Saturday, February 14, 2015

I lied (the big Reading CatchUp Post)

(I lied the other day when I said I'd post that night - here it is Saturday and I'm getting to it...)

Also - I tested (BFN) around noon today.

Don't ask me why, I have never tested before 11DPO.  Ask me why the F*%CK I tested today at 7(ish)DPO.    

SIGH




ANYWAYS - 
BOOKS

I've read 7 books of the list of 50:
     #1 - The People of Sparks, by Jeanne DuPrau (A book set in the future, #35 of 50)
     #2 - Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult (A book from an author you love but haven't read yet, #16 of 50)
     #3 - Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult (*decided category: a book that made you cry, #38 of 50)

and then so-far-un-reviewed:
     #4 - Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin (a book by an author you've never read, #41 of 50)
                
             from Amazon.com:
                 "Judy Lohden is your above-average sixteen-year-old, with a voice that can shake an  
                 auditorium. She should be the star of Darcy Arts Academy, so why is she hiding in a seedy 
                motel room? Perhaps it has something to do with a devastating scandal---and the fact that 
                Judy is three feet nine inches tall. Big Girl Small is a scathingly funny book about dreams 
                and reality, at once light on its feet and profound."
       
       (The following is (almost) verbatim from my "book journal" - words I wrote as soon as I finished 
       the book, so SPOILER ALERTS - and alot of it may not make sense unless you've read the book)
       This book was narrated by Judy, a "little person," and for some reason, as I read, I kept picturing, not
       just a midget (like from "Little Women of LA" - crazy weird show) but The World's Smallest Women:
(who, by the way, is only 23 inches... alot shorter than the 3ft9inches in the book...)

       But this imagery made it hard to imagine certain scenes, like the "scandal" that was alluded to in the synopsis - she loses her virginity to a classmate, in a very anti-climatic manner (no pun intended!)  He seems to be using her and the scandal (that I was able to somewhat guess) erupted. This scandal (trying to avoid spoilers now actually) drove Judy to run away and hole up in a dingy hotel.
       I could palpably feel her despair, that full dread as she walked into her house the day the scandal broke, and could tell with one glance that her parents knew, and with one glance could tell that her favorite teacher knew: "The first time I felt I disappointed her..." as Judy says.
       We all strive for approval and acceptance from people - some of which we think, at the time especially, are the most important in the world.  In Big Girl Small, Judy could only see at the end, but was able to see - that the world is a much bigger place than her highschool - people are very abosrbed in their own worlds the second after they read of other people's scandals/drama.  Having experienced similar situations as Judy during my teenage-dom, and being in possesion of distance from the original situations, I can look back and brush things off, having learned that the world - even my eventual immediate world - was going to be so much bigger than whatever "small thing" had happened.
       So I was glad to read that Judy was able to recognize that her world would survive beyond this scandal, especially so soon after the scandal died down...



Outside of the book journal "review" - overall a well written book, it felt a little YA - but was a good, relatively quick read.


(and for the sake of blog entry lengths, books #5, #6 and #7 will [be continued!]

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