but the other one...i don't even have the slightest idea as to why they're asking me to read it.
its for this english class i'm taking called Voices from the Edge, and its all about rebellion and stuff.
so for summer reading, i'm reading a book called Prague, by Arthur Phillips.
and ALL OVER THE BOOK, it just talks about how wonderful it is, how ingenious and witty and wry and how all sorts of notable sources think its just so great. the new youk times, the san fransisco chronicle, people magazine, los angeles times. The reviews all use words like poignancy, rhapsodic, caustic satire, poise...
personally i think that is all crap.
i don't need to know what magazines or book reviews or the virgin mary thinks of the books i'm reading.
half the books i love aren't even recognized by those so-called credible sources until after i've already read them, or they are, but theres like a 2 inch long article about them in these papers and crap.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower isn't covered from cover to cover in things proclaiming its awesomeness, yet it is the single greatest book i've ever read in my entire life.

so right off the bat, after just SEEING this book, i'm like "oh great, another book that thinks its too big for its cover. whoop-de-doo."
but i still pick it up, cause you know, i do HAVE to read it. and it doesn't sound to bad from the back cover.
it says its about "ex patriots" living in budapest, hungary, who think that their "counterparts in prague have it better than they do."
i have NO IDEA when or where prague will come into this book, but 72 pages into it, it hasn't come up.

hell, 72 pages into it and theres still no real PLOT.
i mean, its not horrible.
but i really see no life lessons being learned from this.
and just from the tone of the book i can already call that someones going to die.

i'd really like this book to prove me wrong.
i'm dying for the moment when it all comes together and makes sense and is wonderful and poignant and everything else that it said it was on the cover.
because i'd rather not think that i wasted my time and effort on a book that isn't worth it.

but right now, its not looking good.

of course, a lot of that is probably due to the fact that its being forced down my throat by teachers who think they know better than me what constitutes a "good book"
Across Five Aprils is not a "good book" by ANY means.
neither was Black Boy.
i wasn't a huge fan of Animal Farm, Dandelion Wine, or Montana 1948.
heck, even To Kill a Mockingbird became not a good book after my english teacher was done with it.
it was wonderful, until we had to get into all the "symbolism" that wasn't even there.
what do the figures in the tree symbolize?
HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW.
i was 15 when i read that.
and i understood it less than i did when i read it at the age of 12.
explain that one, english teachers.

i mean, honestly, i'd get all the life-lessons that i need from those books (of which i got maybe, 3? all from To Kill a Mockingbird) from reading the cliff notes version.
which would be better than this huge waste of my time.

Do we start, then, with Kerouac? Or fast forward to the 2008 Lexus Original Fiction Series?

Apparently there's a press release, and maybe someday I'll find the thing; it's not exactly prominent in the results of the most basic Google search I could manage, so we'll borrow from MediaBistro:

"The Great American Road Trip: immortalized by Jack Kerouac, it holds a special place in the American romantic imagination. Now Lexus magazine is adding to the literature of the road with the 2008 Lexus Original Fiction Series," reads the press release Lexus magazine (which exists!) sent out today. Just think, if Jack Kerouac was alive today, maybe he, too, would have contributed a chapter to "In The Belly of The Beast," a collaboratively-written story that "chronicles a young couple's cross-country journey from Brooklyn to the Bay Area in their Lexus IS F."

MB's Emily Gould notes that she hopes that the writers got "seriously paid", and it's hard to disagree. Certainly, some people are going to hold their participation against them, but it's also worth noting that Arthur Phillips, at least, has gone about the task of the first chapter with something close to a sense of irony.

I know I am to blame for what happened next—in the desert, obviously, but also in Indiana. I started the trip in high melodrama mode from the very first block, because this, after eight months together (three with him living with cannibals), was how our life began: in the stunning Beast, on our way up the West Side Highway, with me about to make more money than either of our parents could imagine earning; with him not required to contribute a single penny for the first year so he could finish turning his dissertation into a book; with a realtor’s erotic dream of a house sparkling in readiness for us; with a Napa Valley wedding to plan—and with him asking if I shouldn’t have the lumbar support set a little more forward.

Chapter two is from Richard McCann, and the third by Curtis Sittenfeld. Beyond that, you'll have to wait until July.

I must admit that I'm a little depressed that I share my birthday with St. Patrick's Day. It's not because I don't like the Irish. Indeed, Patrick and Patricia are popular names among my family and friends. It's just that St. Patrick's Day is a day best avoided in New York City, where I work and where it isn't unusual to see people throwing up in public after too many toasts in honor of the Irish.

I guess I'll be treating Astrology Mundo Day the way I do New Year's Eve -- staying inside with all the curtains drawn. But now I have a URL to call my very own.

I don't believe in copyright infringement (not knowingly, anyway) so I can't cut and paste my favorite cartoon about blogging, which ran in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. It's signed Gregory, and has a picture of two dogs. One dog says to the other: "I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking." If you Google that quote under Images, you can find it, though.

I'm always going to bark so it's best to do it in a safe place, as opposed to sending out inappropriate e-mails at work or writing posts to Barbara Ellen at The Observer in London that can be traced back to me.

When I first started reading blogs, I didn't understand how political they were. I got my feet wet with Instapundit, a blog by Glenn Reynolds, a law school professor at the University of Tennessee. Unlike some bloggers, Reynolds can tolerate viewpoints that differ from his own.

Emboldened by my comments being published on Instapundit, I tried my luck at FreeRepublic.com, when Ann Coulter ended up in a rocking chair on the cover of Time magazine looking like Edith Ann, Lily Tomlin's character on Saturday Night Live.

I advised Coulter to lighten up, and noted that the cover of Time was the cover of Time, no matter how unhappy you were with your picture. I reminded Coulter that major political figures who were the subjects of caricatures, such as Winston Churchill, probably didn't lose sleep worrying about how bad they looked.

Well, you can probably guess what happened next. "Astrogirl60" was branded a "troll," banned for life from freep.com, and my "offending" post expunged, but not before I got to read lots of hateful posts -- all because I had the audacity to poke fun at conservative poster girl Coulter.

Because I was using Astrogirl60 as my handle, one of the conservatives at freep.com said I must be a "real dog," and pasted a picture of the pup from The Jetsons under his post. Now, that was pretty funny, but clearly astro, as in astrology, doesn't exist in Coulter's universe.

Still not ready to throw in the towel, I wrote back under my real name pointing out that my grandfather, father, and two of my brothers had served in the U.S. military and dedicated their careers to fighting for freedom, especially freedom of speech. My parting shot? I pointed out that FreeRepublic.com didn't seem very free after all.

That was before I learned that blogging and basketball have a lot in common: If you're going to join a pickup game, it's best to do it in your own 'hood.

I was really into blogs at the beginning of the Iraq war, particularly the Baghdad Bulletin, which began publishing on June 9, 2003. In those optimistic days, the staff of the Bulletin thought their publication was going to be the next Prague Post, an informative, unbiased English-language paper for expats. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. The paper had to close down for financial and security reasons after just 70 issues, according to the Wiki.

I hope at least one Baghdad Bulletin veteran got a novel out of it, the way Arthur Phillips did with his breakthrough debut Prague, about a group of writers, adventurers, and fortune-seekers living in Budapest in 1989, right after the fall of Communism. It's a good read for media types, especially the character who isn't Rupert Murdoch but really is.

As you can see, blogs are the perfect medium for people who write in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. I'm sure James Joyce would have been a good blogger: Yes I said yes he would yes.