Gimme Gimme

I never get to have a book stockpile. I read fast and I’m way too cheap to spend much on books that only take a day to read. I get a chunk of my books from the library, but they only belong to me for two weeks, so I read them as fast as possible. And the thing about library books is that for every ten books you check out, maybe one or two are books you really long to read. I’m glad to have quantity, but the new releases are few and far between. So, anyway, Amazon had a sale. Barnes & Noble had sales. I got gift cards. I haz stockpile.

It almost makes me giddy, to have two dozen unread books on the shelf (and the Kindle!). I don’t know what I did to please the Barnes & Noble gods, but they sent me coupons this year for 50% off one book (Yay, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution), then 50% off any teen book (Will Grayson, Will Grayson), then 50% off unlimited teen books (these four, plus three more!).

It seems weird to pimp Amazon links for books that Barnes & Noble was kind enough to discount for me, but Amazon has an associates program that I’m part of. I get a few pennies for each link you guys hit through to Amazon, if you buy something. The best part is that what you buy doesn’t even have to be what I recommended for me to get credit, so I’d love it if you’d all go to Amazon through my site and let me keep the stockpile going. It makes me feel dirty rich!

This is just an aside, but you guys need to check this out – It’s called Old Love and it’s photos of famous people who used to date. I’m in deep love with it right now. There are couples I had completely forgotten about, striking a mortal blow to my reputation as pop culture maven, and some people who dated around a lot (Samantha Mathis, I’m looking at you, trampy.)

Centerfield*

Okay, I’m usually not too sad that I don’t have any kids of my own. I have lovely nieces and a nephew and I get to cuddle babies for an hour each week and that’s usually plenty for me. I get out before the back-talk and clean-your-room yelling has to start. I read a book this week that made me want to snatch up the next surly teen boy I saw on the street and take him home with me to coddle forever.

Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay for Now is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Doug Swieteck moves to a new town with his kind-hearted, but defeated mother, drunken, violent father, one delinquent brother gone off to fight in Vietnam and another busy living up to everyone’s low opinion of his future. Doug weaves himself into the landscape of the town, finding allies and enemies and mostly turning his enemies into allies despite himself.

You want your heart broken? Doug gets an autographed cap from a Yankees player named Joe Pepitone. (And a testament to the power of this book is that I now know who Joe Pepitone is. And I love him. Even if he did pose naked for a magazine called Foxy Lady and (this is my favorite)pretend to be injured all the time when he was playing in Japan, only to then show up dancing every night in discotheques, leading to his name becoming slang in Japan for “goof off.”) Anyway, Doug gets a signed cap from Pepitone and his brother steals it from him and it gets ruined.

But once, it was the only thing I ever owned that hadn’t belonged to some other Swieteck before me.

Doug’s brother is questioned in the break-in of a local store and most of Doug’s burgeoning friends and allies withdraw their kindnesses, assuming that he must be like the rest of his family.

Doug Swieteck,” Mr. Ferris said, “do you know the basic principle of physical science?” A trick? “No,” I said, sort of slow. He rocked Clarence. “The basic principle of physical science is this: two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Do you understand that?” “I think so,” I said. “Do you understand what that principle means? I shook my head. “It means, Doug Swieteck, that in this class, you are not your brother.”

I cried more at this book than I have in a while. I sobbed – ugly sobbed – more than once. Your heart breaks for this boy over and over again, but it’s a very, very funny book, too. Schmidt has a marvelous turn of phrase and sense of hyperbole that he gives almost entirely to writing Doug’s inner monologues. Doug gets a part in a play where he has to scream offstage like a madwoman,

I’m not lying. I got good at this. If you had heard me shrieking, you would have thought someone was being murdered too. It was so eerie, you might have thought that someone who had been murdered was shrieking. You might even have thought that someone who had been murdered had come back and was murdering the murderer, who was shrieking. That’s how good I was.

And then it’s time for the performance and guess who shows up for the play? (Here’s a hint – He’s foxy!)

And you know what I was going to do? I was going to shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years.

In front of Joe Pepitone.

You know what that feels like?

You can’t know what that feels like, because no one has ever had to shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years in front of Joe Pepitone.

Go read this book! Run fast to get it. Run fast like Joe Pepitone running to the Japanese discotheques!

 

*The title fit too well not to use, but if you people knew how much I hate Fogerty & CCR…Shudder

This Year’s Girl

I wish Mindy Kaling was my friend and we could talk on the phone all the time. Mindy is writer, director, and actor (Kelly Kapoor) on The Office and she’s written a terrific book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). It’s as funny and cute and likeable as Mindy seems to be, herself. It’s not pure fluff, there’s a deep seriousness that shows up whenever good comedians talk about the business of being funny, but it is light. I could quote from it all night, and probably will be chasing people down to “listen to this one thing” for a while, but this may have been my favorite -

Another old saying is that revenge is a dish best served cold. But it feels best served piping hot, straight out of the oven of outrage. My opinion? Take care of revenge right away. Push, shove, scratch that person while they’re still within arm’s reach. Don’t let them get away! Who knows when you’ll get this opportunity again?

Certain comics come up in Kaling’s stories, like Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, and Amy Poehler. I like almost everything Tina Fey has done, (including not being totally ashamed that I saw Baby Mama in a theater), but I’ve never gotten any sense of how she is as a day-to-day real person, even after reading Bossypants. I have, for some reason, zero interest in Kristen Wiig. I don’t know why she doesn’t stick with me – I don’t dislike her work or anything. Something just occurred to me that is probably fightin’ words to Kristen Wiig. I think everything she can do, Christina Applegate can do better, so we don’t need her. She’s Christina Applegate light. But Amy Poehler. I don’t know if Kaling’s stories made me like Amy Poehler more than I already did, because she’s pretty high on my girl-crush list, but I would stand in line to read her autobiography. While you’re waiting for that book to come out, though, grab Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me? It’s a good read and, like Mindy says -

This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.