Oh yeah, I like lemons, what else ya got?

2004-07-24 - 10:58 p.m.

Surprise, surprise--no word for the WA board yet...

So I discovered a new website, allreaders.com, which at first glance seemed really cool. It's a site devoted to book reviews. Sounds like it's just up my ally, right? Yeah, "Join the more than 1.5 million people who read our book reviews every month!" it proclaims. Except upon further inspection, I discovered that what they had weren't book reviews at all. They were book summaries. In fact, after clicking the button to submit a book review, they specifically state (in boldface and triplicate), "We want a plot summary, not a review." They don't want the things I like in my book reviews which are vague plot overviews and hearing what readers did and did not like about the book. I don't know, it just seems odd--and misleading--to me. But if you look here you will see that I did submit a "review" of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants that was accepted.

I've never really liked knowing too much about the plots of books before I read them. I always like to read the book before I see the movie, I rarely read books twice, and I often read books without even reading the stuff on the back of the cover. I hate it when I can guess what's going to happen in a book before it happens. Dumb main characters who can't figure out what's going on before I do drive me nuts. I'm that way with movies too, although to a lesser extent. When I'm watching a movie, I don't like guessing how it's going to end before it does. My dad is the opposite, at least when it comes to movies. He loves making predictions about how movies are going to end and asking me what I think is going to happen. But I hate that. Sometimes I worry about why. Do I hate making predictions because I'm too dumb to actually figure things out? Do I hate it because I'm too lazy to actually engage my brain and figure things out? Or do I hate it because I just want to enjoy the movie, surprise ending and all?

Last night, after reading in bed for a bit, I turned my light off and set my book on the edge of my mom's desk which is within reach of my bed. I guess that was dumb and careless of me because just beside my mom's desk is my mom's computer. Since my laptop is "in the shop," I have my brand-spanking new 250-gig external hard drive with my entire laptop's hard drive copied onto it plugged into my mom's computer. It's very cool, really. It's like a brain transplant. It's my laptop's brain in my mom's computer's body. The same clunky typing and being tethered to a desk, but with all the wonderful files that make my day-to-day life the exciting thing it is. Anyway, my hard drive is balanced on top of four jacks (yes, those star-shaped things from the old-fashioned game, and no, I'm not that old), to allow airflow to keep it cool, on top of my mom's computer. Anyway, if you can imagine this, there was my book, a hardback by the way, balanced somewhat precariously on the edge of my mom's desk over my hard drive, which was balanced not really that precariously but definitely not particularly securely on top of my mom's computer. So morning comes and in comes my mom to check her e-mail. Instead of tossing my book onto my bed or something, she nudges it aside. Lo and behold, gravity works--BAM!--my books hits my hard drive--CRASH!--my hard drive tumbles to the floor hitting a bookshelf en route. I was not particularly pleased by this. OK, so all seems to be just fine with my hard drive (thank goodness!), but I've learned my lesson--from now on I'm only reading paperback books!