July 2nd, 2009
In a few days, my third month of summer break will officially begin. Sadly, all I have to show for these past couple of months is that I am finally two-thirds of the way finished with my summer reading goal. After reading partway through a few novels, I finally settled on one that didn’t bore me half to death.
Love & Other Recreational Sports by John Dearie is a fiction novel told from the perspective of a thirty-five-year-old single male living alone in Manhattan. This is one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while, and to my surprise, it wasn’t totally predictable. This novel is witty, realistic, and frankly, it’s my kind of book.
From the novel, I pulled out several theories that were either reassuring or eye-opening. A few of these theories were ideas I had already come to terms with; the others were new and refreshing. But all of them I agree with, one hundred percent. Read more…
July 1st, 2009
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not the greatest at interviews. In fact, I’m pretty darn bad at them. Something about being critiqued for how I speak, how I dress, and how I act just does not appeal to me. I get nervous, my hands get shaky, and I start stammering my words. So before each interview, I search the internet for tips on what questions will be asked and how to answer them. When it comes to people like me (who can’t think on their feet), practicing my responses verbatim may be just what I need to impress my next interviewer. So here, I have constructed a little something to assist me next time I happen to score an interview. Read more…
June 26th, 2009
My attention was brought to the subject of kissing diseases when someone (who shall remain unnamed) complained about his mouth ulcer the other day. “This is why you don’t go around kissing people – you might end up with this,” he warned, as he showed me the underside of his bottom lip where an ugly canker sore had been living for over a week. Read more…
June 23rd, 2009
Fictitious Love
In third grade, I voluntarily wrote a persuasive essay begging my mother to buy me the Harry Potter book. Needless to say, I was a big nerd, a real book worm. I could sit on the couch and read for hours upon hours, stopping only to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. But now, reading has somehow lost its appeal, and I’ve decided that that’s something I want to change. So I decided that I would set a goal to read at least three books this summer. Sure, three doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’m taking baby steps here. Three books means I should finish one book for each month of my summer break. I am now almost two months into break, and so far I have read a grand total of one. A gay romance novel. And a very explicit one, at that.
So I finally forced myself to revisit the library last week and wandered into an adult fiction aisle. As I was browsing the shelves, I realized that every book that I randomly picked up was about love. And so that’s how I ended up with three romance novels sprawled about my house.
First up is a typical love story for the hopeless romantic: boy meets girl, boy immediately falls in love with girl, boy goes to great lengths to win girl over… that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far, but I can already tell that these two lovebirds are going to end up together, happily ever after. Now that’s all fine and dandy except for one thing: it’s not real. I used to buy into all this true love and destiny bullsh*t. Romance fiction authors feed us crap about how we’re going to meet our soulmates on a spontaneous plane ride one day, and we’re going to fall madly in love, and all our problems will cease to exist. I used to eat this stuff up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the thought never crossed my mind that it was all fiction, that there was no knight in shining armor waiting for me to one day buy a plane ticket in the seat right next to his.
Finally I realize why I stopped reading. The only kinds of books I ever really enjoyed reading now nauseate me. They are sickeningly sweet to the point where none of it is believable anymore. Maybe if I was young again and didn’t know what real life was like, I could allow myself to delve into this little fantasy world again. But the truth is, everything that I’ve learned these past couple of years gives me cause to believe that these stories could never possibly be real.
This leads me to my upcoming entry about love and relationships. The people who know me are probably wondering what in the world I know about love. Well, I have news for all of you: you really don’t know me that well, and I know a lot more about love than you think.
In third grade, I voluntarily wrote a persuasive essay begging my mother to buy me the Harry Potter book. Needless to say, I was a big nerd, a real book worm. I could sit on the couch and read for hours upon hours, stopping only to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. But now, reading has somehow lost its appeal, and I’ve decided that that’s something I want to change. So I decided that I would set a goal to read at least three books this summer. Sure, three doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’m taking baby steps here. Three books means I should finish one book for each month of my summer break. I am now almost two months into break, and so far I have read a grand total of one. A gay romance novel. And a very explicit one, at that.
So I finally forced myself to revisit the library last week and wandered into an adult fiction aisle. As I was browsing the shelves, I realized that every book that I randomly picked up was about love. And that, my friend, is how I ended up with three romance novels sprawled about my house.
First up is a typical love story for the hopeless romantic: boy meets girl, boy immediately falls in love with girl, boy goes to great lengths to win girl over… that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far, but I can already tell that these two lovebirds are going to end up together, happily ever after. Now that’s all fine and dandy except for one thing: it’s not real. I used to buy into all this true love and destiny bullsh*t. Romance fiction authors feed us crap about how we’re going to meet our soulmates on a spontaneous plane ride one day, and we’re going to fall madly in love, and all our problems will cease to exist. I used to eat this stuff up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the thought never crossed my mind that it was all fiction, that there was no knight in shining armor waiting for me to one day buy a plane ticket in the seat right next to his.
Finally I realize why I stopped reading. The only kinds of books I ever really enjoyed now nauseate me. They are sickeningly sweet to the point where none of it is believable anymore. Maybe if I was young again and didn’t know what real life was like, I could allow myself to delve into this little fantasy world again. But the truth is, everything that I’ve learned these past couple of years gives me cause to believe that these stories could never possibly be real.
This leads me to my theory about love and relationships. The people who know me are probably wondering what in the world I know about love. Well, I have news for all of you: you really don’t know me that well, and I know a lot more about love than you think. Read more…
