The Emperor's Children

I just didn't love it, but I had to finish it. I bought it on a recommendation from a friend at work. I suppose that we are all entitled to our own opinions, but this book just didn't line up with my own interests. At all. It was too heavy, too dramatic, too philosophical, too obviously sophisticated. I never felt pulled into the story, & I never really cared what happened. I found the characters to all be self-obsessed & arrogant. Their subsequent problems were of their own doing, which made things equally frustrating. Overall, definitely not a favorite. I don't recommend.

I started reading Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close this morning on the train {based on the recommendation from another friend at work- hopefully with interests better-aligned this time}. The guy who recommended it said, "Read the first page. You'll buy the book." So- I went into Border's, read the first page, & walked out with a new book in my purse. Thus far- I love it. Definitely my kind of book {a little quirky- sort of in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime Genre- one of my favorite books}. The first few paragraphs:

What The?

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I'd train it to say, "Wasn't me!" every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, "Ce n'étais pas moi!"

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?

Anyway.