Book Review: Recent Reads #26 & #28

I started this entry about two weeks ago and sadly wrote

Oh my god! I'm all caught up!

With a super-fantastic
all-Meg-Cabot-all-the-time entry.

Yeah, not even close anymore. Dammit.

Anyways. Yeah, Meg Cabot books are my ultimate guilty pleasure books at the moment. Seeing as they're mostly aimed at young teenaged girls, and I am most certainly not one. But they're fluffy, and quick, and ridiculously entertaining. And Meg Cabot has the uncanny ability to create heroines with addictively sincere and authentic voices. They all sound like teenaged girls I know/knew/am/were/only was inside my head. And it's awesome.

Anyway, I somehow got addicted to Meg Cabot last summer when Laura ran across her blog and I thought it was pretty funny and decided to give one of her books a try. Unfortunately, I started with Queen of Babble, which I didn't hate per se, but the heroine was far too stupid to live and I really couldn't stand her. I'm pretty sure I then picked up the Heather Wells books. At which point I commenced laughing my ass off. And then, Amy and I were trapped in Vancouver with a bunch of misogynistic assholes and I picked up The Princess Diaries and there was just no turning back. The Princess Diaries are fucking awesome.

(TANGENT ALERT!! If you haven't read any of the books but did see
the movie, keep an open mind. Yeah, the movie was kinda cute, but it got a
lot of things wrong. Like Anne Hathaway being a twenty-yr-old beauty queen
where Mia is an awkward, gangly, 15-yr-old with seriously short blond
hair. And Julie Andrews being poised and regal where Grandmere is a
raging, manipulative, scheming, crazy-ass bitch (who is nonetheless
awesome). And instead of Mia's hilariously stoic Swedish boygaurd Lars
(whose also a big old teddy bear where Mia's concerned), we get Hector Elizando
as a chauffeur named Joe who annoyingly dispenses wisdom from the front
seat. The books are infinitely more interestign and engaging. OMG!
END OF TANGENT!)

Which leads me to... Princess Mia (Princess Diaries #9)!

This is the penultimate book in the series and it continues right along where #8 left off. Which means Mia is depressed, eating meat, and refusing to get out of bed while desperately shooting apologetic emails to Tokyo hoping she can take back the fact that she freaked out and broke up with her boyfriend just before he got on the plane. Yup, Mia's finally hit teenaged-girl rock bottom. Misery, depression, and apathy. Woo. Somehow, in the midst of teen depression, the book is still a riot. Comedy highlights include getting kidnapped by her father and boyguard and literally dragged kicking and screaming (while still wearing her grummy Hello Kitty pajamas) to a bizzare "cowboy therapist," going bra shopping with Lana Weinberger, the school blowing up, and incredulously having ranting about having gained almost an entire "Fat Louie" while at the doctor's office.

I loved it. It was sweet and endearing and Mia feels happy and hopefull going into book 10. But there's still lots of stuff to get cleaned/cleared up in the next one. The last one ever! Woo.

Pick up "The Princess Diaries" because they're awesome. And I mean it.

Book Review: Recent Reads #25, #27, & #29

Quick Note: I was so close to being caught up! I was three books behind! Almost there! Then I knocked my computer off my bed, fucked up my wireless card, had to get the techs at work to fix it, procrastinated as usual, unexpectedly read a giant pile of fast-going YA literature and ended up way behind. As usual. Dammit. Also, the ordering is all messed up at this point because I skipped #17 and #18 which were comics (and thus require me to download programs to read digital comics and rip images before I can post that review... as you have to see Tabby to believe her... not to mention Aaron's mighty robot head). Plus, the Meg Cabot needs to go together so chronology be damned! Anyways, enough with the ramblings... on with the reviews!



Title: Remember Me?
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Genre: Chick Lit

Quick Review: Easy breezy chick lit novel. The heroine is your standard, ordinary, chick lit heroine until she blacks out, wakes up in a hospital bed, and finds out that she's lost all memory of the past three years of her life. And now she's glamorous, has perfect hair, teeth, and botoxed lips, is married to an extremely handsome and wealthy man, and is the boss at her workplace. She may also be a big ole bitch. One who alienated all of her friends, is a tyrant at work, and was cheating on her "perfect" spouse with his hot architect. So, yeah, harmless fluffy beach read with a heroine who is a little annoying (as are all chick lit leads) but fortunately not in the "too stupid to live" category.

Final Note: I love how she used to go to "cute architect guy's" house to eat toast (sadly, that's totally not a euphemism... although "planting sunflowers" creepily is).



Title: Looking For Alaska
Author: John Green
Genre: Young Adult

Quick Review: I picked this one up because Meg Cabot's always saying how awesome John Green is and how he's not a pornographer (seriously, since when does one quick blow-job scene make a book pornographic). So, yeah, it's totally a "young man searches for his identity at an elite boarding school" book. Which makes me think of A Separate Peace or Dead Poet's Society or Prep (though that last one revolved around a self-centered unlikable girl rather than a self-centered unlikeable boy) which is unfortunate because those all have mighty portions of angst. (Oh god, A Separate Peace. I swear, that's one of the worst books I had to read in High School. Oh man, now I'm thinking about The Awakening and Woman Warrior and The English Patient and My Antonia... will this evil mental spiral ever end!? )

Except Looking For Alaska is a very modern, sad and melancholy yet hauntingly beautiful, and really incredibly well written little book. And the angst is at a minimum. And I totally cried in the middle. And I really can't say more without giving away plot.

Final Note(s): My favorite scenes totally involved Cap at the basketball games, harassing the opposing team till he got kicked out ("I am concussed."). Also, I want to read An Abundance of Katherines just because of how awesome that cover is. And that title is cool too.



Title: Book Of A Thousand Days
Author: Shannon Hale
Genre: Young Adult/Children's Lit

Quick Review: I keep reading Shannon Hale books because I liked her Newberry-winning first novel, The Princess Academy. Unfortunately, she keeps writing the same book over and over again and I keep getting bored. I'm officially done. These books have teenage heroines who are seriously great role models for 12-yr-old girls. But I'm not twelve anymore and the writing's just not good enough to hook me in as an adult. Again, another good book for kids, but not a good book for Tabatha.

Movie Review: Iron Man

Oh my god. Iron Man was frickin awesome.

I really shouldn't have liked it. I mean, it's a comic book movie and I pretty much always find them lame, Iron Man was never my favorite superhero, Tony Stark's a total asshole in every comic I've seen him in, and it features a guy in a suit with a mask that covers his face (HATE! SO MUCH!).

Luckily, I love Robert Downey Jr, Stark's an asshole in a good way, the whole film is pretty funny (without being slapstick), the love interest/assistant is awesome (despite the fact that Abi hates Gwenyth Paltrow), and the CGI action sequences are kept to a bare minimum (and the ones they have are awesome).


Favorite Bits:

- Robert Downey Jr frequently running around in a muscle-baring tank top.
- The robots in Stark's house. "You douse me again when I'm not actually on fire and I'm gonna donate you to the local college."
- Tony Stark's sheer awesome brilliance. "Tony Stark made one in a cave... from junk!" "Well, I'm not Tony Stark!"
- Pepper running from the big-bad-guy robot monstrosity and not looking back for a second.
- "Just call us S.H.I.E.L.D"


Also, I totally call my puppy "Pepper, Pepper, Pepper Pot" but I also call her "Pepper, Pepper, Pepper Pants." It's an alliteration thing.

Book Review: Recent Reads #24

Title: Lost In A Good Book (Thursday Next #2)
Author: Jasper Fforde

So much fun. I'm totally addicted to Thursday Next now. And who ever thought Miss Havisham would be a kick-ass book-police mentor? But she totally is.

There's really no way to explain the plots of these books without ruining surprises and workings. So, I'm just going to leave you with a few quotes.

"I took a deep breath and waded into the swirling maelstrom of popular-prose-induced violence. Almost instantly, I was punched in the jaw and thumped in the kidneys."

"She smiled triumphantly as she head-butted a woman who had tried to poke her in the eye with a silver-plated bookmark. I took a step forward to join the fray, the stopped, considered my condition for a moment and decided that perhaps pregnant women shouldn't get involved in bookshop brawls."

"Undeterred, they thumbed through a yellowed statute book and eventually charged me with a little-known 1621 law about permissioning a horse and carte to be driven by personn of low moral turpithtude, but with the "horse and carte" bit crossed out and "car" written in instead- so you can see how desperate they were."

My absolute favorite part of the whole novel involve one character telling another that "For what you've done to me, I hope you rot in Hell." That shit's serious. Seriously awesome.