Postcards from Nowhere Wednesday
Feb. 15th, 2017 06:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bCrossposted from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
In The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs, squid-cutter Shaquille becomes the drummer for Sprawlburg Springs' most enigmatic and galvanizing underground band. They wear football helmets and tshirts with dumb slogans written on them in Magic Marker, and their house shows inevitably turn into chaotic Dionysian free-for-alls. Renee, the curiously earnest lead singer, insists in referring to as a "pop band," "because, like, our songs have things everyone can relate to. I don't mean pop like in the traditional sense of it, but in the universal, the stuff everybody knows about but doesn't talk about everyday."
I'm normally a little wary of satires of suburbia, but I liked this one a lot. Maybe I can discuss why a little better when I stop having a cold. It very successfully recalled a complex of feelings I used to have a lot, when I was a shabby, grubby, pretentious teenager in a Midwestern suburb. So in a way it was pure self-indulgence, like a lot of the other things I've been reading lately.
I was shocked - shocked! to discover that Can't Help Falling, a sprightly and extremely innocuous romance about two nice young C.S. Lewis fans falling in love in Oxford, turned into a Christian romance halfway through. I know, C. S. Lewis - but there were no signs in the cover design or back-cover copy, and no hint in the first hundred pages - except maybe the innocuousness, and C. S. Lewis, of course. The first half of the book is cute and fun, if a little repetitive, but once God rears his head and the characters decide to grapple seriously with the problem of evil, things get awkward. And for a book that lured me in with its promise of my favorite thing, characters who are fans of something, there was surprisingly little Lewis content. But I read it all anyway and I'm not sorry I did.
What I'm Reading Now
It was supposed to be Catching Fire, but I have no idea where I put it. :(
What I Plan to Read Next
I ordered a couple of wordsofastory's romance recs, and I am DELIGHTED by how embarrassing these covers are. My only regret is that there is no public transport where I live, and that I have no bus on which to flaunt these beauties. The cover of the surprise!Christian romance was sugary but contained zero (0) bare chests, which in retrospect may have been a sign.
Also Catching Fire, if I ever find it.
What I've Finished Reading
Bruised on the outside, and apathetic on the inside, I returned to work from the rock party weekend with The Enchanters, with Renee, thoroughly disinterested in facing the squid again. I was twenty minutes late, caught in sluggish Monday morning Cimarron Boulevard traffic. When I finally made it to Cleveland Steamerz Good Time Bar and Grille World, I snuck in through the back-door employee entrance, the white black-lettered sign reading "THRU THESE DOORS WALK THE WORLD'S GREATEST EMPLOYEES." I was dehydrated and a little dizzy, with a headache like beavers chewing on my optic nerves. My unwashed work clothes - black regulation slacks and teal floral-printed button-down short-sleeved shirt - stunk like rotten seafood. My thoughts were a blur of the last three days as I moved through and around the stainless steel kitchen's line cook pot clangs, the prep cook's machete thwacks on the cutting boards, Hobart the Dishtank's whooshes, the abandoned squid-cutting station in the far corner next to the walk-in cooler, wherein the stoner line cooks and coked-out servers took turns tiptoeing inside with furtive little giggles, then hopped out, coughing and sniffling like a TB ward.
In The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs, squid-cutter Shaquille becomes the drummer for Sprawlburg Springs' most enigmatic and galvanizing underground band. They wear football helmets and tshirts with dumb slogans written on them in Magic Marker, and their house shows inevitably turn into chaotic Dionysian free-for-alls. Renee, the curiously earnest lead singer, insists in referring to as a "pop band," "because, like, our songs have things everyone can relate to. I don't mean pop like in the traditional sense of it, but in the universal, the stuff everybody knows about but doesn't talk about everyday."
I'm normally a little wary of satires of suburbia, but I liked this one a lot. Maybe I can discuss why a little better when I stop having a cold. It very successfully recalled a complex of feelings I used to have a lot, when I was a shabby, grubby, pretentious teenager in a Midwestern suburb. So in a way it was pure self-indulgence, like a lot of the other things I've been reading lately.
I was shocked - shocked! to discover that Can't Help Falling, a sprightly and extremely innocuous romance about two nice young C.S. Lewis fans falling in love in Oxford, turned into a Christian romance halfway through. I know, C. S. Lewis - but there were no signs in the cover design or back-cover copy, and no hint in the first hundred pages - except maybe the innocuousness, and C. S. Lewis, of course. The first half of the book is cute and fun, if a little repetitive, but once God rears his head and the characters decide to grapple seriously with the problem of evil, things get awkward. And for a book that lured me in with its promise of my favorite thing, characters who are fans of something, there was surprisingly little Lewis content. But I read it all anyway and I'm not sorry I did.
What I'm Reading Now
It was supposed to be Catching Fire, but I have no idea where I put it. :(
What I Plan to Read Next
I ordered a couple of wordsofastory's romance recs, and I am DELIGHTED by how embarrassing these covers are. My only regret is that there is no public transport where I live, and that I have no bus on which to flaunt these beauties. The cover of the surprise!Christian romance was sugary but contained zero (0) bare chests, which in retrospect may have been a sign.
Also Catching Fire, if I ever find it.
