Worst. Weddings. EVER.

You might think that a singleton like myself would remain cynical about weddings, after having attended more than a fair share of them. That, unfortunately, is not the case - and not because the reception gives me too many opportunities to indulge in cake and champagne while secretly bemoaning the absences of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. The local weddings I've attended in Honolulu have always been such happy, family-oriented affairs, and if there were any humorless Bridezilla moments - other than the ones that may have been instigated by certain bridesmaids (*ahem* yours truly *ahem*) - I should count myself glad to not have been subjected to them.

And if I should encounter such horrific nuptial conditions at some point or another - either on my own wedding, or with others' - it should come as a great comfort for me that none of those will ever compare to the ones I've encountered in my own reading history.

(Note: I've decided not to include Honeymoon with My Brother in this list, since that one's more of a foregone conclusion. And, c'mon, Franz Wisner got a holiday in Costa Rica and an Oprah guest appearance out of it.)

Should've Spent More Money on the Caterer: Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

It's the wedding that started it all: Because Mama Elena was way too hung up on the "tradition" thing, Tita loses her true love, Pedro, to her older sister Rosaura - and not only that, but she also suffers the indignity of having to cook for their wedding reception, which also included an extravagant Chabela Wedding Cake, scaled big enough to serve hundreds of guests. Ultimately overwhelmed by emotion, Tita cries into the cake batter... and the icing... and though her tears do not change the flavors per se, the guests who end up eating the cake at the reception are overcome with such intense longing and bitterness that pretty much escalates into weeping, wailing, wide-scale vomiting... and even death. (Makes you wonder what could've happened if one of the guests had been litigious enough to sue for damages, right?) Luckily for the rest of us, Esquivel makes up for the disgusting spectacle with other tasty treats - including the triumphant wedding* which marks the penultimate chapter of the book. (Hee, I wrote penultimate.)

Blood on the Sheets: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A flamboyant man and his clueless bride commemorate their wedding with an extravagant celebration, and everyone who is everyone in their small town - that is, the entire population - takes part in the revelry. Hours after the last drink has been raised, however, the bride is taken back to her family by the furious groom, claiming that the girl was not a virgin on her own wedding night. What happens afterwards - up to and including the moment when the girl is forced to give up the name of her supposed "lover" - leads to a cycle of vengeance, and a murder so horrific that I felt like I was aiding and abetting the crime myself.

I guess this is the part where I tell you that Gabriel Garcia Marquez must be an artist and a genius for making me feel this way as a reader, blah blah blah, but: no, sorry. That death scene - described repeatedly in both foreshadowing and flashback form -was so grotesque that I couldn't even look at a ham sandwich for days.

Get A Room: On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

By now you've probably heard that Ian McEwan came perilously close to winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award from the UK Literary Review for his not-safe-for-work descriptions of a honeymoon between two virginal idealists. (Sample passage can be read here.) Really, it's not like anyone reads McEwan for passion and sensuality - again, Atonement notwithstanding - and it's pretty obvious that the author nearly dodged a bullet here just for being a perennial critic's darling. Still and all, it's not like I was holding out any hope for the poor couple in the first place; I knew that their marriage - and the book - was immediately doomed from the time I got to McEwan describing our couple's honeymoon dinner as "long-ago roasted beef" with "soft boiled vegetables" and "potatoes of a bluish hue." Oh, yummy. (See also: Like Water for Chocolate, above.)

Premature Miscalculation: Swimming with Scapulars, by Matthew Lickona

On Chesil Beach may have had the bad food and appetite-killing sex scenes, but it's a mere trifle compared to the real-life wedding night woes of Matthew Lickona. Without giving much of the book away - and this is just but one chapter of many in this book of "confessions" - let's just boil it down to the particulars: Let's just say that you're a devout Catholic, and you've waited longer than forever to finally say your vows before man and God. You know - or you think you know - that you don't want kids, but you can't use birth control outside of Natural Family Planning. So what happens, then, when your wedding night approaches... and you find out that your lovely bride... is in the middle of her ovulation cycle?

Thankfully for the rest of us, Lickona spares us the gory details (he is, after all, a Catholic writer and a married man), but he does handle what could've been scandalous subject matter with a healthy dose of humor - and not a hint of Joshua Harris-esque sermonizing. Not only do he and his wife stay together and consummate the marriage, but they also go on to become parents themselves. Five times over, as a matter of fact. (Thank God for tequila.)

Try To Set the Night on Fire: El Filibusterismo, by Jose Rizal

If only those annoyingly extravagant "high society" weddings in Manila could be interrupted so easily. Here's what happens to the doomed wedding in El Fili (aka Subversion or The Reign of Greed) from the Wikipedia plot summary:

Simoun then tells Basilio his plan at the wedding of of Paulita Gomez and Juanito, Basilio’s hunch-backed classmate. His plan was to conceal an explosive inside a lamp that Simoun will give to the newlyweds as a gift during the wedding reception. The reception will take place at the former home of Captain Tiago, which was now filled with explosives planted by Simoun. According to Simoun, the lamp will stay lighted for only 20 minutes before it flickers; if someone attempts to turn the wick, it will explode and kill everyone inside the house. Basilio has a change of heart and attempts to warn the people inside, including Isagani, his friend and the former boyfriend of Paulita. Simoun leaves the reception early as planned and leaves a note behind..

[edited to remove GIGANTIC SPOILER for those of you who have not read the book at all]

As people begin to panic, the lamp flickers. Father Irene tries to turn the wick up when Isagani, due to his undying love for Paulita, bursts in the room and throws the lamp into the river. He escapes by diving into the river...

...And yet, Paulita Gomez remains married to the hunchback. Gee, "thanks."

*EDITED 05/01/2008: For those of you who have read Like Water for Chocolate, the "triumphant wedding" that I referred to in this section is actually not between Tita and Pedro. To say anything more would be to give away the massive spoiler of the ending (and I should know, having watched this movie so many times in college that even my frat-boy housemates have started saying "te amo" to each other)... so until then, my apologies.

NBLB Weekend Survey #5: Book Fiend Confessions

You can run. You can hide. But that tell-tale bulge in your book tote speaks volumes. You gave in. Your library card's scanned heat burns through your wallet. Your Mastercard digits are fresh in your mind after a hasty purchase on Amazon.com. Books are falling out of your shelves. Your nightstand looks like the display case at Borders.

We know what you did.

We did it too - and we're telling all on this weekend's NBLB Survey #5...the Book Fiend Confessions edition.

The Happy Scribe: Undead Histories

1) What books did you buy recently? I seem to be on a history and politics binge lately: Daniel J. Boorstin's The Seekers and The Discoverers; along with Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

2) What's on your Amazon wish list? I want a Kindle. Badly. It's probably another gadget I won't use after its novelty wears off in six months...but I covet it every time I check my account. Though the price tag will keep my reading to paper-based books for a good long while. I can't deal with iPods, but I'm a-tremble over the Kindle. Whadyya know.

3) Complete this sentence: "If I had an unlimited book budget, I would acquire _____" ...A leather bound set of the classics, just like my mom had in her library while I was growing up. There's just something about gilt-edged paper and the smell of leather while reading Cervantes, Thucydides and Shakespeare.

4) Name one hard-to-find book you would love to see on your shelf. I have been hunting for a copy of Eleanor Hoffman's Mischief in Fez for YEARS. I can't just settle for the text version. The original illustrations were so beautiful. Love of that delicate fennec drawing could quite possibly be the root of my infatuation with fluffy, sharp-eared animals.

5) Name one book on your shelf right now, that you would NEVER SELL. My copy of The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. My mother bought me this thick volume edited by renowned historian Kenneth O. Morgan at Oxford, after we saw the famous dining hall. There is absolutely no way I would part with this book. Some of the twentieth century discussions are already out of date (this edition ends with Thatcher) and I've spilled coffee on some pages (notably, the Tudor years, which were my chosen area of study in college), but no other compilation explores Britain's two thousand year old story with such aplomb.

6) What is the most expensive book (or book-related purchase) you have made? Cherry wood folding shelves for my living room. I realize my current book collection has already spilt onto various windowsills, but I will not settle for ugly shelves. Hubby has the more expensive books, since arts and photography anthologies do cost quite a pretty penny. I'm a cheap book date in comparison - most of my current collection are from my childhood/college stash, or refugees from library sales.

7) If you could design your dream library, what would it look like? Cozy - full of pillowy couches and arched reading lamps in worked nickel, all four walls reaching ceiling-high in books. Huge windows for daylight reading, with a fat, purring cat in the corner. Oh...and all the time in the world to read every single volume.

8) Complete this sentence: "When I walk into a bookstore, I save my wallet from impending doom if I bypass the ___________ shelf/section." The bargain history book pile, especially those big discounts on DK books with all the great pictures. If it's under $15, I'm stuck to it like mud on a farm horse.

9) List ALL the books you currently have on loan from your local library. Deep breath: Eight Laurell K. Hamilton books (Anita, you saucy minx), Mary Janice Davidson's Sleeping with the Fishes, Shobhaa De's "sari-ripper" Bollywood Nights, Duncan Sprott's ancient family saga The Ptolemies, Meg Cabot's Queen of Babble in the Big City, Hester Browne's The Little Lady Agency and the Prince, and several art compediums. I read them simultaneously, so I could dabble in a little Hamilton paired with MJD (because I need her humor to wash down all those leather pant descriptions), or some Cabot spiced with Bollywood adventures. All those Anita Blake books lately? My librarian thinks I'm doing research on vampires. I don't correct her.

10) "I love my local library because...." It's my sanctuary away from my distractions. And my librarians are pretty cool, despite all that vampire literature they've had to stack for me in the holds' shelf.

Meimei: Wine and Coelho on Loan

1) What books did you buy recently? My parents are reading this blog, so you won't find out here about the trashy bodice-rippers I just purchased on the sly. Apart from that... I just picked up Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die, which I will get around to reading soon.

2) What's on your Amazon wish list? Since it's freshly updated: My Life with The Saints, by James Martin (highly recommended by my sister); some yoga DVDs; a couple of books by GK Chesterton and Scott Hahn; Harry Wong's The First Days of School (more on this later) and Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears. Also, LOVE (the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil collaboration), Cranium, and Living Language's In-Flight French in CD form.

*Cue Meimei's sister reading this and thinking: Girl, you have GOT to start editing that list already.*

3) Complete this sentence: "If I had an unlimited book budget, I would acquire...." Great Tastes Made Simple, by Andrea Immer (now Andrea Immer Robinson). This is the book that got me really interested in wine. Immer has an engaging way of writing about wine that doesn't make you feel stupid if you can't tell your Barbera apart from your Barolo. It's a pity this book is way too heavy and pricey for me to keep!

(Note from NBLB: Andrea Robinson also wrote Everyday Dining with Wine. Prepare to part with more of your money, Mei.)

4) Name one hard-to-find book you would love to see on your shelf. In a just world, I would have owned a decent Filipino cookbook - a well-written one with amazing pictures, sturdy paper stock, and great recipes that won't leave my Mom screaming bloody murder for suggesting such insane substitutes should I decide to make the dish outside of the Philippines. It's a pity that Jessica Zafra can't cook and Clinton Palanca is way too high on his own self-importance to write down a decent recipe!

5) Name one book on your shelf right now, that you would NEVER SELL. The Soul of Education, by Rachael Kessler. This was the book that really got me revved up about teaching; it's up there with Parker J. Palmer's The Courage to Teach and Harry Wong's The First Days of School (which I also haven't purchased) as the Holy Triumvirate of Books No Teacher Should Leave Behind, Ever.

6) What is the most expensive book (or book-related purchase) you have made I remember paying upwards of $25 for Kevyn Aucoin's Making Faces when I first bought it here in Honolulu. Worth every flipping penny.

7) Close your eyes: if you could design your dream library, what would it look like? (Erm...you can open your eyes to type the answer...) I'm the kind of person who never leaves her books in the same place, ever... but if I must, I definitely can imagine a Victorian-style personal library, with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Not a lot of hardcovers (unless you count some of my ED textbooks, which I refuse to part with), but you'd best know that the ones I reach for the most would be the ones that are within eye level. No "airplane books" or double-shelving, just my fiction, nonfiction, and cookbooks mingling together. Also, hidden compartments for my respective stashes of booze, herbal teas, and fine dark chocolate.

8) Complete this sentence: "When I walk into a bookstore, I save my wallet from impending doom if I bypass the ___________ shelf/section." I don't have to worry about the romance and fiction sections any more than I have to worry about the cookbooks and DIY crafts! The bargain bins at B&N and Bestsellers are lethal, though: quickie gifts, gag books, gorgeous journals, anthologies of the trashiest bodice-rippers and canned-soup recipes ever written... not to mention $2 Sudoku compilations not edited by Will Shortz. Ay naku!

9) List ALL the books you currently have on loan from your local library.

From the Hawaii State Library System:
- Isabel Allende - Zorro (yes, it sounds cheesy, but I'm curious about how Allende managed to class up the joint here)
- P.G. Wodehouse - Carry On, Jeeves and The Code of the Woosters (a little British humor, for a change of pace)
- Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find (I much prefer her dry Catholic wit to the balmy Southern Gothics of Faulkner)
- Ian McEwan - Saturday (I hear that this one is much better than On Chesil Beach, but I'm not touching this until after all that Wodehouse and Allende)

Also on loan from Chaminade's Sullivan Library: Coelho's The Alchemist and Allende's Of Love and Shadows, which I still need to return on Monday.

10) "I love my local library because...."

- They ENCOURAGE you to sit down and read, just about anywhere you can grab a book. It's a refreshing contrast to Barnes & Noble, where you get sales clerks every five minutes looking down their nose to tell you to stop lingering so much in the aisles and/or buy a Frappuccino if you intend to finish your book and still keep your seat in the cafe.
- In the same vein: Librarians won't give you that empty stare when you ask them for a book that you can't find anywhere, or give you a condescending sneer if they catch you with a particularly dirty title in your hands.
- Most of the public libraries that I frequent in Honolulu (Hawaii State, McCully-Moiliili, Manoa and Aina Haina) are air-conditioned in a way that's comfortable and doesn't require an extra layer of clothing.
- If there's a kids' event, you get free pizza coupons if a staffer mistakes you for a teenager. (Yes, it has happened to me!)

Bodice Ripping Cliches, Part 3: A Swift Kick In the Crown Jewels

I'll be the first to admit that the romance novels of Bertrice Small were the source of much unintentional comedy between myself and The Happy Scribe in our younger years. For all the talk about Mme. Small's devotion to historical accuracy and painstaking research, even I will have to admit that our tolerance for romance-novel cliches were diminished by our repeated reading of her oeuvre.

Let's run down the cliche list, shall we? Coercion? Check. Stockholm Syndrome? Check. Horny Scottish Lairds? Check. Repetitious sequences involving kinky sex in harems? Check. Too many underage milksop brides trying to be feisty, yet throwing their corsets to the wind as soon as the Horny Intrepid Hero(es) entice them to bed? Check, check, check.

But the most tiring Bertrice Small cliche of them all, in my opinion, is the one involving the Excessively Horny Real-Life Royal. I swear, after reading so many Bertrice Small novels, you'd think that all these European royals were never taught how to keep it in their pants; not the impetuous young princes, and certainly not the lecherously Dirty Old Kings who ought to know better.

Say what you want here, but apparently Bertrice Small may have taken Henry Kissinger's words about power being "the ultimate aphrodisiac" a little too far here.

Don't even get me started on the repetitive nature of each plot line: Royal seduces our heroine in the most lascivious way; Royal shows Heroine a "good time" in bed; history intervenes (regardless of whether or not our Heroine actually becomes enceinte from their one night of "passion"), and Our Lovely Heroine parts with the Royal on relatively civil terms so that she can be reunited with Our Intrepid Hero. Ho. Freaking. Hum.

With all due respect, I'm the kind of romance reader who would rather enjoy a book where the leads engage in Hot, Sweaty, Exclusive Monogamy. No partner-switching, no plot-driven adultery, not even a single attempted rape. Which is why I find it ironic that I've actually found a Bertrice Small novel that actually defies the cliches I've written above, even with a Horny Royal romping about the premises.

Do not be fooled by the cheese-tastic (and horribly inaccurate) cover: Love, Remember Me is actually Not That Bad. Intended as a sequel-of-sorts to the also semi-cheesy Blaze Wyndham, this novel follows Nyssa Wyndham - the daughter of the titular Blaze - into the court of her mother's ex-lover Henry VIII as a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, rendered here as a pragmatic, good-humored German princess who sees her sham marriage to Henry for what it is and agrees to part with him on civil terms. Here Small's historical research pays off nicely - the court of the Tudor King, and its surrounding characters, have never been rendered with so much rich detail.

Yes, it starts out very, very badly: Amid speculation that the virginal - and brunette - Nyssa may be in line to be Henry's next mistress (which... considering that her mother used to do the nasty with the King himself: awkward!), certain forces conspire to have Nyssa wake up in bed naked next to the "notorious rake" Lord Varian de Winter, in order to take her out of contention and replace her with Catherine Howard. That the devilishly handsome Lord Varian would also turn out to be an illegitimate relation of Cat Howard also factors prominently in the story, since the rest of the story is centered around the rise and fall of a woman who married for power and ended up in the history books as the "beheaded" between Anne of Cleves ("divorced") and Katherine Parr ("survived").

But enough about poor Cat Howard, who would never have lost her head had she actually kept her own legs crossed. I know some readers have complained about Love, Remember Me having too much history and not enough hot lovin', but I thought that the side action (ahem) between Nyssa and Varian dovetailed nicely with the rest of the history-book aspects of the novel. Nyssa starts out as a feisty but proper 18 year old, who is rightfully freaked out to find herself being gossiped about in relation to both Varian (approximate age in book: 32) and the grossly obese fortysomething King Henry (who, as other characters would point out later in the book, may as well have been her own father... again: ewwwww). Once Nyssa enters the marital chamber, however, Varian handles her "first time" with a surprising amount of finesse and sensitivity... and that's just the first of many heartbreakingly intimate revelations between man and wife. Suffice it to say that Teh Sex between Lord and Lady De Winter may be hot, but it's not as devastating as the quieter conversations they have between all the rumpy-pumpy. It's a testament to Small's restraint that not only do Varian and Nyssa remain faithful to each other throughout the story, but that the only other attempt at Nyssa's post-marital virtue is swiftly thwarted by Nyssa with a few well-placed knee jabs delivered to her attackers.

Despite the age difference between them - not to mention the inordinate amounts of sex - Varian does treat Nyssa with more than a fair measure of equality; as he mentions in the story, he was already preparing to settle down when he met her, and he would have been lucky to choose her as a wife anyway. Nyssa also grows to love Varian - and bears his children (yes, folks, she has twins) - but she also learns to find her own strength, and her growth from lady-in-waiting to fiercely protective matriarch becomes a striking parallel to Cat Howard's infidelity, which Nyssa observes with appropriate puzzlement. By the time Cat ends up facing the chopping block, loyalties are tested and lessons are learned... and our beloved Lord and Lady De Winter emerge from the scandal more ferociously devoted to each other.

Yes, it sounds so cheesy and trite on paper - especially after I've left out some pretty spoilery bits out of that summary above - but the great majority of elements in this book do fit together nicely. You'll be surprised to find how a love story like this could actually turn out to be even more touching amidst all the skullduggery - and even more so to find that such a tastefully developed story could come out of the mind of Bertrice Small, who might as well have bartered every single character in this book into white slavery. At the very least, it should save you some trouble for your next European History midterm.

Salacious B(uffy): The Anita Blake Series

The librarian hands me a pack of hardbacks, eyebrows raised at the titles printed from the computer: Cerulean Dreams, The Lunatic Cafe, Micah...Anita Blake, much? How did I end up becoming a Laurell K. Hamilton junkie?

I blame the following details:

* Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
* Anne Rice
* Living next to a glamorous cemetery (I like jogging around old tombstones. The dead don't laugh at my thighs.)
* Waiting too long for my next MJD fix
* A hard-boiled newsie friend who admitted in a gush of red wine and late night neurosis how much she adored Narcissus in Chains. (This was eight years ago. I picked up my first Hamilton last weekend.)

I'm reading them as soon as I can get my hands on the goth-decorated covers. This is insane. I also gobbled (in twenty minutes) the graphic novel version of her first book, Guilty Pleasures. Since I can't avoid reading spoilers, I already know Anita has gotten it on with every type of Undead, from Jean Claude the Master Vampire and Richard the Werewolf, to Micah the Wereleopard (hrm...spotty...). I wouldn't be surprised if she finds an attractive zombie some day - though at this point, she does draw the line on decomposing lovers. Hamilton's imagination is as fertile as it gets - I totally understand how she hits the New York Times best-seller list every time she publishes. She writes about a world where vampires have recently acquired U.S. citizenship, throwing a monkey wrench into the usual stake-em-and-leave-em vampire slaying stories. Her heroine Anita is an animator (no, not da kine that works for Pixar - when I first read the description of her job, I was like "Eh? How does she go from drawing cartoons to killing badly-dressed vamps?" Dense = me.), able to raise the dead in order to settle court cases and police investigations. She's also a necromancer, which means she can CONTROL the dead, a power growing stronger with each novel (and each paranormal boinking, apparently).

While I'm hooked, and will keep reading until I've exhausted the tri-county supply of Hamilton books, I cannot help laughing at some outrageous details. Like how Hamilton has made the kinky menage a trois into a power-sharing "triumvirate" of inter-species power. So if Anita's dating a wereleopard and a vampire, they can draw power from each other telepathically, increasing their natural powers through metaphysical bonding...and well...physical contact. Wokey. There's also quite a lot of different "were" animals - it's becoming an undead zoo around here! In the beginning, I was thrilled by the idea of wererats, wereleopards, etc. Now, I'm a little scared...because Anita has a tendency to get "involved" with the latest species (no were-snakes, Anita!!!). I haven't read Narcissus yet, where sex becomes an important act to keep the main characters alive (oh dear!). And I can't decide if I do prefer the characters clothed...because some of the S&M themed outfits are just too much to bear in my (shallow watered) Vogue-loving head. I mean really - do all male vampires shop at Leather Pants R Us? It makes Angel's all-black ensembles seem rather nice in comparison (and they were, weren't they?).

Argh.

But I keep reading. So far, my favorite is The Laughing Corpse, a voodoo-themed novel about killer zombies and the unscrupulous humans who control them. Very gross. Lots of supernatural fighting. In other words - less naked tussling and more clothed whupass. Hamilton is a great writer because she's able to (Count Dracula laugh...PUN) suck you into her improbable world, where a tough heroine with a penchant for guns and stuffed penguins reigns supreme over all other beings. If you can suspend disbelief at Anita's sexual prowess and shield your eyes from the odd fashion choices, this series is worth a few guilty reads in the near-dark.

NBLB Weekend Survey #4 (FINALLY!): Literary Smackables Galore

Finally, after letting Real Life get in the way of blogging during this weekend, the readers of No Book Left Behind have managed to sit down and unleash their anger issues on ten literary characters of their choice. We've both had so much fun trashing our least favorite characters throughout the week that unleashing the can of Literary Whup-Arse on more of our non-favorites would be apt.

Special thanks to the American Library Association for their "Read" posters, and to Tim Gunn for holding the fort and "making it work."



The Happy Scribe: Whiny vampires and milksop heroines need not apply.

10) Fanny Price. Can. Not. Deal. The only Austen heroine who I feel needs a backbone transplant.

9) Bridget Jones. Liked the movies better than the books. Heroine is v. v. annoying. Smoking and kvetching gets old, especially in second book.

8) Louis. Yes, his immortal whining launched Anne Rice's career. But oh my god...someone stake him already if he's so unhappy with his sucky immortality.

7) Edmund Pevensie. I really hoped all that Turkish Delight would make him explode.

6) Fleur Forsyte. Egh. Why in the world she had Jon AND that budding baronet around her spoiled little finger was beyond my comprehension! Maybe because Soames was already a pill...his daughter was just...too much!

5) Dorothy. I loved Baum's other characters. Dorothy was just a little too self-righteous for my taste.

4) Briony Tallis. Too many exclamations from my reading corner on how her dangerous fancies and childish ignorance ruined her sister's chances at love.

3) Bertie Wooster. I adore P.G. Wodehouse's class romps, but in fairness, I feel Jeeves should've filled stupid Bertie's socks with jelly and left to serve the Queen.

2) Fred the Mermaid. Mary Janice Davidson wrote a mermaid series as well. Sometimes I wish Fred would stay underwater. Not my favorite MJD heroine.

1) Any Bertrice Small heroine. See Mei's bodice ripper cliches. (Though in hindsight, these ladies might actually get turned on by a smacking.)


Note: I did not mention Anita Blake because she could probably kick my ass with all her limbs tied together.



Meimei: Shut up, Daedalus. (You too, Judith Krantz and Jean Rhys.)

Before I begin with my list, I have to explain that these characters represent the tip of the iceberg as far as slap-worthy characters are concerned. I’ve already explained Bridget Jones last week; I was also tempted to add Anita Blake, but that’s more of a hate-on-sight (without having read a single book) than a genuine kind of hate. And, while both Agatha Christie and Ian McEwan have written slap-worthy characters, I can’t put them on the list because none of them inspire me to bring on the Slapsgiving that these have.

1) Stephen. Freaking. Daedalus. No other character has ever deserved such a violent smacking – and not just because anyone who has ever gone to the same high school as myself and The Happy Scribe has Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to blame for turning our otherwise fun IBH English classes into depressing slogs. I can’t remember having read Portrait without repeating the words “shut up” so many times - sometimes loud enough to scare my parents - and as much as I actually tolerated Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, I still have Daedalus to blame for ruining the rest of Ulysses for me.

2) Holden. Freaking. Caulfield. The runner-up to Stephen Daedalus in the “Stream-of-Consciousness”/ Douchebag division, easily beating out both Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise from Kerouac’s On the Road (talk about two people who just won’t Shut Up). The only saving grace I could find for Holden comes towards the end of Catcher in the Rye, when he takes his sister to the carousel… but other than that? Grow up, already!

3) Goldilocks. Just because there’s a successful Filipino bakery with your name on it doesn’t make it OK for you to barge into a stranger’s house unannounced and make catty, unwarranted comments about their food and furniture. I hope those three bears caught up to you.

4) Jewel Bundren, from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. In a book full of slap-worthy characters – including poor dead Addie – Jewel stands out as the whiniest and most incompetent of them all… and that’s saying a whole lot, without giving the “plot” (ha ha) away.

5) Mama Elena, from Like Water for Chocolate. Unlike her fellow archetype Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mama Elena’s cruel hounding of her own biological daughter seems way too telenovela-ish for me. Did Laura Esquivel really need to manifest her as a vengeful ghost and a hypocrite at the same time? At least Elizabeth Bennet got to dispatch of Lady Catherine with one of the best smack-down monologues ever written; Mama Elena’s come-uppance, on the other hand, comes a few chapters too late, and even then – both in the book and the movie - it’s handled way too abruptly.

6) The titular character from How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It didn’t take me too long to realize that this Stella was Terry McMillan’s version of a Mary Sue… and that’s before she realized that her Hot Jamaican Mandingo Lover Man was actually a gold-digging little queen.

7) Every single female lead character in the Danielle Steel oeuvre. “Hi, I can’t decide what I want for myself because my mother was too frigid to love me as a child, and Danielle thinks that giving me an actual personality would ruin all those dramatic ‘scenes’ and ‘monologues’ she wrote for me. Watch me as I screw my way through this book like a dispassionate sexbot!”

8) Billy Ikehorn, from Judith Krantz’s Scruples series. “Hi, I can’t decide what I want for myself because I’m used to being a horny, power-hungry slut, and Judith’s idea of giving me a personality is to have me screw rich and powerful men so I can dump them when they get bored of me. Watch me as I sleep my way to self-esteem… through three books!”

9) Waverly Jong, from The Joy Luck Club. True, she was the uppity daughter of an uppity mother, and Amy Tan did take both of them down a few pegs towards the end of the book. That doesn’t make the scenes where she rubs the other Joy Luck girls the wrong way any less painful, though.

10) Bertha Rochester. Fine, I say: Mr. Rochester was an idiot to keep her in the attic. And, from having watched the first movie adaptation of Wide Sargasso Sea, maybe there are a few reasons for me to be sympathetic towards her. But, c’mon – of all the interesting side characters in Jane Eyre, did we really need Jean Rhys to tell us how horrible Bertha and Edward were to each other? (And would the world be a better place if it had been Jasper Fforde’s province instead?) Extra slaptastic points goes to Bertha’s most recent adapted-for-screen incarnations – not just for getting to play “Touch My Body” with Nathaniel Parker and Rafe Spall (note to Rafe: Final season of LOST – look into it) but also for damn near defacing the lovely visage of Toby Stephens, who recently became one of my favorite OG Rochesters.

Please Stand By

Those of you who have been waiting for the NBLB Weekend Q&A may need to be patient; both of our reader-bloggers have been incredibly busy lately with non-blog-related business, which means that our regular weekly feature may be a tad delayed in posting. Fret not, however - there's a lot more reading and reviews in store over the weekend!

In the meantime, you can get your own Tim Gunn poster - and other celebs, too - at the online store for the American Library Association.

Big Ole Brain Crush: Daniel J. Boorstin's The Creators

If you ever get a chance to cruise downtown Oberlin, OH, check out the used book store (that is, if you don't blow your money at the bead shop...advice: start at the coffee shop and walk to the right). I got twinkly little stars in my eyes from cool book overload. Yellowing and yet in pristine condition on the crowded shelves were out of print copies of fairy tales, drama anthologies and classics. I nearly went home with an E.M. Forster biography and an illustrated Shakespeare, but my cash didn't stretch that far (we still have to eat this week, darn it). So, practicing the same restraint I apply to shoe stores, I browsed, bovine-like in my constant chewing over of titles and authors. What I love about Oberlin's liberal atmosphere is that the clerks are friendly, but not pushy. They're used to students and artists with limited budgets, so the "buy! buy! buy!" schmooze doesn't exist. (I would, however, still steer bead lovers to my neighborhood's City Buddha versus the crazy expensive stuff at the bead shop...still, those Peruvian bags were way cool...sigh...)

Anyways, when I finally made my choice, there was no question what my home library missed: Daniel J. Boorstin's Knowledge trilogy.

There are three key things that saved me from completely chucking myself out my 13th floor window (lucky, yeah?) while writing upper level European history essays: coffee, the love of my late (great) Pomeranian, and a copy of Boorstin's The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. This book needs to be in your library if you adore art and history, and want to maintain that love affair despite the rocky essay deadlines and those interminable recitals of dates and religious upheavals. Boorstin's take on history's greatest artists isn't written like classroom text. This was what was so great about reading this book in my early high school years - history became a flesh and blood story, not a distant, dusty timeline. Critics of Boorstin's work tend to skewer him for presenting a Western-slanted account of the past 3,000 years. I was glad I didn't see it that way - I discovered this book as a story of how individuals left lasting imprints on society - how the efforts of one man or woman could be remembered from the works and words they left behind. It's as close to immortality we humans can achieve in THIS life.

I first read this book between trips to Europe, sandwiched between my childhood exploration of the Louvre, and when I dragged my Dad and little sister through it as an adult. My professors spanning high school and college were then treated to massive chunks of quotes from Mr. Boorstin's series of biographies in last-minute essays.Then I read it one really bad night while I cried about my own "art" alone in my college apartment. I don't care what the critics say. Boorstin's short biographies don't have to be read in order - for one day, Michaelangelo provides healing and guidance, for another, it could be Mohammed providing inspiration - it's good to have this option from a heavy history tome. The book is divided organically, according to themes - of God, structures, images, words, music, time/space, and the intangibles of the human soul. Appealing to my journalistic spirit is the prevailing question of WHY - the search for the answer to this question over the ages, versus the more utilitarian (and therefore more cold) question of today, HOW to get it done. The answers are in the architecture, the poetry, the philosophies, the religions, the paintings...it lifts the heart to think this can be a neverending exploration. You'll want to read Dante and Dickens, view Picasso, listen to Bach - you will want to experience it for YOURSELF.

I didn't find The Creators at the bookstore, but I did scoop up Seekers and Discoverers. Both deserve a re-read, after nearly three years of missing Boorstin from my library. I have had a huge brain crush on this man's writing for over a decade. "The nation's collective IQ took a nosedive on February 28, 2004, when Daniel Joseph Boorstin - historian, professor, writer, curator, librarian, and great American Booster - died of pneumonia at age 89." (The New Atlantis obituary) His career reads like an account of ten lives, all mashed together into this big, beautiful intellect. More importantly, he lived and wrote generously. The Creators points to the beginning of a path -wherever your mind is inclined. He is criticized for lack of elaboration - but he was not motivated to impress us with a huge tsunami of research (which he undoubtedly had to swim in, to produce these marvelous books). He gives us a compass to discover our own roads to expression. This is the survey class of your dreams - that first brain crush on art, history, religion and cultures, culminating in a lifelong love affair.

These creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story — a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.

-- Daniel J. Boorstin