I feel like I have been reading a lot less since I came back from Lousiana. Maybe it’s because I’m finishing up the Mayfair Witches trilogy by Anne Rice and have been immersed in nothing but flowery, gothic, weird, incestual plotlines for the last two months?

I read A Confederacy of Dunces as “homework” for my trip. I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit, it really reminded me of Youth in Revolt. Book smart, street stupid protagonist (if you can even call Ignatius that), an intelligent love interest whose motives are often questionable and everyone else existing solely to give the protagonist proof of his own (false) superiority.

The Witching Hour was my saviour when our flight was delayed, resulting in an extended layover in Houston and another night in Seattle. It’s well written tawdriness and Anne Rice’s descriptions of New Orleans are absolute perfection. She really captures the decaying beauty and southern gothic spirit of the city. There are about a billion characters in this book but luckily I love a good dynasty and I found the Mayfair family history utterly absorbing. I immediately recommended it to Jessica (that means I loved it).

Lasher verged on being a bit too “sci-fi” for my tastes. I’m really more of a ghost person than weird what evers. It was still a fast read for me though, even if I had to be Jessica’s “sponsor” for some of the more… ahem, challenging scenes. Now I’m reading Taltos and after that I think I am due for another ten year Anne Rice break.

Book-to-reads: Ka’iulani: Crown Princess of Hawai’i by Nancy Webb and Jean Francis Webb, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Sussan, Barney’s Version by Mordechai Richler (I owe it to Jordan, even if I doubt he’ll ever read MY favourite book, Kushiel’s Dart).

Whether you surreptitiously hid the cover of Flowers in the Attic in public back when it was controversial or if you’ve read enough books to know the love interest is always the brother she didn’t know existed, there’s no denying the draw of the front of a V.C. Andrews novel. In particular, the early series, with their “keyholes” revealing stepbacks of frightened looking girls and their leering adversaries, are eerily beautiful. I’ve always loved the cover of Ruby and I’m convinced it would look amazing blown up and framed on my wall (I’ve never found someone who agrees with me, but I know I could make it work).

More covers, new and old, can be found at The Complete V.C. Andrews Library.

I’ve been reading a lot lately in anticipation of my trip to New Orleans in just a few weeks! To prepare myself I printed out a few reading lists of books that take place in the city, only to discover that the Greater Victoria Public Library does not exactly have an extensive selection of Louisiana based literature.

Oh yes, I finished Ysabel. I don’t wanna talk about it. I didn’t even care in the end.

The first New Orleans book I read was The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I hope I’m not spoiling it for anyone but the “awakening” in question was sexual in nature. The best kind! I really enjoyed it and my head has been filled with all sorts of fin de siecle scenes starring handsome women in white dresses and sexy 1899 dinner parties ever since.

Next I read A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Also very sexy! I’m sensing a typical New Orleans forecast is humid with patches of sweaty sexual tension and hate-fucking.

I took a brief respite to read the first two books in The Vampire Diaries to see if they could capture my attention like they did in high school. Didn’t really live up to my expectations but they’re still better than Twilight.

I eagerly tore though Ruby by V.C. Andrews next, as this was, embarrassingly enough, the book that always made me dream of bayous and the French Quarter. Reading this book lead to a self-deprecating moment at a breakfast with friends when V.C. Andrews somehow came up in conversation and I sheepishly pulled my copy out of my bag. Needless to say, Ruby was just as great as I remembered, I learned more about what to see as a tourist in New Orleans from Ruby’s tour with her long lost wealthy Creole father than I did from all the guidebooks I’ve read. I’m debating whether I should just jump right in and read the whole Landry series.

Now I’m almost done the fourth Vampire Diaries book, cause that stuff is like candy. I’m going to start A Confederacy of Dunces next and hope I can get through most of it in the next two weeks so I can time finishing it with my plane ride on May 8th, on which I am going to read The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. Perfect plane material! Unless of course, there are some good plane movies available… maybe that one with Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler…

I was on such a good roll since the start of the year and then I got STUCK on stupid Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. For some reason I cannot get into this book. I hate how the author keeps dating the story by dropping in stupid references like when the protagonist (a 15 year old boy) “dials in some Alanis Morrisette on his ipod” or when his mom tells him to “email some jpegs” to her. Some what?! Maybe he’s really trying to ingrain that it’s the PRESENT or MODERN TIMES but it just annoys me. I still have not finished this book, I don’t even think I am half way through and it’s not a difficult read, it’s just that nothing draws me back in. SORRY YSABEL.

For some reason I thought this author wrote Tailchaser’s Song, a book I LOVED way back in the day. It was about cats and it was SCARY AS HELL. There was a warped and mutated band of cats that kidnapped normal cats to be slave diggers in their underground tunnels. The more I think about this book, the more I realise it was so, so weird. There was a female love interest cat named Hushpad and thinking on it now I realise it’s sort of like the cat name equivalent to the Glamour books that I collect, but back then I thought it was the most BEAUTIFUL name. Jessica, perhaps you would enjoy this book. You’re about the only person that comes to mind.

Oh yeah and while I was procrastinating on reading Ysabel I read the first story in “Beyond Palomar” by Gilbert Hernandez. It was really violent and sad and it made me embarrassed because I realised I really prefer reading shoujo manga, as evidenced by the way I burned through the first five Fushigi Yuugi books that I shamefully checked out of the library. Remind me why all these dudes fall in love with Miaka.

Oh yeah, before I started Ysabel I read The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt. I enjoyed this book and tore through it pretty voraciously, although it left me feeling unsatisfied. Everytime I thought the plot was going somewhere amazing, it veered off into something else. There was SO much going on in this book! When I pulled it off the shelf at the library, I assumed it was a fantasy set during the Victorian period, but it turned out to be steampunk set in a fictional country that was obviously England. What. I was really confused because I didn’t figure this out until I was a good hundred pages into the book. Also the main characters had no personality and pretty much just steered the plot around. I was interested in the world created by Hunt but he pretty much dismantled it by the end of the book and therefore I will probably not read the sequals.

March is half done!! Here’s to reading more in April! Yeesh!

One of my goals for 2010 was to read more often. Here’s how 2010 is shaping up so far plus some brief reviews in the style of Rachel:

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill – I was hoping for a seedier description of the fickle world of international modeling but instead got a book on human interaction. I find my tastes are too tawdry for “good” books like this but too picky for drugstore paperbacks. It’s a hard balance to find!!

The Collected Peanuts by Charles Schulz – As a kid I owned a tattered copy of a Peanuts Treasury, which I read multiple times. That being said, I never realised how fucking depressing this comic is. Everyone is such an asshole to Charlie Brown. That being said, look at this picture. LOL.

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey – I have spoken often about my never ending obsession with JC’s Kushiel series. Unfortunately her Mexican-border-town-dystopian-future-genetically-engineered-superhero just didn’t do it for me like her BDSM-loving-alternate-universe-French-tramp-stamped-courtesan did.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld – Growing up I had the immense pleasure of reading all of the stories my mom had written as a teenager. There were boxes and boxes of coil bound notebooks filled with stories that she had written in her formative years and my favourite were a series called “The Super Six” and their sequel, “The Nifty Nine”, about a group of prankster girls (based on my mom and her friends) attending boarding school. I had high hopes that Prep might fill my desire for a grown up Super Six but it was more about the biggest whiner ever to attend prep school. I dunno, maybe I am just spoiled by Gossip Girl and my love for the tawdry. Looks like it’s up to me to adapt The Super Six for modern times. Either way, Prep was by no means an unenjoyable book, I quite liked it, but just wished in my usual manner that it was a bit more… salacious.

Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne – Unfortunately the library only had the Michael Cera movie adaptation cover copy of this book, so it looked like I was reading a Cera biography. I really enjoyed this book. It had: big words, salacious details, hilarious pranks and was just over the top and wonderful. Believe it or not, I feel Cera was perfectly cast, though I am having a hard time envisioning a decent screen adaption. Will return with further thoughts on that one.

Now I’m reading a random library pick (The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt… I thought it was a Victorian fantasy, turns out it’s an alternate Victorian universe fantasy.) and still slogging through Fraser’s The Weaker Vessel. Will probably read Ysabel by Garth Nix or maybe next or maybe some Faulkner to get me in the mood for the Southern vacation Anja and I are planning. Mazel tov!

ALWAYS ACCEPTING SUGGESTIONS TOO

Booyah, internet! It’s January! You know what that means? It means I don’t want to leave the warm, dimly lit confines of Rockridge Manor! Every fibre of my being is fighting lately, half tells me I should be out seeing people and working on LIFE projects, the other half reminds me that there are still two seasons of “30 Rock” to be watched.

Isn’t “30 Rock” the best? Yes, I am very late to that party but oh! Banter! Wit! Being attracted to Alec Baldwin even though it feels so wrong! I want to be late to every television show party because then I have SO many wonderful things to watch. I made the mistake of starting on “True Blood” fairly early in the season and now I have to wait until next summer to see new episodes. (I was forced to sustain myself on the tasteless but nourishing pablum that is the “Southern Vampire Mysteries” series by Charlaine Harris. I think I read 15 of the things this summer.) I want to shout from the rooftops: I love good TV!!! My brother and I always are debating the merits of television. I still don’t quite comprehend why he thinks it’s such a waste of time: from what I can understand, his opinion lies somewhere between “feeding the fat cats in Hollywood” and controlling his own destiny. Alls I know is that “Teen Mom” exists and thus my own existence is a little more special.

This last weekend I was struck with an unshakable urge to join my friends for a night out on Friday in Vancouver. With the help of Denys, I showed up at Guu with Alana in tow. Jordy stared at me with a thrilled but confused expression. “How did you know where I was?!” He asked.

We went to Honey that night. They were playing Motown and Alana could barely contain herself in the line. She knew every song. By the way: BAR CULTURE. I don’t GET IT. Wait in line to get inside (watch d-bags pay the bouncer fat hunnies to get in ahead of you). Wait in line to check your coat. Wait in line to buy a drink. Wait in line to use the washroom. Thank DOG Alana is the most amazing person to dance with to Motown EVER. I had the weirdest sensation that dancing to that genre with Alana is the closest I will ever come to getting in a time machine and going to the era and dancing with the denizens of Motown in the 1960s. Al is that legit. Twisting and shouting aside, I think maybe watching youtube videos of our favourite MuchMusic Video Dance Party hits at Denys’ condo was preferable to wrastling girls in tube dresses and denim skirts and touseled Blake Lively hair for a spot at the bar. We ended the night with Jordy and I on the balcony talking about Highway 97 and Denys and Alana chatting en francais in the living room.

The next day Alana, Jordy and I attempted a shopping trip but I was burnt out after braving the Saturday Urban Outfitters crowd. After an afternoon of watching bad yet glorious cable at Alana’s, Jordy and I decided to fulfill one of our dreams and go to the huge Japanese dollar store, Daiso, in Richmond (with Darcy Tucker, of course). It was two stories of practical and kawaii every day objects and I was in HEAVEN. I had to put so much stuff away before we even got to the til. Afterward we trekked out to East Van and I ended the day chatting sleepily from the couch with Laura.

I went home on Sunday, but had to reflect on all the amazing restaurants I had tried that weekend as well. On my fourth attempt, I finally got to try Guu (Thank you Denys!), which was ridickalus. Deep fried BRIE!!!! Also finally tried La Taqueira (tasty but damn you Hernande’z, you still own my heart) and Vietsub (though I tasted those meatballs for hours) and BEARD PAPA!!! Beard Papa is a Japanese cream puff store! Can you even believe it? It got Jordy and I talking about Japan– we want to go together in the early summer this year. I think it would be the most enchanted trip ever, just me and Jordy and a million super cool things like funny uniforms in every store and tiny things to hang off my cell phone and Nomihodai. The South and Japan? That would definitely make for a happy year in traveling.

Oh yes, in order to balance out a month of TV watching, I am also trying to read more and keep a tally of what I’ve read so I can sneak an intelligent book in here or there. After an aborted attempt at “The Weaker Vessel: Women’s Lot in 17th Century England” by Antonia Fraser (okay, this one is just on pause) and “The Mists of Avalon”, so far this month I have read “Veronica” by Mary Gaitskill. Although I sought this book out because it was apparently about the seedy underbelly of the world of high fashion modeling, it was one of the 10 Best Books of the Year, as chosen by the New York Times Book Review, and it was a National Book Award finalist. Therefore, I will file this under “smart” books. I am also reading “The Collected Peanuts”, which is melancholy and clever and perhaps could be considered “smart” as well, and “Santa Olivia” by my patron saint of “dumb” books, Jacqueline Carey. JC, I worship at your feet.