Happy Halloween Eve dear readers. Do you have your costumes ready? Have you carved your pumpkin yet? Have you watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown? Have you eaten 1/4 of the Halloween candy already?
As I'm sure you can tell by me kicking off the Halloween posts a day early, I'm feeling very excited about Halloween because I have some totally embarrassing Halloween pictures and memories to share with you. So I hope you'll join me tomorrow dear readers, for my special Halloween blog entry.
Today's book, "In 1917 no one had ever seen a woman like the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She regally stalked the streets of Greenwich Village wearing a bustle with a flashing taillight, a brassiere made from tomato cans, or a birdcage necklace; declaimed her poems to sailors in beer halls; and enthusiastically modeled in the nude for artists such as Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, setting the city ablaze with her antics. In a beautifully written novel, Rene Steinke paints an exquisite portrait of this woman and her time - an era of cataclysmic change that witnessed brutal war, technological innovation, the rise of urban living, and an irrevocable shift in the lives of women, who, like Elsa, struggled to create their own destinies."
Shallow Halloween Eve thoughts:
- Can you see from the description why I thought this would be a really interesting book dear readers? Well, it wasn't. I cut the book some slack for the first hundred pages because I hadn't read the book description all the way through and so I didn't know that it was a novel about a real person. I thought it was a biography - and so I figured that the author really can't help it if there are parts of the story that are a tad bit boring. But, once I realized it was a novel I began to have higher standards, and then I started complaining about the same thing I complain about when I pass a tabloid that has the same cover as the last week, If you're making stuff up then there's no excuse for being that boring. If you're going to lie then at least have the decency to tell interesting lies. Is that too much to ask for dear readers?
- Today's book wasn't racy - not even by my Puritan, uptight, Midwestern standards - but it wasn't what I would call wholesome either. For instance, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the way that STDs were treated in the early 1900s. I considered turning some of the things that I had learned into fun facts, but I felt like that might be pushing the limits of good taste. Perhaps a little raciness would have improved things a bit - because as it was, I spent most of the day counting down the pages until the book was over, which is never an enjoyable way to spend the day.
- And finally, it's time for an extra shallow thought: I feel very lied about the striped cover of today's book. I see a striped book cover and I automatically think that whatever is inside must be fun, whimsical and delightful - and I just don't think an author has any business putting a boring story inside of a cover like that. It's false advertising. Am I right or am I right?
