#75 of 2012: When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Goodwin
MAY I JUST START WITH HOW LOVELY I FIND THIS COVER TO BE? And to be honest, that was mainly why I picked it up from the shelf and brought it with me home. Of course, I am equally thankful that it has an okay story in it, so I suppose I am in a win-win situation. That and I really didn’t expect this to WOW me exactly, because I have issues about too well-awarded novels. So when it turned out that Sarah Winman actually had something more than decent to share, then by all means, if she said God was once a rabbit, then YES, God could have been a rabbit, period, no arguments whatsoever. So now you might be thinking why I’m raving about how “more than decent” this novel is and YET I gave it only a two-star rating, then here goes:
Boo!s
-I just don’t like it when something is disguised in another form than what it is supposed to be. Instead of a novel that has a plot, this read too much like of a memoir with climaxes and dilemmas randomly popping in every other chapter.
-Ellie, the main protagonist, wasn’t someone you’d want to be friends with. She was a bit creepy - even as a four-year-old (WHAT FOUR-YEAR-OLD TALKS AND THINKS LIKE THAT, SARAH WINMAN?? Clearly, your characters have had issues even before Page 1 began), let alone when she grew up.
-Though I liked how Winman portrayed a non-perfect family in a conservative time like the 1960s, like how Ellie’s mom seemed to be bisexual and her (Ellie’s) brother was gay, I wasn’t on board with the way she made them keep falling apart with each other when the obvious thing she could have done was to put them back together. It was as if she wanted her characters to keep on hurting and stay confused. Yeah, I get that that IS life, but hey, pain is not all there is in life.
#67 of 2012: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
kadsabfjsahuhwufbasdn*****?!?!?!?! For serious, y’all people who think this book even meant anything, please go and get laid. Stop imagining yourself as Anastasia Steele; we’re almost near the 22nd century and why would you need a man to BDSM you?? Authors, please stop producing simple-minded female characters!! I know some of you might already be judging me, saying “OH YES 22ND CENTURY APPROACHING AND YOU’RE STILL A PRUDE!” Well, my darlings, it’s not about being prude - it’s about hundreds of people being misled into thinking/believing that this… this “story” is even literature, published internationally and all that. I have no problems with erotic fiction but when it is being used to disguise something so horribly done, it’s just YIKES. And I felt a lot of YIKES while reading this book, like: srsly, ANAL FISTING??? WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO LET A MAN DO THAT? Honestly, I wouldn’t even allow Zac Efron to do that to me, IF THAT EVEN HAPPENS! And Christian Gray sounded like a big poser whose only personality was of being sex-hungry ALL THE TIME. Clearly, he has SEXSSUES and boy, E.L. James, you gotta suit up for the sequel and come up with something more with sense than this. And you know, having a plot won’t hurt, too.
Boo!
-YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT THIS HAS A FREAKING SEQUEL… People, why not just watch porn instead?
#52 of 2012: On Love by Alain de Botton
If I had this book as a boyfriend, everyday would be a mindfuck. Alain de Botton sure did put a LOT of thought in writing it, and I’m just in awe in how much he can talk about different philosophical and sociological views about such a vague and unstable topic like love. It does not thrive in plot or characterization or setting, even, in my opinion, but I suppose that is besides the point, because the insights were definitely more interesting than the used examples which were the protagonists. This book made me fall in love, then fall OUT of love, and then made me angry and sappy and all that - as romance and relationship do - and even though I have predicted how it was going to end, I still enjoyed the time I spent with it.
Yay!s
-My past months have been swamped with academic discourses, so I was attuned to reading too highly intellectual thought processes, and that was good for me because this book had a lot of Marxism, dialectics and other profound theories in it that de Botton used to illustrate or expound on the idea of falling in love.
-The flow of this book was also well-thought. For instance, de Botton broke the different levels and stages of falling in love into chapters that made concepts more descriptive and understandable. Kind of like that movie 500 Days of Summer, although much more mind-boggling.
-British people! And Chloe, the female protagonist (I call her protagonist because she is the main apple of the eye of the narrator, after all, and not some sidekick character), was such a standout character. She had a lot of quirks and possessed this free and I-don’t-care spirit but maintained an equally mindful attitude. I guess she had to be or else there wouldn’t have been any discussion about falling in love with her, to begin with.
Boo!s
-Because it often was “too highly intellectual,” I had to fight off zzzss and page-skipping. I was all, “Man, somebody needs to relax and just enjoy life.” de Botton needs to stop being too deep in his thoughts and should avoid giving himself heart attacks and brain strokes by trying to understand, let alone, explain, the concept of love.
-I never knew the male protagonist’s name! I know there’s a reason for the nameless character, but see, with that namelessness comes facelessness. I couldn’t have a picture in mind of how he could look like.
-Ooh, that too-predictable ending. (But that’s the reality… so de Botton still gains points for that.)
