Summer Reading.
2006-07-06/11:23 a.m.


I started reading this book back in March but only got a few pages in, and then left it at the LA apartment. It wasn't that I didn't like it, but for some reason I just wanted to save it for summer. Well, summer's here and I am almost done with the book. I love it! It's a great story of a girl from the midwest who gets a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school on the east coast. Growing up in Kansas, I always thought that things like summer camps and boarding schools were things of the movies, and didn't still exist in real life. Then I moved to the east coast and found out that I was totally wrong. Ever since then I've been kind of sad that I never got to go to either of those things, even though I can't really imagine that I'd love either thing. Well, maybe summer camp since I loved sports, but boarding school really didn't mean anything to me except that I had romanticized it after seeing "Dead Poet's Society" in 9th grade.

I only have about 50 pages left to read, and I am finding myself doing what I often do when I can tell a book is about to be over: Getting upset. I have been doing that since I was about 12, and I think it's because if I like something I get sad when I realize it will end. Yes, I am a huge nerd. But anyway, last week I took a four day break from reading just to prolong finishing, but the end is approaching anyway. Hopefully the ending is good and doesn't leave me annoyed after all this. But if it is good, that can also be tricky because then I will be even sadder to see it end.

On the other end of the spectrum,I read this book called "Why Girls are Weird" last year and really disliked it and I just saw that the author has another book about (with an eerily similar title) and so I've been thinking about it lately. I bought the book hoping that it would be really funny and light (my grandpa had just died and I needed a plane book) but all I got was disappointed. I really, really dislike thinly veiled fiction. When someone is clearly just writing about their actual life but calling it fiction. Man, I get REALLY annoyed. There are other mediums you can do it in, like say ESSAYS! And this book was really bad in that it was about a girl who lived in Austin and started a personal website before they really existed and then got sort of locally famous because of it. This all happened to the author in real life. In fact, I read her site (and televisionwithoutpity.com) and that's how I knew about her. The worst is when she took actual entries from her real, personal site and put them into the book VERBATIM. Fiction? How is that fiction? Why not just call it non-fiction? Is there some kind of stigma that I'm not aware of? As a non-fiction writer, I must say, I've never heard of one. I was not sad to finish that one. In fact, I motored through it just to get it over with as soon as possible.

Not book related: I got a package from sharon and eric yesterday (though, to believe the card, a very large cat and a tiny hamster also sent it). And it was a sweet Holga!!
I was going to buy one myself when my checks started coming in, since they've been discontinued. And in fact, sharon is who told me that. I can't wait to start taking pictures with it!

I took pics of all of my amazing presents, but I don't have them online yet. I love them all though. I have the best friends in the world.

I will now leave you with a quote from Prep:
"How was I supposed to understand, when I applied at the age of thirteen, that you have your whole life to leave your family?"








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