I
started an account on Goodreads this week and I think I’m maybe a little
obsessed. You can list the books you’ve read, the ones you’re reading, and the
ones you’d like to read. It throws lists of recommendations at you and you just
click them into the appropriate categories, including “not interested.” At the
time I’m writing, I have 1,371 in my read pile and 72 in my want to read pile.
I haven’t even really started to list my books, and I’m a little traumatized
because they don’t seem to have all the Wildfire Y.A. books from the 80’s even
listed, so it won’t ever be complete.
Really, if I could turn half of
this energy towards cleaning my house I might invite people over more often. I
picked up the The Manolo Matrix last week, companion to the The Givenchy Code
(and,
apparently, the The Prada Paradox, but I didn’t know this book existed and had to
stop and add it to my shopping cart in Amazon.). The book is about people
getting sucked into an online Gotcha!* kind of game called Play.Survive.Win.
that moves from the computer into real life. The victims are sent elaborate clues
& riddles to solve in order to save their lives and end the games. In the
Givenchy Code, the clues related to codes and I think I had just read some Dan
Brown book about codes, so I had some idea what in the world the clues were
referencing, but in the Manolo Matrix all the clues were about the theater. I
couldn’t even pretend to follow the reasoning behind the clues. It was like
when I play old-school Trivial Pursuit and answer every sports question with
Wayne Gretzky or Sea Biscuit. This strategy works pretty well, actually, to get
that little pie wedge, but, strangely enough, the answer to every clue in this
book was neither Cats nor Starlight Express**. Maybe in Prada Paradox the clues will be about
Little Debbie's eponymous snack food line.
Julie Kenner also has an outstanding
series of books under the Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom
heading. They’re Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets married and moves to the
suburbs, and they’re super funny and sly. And I see from her Wikipedia page that
she lives in Texas, now, so I’m even happier to recommend her books. I also see
that I haven’t entered the rest of her titles into my Goodread account, so I’ll
be headed down that rabbit-hole for the rest of the night. Heaven forbid I not
get credit for a book I’ve read.
*Gotcha is an awesome 1985 movie with Anthony
Edwards where a campus-wide game of paintball gets real, y’all, when some spies
need some secret information that Linda Fiorentino has planted on him. Mostly
memorable because Czechoslovakian spy Sasha (Linda) is really CIA agent
Cheryl from Pittsburgh and the weariness in her voice when she drops the
(really, really bad) Czechoslovakian accent and says “Fine, it’s Cheryl.” in this
beautifully flat voice, it’s the equivalent of coming home after work and
taking your bra off.
**Starlight Express is about a train that comes to life.
And the actors are on roller skates. And Wikipedia says, “It is the most
popular musical show in Germany.” I don’t know why this wouldn't be the answer to every question about musical theater, do you?
1 comments:
I knew about everything you talked about in this post. I am so damn proud of myself!
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