bittermuch?

I also ordered the Neil Jordan book and the House of Leaves book based on your blog, fykey, and I am thinking about a few others. Unfortunately, between trying to keep my job as a really super nice non-jerky lawyer at a semi-non-evil small office of a big corporate law firm, and trying to spend time with my boyfriend and his daughters, I've sacrificed more of my beloved recreational reading time than I would like!!! (can I mention that every time my eyes get blurry today from staring at my computer screen I get a little freaked out...) Also, I have been reading this one more slowly because I'm scared I'm going to miss something. So far I really like it and can't wait to get back to it.

Started Seven Types of Ambiguity thanks to fykey's book blog and read whenever I could over the weekend but had to put the book down around page 200 or so because I have a hellishly busy two weeks upcoming at work. Am hoping to sneak in more reading time this weekend because it's really good and I keep thinking about it at work anyway, so I might as well be reading, right!?!?! Right!?!?!

I can tell you that the first 100 pages or so of Helter Skelter are scary as hell. I never got around to reading more than that. :ph34r: I think occasionally about going back and reading it. Maybe some time when I feel like I've been getting too much sleep.

The Stranger Beside Me. I think, but I could be wrong, that it was the basis for the Ted Bundy miniseries starring Mark Harmon. When I was like eight years old, I read a book excerpt in the back of a Reader's Digest at my grandma's house about Ted Bundy. Scared me silly, but probably also started my sick fascination with Bundy and other serial killers. It still scares me silly yet I can't stay away. For some reason that book pushed me over the edge, though, and I must stay away from it or I will be convinced that every sound my dog makes in the night is Bundy creeping through my window to get me. Now that I'm thinking about scarring things I read at my grandma's house, that reminds me of Helter Skelter. After less than a hundred pages I had to hide that one behind some other books on a very high shelf in my grandpa's den.

AAAAAAAAAAA you said Ann Rule.I bought the Ted Bundy book of hers about five or six years ago and read about halfway through before I got so freaked out that I had to hide the book behind all the other books in my bookcase and never look at it again. I didn't sleep that night at all. When I was packing to move out of that apartment a year later I found it and got all spooked out again. I've moved again since then and it's still wedged behind the other paperbacks in one of my bookcases lest I catch sight of it some lonely evening....

Oh I tried to read Maneater as well and thought it was so painfully poorly-written that I just couldn't get past the first few pages. It's still on my bookshelf at home. Glad to hear Starter Wife is better. I am reading Stephen King's Danse Macabre, which is just making me want to go on Amazon and buy all the other horror books he discusses.

I didn't hate The Lovely Bones exactly but did think it was very overrated. And to the extent that I hated it, I had weird reasons unrelated to the book's merits.I really liked The Glass Castle too. Interesting to hear that Walls is so kind in real life. She does seem to have a generous spirit, based on my reading of the book, but I have been disappointed before.

KITTEN WARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Note to self: starve boyfriend.

Highly recommend "Heat" by Bill Buford. He is a former fiction editor for The New Yorker who went to work as a sort of intern for Mario Batali in the kitchen at Babbo. The book details that experience, the people he met, the things he learned, and the FOOD....plus it gives a sketchy history of Batali and his career. Buford also goes to Italy - specifically several small towns in Tuscany - to meet and work with people who influenced Batali, and to work for this wild Dante-quoting hard-core traditionalist Tuscan butcher. I'm about fifty pages from the end and could only put it down because I absolutely had to go to the office today and accomplish something.... Warning: it will make you hungry. I ate far too much this weekend and I blame the book. This time.

Wow, but library books can't just sit on my bedstand while I read the sixty million other books I have in line.... That is a good idea though. I should walk over to the downtown branch at lunch next time I don't have some work lunch thing. Part of my problem is that I'm trapped in front of a computer in my office all day and Amazon is just there and it's just so quick and easy to find the book! Then in a couple of days I get a fun package at my front door and it's really exciting. Yes, I'm sad.

yeah, this thread has not exactly helped me curb my Amazon habit...

You know, I started Shteyngart's other book The Russian Debutante's Handbook, but I didn't get very far. I should pick it up again and see if I can read it now. Absurdistan was not a good read, huh?

Oh wow. And I'd always heard that the one thing that separates humans from other animals is that we are not afraid of the vaccuum cleaner. That cat has clearly crossed the line. (note to self: make sure dog is still afraid of vacuum cleaner after recent sleeping-with-head-on-pillow incident).

LOL - at first I thought that was Sienna Miller. Yep: she officially now looks like "generic skinny blonde #47"

The funny thing is that based on her quotes in the US Magazine with all the "drastic diet" celebs, she thinks she's the fittest she's ever been. She said something to the effect of all her hard work paying off, and she's going to have a great summer as a result.

Not hard to act the pants off of Paris - she usually isn't wearing any.

Blondie, we ARE reading the same books! How funny.I loved The Year of Magical Thinking, too, and found it quite moving either in spite of or because of Didion's spare, cool style. I needed something light and easy after far too much heavy reading at work, so I just started a legal thriller called The Lincoln Lawyer. So far yummy fast-moving trashiness with more substance than most legal thrillers...

I am a huge doggie lover and I CANNOT read Marley & Me. I don't care how happy and cute the overall story is, the inevitable ending always kills me. My bad little doggie is living FOREVER, I tell you! FOREVER!

For some reason, even though Johnny Depp violates my #1 celebrity crush rule (he looks like he smells bad, dammit!), I still drool over him in Pirates. Where he looks like he smells EXTRA bad. Why? Why oh why? Crazy Disney voodoo, I tell you.

I guess I kind of expected Wicked to be political, since The Wizard of Oz was..... I enjoyed it but read it ages ago. Also bought another by him - I think it's called Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - but I've never gotten around to reading it for some reason.

Did anyone see the latest hand-wringing by US Magazine about "dangerously thin actresses"? Total anorexia porn, people! It even had a list of helpful hints on how these Hollywood types get and stay so skinny, including the aforementioned Clenbuterol, and in some cases even gave web addresses for purchasing these products. We all knew this agony over people being too thin was really all about ENCOURAGING people to be too thin, but I can't believe US would be so transparent about it.

For heaven's sake she practically looks like Jessalee Simpson. They must all share the same surgeon.

I also thought it was a pretty shitty thing to do, until I actually read the article itself. I still think it was unwise and that she probably should not have done it without Chad's permission. But it did not come off as bitchy or evil in the slightest. The article made it seem like the interviewer spoke with Swank once when she was on the high end of a post-split mood swing, and then caught her a second time when she was in a deep low, which was when the interviewer asked her about the Lowe substance abuse thing (something about which the interviewer seemed already to be fully aware). It seemed like the marriage just didn't have what it took to recover from the damage Lowe's earlier substance abuse wrought. And it seemed like Swank was not in a good place mentally at the time of the second interview, and that she might have been coerced or taken advantage of by the interviewer and/or Vanity Fair. I don't know, it's a strike against her but I can't hate her for it. But I didn't hate her before, either. I'm not a raving fan, but I do think she's striking and a tremendous talent. Not only was she great in Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby, she brings intelligence and skill even to less-noticed roles like the one in Insomnia, where she more than held her own with Pacino.

Didn't Scarlett say something about not being the marrying kind / not wanting to be too serious with a guy? She's the hottest thing going right now; don't see why she'd waste herself on Wilmer of all people. I think she's just feeling and enjoying her power. And I say more power to her.