Lastly, Laundry

I have a whiteboard FULL of things to do this weekend. And tonight, I don't plan to do any of them. Why, you may ask?

Two reasons- 1. Because procrastination really IS my friend.
2. There are little screamy girls in the house blasting music that is alternately country (which I'd expect, from farm girls) and hip-hop, (pairing Black Eyed Peas and Rascal Flatts is pretty funny)

ohhhh and they've thrown in some Gaga. :D I love me some Gaga.


I will however, recommend a book because...books are kinda my thing.
And I just finished reading a good book for my Adolescent Lit class.

So I present for your consideration:

The Virgin Suicides- Jeffrey Eugenides
He is also the author of Middlesex which I know nothing about except that it's popular enough that I know of it, and it won a Pulitzer, which Google just told me. The Almighty Google also just shared with me via a super cool logo that it is Dizzy Gillespie's birthday. Megan's dad used to call me Dizzy Lizzy. Happy Birthday, from one Diz to another.

Back to The Virgin Suicides.

What makes this novel so good is the perspective from which it's told. It's about the year when the five Lisbon girls commit suicide, which I'm sure you gathered from the title, so I'm not spoiling anything. But it's not told from their perspective. In fact, we know next to nothing about them. It's told by the boys in the neighborhood who are obsessed with these mysterious girls and try to put the pieces together. They never completely succeed. Normally, I don't like a book that leaves gaping holes in the end like this, but I liked this book, because you don't really need to know. That says a lot, because I generally don't like YA- at least, the vast majority of it that sucks and is all the same story- this is different.

It's a refreshingly unique look at that period in our lives, and it's really beautifully written. I never felt like I was reading IN-YOUR-FACE-TEEN-ANGST like I feel reading other things (HP, and Twilight, por ejemplo. Or even something like A Separate Peace. "Finny's so wonderful, and I suck, I wonder if I secretly hate him and want to kill him so I can feel better about myself, or I secretly love him and my repressed homosexuality drives me to kill him because in my post-war society that's frowned on". There you go, you've now read A Separate Peace).

Even the movie version is well done, getting back to Virgin Suicides again. Sorry for the tangents. It's kind of dream-like, in the way the reader is never really sure who the narrator is, and also never really sure who the Lisbon girls are, but it's very real at the same time. I was engaged, and interested.

I'm now going to work on some editing for bit, and then watch Bones and crochet when the little girls go home. And laundry, if you care.