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It Looked Different On The Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy
It Looked Different On The Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy
by Laurie Notaro
Random House Audio
Audio book from public library
[#21 in my 75 book challenge]
Laurie Notaro’s books are non-fiction and feature different essays about her life. Like David Sedaris, but for straight girls. The essays included in this volume include:
- Trying on a super-cute size M shirt and finding out that she’s really a size L
- Ambien Laurie
- Teaching her mom about urban legends in email forwards
- Getting blacklisted from the neighborhood Christmas party
- Dog bark translator
- Those aren’t chocolate stars on her husband’s pillow…
(those aren’t the titles of the essays, just the topics).
Review:
Last year I read My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler. In my review, I said I didn’t like it because it wasn’t as funny as Laurie Notaro’s books. Well, that’s how I felt about this book. Just not as funny as the old Laurie stuff.
While there were a few funny moments in this collection, I was mostly disappointed. I LOVED Notaro’s earlier books, especially The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life and Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood, but this one fell short. I think Laurie’s self-depricating, dorky, clumsy, awkward, and sometimes crude stories were funnier when she was a single twenty-something. Now that she’s married, it seems like she’s stretching the humor a bit and that she should have grown up a little bit more.
Don’t get me wrong — there are funny moments in here. It was an enjoyable, light read in the car. No pressure. If you were browsing the public library and came across it, I would certainly recommend taking it home to read or listen to. But I was glad that I just borrowed the book and didn’t pay money for it. My biggest issue was that many of the stories seemed to ramble on. I got lost while listening because I couldn’t quite grasp if I was at the climax of the story or why it kept going on and on after I thought the point had been made.
Final Grade: C Often funny, sometimes hilarious, with a dash of boring, this book didn’t live up to my expectations. I don’t regret reading it, but it was quite average and not memorable. I still love Laurie Notaro and want to be her friend, but I guess I will just go back to reading her earlier books. Of course, this is an adult book so I wouldn’t recommend it to my students. For my readers, I do recommend Notaro’s books…just not this one (or her fiction books). Start with Idiot Girls’ Action Adventure Club if you’re looking for a real funny read!
Waiter Rant
Is there going to be a book called Teacher Rant? I'd read that for sure.
Waiter Rant: Thanks for Tip — Confessions of Cynical Waiter
by Steve Dublanica, The Waiter
Ecco Press
Purchased on my Nook
[#20 in my 75 Book Challenge]
Sometimes when I’m browsing in the Nook store (which I do almost daily), I go a little crazy and just buy something because I want to read it immediately. Forget everything else on my wish list. Forget researching the title. Forget making it wait in the TBR stack to be sure. I just willy-nilly hit that “BUY NOW” button and tear into it. That’s how I ended up with Waiter Rant.
Waiter Rant comes from the website of the same name. The structure takes the narrative of Dublanica’s journey as a waiter in New York (and a waiter-blogger/waiter-writer) and frames it in individual chapters that each focus on a different aspect of his rants. There are chapters about Mother’s Day, vindictive waiter tricks, tipping, etc.
Overall, I found myself not liking The Waiter. He is certainly someone I wouldn’t be friends with. He does seem aware of his shortcomings and bad behavior, but I still can’t forgive him because he doesn’t seem to care or want to change. He does come off as very entitled, the very behavior he accuses his customers of. Much of the book is spent talking about his blog and trying to get his book deal. Authors don’t necessarily make a whole lot of money, and Dublanica still has to wait tables after he sells his book. But throughout the book I get the feeling he thinks writing the book is going to save him from his direction-less life. Oops.
That being said, I do enjoy books and blogs that give me a sneak peak into worlds that I am not a part of. I have never been a waiter, for good reason. I’d be a terrible waiter! I like reading stories like this to remind myself that my job is awesome and I’ve made good choices in life. I also gain empathy that I take with me into the real world.
Final Grade: C It didn’t change my life, but it was a fun reading experience. I zipped through it in just a few days. Folks that have been waiters might appreciate it more, but it’s worth checking out if you are intrigued. It is definitely an adult non-fiction book, so I wouldn’t put in in my library or recommend it to students. A few friends come to mind that might enjoy it, though.
And some quick questions for my readers: Have you ever been a waiter or waitress? Did you love it/hate it? What would you rant about?
It’s A Book
The cover: simple and to the point. Like the book.
It’s a Book
by Lane Smith
I don’t quite know who this book is for. It’s a picture book, for sure, and it’s marketed to kids 4-8. I think it has a certain value to kids in that age range. But I think the best audience for this little gem is adults and teenagers.
It’s the story of three animals: a monkey, a mouse, and a jackass. Monkey is reading a book and Jackass just doesn’t seem to understand what a book is. It’s not digital, it doesn’t need to be charged, and it has a whole lot of letters. Monkey is very patient with all of Jackass’s questions. At the end, Mouse gets tired of the questions and delivers the punchline: “It’s a book, Jackass”.
The use of the word “Jackass” in this case makes me question who this is for. I’m not questioning if it should be in a library — go ahead, put it in there. Sophisticated parents can explain the whole donkey/jackass thing to their kids and all will be well. But the real humor is in understanding the wordplay of using Jackass as a character. The punchline only works if the reader understands that — otherwise, it’s just a mediocre book.
I also question if kids will really get the content. They can understand the surface level joke: Jackass is confused that the book isn’t a computer. Again, the real humor comes from understanding that this is backward; people are used to seeing others confused by technology, not the lack of it. As adults we get this without much question, but kids that have grown up playing with iPods won’t see it on this level. There is also a scene where Monkey reads a passage of Treasure Island to Jackass and Jackass converts it to text speak that is particularly hilarious…but again, will readers as young as age four get the joke?
I think this book is a case of a two-layered story to the extreme. The first layer is so-so and the second layer is hilarious. Kids age 4-8 just won’t get the second layer and won’t find the first layer all that interesting. For adult readers, though, it’s quite funny and I just love it! I love all of Lane Smith’s snarky work, especially his Caldecott Honor-winning illustrations in The Stinky Cheese Man and Fairly Stupid Tales. This gem will be sitting next to it on the shelf.
And special thanks to my friend, Meredith, for giving this to me for my birthday!
Get your own pencil. Please.
*Warning: This post has little to nothing to do with books, librarian-ness, or teaching.*
This is a post about office politics. And people who steal my crap.
In the world of education, we have very little. Even when it comes to office supplies. I did, for the first time in five years, get a budget this year for office supplies. But I buy most of my supplies myself. I buy my own mechanical pencils, regular Bic pens, fancy pens, highlighters, markers, folders, notebook paper, binders, scissors, my 3-hole punch, my fancy stapler, binder clips, cute paper clips, super-sticky notes, and CD-Rs.
I don’t mind when someone asks me to borrow a pencil. Or a sheet of notebook paper. Or a sticky note. I’m not a total crazy lunatic. However, it drives me nuts when the need for my supplies is constant. Teachers in the media center send the kids back to my office, I assume with the phrase, “Go ask Miss Anderson if she’s got some.” I feel sort of like an endless office supply freebie machine. The teachers drive me nuts worse than the kids, though. With them, it’s usually asking for a pencil or a pen. They come in and lay on lines like, “oh, I was sooooo busy getting these kids down here that I forgot a pencil. Can I borrow one of yours? I promise I’ll bring it back.” Or, worse yet, they just walk in my office and take things off my desk. Because I am the librarian, and not a classroom teacher, some teachers see my space and my office as public domain and not my personal space.
Most of the time I try to be helpful. I really do. I’m in a good mood and I really don’t care about a pencil or a piece of paper. Go ahead and borrow my stapler. If people ask, I’ll help. I get a little annoyed when it’s the same person asking for the same thing every day or every week, but annoyed is a very different emotion from the “I’m going to write a blog post about this!” kind of angry I got today over an office supply request.
If you look in my desk today, I have the following: two sets of highlighters, several Sharpies, five mechanical pencils, one vis-a-vis pen, two dry erase markers, three other markers, and two nice pens (my fancy pens that cost $6 a pack). So, basically, nothing lendable. Nobody wants any of the various markers, and the other supplies are my nice pens and pencils. I’m all out of my cheap pens and pencils, but that’s my own fault because I lent them all out and 90% of things I lend out never come back.
A teacher came in and asked to borrow a pencil. This teacher asks me for things at least once a week, usually when she brings her kids down for unscheduled media center time. I told her I didn’t have any pens or pencils I could lend out. She looks at my nice pen on my desk and says, “Can I just borrow that one? I promise I’ll bring it back.” I told her it was my nice pen I don’t lend out my nice pens. She repeats, “I promise I’ll bring it back!” I stuck to my guns and told her no again. She was not happy with that response. I’m pretty sure she thought I was being a petty bitch, and she kind of made me think that I am a petty bitch for a second. I felt really bad. I almost gave her the pen.
Why I am supposed to feel guilty for telling someone no? Is there some unspoken rule that one must always lend her supplies if they are available? If I ask for something and someone says no, I tend to respect that — they have their reasons. Saying “please” does not entitle you to get something. I got angry when I realized that this teacher was trying to make me feel like a jerk for not giving away my expensive office supplies. After I told her no, she just stood there, like she was waiting for a “but” or for me to give her a plan B. Was she expecting me to say, “oh! But I can run up to the office and get you some?” or “oh! But I have this pen in my purse!”
Maybe she wanted me to offer to go to her room and grab her pens. Or offer to watch her kids while she ran to her room. Or run to Wal-Mart and buy her some new ones. Or go home and get some from my desk there.
Sometimes teaching can be a profession where we make each other feel guilty for not going above and beyond. If we aren’t going out and buying all of our children pencils and paper, we are bad teachers. If we don’t stay two hours late each day, come in early, and spend our weekends grading papers then we are bad teachers. And, apparently, if I don’t lend my nice pens to everyone who asks then I am a bad teacher-librarian. Shame on me! It is not my responsibility to keep everyone stocked in office supplies. Sometimes I say no, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Step away from the books…
Reason #1,274 why we need our library assistants: I am a failure at covering books.
My media assistant spent most of her two days with me this week processing all of the paperbacks we bought from the Scholastic Book Fair. She left a small stack of undone books on the cart, and I thought I’d give it a go and help her out by covering a few.
Bad idea.
Not only did my cover have bubbles in it, but folds and rips, too. The worst part was that I accidentally folded the sticky side of the material over the last page in the book instead of just the back cover. So now the end page is forever entombed in contact paper that won’t unstick. “Forever” meaning “until my media assistant comes back on Monday and shows me how to fix it.”
I put the rest of the books back on the cart and gave up for the day.
That's end page stuck in contact-papery goodness.
Laurie Notaro > Chelsea Handler. Sorry, kids.
Oh, Chelsea. Tsk tsk.
My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
by Chelsea Handler
[#30 in my 52 book challenge]
I bought this book because I saw it for $1.99 in the Nook Book store. I’ll just say that I’m glad I paid $1.99 for it, because that’s about all it’s worth. It was okay. $1.99 worth of okay.
So why didn’t I like it? Probably because I just don’t like Chelsea Handler. I know she can be a funny lady, but I just find her annoying. I thought the book would be like The Idiot Girl’s Action Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life and Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood by Laurie Notaro. Notaro’s books are collections of self-depricating, humorous essays about being young and dumb as an awkward 20-something. I like her stories and her style. I relate to her. Chelsea’s book was all about sex. I should have gathered that from the title (duh, Miss Anderson) but somehow I thought she would have a big more substance.
Sure, there were moments that made me laugh. Most of her experiences would make great sitcom story lines…if spread out over a whole cast of characters. I found the fact that they had all happened to her to be a bit sad. And I found Chelsea’s life to be a bit alcohol-dependent and shallow. I guess it’s just my values? I value hard work and education in addition to having fun after hours. Chelsea’s life appeared to be all about the fun and promiscuity without any of the hard work that makes a person interesting.
Not every book I read is excellent. My Horizontal Life is one of the less-than-excellent ones. What it highlights for me, though, is the reason why I do this challenge: it forces me to finish books that I might walk away from. I would have put this one down and walked away, but I followed through and read the whole thing to get my $1.99 worth. And then I felt a strong need to go back to fiction, which is why my next post will be the start of my re-reading of the Harry Potter series. Excellent!
I love you, Tina Fey!
"Totally worth it." -- Trees
Bossypants
by Tina Fey
[#26 of my 52 Book Challenge. I'm halfway!]
Bossypants is hard to catergorize as a book. It’s not a memoir, but it’s close. Not that I’ve even been able to make it through a memoir — which is how I know this isn’t one. Tina simply talks about her life, in chronological order, telling whatever she feels is necessary/interesting/people want to know.
What makes this book magical is the fact that it’s Tina Fey. I love Tina Fey. She’s my hero. She makes the sexy librarian thing cool again. And I loved her even more after learning more about how she got to where she is. Everything from her awkward childhood to her decision not to breastfeed is described with Fey’s trademark comical tone, but I also understood that she is serious. Fey is serious about battling sexism in comedy, being successful, and having it all, but she does it all while not taking herself too seriously.
I don’t know what more I can say about Bossypants other than that you should read it. The sections on “Peeing in Jars with Boys,” “30 Rock: An Experiment to Confuse Your Grandparents,” and “My Honeymoon, or a Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Either” alone make the book worth it. I learned so much about Fey that I didn’t know before, and it all made me like her even more. In fact, I spent much of yesterday watching documentaries about the Second City improv group, along with various episodes of 30 Rock and SNL that Fey mentioned directly in the book. Apparently I can’t do anything halfway (as we evidenced with my obsession with Mt. Everest media after reading High Crimes).
In my research on the book, I also happened to find this lovely review by Janeane Garofalo that you should check out. Janeane is one of my other favorite female comedians, so I enjoyed what she had to say about Fey. And now I’m off to go find a good fiction book to get into…I made a promised to quit reading non-fiction, but I obviously have not followed through on that very well. I hang my head in shame.
Favorite Picture Books #2
"It has been determined that these tales are fairly stupid and probably dangerous to your health."
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales
by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
I love this book. Obviously. Because it’s #2 on my list of favorite children’s books. I think this is mainly because Jon Scieszka is a genius and Lane Smith’s drawings are awesome.
This is not a single story, but a collection of fairy tales that have been twisted. Each story is relatively short, usually 2-4 pages. Stories include: “Little Red Running Shorts”, “Cinderumplestiltskin”, “The Really Ugly Duckling”, “The Princess and the Bowling Ball”, and “The Other Frog Prince.” Each story laughes in the face of traditional fairy tales. Some have no happy ending. Some continue throughout the book. The characters are all a little bit ridiculous and are exaggerations of many traditional fairy tale characters.
As a kid, I totally got Scieszka’s humor and I found great joy in trying to mimic it. As as adult, I loved reading Scieszka’s books with my middle school students as an extension to my units on folklore in the language arts classroom. My students have acted out the stories, written their own, and performed reader’s theater to many a Scieszka book. Besides The Stinky Cheese Man, my favorite book for the classroom is Squids Will Be Squids, a collection of fables with morals such as “He who smelt it, dealt it” and “You should always tell the truth, but if your mom is out having the hair taken off her lip, you might want to forget a few of the details.” The word play and sarcasm are laugh-out-loud funny. Other favorite of mine by Scieszka include The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (alternate point of view) and The Frog Prince, Continued.
I don’t actually own many children’s books, including most of the ones on this list (they exist at my mom’s house, I guess, but not on my personal bookshelf). However, I do own four Scieszka books, including The Stinky Cheese Man. That should tell you right there that it’s one of my favorites.
Twitterature
This is not exactly a typical book review, because I didn’t read the entire book cover to cover. However, I do feel the need to share this gem with you. Twitterature, by Alexander Aciman and Emmett L. Rensin, retells classic stories of literature in 20 tweets or less. The authors have not only condensed the stories, but also modernized them. And they are hilarious!
LOL.
I only read the tweets for stories I have actually read, since the others made very little sense. The humor was over my head if I didn’t know the plot of the actual story. So I read the tweets for the following stories: Catcher in the Rye, The DaVinci Code, Oedipus the King, Harry Potter, Macbeth, The Great Gatsby, The Iliad, Hamlet, Ender’s Game, Heart of Darkness, King Lear, Lysistrata, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Sound in the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Aeneid, Jane Eyre, Twilight, Moby Dick, The Canterbury Tales, and (oddly enough) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Most of the tweets made me LOL. However, some missed the mark because they didn’t actually sound like the characters speaking in the story — they sounded more like over-analyzing English majors speaking for them. All the characters ended up sounding like teenage girls in this fit of satire, which was fabulous! Overall it is definitely a book I would buy to place on my shelf. I loved it.
Here are a few of my favorites:
DaVinci Code: Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles all day long.
Harry Potter: No! Voldemort is trying to wreck my shit up AGAIN!! I am TIRED of these MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING CASTLE!
The Illiad: PATROCLUS!!!! This is BULLSHIT, my…cousin is dead and I am SO ANGRY. I JUST FEEL LIKE DESECRATING A TEMPLE.
Ender’s Game: Has anyone ever committed genocide by accident? Long story short: there goes my sanity. Finally. Thanks, military-industrial complex.
The Aeneid: @Dido: Hey girl, yeah, you my world baby, yeah girl I love you, but I have a city to found and Juno says to get moving. Duty before hos.
