Amazon Thinks I'm Fat.

Today's Recommendations For You

Here's a daily sample of items recommended for you. Click here to see all recommendations. Everything Is Illuminate...(Paperback) by Jonathan Safran Foer  (436) $10.04 Fix this recommendation The Skinny: What Every Skinny W... (Hardcover) by Patricia Marx  (23)   Fix this recommendation The Karl Lagerfeld Diet(Paperback) by Karl Lagerfeld  (8)   Fix this recommendation

Dear Amazon, 

Are you trying to tell me something? I haven't looked at weight loss books ever, so I can't help but wonder why you are recommending them to me. Maybe you are worried I may put on a little winter weight. You're lucky I'm skinny, or I might consider these recommendations to be offensive. 

Please explain.

Thanks,
Brenna

Someone Really Loves Ray Bradbury

Warning: Because of the language, this video is inappropriate for some readers.  Please use your discretion. With that being said, this is hilarious. 

Have a great weekend!

Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis

I'm not really sure how to review this book except to tell you it is unlike anything I have ever read and it will stay with me for a long time. My initial reaction after closing the book was wow this is brilliant and seriously crazy all at the same time.

On the surface this is an extreme satire of post-modern society and the celebrity-obsessed culture as we know it. Ellis combines models, celebrities, drugs, pop culture, violence, sex and terrorists to convey a sense of confusion, emptiness and dispair. The first half of the book focuses on establishing this plastic, superficial culture and the ladder twists it into a violent ball of mayhem that begs the reader to consider exactly where our society is headed.

While I did enjoy the book I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. If you can't read Chuck Palhunak you most definitely can't read Bret Easton Ellis. That being said, Ellis has the gift of combining great writing with a great story - albeit a very dark and shocking story.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Year of First Edition: 1998

With 546 pages this book puts me at 2,227 pages for the 2010 Summer Reading Challenge.

I Heart Nabokov More Than You

Awe, you guys. I took this quiz (that Eric recommended to me) that determines which author my writing style most closely resembles and this is what I got:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Love it! Regardless of the fact that it's so not true because I couldn't even come close to his poetic prose, but it's still nice to see.

Take it here if you'd like and let me know who you get! All I did was copy and paste my last blog entry into a box for analysis.

Sucks for Molly Ringle

Did you know there is an award for the worst opening sentence of a novel? Well, there is and Molly Ringle won it this year for writing this sentence: "For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

Yikes. She deserved this one. It seems like not all publicity can be good publicity, especially in the book world.

Via Media Bistro: This prize is part of an annual bad writing competition that began in 1982 at San Jose State University. The contest was named after Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, an author famous for writing the opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night."

UPDATE: So I guess I read this article wrong. Caroline Bookbinder informs me that "Actually, these lines that are submitted for the Bulwer-Lytton award are NOT the first sentences of actual books - they're made up specifically for the Bulwer-Lytton (at least they don't HAVE TO come from books. I suppose having been published wouldn't prevent a line from being submitted.) So Molly Ringle purposefully created the worst first sentence she could think of. It's an exercise in creativity."

Thanks for setting me straight Caroline. I feel like a total spaz. I guess it doesn't suck for Molly Ringle.

Tornados and The Angel's Game

I would just like to say that as I am finishing the last 50 pages of The Angel's Game - right as everything is proving itself to be evil and tormented, and I am deliciously consumed in the devilish plot - a crazy thunderstorm rolls through, followed by tornado sirens, followed by my power going out.

Here I am finishing this book, flashlight in hand surrounded by candlelight, sitting in my basement hoping my roof and I don't get sucked into oblivion. What a perfect way to finish this ominous novel.