (fictional) reality show. It’s told from the points of view of seven different characters: everyone from an “ex-gay” couple to a former child star to a mother and daughter trying to repair their relationship. She really gets into these characters’ heads, and the plot, like any good reality show, is engaging and keeps you guessing. The only disappointment was the ending—I kind of wanted more. But it’s fun and extremely well-written, and I definitely recommend it.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is a great writer, and not only because his books are funny and insightful with well-written plots. He has an amazing talent for taking subjects that sound really sappy and turning them into funny, remarkably unsentimental novels. Here, he writes about four people who go onto a rooftop in London to kill themselves on New Year’s Eve: a disgraced former talk show host, a mother of a severely handicapped son, a depressed teenage girl, and an American musician. After talking, they decide not to kill themselves and to check in on each other on Valentine’s Day. With a description like that, wouldn’t you think it would be really sappy? But it’s not. It’s funny and sarcastic and self-aware. There are lines like, “First, I’ll have you know that I scored very highly on Dr. Aaron T. Beck’s Suicide Intent Scale. I’ll bet you didn’t even know there was such a scale, did you? Well, there is, and I reckon I got something like twenty-one out of thirty points.” The book is told from all four main characters’ points of view, and they each have their own distinct voice. It doesn’t trivialize suicide, but rather points out the absurdity of it. What it’s really saying is that when you think you’re alone, you aren’t really, and that the world doesn’t revolve around your problems—it just keeps going. But of course, it says so in a much less sappy way.

Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner

First, a disclaimer: I do not think there’s anything inherently wrong with “chick lit.” A girl I knew in college actually wrote an entire thesis on why chick lit is worthless, but I disagree. The only problem with chick lit is when books are a little too ditzy or when they all start to sound the same, or when people start to dismiss all books written by women as “chick lit.” But to me the term just implies a story that’s easy to relate to, entertaining, and cute. And when it comes to chick lit, Jennifer Weiner is the cream of the crop. She’s a smart, funny, confident writer who creates believable and likeable characters. This book is a little different—it’s a murder mystery. A bored mother of young children in a rich suburb sets out to solve the murder of a fellow mother. The mysyery keeps you guessing right up until the end, and there are plenty of laugh-out-loud details about life in the ’burbs. (Like the Starbucks in the center of town that couldn’t put up a sign because it ruined the town’s “feel,” or the woman who raises her children without diapers to get in tune with their “natural rhythms.”)

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

Eh. Honestly, I didn’t really like this one. I loved her first book, The Secret Life of Bees, but in this one I couldn’t stand the main character. She’s a married woman who has an affair with a monk. Why should I care about her? I have no idea. The writing is pretty, but in the reading of this book, I discovered that when it comes to fictional characters, I have more sympathy for murderers than for people who cheat on their significant others. I think that says it all.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

I finally read this, and it was…interesting. And not in a bad way. It’s an unusual subject, and I learned a lot about geishas, a topic about which I had previously known nothing. The author obviously did a ton of research, and the characters are realistic and compelling. But plot-wise…I kind of wanted more in the end, and the romance at the heart of the story rang very false to me.

Hypocrite In a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman

This was awesome. When I think “memoir” I automatically think “depressing,” seeing as so many memoirs get made into Lifetime movies. But this one is hilarious. Susan Jane Gilman’s life isn’t terribly extraordinary (well, aside from having hippie parents who took her to a socialist retreat at age 4), but she writes essays about things like her first job and being picked on at school in the most hilarious and compelling way. One of the most important elements of humor is unexpectedness, and this book definitely has that. When describing her impending marriage, she says, “Both my overwhelming love for him and the desire for joint health insurance won out.” When describing a point on which she and a friend disagreed as teenagers, she says, “In standard Teenage Girl Culture, this should’ve been considered a massive betrayal, a pivotal moment that ended our friendship. The fact that it wasn’t was a testimony to how close we were.” The book follows her from her earliest memories to adulthood, so we learn about the lies she told to her kindergarten class, her massive crush on Mick Jagger as a teenager, and her thankless stint working for a congresswoman as an adult. The overwhelming impression you get of her is that she’s someone you’d love to be friends with.

Once Upon a Day by Lisa Tucker

Lisa Tucker has quickly become one of my favorite authors. Her first book, The Song Reader, was wonderful, and her second, Shout Down the Moon, was almost as good. Here, she’s taken her writing to the next level. It starts with a twenty-three-year-old woman who has been raised in a “sanctuary” away from society meeting a young man who has lost his entire family. The woman is searching for her older brother, who has run away from the world in which their father raised them. I hesitate to tell much more than that, because the plot is almost like a Gothic novel—secrets just keep unfolding. It’s a rarity: a literary novel with a page-turning plot, and it raises a resonant theme: the dangers you face in life shouldn’t prevent you from living your life. I highly recommend it.

The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld

I didn’t like this as much as Prep, but it was still enjoyable. I think Sittenfeld’s greatest strength is observation. She has this real knack for nailing truths about everyday situations. This one is about a woman named Hannah and her insecurities with relationships, and one reason why I liked it is because I’ve never read another book about someone who wasn’t kissed until college. In a lot of places I saw myself in Hannah. She truly seems like a real person, and while the ending isn’t terribly satisfying, it feels like the natural course of events.

We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg

I’ve never read an Elizabeth Berg book that I didn’t like. In this one, she writes from the point of view of a young adult, which she’s exceptionally good at. The only other books where she’s done so are her books about Katie (Durable Goods, Joy School, and True to Form), and those are some of her best. So is this one. It’s loosely based on a true story about a woman who gave birth in an iron lung as she was being paralyzed by polio. The story, which takes place in 1964, is told from the point of view of the woman’s now-fourteen-year-old daughter. It deals with the struggles they, as well as their black maid, face. The mother-daughter relationship feels very genuine, and I enjoyed this book all the way through.

Belated September 11th Entry

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I was a senior in high school. It was C Block, the free period I had to work on the yearbook. I was working on the yearbook supplement for the previous class’s yearbook, the little book that covered all the events that were too late in the year to make it in the yearbook. I was picking out pictures for the page about the school musical, Man of La Mancha. My friend Sherry had her hand on the phone, about to call our yearbook advisor to ask her a question. Then the principal came over the loudspeaker. I figured he was probably going to say that someone left his or her headlights on or something. Of course, that’s not what he said.

Everyone has a memory like this. You don’t forget the moment you learned that the world would never be the same, that the security you used to feel was gone. I’m just lucky that my memories of this day don’t include the deaths of relatives or friends. Of the thousands of people dead, none were people I knew personally, although some were relatives of people I knew. I’d say I’m grateful that I didn’t lose anyone, but it’s hard to be grateful when so many others did.

On September 11th this year I donated blood at Fenway Park. There’s always a need for blood donations, but it still makes me shudder to think about the sheer number of people in need of blood five years ago.

The phrase “the war on terrorism” has always made me uneasy, because it’s not a war against a country or a group, but against a way of thinking. And when as many people as it took to pull off the September 11th attacks are zealous enough to commit crimes of this magnitude, eliminating the idea that killing thousands of innocent people is for the greater good could be impossible.

I don’t have any answers. All I can do is pray for a safer world.

The 856th Sign That I’m Not A Kid Anymore

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For awhile I’d been saying that I hadn’t quite gotten to the point where my friends were getting engaged.

Well, scratch that. My friend Alyson, my roommate for a year in college, is engaged to the guy she’s been with since our freshman year at BC.

I’m really happy for her– I had a feeling she’d be the first one of my friends to get engaged– but yeesh. I feel so old. I have a full-time job and an apartment, AND my friends are getting married.

Also, I just have to clarify something: at the moment, I do not have Internet in my apartment. We’re getting cable and Internet on Tuesday. Right now I’m at my parents’ house in C-Town. Once I have Internet access at home, I’ll be making more frequent updates.