Almost a month ago, my blogging knitter friend Heather (yarnliberationfront.blogspot.com) tagged me with a "meme." Apparently, this is something that gets passed along from blog to blog. This particular one was "Seven Weird Things About Me."
I gave it a lot of thought, but I didn't want to answer it just like that, because my blog isn't a journal about me and my life; it's about what I'm reading and books in general. So I thought, okay, The Seven Weirdest Books I've Read, and looked through my list of books read over the last ten years. There weren’t even four things I could put under the category of “weird.” Or even just “weird for me.” I was disappointed and felt rather vanilla.
But there was one that stood out. One that I’ve read in the last year or so. A book unlike any other in my list. A book that I will never, ever read again. A book that took me back to the memory of hiding out in the upper bunk of my friend Suzie’s family RV in middle school and reading Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews.
It was The Washingtonienne by Jessica Cutler.
First of all, this book is contemporary fiction, which I don't often read. Secondly, the cover features some young woman's decolatage and doesn’t exactly scream “literature.” Thirdly, the author photo on the book jacket looks more like the result of a photo shoot for an aspiring model than a writer. But I was trying to branch out a bit, step outside of the librarian/schoolteacher/hair-in-a-bun mode. And, hey, I liked the West Wing.
Well. This book is ugly, desperate, shallow, and sad. It is the thinly disguised story of the author’s real-life experiences as a staffer in Washington D.C., where she used men and they used her. It is an absolute tell-all with late-night office sex, cocaine being snorted off body parts, and M&M’s going where M&M’s are not meant to go. Needless to say, it was nothing like The West Wing, but I did read the whole thing. So maybe my history of reading isn’t just a big bowl of pristine vanilla ice cream after all; maybe it’s a big bowl of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with a few, oh, uh, never mind.
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4 comments:
I've read a few books on that order--popular, fairly trashy titles that I read for fluff. Afterwards I usually wanted a sharp implement to remove all memory of them from my brain--hopefully I've learned my lesson by now. D "Vanilla" RD
I don't know that I've ever read anything that someone (possibly even the folks gathered here) wouldn't call "weird". Hey, love what you love, but don't mistake bad for you as bad.
I'll never look at an M&M the same way again--thanks. At least it wasn't gerbils... And I have to say that Flowers in the Attic definitely falls under the category of weird. A lot of the stuff I've read is weird. How weird do we want to go? Weirdest ever=American Psycho. I could have listed it for horror, it does involve gerbils, and also wins for most horrible book I've ever read, and the only book I would ever ban (I'm not a pro-censorship kinda gal).
Sad to say, I read the (complete) Flowers in the Attic series (in my defense, it was in fifth grade, but still). It's really funny you read The Washingtonienne because there is this online forum I look at *cough* (okay, maybe it leans towards celebrity gossip) but the "ladies" who talk on it were talking about starting a book club and I got all excited because Yay! I like the books! And they decided on, Yes, The Washingtonienne. Seriously. *sigh* I'll just continue on with my stinky copy of Joyce Carol Oates, thanks...
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