The ADD Book Club

This is a list of books I've started but not finished*, in no particular order:

The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor

Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

Color by Victoria Finlay

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

... and I think I read one page of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It's almost 1500 pages long - I think I have a used copy somewhere.

ETA: The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas

Do you do this, for whatever reason? Do you start books, put them down, and inexplicably not pick them up again? They're not bad, they're not boring -- but somehow, you give them the brush-off? Then you might want to join my club.




*The ones I can remember. This does not include the many quarters and thirds of books I've read in waiting rooms or friends/relatives' houses; or the ones I've been required to read in school but skipped. I wish I could remember all those, but I never write them down.

okey-dokey tokidoki

i couldn't resist. i answered the siren call of the dailycandy.com 30% off online discount for the le sportsac summer tokidoki collection. i got it in the mail yesterday and it's as cute and as satiny as i had imagined it would be.

i plan to use it on my travels. can't exactly find an excuse to use it for work. perhaps for the gym? how can we get some more mileage out of this purchase ladies...money doesn't grow on trees you know! but then again another cliche says that life is short...seize the day. oy vay.

ain't the graphic print cute!

Malarkey!

I am pretty stressed out right now by many things, one being the fact that Blogger has a vendetta against my HTML (sincere apologies for the spacing f'ups on this one), but that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the simple pleasures of life, especially those that Bravo offers -- namely, my first reality show crush of the season, Brian Malarkey(!), of Top Chef 3:

I've found that I tend to crush on men who are either (a) arrogantly snarky, (b) scary lonerish types, or my latest favorite (c) brilliant but self-destructive -- or some droolicious combination of any of the above.

Malarkey falls squarely in the (c) category. I am convinced, from his alternating between joyous, affable hype man and maniacal, perspirating, short-circuiting-waitron ... that our Malarkey (I will spare no opportunity to say/write "Malarkey"!) may be either a cokehead or speedfreak. Or both. This is not the first time I've had a crush on a nattily dressed perhaps-drug-addict (the first case being a young attorney who was allegedly a former coke addict, but who charmed me with a rico suave one-on-one title and survey tutorial - yes, you may take a moment to fan yourselves). Malarkey(!) can sculpt the most primordial of sea creatures into a high-end delight, but he'll also use the same skeelz to kill some innocent lipid-challenged senior citizens with deadly and verboten lobster broth.

But such is Malarkey's enthusiasm for the sea. It is one of the many qualities he shares with one of my other favorite TV personalities -- Spongebob Squarepants.

Both have names that are fun to say.
Spongebob!	Malarkey!
Both enjoy oceanic environs.
Spongebob lives in a pineapple, under the sea.	Malarkey works at the Oceanaire Seafood Room (San Diego, CA, big ups to lilbunny), where diners are invited to enjoy the "sea of Ultra-Fresh fish".

Both are extremely enthusiastic about their work, occasionally in a narcotically suspicious way. Please also note the similar eye color of sparkling ocean blue.
They take pride in creating meals from ground-up seafood substances.
Krabby Patty.	Seafood Sausage.
They also take pride in dressing for special occasions.
	He smuggled his suit in under his chef jacket! And look at that flower!
But the underside of enthusiasm is the crash-and-burn....
"Spongebob is as optimistic and earnest as a sea-dwelling sponge gets, but he can't seem to avoid getting himself - and usually everyone else around him - into trouble. While trying too hard, he tends to do things wrong - really wrong - which usually spells disaster." -- Nickelodeon	"Running around in a flop sweat, his eyes rattling around in his skull like pachinko balls.... Brian cracked under pressure and "lost it" so completely that he, too, was lucky to not be tying up his knife roll at show's end." -- Anthony Bourdain

I really hope Malarkey(!) succeeds with Restaurant April tonight. I will be in tears and in need of consolation if he is booted.

ETA: I am sad to report that LL Cool Tre was the one eliminated in this past week's show. He was my pick for the winner, but I'm sure he'll do amazingly well for himself in the real-restaurant world.

I hope that doesn't give you nightmares!

All Spongebob Squarepants images, Nickelodeon. All Brian Malarkey images, Bravo.

What's your favorite violent/horror/action movie?

So there was a recent speaker-phone discussion among some of this blog's participants about violent movies and I feltI'd pay homage to three of my favorite movies ever, all of which address different types of violence in unique ways.

Throw Your Dandias In the A-air...

and wave 'em like you just don't ca-are.

Not as cool as updating live from the event, but I thought you all would get a kick out of it. I just returned from the Garba/Ras event of the wedding I'm attending this weekend - the wedding I've been dreading/anticipating for the past year or so :P

Garba is like a line dance, only in a circle. I tried to follow one round, but really could not. I was sort of pulled in without being taught the steps, though.

Ras (a line dance with pairs, where you hold two decorated sticks [dandias} and hit your partner's sticks in rhythm, then move on down the line) was a little easier to pick up, somehow, even though there were (potentially dangerous) props involved. I even learned something called "12-step", which all the kids were excited about. But by the time my aged curmudgeonly self learned it, the Ras part of the dance was over.

OK, that's all for now. There may or may not be a Part II to this tomorrow. Thank you all for listening to me b!tch and moan about this for the past 9 months or so!