Permanently disgruntled? Perhaps.

Never buy from Barnes & Noble online or ship via UPS. I ordered a ton of books (9 or 10, which is a ton for me) on 12/26. I used 3 day air and paid via PayPal, mainly because I was too lazy to get up and get my debit card and PayPal was an easy click away. Then the problems started:

1. They charged Paypal oh, half a dozen times. I have no clue why.
2. They didn't ship for 5 days even though it should have already been at my house 2 days before they even decided to ship.
3. They split my order into 2 packages, which is ordinarily fine, but in the case of B&N, they decide to inform you 7 days after your package should have already arrived that they are splitting your order up even though they already sent out confirmation emails on everything.
4. UPS drops off a lovely, yellow InfoNotice, because oddly I was not at home from the hours of 2 to 5 in the middle of a work day. Odd.
5. UPS man/woman checks "A signature is required on delivery." I look to the back to read the instructions to make sure this is the one where I can just sign, not necessarily in person. It says, "If the 'A signature is required on delivery' box is checked, the driver must receive a signature either in person or by signing below." So I sign below and leave it for the driver.
6. The driver does not leave my package the next day and instead leaves a final notice. Great. (This was Tuesday.)
7. Wednesday evening I get home and there's a lovely book on my doorstep. Yes! No InfoNotice, no nothing. It's only 1 book and I remember that B&N split my order in two but still. I have 1 piece!
8. I'm about to travel over lunch to the boonies, where the UPS is oh-so conveniently located, when I decide to double check my tracking number online.
9. Hmmm... that's weird. It appears that my package is in fucking Pennsylvania. Rana - want some books?
10. I call the 800 number knowing my anger will most likely get the better of me and get a return phone call within an hour, as per policy.
11. The local UPS woman tells me the shipper insists on getting a signature in person. I politely (I think) inform the UPS woman that that was not the box that was checked on the multiple InfoNotices on my doors.
12. Then the local UPS woman decides that the driver must not have felt it was a safe location to leave a package, so that's why he didn't pay attention to the signature on the notice. I mention the package delivered the day before, just left on my doorstep, from UPS, presumably the same driver. I also mention how UPS packages are left on mine and my neighbors' doorsteps practically every week (I have 4 neighbors in my fourplex), so I doubt the usual driver has an issue with safety.
13. With no response, she informs me I must call the 800 number back and ask them to "intercept" my package. She apparently can't intercept my package and my only other option is to contact B&N and try to convince them to send me another package. Did I mention a couple of the books I ordered were 1 or 3 or some such low stock bullshit?
14. I call the 800 number. Oops. They can't do an intercept. I have to call the shipper.


Fucking shit, man. Now I have to call B&N, the original fuck-up and demand they send me my books all over again?

I hate B&N and UPS. I'm officially disgruntled. I can't even remember what books I ordered anymore. Damn.

The top 75 books by women, as decided by Jezebel.

I'm all about this list. I'm a top 10 maniac. I used to buy every year-end review and top 10 of the year magazines on the newstands (until I got a job and realized I couldn't afford it). One of my mini-goals in life is to find and agree with a definitive book and/or movie list and make my way through it. So here is yet another "best of" list but this one is about books written by women (mostly) and decided by the editors and readers of Jezebel. It's an awesome list. I have a few books on my reading list right now but once I'm done, I'm tackling this list. Suggestions on where to start? (My thoughts in italics.)

• The Lottery (and Other Stories), Shirley Jackson read it in high school
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf own it but have refused to read it for some reason
• The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton one of my favorite books evah!
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith
• The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
• Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath seriously? I'm not into slitting my wrists right now...
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri saw the movie
• Beloved, Toni Morrison read it, got totally caught up in it, and felt really, really weird for awhile afterwards
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert amazing
• Like Life, Lorrie Moore
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen are you kidding? my favorite book of all time.
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë read it. eh.
• The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin I'm scared of Anais Nin. Should I be?
• A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
• A Good Man Is Hard To Find (and Other Stories), Flannery O'Connor read it in high school but can't remember it
• The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
• You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
• Earthly Paradise, Colette
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
• Property, Valerie Martin
• Middlemarch, George Eliot own it but am scared of the tiny print.
• Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
• The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
• Runaway, Alice Munro B gave me this one. I've read about half of the stories. They're really good.
• The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
• The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë like movie versions better.
• You Must Remember This, Joyce Carol Oates
• Little Women, Louisa May Alcott *sob* Beth!
• Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
• The Liars' Club, Mary Karr
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou amazing book of poetry. practically the only one I own.
• A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith read this in junior high or elementary school thinking it was a young adult book. it's not and i think i've blocked it out.
• And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
• Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt
• The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
• The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker this reminds me of Gilmore Girls.
• The Group, Mary McCarthy
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
• The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
• The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank does the play count?
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley I once got in a disagreement over the meaning of the word sublime because of this book. I was right.
• Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag
• In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
• The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck high school again. horribly depressing.
• Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
• Three Junes, Julia Glass
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
• Sophie's Choice, William Styron
• Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
• Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford it's on my amazon wishlist. does that count?
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell read it multiple times. love it.
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
• The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera it's on my list - thanks B! - and sitting on my end table by the couch
• The Face of War, Martha Gellhorn
• My Antonia, Willa Cather
• Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez love marquez even though i haven't read this one.
• The Harsh Voice, Rebecca West
• Spending, Mary Gordon
• The Lover, Marguerite Duras
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen
• Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
• Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
• Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons seen the movie and Kate Beckinsdale has some effed up teeth in it. *shudder*
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith yep. I read it. I don't think it belongs on this list.
• Possession, A.S. Byatt I feel like I've read this but I can't put my finger on what it's about....

Review time...

Latest book read: House of Lights by Leah Cohen
Latest movie seen: The X-Files, something, something, something.

House of Lights was extraordinarily good. I don't use that word lightly (extraordinarily) either. It's not up there with "best book I ever read" kind of praise but it's definitely upper middle-class. It was so good I read it all in one sitting, which almost never happens. I started it, it got interesting, and when it was time to go to bed, I couldn't put it down. So I read on and on and on. And it made me cry, it made me laugh (not that it was a funny book), and it made me want to call my mom and listen to classical music. Oh and never marry a significantly older man, although that's another story, I'm sure. I found this book on one of the NYTimes greatest of the year lists and while I can't say it was "greatest list" worthy, as I haven't read all the books on the list, it didn't disappoint. Oh and fyi, it's about a 19 y.o. aspiring actress who contacts her estranged grandmother, who is a famous actress, to, ya know, cut through some of the red tape and what not. The grandmother is estranged because her mother doesn't talk to her, not because there's any history between the granddaughter and the grandmother.

X-Files was more than okay. I am not a fangirl or anything like that but I watched enough X-Files back in the day to like the show and hope for a better movie than the "other" one. The movie caught me off-guard with some romantic developments and while I was squealing (alone) in the audience, I kept looking around wondering if anyone else was as icked out/delighted as I was to see some of the scenes. I don't think they were. Weirdos. The movie also acted as a catalyst for a completely ridiculous fight between the bf and me re: whether X-Files was really about aliens or not. (I say not, he says yes. I'm totally right. It was about the unexplained, and sometimes that happened to be aliens but not most of the time and barely even some of the time.) If the show had been all about aliens, I probably wouldn't have watched it as much as I did. While I'm all into psychic unexplained phenomena, I'm less enthusiastic about the possibility of life outside of earth. I believe it could be and I believe there probably is other life out there, but I just. don't. care. I could not care less if there are little bacterias or amoebas out there waiting to grow up big and strong into dinosaurs or birds or pseudo-humans or whatever.

I'm off track. The movie was good and if you dig any X-Files epis at all, check it out. You won't be disappointed although you might be cold (there are a lot of snow-covered scenes in the movie). And did I mention I adore David Duchovny (Why don't you love me? - name that tune) and Amanda Peet (I know of no song that mentions her name).

Book reviews

I've read a few books lately and I have no one to talk to about them so I'm going to review them here. They were all good, so I guess it's not so much a review as a description.


Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger - this was a good chicklit book. I went to her book signing/reading and almost finished the book the same night. It was entertaining, engrossing, and I didn't feel dumber and/or lamer for having read it. What more can you ask for from chicklit?



The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
Good historical fiction. Alison Weir is a great non-fiction writer. She writes mainly British royal family non-fic but it's superb. This is her second fiction attempt and it's pretty good as well. There are a couple of sexy spots but I think that's to be expected. Because she's researched Elizabeth so much, she really brings a lot of authenticity to the work. You can read this and not feel like you're being sucked in by a sketchy basis in fact, at best, like The Other Boelyn Girl.



Eleanor of Aquitane by Alison Weir
This is a non-fiction book and if you're at all interested in Richard the Lionheart, British royal history, the Crusades, etc., you should read this book. I didn't really know who she was, to be honest, before I found her on wikipedia on one of my wild "I have to know more on this subject right now!" clicking frenzies, but I think she could be one of my new feminist icons. She's awesome. She was married to the French king, had a couple of furture queens, divorced him, married the English king, had a few more future kings and queens, planned a coup, went to prison, ruled through her sons, and all the while managed to maintain control of her own lands (most of present day France) as their pseudo-queen. And, like I said above, Alison Weir writes great non-fiction. She really keeps you engrossed in everything that's happening. It doesn't feel like non-fiction at all.



Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
I've never been huge into graphic novels mainly because I don't know that much about them and not many of my friends read them. But this one was excellent. It's brief, which I liked for my first graphic novel try, and the story, although in cartoon form, is really believable. I read it shortly after I read one of Margaret Cho's books, and they both gave me a bit of insight into the modern, Asian-American culture. If you don't read any of the others one I suggest, read this one. I found this one on the NYTimes 100 best of 2007 list.



On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
I think this is actually a novella, although I didn't count the pages or anything to be sure. I read Atonement along with the rest of America and I have to say I'm not the biggest McEwan fan. I'm not really sure why I picked this book up except that I'd read it on the NYTimes list as well. I'm glad I did. I honestly didn't think I was going to get a chance to read it before it was due back at the library, but I jumped at it on my lunch break the day it was due and finished it in an hour or so. I skipped a tiny bit (due to time) and if you read it you'll see where, but all in all, it was wonderful. I mean, it was horrible, the story, but the book was wonderful. I zoomed over to the McEwan website afterwards to see what others were saying about the book. I can't say much without giving it away but there are some subtleties in the story that are left to your imagination to determine if they actually happened. I was happy to find out I was right about most things and I learned a few more from other readers on that site. I guess it's been on several book club reading lists or something? I don't know but it's definitely one of those that leave you thinking when you put it down.

I have another stack of books I'm making my way through right now and I'm sure belabor the point and write more about them when I'm done. I'm a total spurt reader. I either read nothing or read everything I can get my hands on. Right now I'm reading - maybe it's the lack of good tv? Gossip Girl does make my brain a little numb...

On Chesil Beach

I just finished reading On Chesil Beach. (I don't know how to accentuate book names so I'm italicizing. Forgive me if I'm wrong. I feel like it should be underlined but that looks dumb.) It's a short novel by Ian McEwan (of Atonement fame). It was on the NYTimes list of 100 greatest books in 2007, so I picked it up on my last trip to the library. Of course I haven't finished reading any of the books I checked out, but when I went to renew them online I realized someone else requested OCB and I can't renew it! So it's due back Thursday. Today is Tuesday. Guess what I did over lunch? Read OCB. It's that short.

It's really quite good. I read Atonement and saw the movie but I never really got the hype. Obviously McEwan is a great writer but it wasn't really my cup of tea. There was too much of modern lit in there for me to fully appreciate it. I can't stand all the sacky, emotional, whiny crap that goes into most modern fiction. (By sacky I mean balls and their apparatus/containers.) But I really enjoyed OCB. Maybe it's because it's about sex, maybe it's because it's short, or maybe it's because it's good. I'm not sure. Either way, I highly recommend it if you're into two virgins doing it for the very first time on their wedding night, a night which ends very disastrously due to the above description.

It just goes to prove that you really should do it for the first time in high school when everything is awkward to begin with. It saves everyone a lot of trouble.

So what DO your books say about you?

This Jezebel post pointed out this NYTimes article and then there was Rana's post on books, so what is a girl to do when the universe is begging her to answer what appears to be THE question of the day: what does your taste in books say about you?

I decided to let Google take a shot at it first. I found links to what your music says about you (I've got a little Cusack to help me out with that one), what your car says about you, what your checkbook says about you (checkbooks, really? that you're old and antiquated?), what your office says about you, what your spelling, mutual fund, blog, drink, and even your ringtone says about you but book/s? Nada. As Google failed me, not for the first time, I decided to tackle the issue myself.

Let's tackle a few top 10 books, shall we? (I'm picking and choosing my top 10 books because I haven't read very many of them. I have to talk about what I know, right?)

According to the NYTimes Modern Library:

#1: Ulysses - Um, I've never read this book but I'm guessing the person who has this on their bookshelf was an English major, which probably means the bookshelf in question came from IKEA. So I'm guessing Ulysses = poor.

#2: The Great Gatsby - This one could be left over from high school so it doesn't necessarily have the same meaning as #1, although it could. I'm guessing a person who identifies with the Great Gatsby might also identify with a $30k Millionaire, no? (Not the poor part but the used-and-abused-by-society-so-I've-got-to-get-mine part.) Perhaps Fortunate Son by CCR is their favorite song?

#3: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - paging Rory Gilmore! In my own version of pop culture know-how I've only heard this book referenced once in a Gilmore Girls episode (fyi - it was the one where Rory had an affair with her married ex-bf and then left town to "summer" with her grandmother in Europe). Again, I haven't read this book but I'm guessing anyone who has this book on their bookshelf can probably do a NYTimes crossword puzzle. In ink. I try to avoid people that are obviously that much smarter than me. I can handle a good TVGuide crossword puzzle though. How 'bout them apples?

#4: Lolita - oh my. This person is either a Russian lit enthusiast, which I can totally get behind because they must be the coolest, hippest people around (ahem), or they're a pervert. Either way is probably okay.

skipping a few...

#10: The Grapes of Wrath - run away! You've quite possibly met the most boring individual on the face of the planet. Hurry and get away while you still can! Oh and to all you Steinbeck fans out there? Suck it. You're boring too.

#13: 1984 - probably just a smart, sci-fi/technology geek. Can't go wrong with a person who will watch a midnight showing of Bladerunner or The Princess Bride with you, right?

#15: To the Lighthouse - seriously? Do people actually read Virginia Woolf anymore? Surely with all the anti-depressants and therapists out there we don't actually need to wallow in another woman's depressions do we? I mean, unless she's Sylvia Plath.

I'm skipping waay down to

#45: The Sun Also Rises - because I have a serious beef with Hemingway readers. Why do you hate women so? Is it the lack of a functioning penis? Too much sun? Either way, people who lay a claim to Hemingway are self-righteous misogynists, guaranteed - even the women. There's no crime greater than girl-on-girl crime, so sayeth Mean Girls. Be prepared to fight your way, passive-agressively of course, out of that den of inequities.

#58 & #69: The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, respectively - love these people. A reverence for all things Edith Wharton is a mark of a highly intelligent, witty, and humerous person. Not to mention fabulously beautiful, I'm sure. An Austenian attention to the detail of class warfare meets the gross tragedy of a Russian novel. There can never be anything greater. Therefore the person who carries an extensive Wharton library should be your best friend. Just saying.

#76: The Prime of Miss Jean Brode - most likely this person was a drama nerd in high school. They might still be one. A "leave the drama for your mama" t-shirt or sign anywhere in the vicinity of their living quarters will confirm your worst suspicions - once a drama queen, always a drama queen.

I could go on (and I seriously question this so-called "best of" list) but I won't. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Books to add to the list?