I Love Everybody (If everybody is my dog)

It was a very busy weekend at our house. Saturday the dear fiance and I adopted a puppy from our local shelter!

Meet Massey!

She's a ten month old (according to the vet) Lab puppy. She was given to the shelter by her first family because they just couldn't deal with her puppy behaviors (chewing, housebreaking issues etc.). We didn't take this decision lightly, I've been begging the fiance for several years for a dog. When we finally bought our house in January I was totally ready to head straight to the shelter and pick out a dog, he stepped in and said we had to wait until summer so I would be home all the time to work with the dog. In mid April my parents had to make the tough decision to put down our 12 year old chocolate lab and my jonesing for a dog increased exponentially. We went on Saturday and looked at several dogs and ultimately decided on her because she seemed calm and happy. She is, at least partially, she is totally calm if both of us are sitting in the room with her. Her sole goal in life is to be with her people and she isn't particularly happy if we aren't all together. There is nothing more she loves than cuddling with me or sleeping at my feet (of course the second I move she's all over the place). She also throws up in the car and likes to run wild in the yard and chase birds and bugs. She also hasn't quite yet mastered the "come" command (as evidenced by her taking off into our wheat field today and refusing to return), but she's great at sitting down!

This is a lot of backstory for a blog about books, but I honestly cannot stop gushing about my sweet little girl. It's fun to see her personality develop so quickly and to see how different she is from other dogs. I have known. However, she requires a lot of attention and work and for that exact reason I've read a grand total of two pages this weekend. Getting a new puppy is a lot like having a baby (not that I've every actually had a baby but the concept seems similar) and I wasn't too interested in my book (even though it is an awesome book). Turns out even for an avid reader when you have something as cute as a new puppy book reading tends to go by the wayside.

However, I did finish Laurie Notaro's book and without further ado here is my short and brief review.

I've admitted to a fondness for Laurie Notaro so it's not a surprise that I adored "I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies". Laurie is like a meaner (and slightly stupider...in a good way) version of myself. Her writing verbalizes my internal monologue. I especially connected with her struggles to get her book published and the struggle when yet another rejection letter arrived in the mail.

She says "Each said I sucked. Each said I was 'not right for their needs.' Each wished me 'good luck
 in my pursuit to get my book published. And they meant it, the same way my mom meant it when I told her I had finally found a boy that liked me back" (61). When I read those sentences and the continuing rant about how all she would have to do to get her book published is become Anne Heche or Oprah Winfrey and I connected. The best thing a book can do for me (or any reader) is to make a connection with the reader. It's a tough thing to do, especially in the memoir genre when the author is sharing specific stories about their own life. I've read a lot of memoirs that I just can't connect to, it's almost becoming an overdone genre with entirely too many people telling stories that to be honest aren't that interesting (Living Oprah comes to mind). It's a tough balance to strike, you have to be honest yet it is difficult to make the mundane funny and exciting. Notaro strikes that balance with ease, she's able to take the smallest most mundane events that every person has experienced (shopping at Costco, going to the movies and helping the elderly with their electronics) and turn them into something epic.

When I read her book I feel like I can look at my most mundane activities and find the humor in them all. It's a gift really to look at shopping at Costco (sub in Sam's Club for me, we're too much of a cow town to get the fabulous Costco) and write several whole pages about it (To be fair I can write several pages about shopping at Target-but absolutely no one wants to actually read them) and make me laugh out loud. I'm sure if I could get my dear fiance to read it he would identify with Laurie's long suffering husband Victor (since I'm sure the reports he gets about my day sometimes sound like her books in the level of ridiculous).

I'm giving this one 5/5

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Why I'm Destined to Own Entirely Too Many Books

It became clear to me this week why it is just in my destiny to own way way to many books. This has nothing to do with my early reading ability, my family genetics (trust me if your mom is a librarian you are practically required to salivate over books) or anything of that nature. This story highlights the absolutely ridiculous situations I find myself in with frightening regularity (things that seem to happen to no one else).

Earlier in the year I ordered a textbook for one of my online classes, no big deal right? However, there was a screw up with shipping and I ended up with two copies of the textbook. I promptly stuck both of them on a shelf (because even if I "need" the book for class the likelihood of me actually opening it is slim to none) figuring I would deal with the book later.

This week I decided to deal with extra book and I logged onto Amazon to sell the book back. When I discovered I would be getting a 49.00$ credit on my account I was thrilled! Dreams of new books on my Kindle danced in my head as I happily packed the book up and sent it off with the handy prepaid shipping label (and wrapped neatly in a Brahm's bag). Yesterday I get an e-mail that my trade in had been denied and they were sending the book back to me.

Turns out this book has two different ISBNs (two different hardcover editions, one that is significantly cheaper than the other). Turns out I was sold the wrong book (sold the cheaper book at the higher price). At this point I was furious and spouted off a massive ranting email to Amazon (one of my many fabulous hobbies). Because Amazon is an awesome company who always tries to do the right thing they issued a credit of 49.00 to my account and then forwarded the information on to the investigators.

Great! Right? Well, kind of. See the other textbook is still jetting its way back to me and I still have two copies of the same book. When I have the courage to actually get rid of a book it just boomerangs back to me and takes up precious space on my shelf and now I'm too scarred (or lazy) to try again.

In other book news (apparently I have a lot of that) I finished Laurie Notaro's book and I expect to have my review up Monday-ish. (It's shaping up to be a busy weekend). I've selected my next book "The Badlands: More Stories from Midnight in Peking". This is a special e-book companion to the fabulous book "Midnight in Peking" by Paul French. This book was the best book I've read so far this summer and I was thrilled to drop the 3.99 on the companion book (and to be fair this book has only been floating on my Kindle for a week or so, much less time than my other books).

The First Book

Part of the problem is that I'm a serial re-reader. If I find a book a like I will re-read it countless times, finding something new every time. Dave Barry, Jen Lancaster, Elaine Viets, Janet Evanovich, Sara Shepard and J.K. Rowling are all authors whose books I've read hundreds of times, often to the detriment of other books on my shelves. It delights me to wait a year or so and then reread my favorite books, it seems like every time I open the book I find something new and something that speaks to me in a different way. It helps that I'm in my early twenties and each year I change dramatically. Who you are at 23 is very different than who you are at 24 and the amazing thing is that books change with you. The people in your life may not (I think we all have those friends who we loved in high school, but by the end of college you want to stab them in ear), but books always will. Relationships are something that must constantly evolve in order to be successful (and according to my fiance I also hold the belief that your house should change every four months so you still like it) and my relationships with my favorite books is constantly changing. Take for example Dave Barry, I started reading him when I was in middle school and while he was funny I couldn't really relate to a lot of the things he talked about as I wasn't an adult with a house and family. Fast forward to last year when we were desperately shopping for a house (and failing miserably because apparently you can't have a brand new house on many acres of land for less than $500,000) I re-read his book "Homes and Other Black Holes" and I finally realized exactly what he was talking about. He was spot about absolutely everything and I couldn't stop laughing (and reading passages aloud like some sort of awkward parrot-Trust me it wasn't appreciated no matter how funny the book was). Just like dating I struggle with meeting new books, just like I would totally be with one person for my whole life (because that's socially acceptable and because change is scary-except when houses are involved) I would love to read one book for the rest of my life. However, I can't stop checking out the selection (it's totally natural) so I find myself with thousands of books. Because I'm a complete pansy I decided to give myself an easy book for the first book, don't want to overtax my brain on the first go round.

I'm starting with "I Love Everybody (and other atrocious lies)" by Laurie Notaro. I picked it mostly because the title makes me laugh every single time I even look at the book on the shelf and it comes highly recommended by an author I admire. It's also reasonably short at 226 pages and the last thing I want to read during summer vacation is a lengthy academic tome. I already have to read enough of those for graduate school, when I'm done with my homework I want fluffy and funny and Notaro fits the bill. Plus, I'm cheating in a way because I've read several of her other books and I know I like her (I know, I know...But Rome wasn't built in a day).

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