Bookshop Bumblings

What a fantastic little collection of amusing and well told stories essays. Although I did feel as if I should be a 55 year old man to enjoy them so much.

Also, I did not know that armadillos lived in Louisiana. I guess it makes sense since it’s right by Texas, but I had just never thought of it. I’ve never lived in a world where an armadillo might be my grub-loving neighbor. But that’s ok since I’m fairly sure it’s not something I really want anyway.

After finding myself telling the new puppy, “Just wait until the pack leader gets home!” I decided I needed to study up on The Dog Whisperer’s method rather than just relying on Ben to know what to do. This book is fantastic, and about 75% of it I would have never gotten on my own. It’s just not intuitive to me as a human. I have decided to ignore all the conflicting instructions from the other dog training books, and to just follow Cesar Millan’s method of being a calm assertive pack leader.

The first half is Cesar’s own story which is part inspiring and part heartbreaking. Although I’ve watched his show for a few months now, I didn’t know he had illegally crossed the border and was homeless when he first arrived here in America. Nor did I know that this great insightful man’s wife left him because he was a complete ass to be married to. Here I had been thinking that he must be a dream husband with all of his knowledge and inherent gift to relate to and deal with others. (Evidently, after his wife set “rules, boundaries, and limitations” – just how an owner is supposed to do with their dog – he was able to fix his problems and they have a very good marriage currently.)

The last part of the book is what I really needed to know which is about the actual dog psychology. Unfortunately, I needed to know it a week ago. Who knew I wasn’t supposed to show ANY affection toward the new puppy until he lived with me for a couple of weeks? Whoops. Also, I realize now that I introduced the new puppy into the house the wrong way, and all sorts of other blunders. Thankfully, I can still correct it and at least know what to do from now on. Whew.

Soon it will be me you’ll see careening down the street on rollerblades while being pulled by a pack of my dogs. Awesome.

Guess who got a new puppy? Guess whose new puppy is not housetrained?

As far as how correct the information found in this work is, I guess I won’t really form my opinion about it until about a week from now. I can tell you now that for a “classic” on the subject this is a rather poorly written book. The entire guide is basically the same two paragraphs repeated incessantly. Sometimes, it’s rewritten so it says the same thing in a different way but frequently there’s the same exact set of sentences written over and over. Plus, the style leaves much to be desired. I’m not expecting Proust when it comes to how to housebreak a dog but the tales of how Miffy “stunk to high heaven” were too much like being pinned against my front door as my neighbor corners me about her own tales of woe about housebreaking her little Miff-Miff. By the end, I was just surprised that the phrase “bless her heart” wasn’t tacked on the end of these little “examples”.

Yeah, I read it two years after everyone else but as this novel teaches: Time is completely irrelevant. Unless you’re popping into a place where hunters like to go.

Then … Well, you’re in some trouble boy.

First, I would like to say that if my husband made me type up the manuscript of his novel about how he had an affair with a much younger woman, I would freaking bludgeon him with the typewriter.

Second, Mishima certainly was much better at the HOT Japanese lesbian action. The lesbian happenings in this novel were kind of creepy. And by kind of, I mean if I lived in Japan I’d never leave my house.

Third, I was detailing the plot to Ben and I realized that this story is one big Japanese soap opera. Seriously, it’s crazy!

Don’t bother. Seriously, don’t.

Can anyone explain to me why they would have use a photograph of a scene from the Rocky Mountains as the cover art for a book which takes place and romanticizes the Blue Ridge?

This was actually a fantastic novel until it came to the end which happened about 100 pages before the last page. That’s never a good sign.

“This is perhaps one of the best books I’ve read about the teenage experience. It’s a brilliant, ruthlessly honest depiction of a young girl just growing into her adult body while dealing with an angry father and a jealous and self-involved mother. It will break your heart and make you flinch. I literally could not put this one down.”– Jarek Steele, Left Bank Books, St. Louis, MO

This is exactly how I feel as well. Well, if you replace “ruthlessly honest” with “explicitly provocative” and then substitute “raging abusive racist” in place of “angry”. Then add on “horrifyingly immature selfish terrifyingly bad mother” after “jealous and self-involved”. Also, instead of “I literally could not put this one down” a “When I was not throwing it across the room, I was slamming this one down only to return to it like a forlorn lover” might work a bit better.

“My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.”

Nothing like a novel full of shame for being embarassed about who you are to kick start a weekend!

“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life… To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

I’ve been meaning to read this novel for around seven years when it was first recommended to me as being quite excellent. However, you can’t just rush into a book with a main character by the name of Binx Bolling, you know.

I’m quite thankful I waited as well because I connect much more to a 29 year old Binxy boy much more now than I could have when I was 22. Although I suppose the wayward ennui and the dalliances with secretaries are things I could ALWAYS relate to. Such is the southern life.

Do I even need to say that I adored this book? I loved the descriptions of the long drives in fear that malaise would somehow seep out of the car into the atmosphere and narrator. Of course, the uncaring desperation and detached shiftlessness of Binx is exactly the kind of thing I would have smitten with seven years ago. Good thing I waited – otherwise I would have had to develop one of those terminally unrequited crushes on it that I was so fond of at the time.