I just finished reading We Need to Talk About Kevin about twenty minutes ago and I am completely drained by the whole thing. Shriver is an amazing writer who not only creates some very suspenseful moments and a jaw-dropping plot twist, but also manages to create a main character readers are sure to feel ambivalent about.

Never have I started and stopped a book so many times...not because it was boring or badly written, but because it was so disturbing and powerful at times I didn't think I could take it.

It will make you uneasy more times than not and the main character is often aloof and pretentious, even dislikable. But the thing about Lionel Shriver's novel is that it's100 percent mesmerizing from beginning to end. You may think you want to stop reading (I returned it unfinished to the library the first time I had it), but you won't be able to (the next day I pulled it back off the shelf and continued reading.)

It's creepy and well-written and full of  the kind of writing that puts things the way you wish you could say them.  Eva is never afraid to say what she really thinks, even if it makes her look bad. She wonders if her doubts about motherhood and having such a terrible time raising her son may be the cause of the disaster that has become her everyday life, which mostly consists of having people recognize her when she's out in public and visiting her son in prison on certain Saturdays of the month.

The Boston Globe called Shriver's novel "searing" and "brutally honest"  and it won the Orange Prize in 2005.  This suspenseful tale, written in a series of letters to her often clueless husband by a woman recounting a lifetime of events leading up to her son's murderous rampage at his high school, is hard to shake. Shriver takes "a calculated risk" (as the Wall Street Journal reviewed) "but the gamble pays off as she strikes a tone of compelling intimacy."

Once you finish this read, be ready to have it on your mind for several days after...it's that compelling and that good, but it comes with a price: that feeling in your stomach when a book sucker punches you.

...yet another heart-breaking song that sounds lovely and lush and can bring tears to your eyes if you're in a particularly vulnerable mood. A few months ago, "Around the Bend" was available for free on Amazon's MP3 download store, but even at its current price of 99 cents a pop, it's still very much worth adding to your player.


My favorite part goes:

Play the song without the rhyme scheme
Play the song without the hook in the third line
So I can forget it easily
Like I wish I could forget you


(another Eternal Sunshine of the Mind moment)



Greg Laswell sounds a lot like Chris Martin from Coldplay, but that's fine with me!:)

I often relate more to novels where the point of view is from a male's perspective.  One book in particular is Five Days Apart by Chris Binchy. So much of what the main character says I empathize with a lot. He doesn't know how to talk to people he actually likes and often ends up saying things he regrets or making things much, much worse.

He writes of spending a life "building significance into the smallest everyday interactions with women. Smiles in shops. A coincidentally turning head. Eyes meeting in a mirror or in a car stuck in traffic...These incidents were the starting points for my fantasies...Over and over I went through the same process, imagining what could have been. I would return to these happy scenarios as if they were memories."

I suppose it doesn't matter what your gender is, though, when it comes to passages like the one above. I mean isn't that kind of thinking what fuels the "missed connections" section of Craig's List??:)

missed connections

Loneliness and a deep yearning to meet someone special isn't limited to being a man or a woman. The problem is that sometimes loneliness can be so intense and yearning so painful that we see things where they don't exist. I'm not saying that the "missed connections" section of Craig's List is full of delusional and sad people. I'm not. I'm pretty sure some of those people read the right signals and are hoping, miraculously, that somehow that other lost soul will be perusing "missed connections" and catch sight of their ad.

Sometimes (I'll use myself as an example) you want to believe someone else is giving you that "I want to get to know more" look and then you happen to be in the rest room a few minutes later, look in the mirror and realize you've had spinach in your teeth ever since lunch and that's why you've been getting those looks.

Still, a girl (or guy) can always dream, right?:)

...heard this amazing and very catchy song today in American Eagle when I was shopping with my niece and her best friend. It's definitely worth the 99 cents to download it off Amazon or iTunes!!:)

"Souls for Sale" came out in 2007, but it's never been more relevant!

listen and see lyrics here

a pretty impressive website for anyone interested in 80s music or having inexplicable fits of nostalgia:)  :

in the 80s