done

This weekend I read what is perhaps one of the most touching, and accurate book about teen years that I have ever read. Or at least teen years so far as I have seen. The book is called 'I Love You, Beth Cooper' by Larry Doyle. The basic story is fairly old, dweeby guy falls in love with drop dead gorgeous cheerleader, and she falls in love with him, but it has an extremely new twist. The boy, Denis Cooverman, tells her that he loves her in front of the entire school at their graduation. The expected humiliation follows and then she ends up at his house that night, hiding from her freaky army boyfriend. A tragic and amusing tale follows, complete with drugs, sex and cheesy graduation songs. Isn't that what all of us want to have our last night of high school be like? Now this book does not sound accurate, at least not for the majority of us, but I don't mean accurate in the plot line. I mean accurate in the feelings it portrays. Like all the nervous bodily functions that happen when you're around someone you like. And I don't mean, oh I'd go out with that person if they liked me like or I would like to see that person naked like. I mean oh my god I like this person so much if I they don't like me back I'm going to die and have my heart eaten out by crazy rabid polar bears. That is how Denis feels about Beth. Even though she turns out to be a crazy psychopath who exhibits ahem wanton behavior. There is that and other feelings such as your first time being with a significant other (whether or not you like them), your first awkward moment after doing something with that significant other, realizing that you or your best friend is gay, and having your insides completely pummeled out of your body. These are just a view of the joyous experiences that I believe we have to look forward too. But I Love You, Beth Cooper puts them forth in such a way as to make you want to laugh at yourself. Okay maybe not right now, but in a couple years or so. This makes it a must read for everyone. 

G'Night Second Quarter

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nine.

In the last section of the book, which is what this is, Rebecca has finally settled down. Found herself a fairly stable man, who loves her very very much. Her son is growing up to be the famous pianist that she wanted him to be. Everything is falling in to place. It's actually a bit of a disappointing ending. She's getting the happily ever after that you always hear about in fairy tales and stories made up by your mother to make you sleep at night. Yes, hypothetically she does deserve it. She lost both her brothers when she was fairly young, her dad killed her mom and than himself and almost killed her, but instead she just watched, than she married young to the first man she slept with who killed her first baby, got her pregnant a second time and than beat the crap out of her and her second child, so she finally runs away scared looking over her shoulder all the time, until she eventually settles down. It doesn't seem fair, but as our parents so often like to point out, life isn't fair. Just another cliche to hate. In a perfect world that is the ending she would get, but it seems like nothing works out like that. It's too....hollywood. A messed up life wouldn't have a perfect ending, just like a perfect life wouldn't have a perfect ending. Also there is no such thing as a perfect life, but that's more of a different topic. I just think that if this book was being true to it's so clearly pessimistic nature, and following the natural events in this no longer young woman's life, then the ending would not be a happily ever after. More like a Grimm fairy tale or real life. Like the difference between a homemade crappy movie for a language arts outside reading book report, and a smooth as butter colorful rendition on the big screen that captures the story perfectly. 

eight

"You live your life forward and remember only backward. Nothing is relived, only just remembered and that incompletely. And life isn't simple like a movie story, there is too much to remember. And all that you you forget, it's gone as if it has never been. Instead of crying you might as well laugh."

Hazel Jones said that. Hazel Jones, formerly known as Rebecca Schwart. Given her background, fairly uneducated and raised by parents who certainly didn't encourage deep thought, it seems crazy that she could say something so wise. Perhaps not in the most eloquent language, no big words or poetry feeling, but it elicits the reaction that I think she was intending. In fact, in the story, the person she is speaking to is astounded. From this feminine, beautiful woman comes a truth so dark and despairing that it seems to come from a different person entirely. And yet we know that this is Rebecca's life experiences coming through Hazel Jones' personality. At this point it seems safe to say that they are two completely different people, not as in split personality disorder, but more emotionally different. She had to reinvent herself to save her life, and her child's life. Hazel Jones never cries, or gets angry. She is teasing, and loving, but emotionally detached from men. ' As people so often exclaim in movies, books, or real life, 'I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.' Hazel Jones would always say laugh. Whereas Rebecca wouldn't really know what to say, she would just stare at you with a sad expression on her face. Hazel has also had to forget and remember to survive. She has to forget all the weakness she learned from being so dependent on first her father and then Tignor, but remember those experiences because they teach her why she must be strong. Like so much in this book, the words that Hazel utters above are purely sad. There doesn't seem to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, just making your own artificial light and hoping that the tunnel will end soon. 

seven

"Why did you marry me then, if you don't love me?"

This is the question Rebecca asks Tignor. They are now married, so she thinks, and they did not get married because she was pregnant. Thinking that would be a natural reaction though when two people who are not in love get married. It's for the child's sake and whatnot, but she wasn't pregnant, she was just in love. Which might be stupider than getting pregnant at a young age. Tignor hauled her out of her safe haven in the hotel and took her around with him until they stopped and got married. He essentially aborted the first child she conceived, after they were 'married', by slapping her around until she miscarried an hour later. When she got pregnant again he conceded, "You can keep this one." Eventually they settle down in a town, she stays with her baby and he continues to travel, coming home once and awhile. When her child, Niles Tignor Junior, is about three Tignor comes home from a long absence. He is older than she remembers but still her heart appears to beat only for him. But being the jealous, creepy, and quick-to-anger man that he is he assumes that she's cheating on him. So he does what any rational man would do and proceeds to kick the shit out of her, beating up her child as well. Now before this he had slapped her around a couple of times, including the abortion of her first child, but she always justified it by convincing herself that she deserved it. This time was different though, he threw Niles Jr. against the wall. Although my feelings on women who stay in abusive relationships are that they should be stronger, one thing you can say is that they have a very primal instinct to protect their young. This was the last straw for Rebecca and she finally left him. Before she did, she asked him the question above and when his reply is a smirk, she knows: They were never married. 

Happy holidays. 

had to take a break 6

So this week I read and finished this book called 'A Cold Heart' by Jonathon Kellerman because A Gravedigger's Daughter was just getting a little too depressing. 

'A Cold Heart' is actually a murder mystery, quick and easy read, that's about a series of serial murders in LA. That isn't what actually got me interested in these books though. They are a series of books centering around the main character Dr. Alex Delaware. I'll admit, I make fun of all those girls who go goopy over Edward from Twilight. I read some of the first book, and I thought it was awful, and his only appeal appeared to be his eyes or something. But Delaware is my own private Edward, but much more interesting than a goofy fictional vampire! Instead he's a doofy fictional psychologist. However, here are the reasons that he is better than Edward: 1. He's single, and if a fictional character is involved in some great love story, its just depressing because then it really never is going to happen and your memory will constantly be tainted by this other woman who's probably going to end up breaking his heart anyway. 2. He's a psychologist, which automatically means he leads a more exciting life. What does Edward do, chew on cow bones all day? 3. He's an older man. Edward might be 300 or whatever but that's just ridiculous. Okay I'm done comparing fictional characters, but I would just like to say I'm ashamed at the way our generation is so willing to fall into traps set by independent corporations that are merely attempting to feed our brains with mindless trash that is gobbled up by the masses everywhere. 2 snaps for communism. 

good girls grow up so fast 5

In this section of 'Gravedigger's Daughter', Rebecca meets her eventual husband, Tignor. We already know my feelings on their relationship, but I still believe that the way they met is worth a mention. Rebecca is working at a hotel in town, and she's a very handsome woman so she's always being hit on by these creeps but she ignores them. One day she goes to clean a room and the man on the bed looks like he's dead so she steps closer to get a look. He jumps up grabs her and it appears as though he's about to rape her when Tignor, even though she doesn't know him yet, here's her cries from the hall and saves her. Saves her by promptly beating the man almost to death. Does this not seem like the slightest bit of foreshadowing? Why would you even marry a man who had a temper like that, despite the fact that the beating was for a good cause, wouldn't you be a little nervous? Well apparently she wasn't. In fact she promptly falls head over heals in love with him, the way she never has before, and doesn't stop thinking about him until she finally sees him again a couple of months later. Pardon me for thinking that a relationship where he stops you from being raped by another man, is at least a little bit under a dark cloud from the beginning. But many relationships are doomed from the beginning, and we enter them anyway, thinking that it will all be worth it. Like Romeo and Juliet, their parents completely hated each other, which means it will never end well, but they just went ahead with their cow eyes. Or Blair and Chuck from Gossip Girl, who are possibly the most self-destructive, I-am-an-island type people you've ever heart of, but you know they're meant to be together even though they can never be together.... Although Rebecca and Tignor might not quite be to that level, I still don't see the point.