Also: Books.

I'm reading V. C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic and it's hiLARious. I don't even particularly want to keep reading it and yet I find it strangely compelling. I highly recommend it, although-- I feel I should clarify this--not in the sense that it is good, or has any redeeming qualities.

I just finished Nick Hornby's Shakespeare Wrote for Money which is great but also a make-work reading project. (Note: apologies for inability to link to specific posts, the past is dumb) It's his last collection of columns for The Believer. Based on this I found six more books to add to my to-read list. Based on these three books of columns, I kind of want to be friends with Nick Hornby, although I don't like soccer/"football" so I don't know what we would talk about.

Two weeks or so ago I watched the TV miniseries version of The Mists of Avalon and it just made me want to read the book again, so I am doing so. Although it is verrrrry long and I am going to need both renewals I am entitled to to finish it, I think--especially since my recent reading has been very schizophrenic and I can't concentrate on anything.

In Vegas I read John Green's Paper Towns which was excellent, and oddly suitable for Las Vegas, although the book is set in Florida. Early in the book I was getting frustrated that the female main character is kind of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and I was getting really uptight about it, but then--without giving too much away--I came to realize that that is kind of what the book is about. Being annoyed by something and then realizing the book/movie is actually about how the thing that annoyed you is annoying, is awesome. And if you want to wait for that sentence to come around again before you get on, feel free. I'll wait.

Sub-Topic: the two types of girls that annoy Jocelyn the most in books and movies.
1. Manic Pixie Dream Girls (MPDGs). Term coined by The Onion A V Club. The worst offenders are the Kirsten Dunst character in Elizabethtown and the Rachel Bilson character in that dumb Zach Braff movie. Grrrr. I could be that effing adorable too, if I took a bunch of speed.
2. Movies in which the male protagonist has to choose between two women, and one represents responsibility and maturity and boringness, and the other is a MPGD (usually). And Girl Option A talks too much. Implication: you are always better off with the girl who doesn't talk. Well, as a girl who talks a lot, and also refuses to be Girl Option A: Go screw yourself, Hollywood. I have things to say. Sorry if that gets in the way of your boring male angst.

Of the things on this list, 2/4 are tagged "incest" on all consuming. Co-incidence?