britty books

Even I like spiders, but yikes on the huge Tegenaria Domestica, Sedaris! Photo: Dixi/Wiki

Do you think that people are willing to donate more money to a charitable cause if there is animal suffering involved?  Some may say ,”Yes!” even though they think the animals are having fun.  Look at the popularity of I Can Has Cheezburger? I just don’t get it.  A classic issue of anthropomorphism, which is to say applying human characteristics to non-human beings.  Like spiders.  Like David Sedaris in his

Gist of the Story

Sedaris writes that instead of showing human suffering on programs asking for charitable donations, i.e. tsunami disasters, we should instead show a photo of a big, fat puppy lolling about on the ground.  He says it worked in New Orleans when they showed photos of dogs being stranded on the roofs.  People sent more money!  Even Nate Burkus rescued pets during Hurricane Katrina.  Good TV.

So, in typical Sedaris fashion, he takes up a liking to the spiders in his windowsill in Normandy, France.  Okay, spiders, I thought.  Spiders are alright.  Um, these are cousins of the tarantula-type of spiders (photo shown here).  Yikes!  Anyway, when I still thought the spiders were relatively harmless, I was amused by Sedaris naming them and feeding them flies.  He loves one spider, April, so much, he takes her to Paris with him and shows her the Eiffel Tower.  How romantic!

However, flies are not as plentiful in Paris as in Normandy (who knew?!) and he returns her back to her windowsill where she scampers off and is never to be seen from again.  Sedaris is yet another person that falls victim to ANTHROPOMORPHISM <insert dramatic music and echo effect here..here…here>.

At least he didn’t start a grammatical horror of a website after the ugly things.

First Lines, Last Words

While watching TV one recent evening, I stumbled upon a nature program devoted to the subject of making nature programs.

The TV was on, the grandmother signaled from her rooftop, and I found myself wondering, with something akin to panic, if there were any spiders in her house.

Quotable

“I mean, come on,” I said, “You can’t feel sorry for everything.”

Book Rating

…is happening at the end of the book!  Stay tuned or review the book ratings chart in the meantime. Or watch some real “April in Paris” to calm you down from the spiders:

"You're acting like a crowd of kids!" says Piggy, hardly more than a kid himself.

Welcome to the Bullying Prevention book review this month!  There has been a tremendous focus on the issue of bullying in the news during the month of October, especially involving social media and the preventable death of Tyler Clementi.  If you are concerned about bullying, are a victim of or know someone that could use some strategies to cope, I recommend that you investigate J. Richard Knapp’s International Bullying Prevention monthly newsletter. Remember, bullying is not only a children’s issue.  These book reviews are a small part of this free subscription.

You’re Acting Like a Crowd of Kids…and Other Statements
That Led to Piggy’s Downfall
in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

William Golding’s first novel in 1954 was recognized as an instant classic for the social experiment within.  The main thrust of the plot is a school of English boys stranded on a deserted island when their transport plane crashes.  The only adult on board, the pilot, dies.  So, the boys (who range in ages from approximately 6 years to 14 years old) must learn to fend for themselves.

Immediately, the reader is immersed in the relationship between two of the three main characters, Ralph and a boy only known as Piggy.  The reader never does discover Piggy’s real name, as he becomes an easy target of the other’s repulsion with his asthma, his glasses and by being overweight.  Although Piggy is somewhat of an outcast within the tribe of schoolboys, he is one of the few older children and, most importantly, is council to Ralph, the voted chief of the island.

Ralph is a graceful, good-looking, self-confident type that the other boys see as a natural leader.  The only threat to this duo is Jack, a tall, lanky redhead who insists that hunting the island pigs is far more important (and much more thrilling) than keeping a signal fire going in order to be rescued.

As the novel progresses, the power shifts from the lawful use of assembly via a conch shell that denotes the speaker who has the floor, to a hodge-podge dictatorship run by a half-crazed and painted-faced Jack, with his strongman, Roger, to do his evil bidding.  Although a once banned book, Lord of the Flies is standard reading for most high school English curriculum, so it may come as no surprise to most that Piggy’s own words are his ultimate downfall in his final confrontation with Jack.

Piggy, the voice of reason and order on the island, becomes nothing more than a target to bully as the balance of power shifts to Jack.  Because of Piggy’s adult reasoning in this expanse of children, Jack feels the need to silence Piggy in order to be able to give himself and the rest of the boys completely over to the savagery in which they wish to participate.

In Piggy’s final speech, he appeals to Jack saying:

‘I got this to say.  You’re acting like a crowd of kids.’
The booing rose and died again as Piggy lifted the white, magic shell.
‘Which is better – to be a pack of painted niggers like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is?’
A great clamour rose among the savages.  Piggy shouted again.
‘Which is better – to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?’
Again the clamour and again – ‘Zup!’
Ralph shouted against the noise.‘Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?’
~page 200

Conformity is sadly still one of the sticklers of social acceptance.  Piggy never compromises his inner wisdom of things he believes to be right and wrong and therefore becomes a figurehead for the boy’s rebellion against adulthood.  Should have Piggy been less rigid, joined in the hunt and admit to Jack’s style of leadership?  Or was the downfall of Piggy inevitable?

If you have never read or studied this novel before now, I strongly encourage you to do so.  Discover in what places we, as adults, ‘go along to get along’ and when we decide to stand up against the odds for what we know is right.

A novel about the back of house goings-on in the early days of the circus just meant for us rubes.

As I mentioned the overall premise of this book to friends (it’s about the circus, generally, is what I believe I said), I got many incensed reactions and strong feelings about the circus, especially clowns.  Being a globophobe myself and an advocate of animal rights in regards to circuses, I could understand people’s distaste.  What I can’t understand is that it’s in a book….it’s not real (not really, more on that later)…enjoy it!

So I did.  I really enjoyed this book.  I even learned some new language.  Carny language!  Now I can visit the Regina Ex or the Calgary Stampede and fit right in, except maybe for the whole lack of personal hygiene part.

So here’s some new circus language for you from the book:

• a “First of May” means a rookie or a person new to the circus life
• a “Rube” is a common person or customer of the circus.  The connotation is that rubes are generally dumb and easy with their money.
• “Red-lighting” is when someone, sometimes a stowaway, was thrown off a moving train.  Usually, the people would be tossed at a crossing, or red-light, so they could find their way back to town.
• a “kinker” is a circus performer
• the “baggage stock” is a term for the work horses

There’s lots more fun with words to be had should you read this novel.  For now, let’s get to

The Gist of the Story

When we meet the main character, Jacob Jankowski, he is an old man living in a nursing home.  Frankly, I don’t have much positive to say for the nursing home chapters and I felt they were a waste of time.  So, moving on to chapter two, we are entreated to a much younger Jacob studying for his veterinarian finals at Cornell.  A crisis point: his parents are dead and destitute.  Jacob has no money or will to continue on to write his final exams and runs away.  It’s the 1920′s, so he hops a train.

Turns out, he hopped the circus train.

He makes a friend in a man named Camel, who then sets him up with various bad jobs.  Eventually, the ringmaster hears of Jacob’s schooling and installs him as the circus vet.

Jacob rooms in the performing horse part of the train with a dwarf clown named Kinko, who is quite cranky.  But, Jacob is so nice, he eventually wins him over.

Jacob also falls in love with Marlena, the horse performer, much to the angry dismay of her husband, August.  But, lucky for Jacob, nothing much happens between he and Marlena and he even seems to be befriended by August, sometimes.

All the while, the ringmaster, Al, pines for an elephant.  The show finally acquires one…but she won’t perform.  Everyone is upset because they aren’t being paid (the elephant is eating any profits).  August beats on the elephant.

Things from here dissolve into spoiler country and there is much to be spoiled.  But I won’t be the one to do it.

Even though the last chapters seem to fall apart, this is a great book overall, very exciting and thrilling.  Plus, it has an elephant – what could be better than that?

A short p.s.: read the author’s note in the back of the book describing the inspiration for Rosie, the elephant.  One of them was Topsy, sentenced to death for killing 3 men.  Methos of death?  A filmed experiment on alternating current which was performed by Edison.  Yes, that Edison.  You can watch the very grainy film here on YouTube and pray that we have come farther as a society in the humane treatment of animals.

First Lines, Last Words

Only three people were left under the red and white awning of the grease joint: Grady, me, and the fry cook.

For this old man, this is home.

Quotable

“Honey, I plan to marry you the moment the ink is dry on that death certificate.”

Book Rating

Overall rating 4.77/5

Beside the Bed 4.6 Although I’m still quite confused about what it means to be a Canadian author, I am giving this one the benefit of the doubt.  Go Canuckian book!

Sleepless for the Story 4.9 Zoomed through this in two days.

Regifting this Read 4.8 This is one of those books you can give to either a man or a woman, young, old, Canadian or not.  Very universally enjoyable.

If you are not confused about what makes a Canadian author, but how I rate these books and what those ratings mean, see my book ratings chart for further details.

Russell Wiley a unicorn leader among the horses and other great office wisdoms.

I was quite surprised this summer when Richard Hine’s publication office contacted me and kindly asked if I would care to review his forthcoming book (released today, actually).  As Richard was a Twitter friend of mine (@RichardHine or on his novel’s Facebook page), I said, “Yes!” with a resounding yarwp.  As Richard’s publication office contacted me by E-mail, I suppose they did not hear my resounding yarwp but hopefully I used enough exclamation marks to make up for the lack of intonation.

Let’s stop bragging about the authors I ‘know’ via Twitter and start bragging about their guest posts at Britty Books (Richard Hine’s can be found here, too!).  Perhaps this is too egotistical as well?

Then, let’s just get to the…

Gist of the Story

Russell Wiley is the advertising manager for a medium-sized circulation newspaper in New York.  The problem is he’s on the print end of the newspaper in an online world.  There are some amazing insights about the death of print throughout the novel, especially by Wiley’s pseudonym, Christopher Finchley.  His alter-ego writes inspirational leadership material for a magazine.  He gathers ideas from his friend’s daughter.  Hence, Look at My Poopie!: Tracing the Origins of Workplace Competitiveness to Your Early Childhood Years and other ideas about unicorns and stand-out managing.

All the while, Wiley is trying to manage a dry spell in his marriage.  A dry spell for Russell Wiley equals a countdown of days without sex for the reader.  Warning to the faint of heart, some chapters can be quite explicit, proceed at your own risk.  Beyond this, Hine manages to capture the essence of long-term relationships, married or not.

Navigating the waters of his rocky home life, Wiley manages to get through most of the novel doing little to no work.  Office life, indeed!  The reader will recognize many types of office people from the intern with too many good ideas to the consultant of whom everyone is suspicious.  Add to that a hefty dose of project acronyms and the threat of job losses and you have one of the few modern novels that captures the heart of the workplace – for better and worse. (If you happen to be a fan of The Office TV series, you will indeed love this book.)

As his marriage and career rocket toward destruction, can Russell Wiley get motivated?  You may be surprised at this ending.  I was!

First Lines, Last Words

“I’m still asleep,” says Sam.

And this time they kiss.

Quotable

You can only be trapped by unreality.

Book Rating

Overall rating 4.4/5

Beside the Bed 4.3 I’m proud to have a new author on my bedstand but I might get in trouble for some of the explicit language used from my elders.

Sleepless for the Story 4.4 Once I got into what Russell Wiley was trying to do (and get over what he wasn’t doing), it was hard to put down.

Regifting this Read 4.5 Definitely would give this to a friend, just so I can brag about ‘discovering’ this author myself.  Watch out for Richard Hine, there be talent here!

For more on my book rating system, have a look at the break-down.

When you're lost, you can't get any loster.

This is my second newsletter article/book review with Bullying Prevention by speaker and author, J. Richard Knapp.  For more information on bullying prevention or to sign up for the monthly newsletter, see his website for details. Click here to look at a review from last month on Flowers for Algernon. Happy reading!

Survival of the Cruelest: Bean’s Manipulation of Street Bullies
In Ender’s Shadow: Orson Scott Card

“So we know that a lot of kids who should get a turn can’t even get in the line, because they’re pushed out.  And if we do manage to stop the bullies and let one of the little ones in, then they get beaten up afterward.  We never see them again.  It’s ugly.”
“Survival of the fittest.”
“Of the cruelest….”  ~page 20, Ender’s Shadow

The Ender’s series of books by author Orson Scott Card may be some of the best science fiction you’ve never tried.   Ender’s Game written in 1985 zoomed to the tops of best-selling fiction lists.  This story featured a brilliant boy named Ender who goes to Battle School to save the earth from an invasion of the Formics (also known as Buggers).  Ender receives a good dose of bullying, both from his brother while on earth and from fellow Battle School students in space.  How he deals with their aggressive and manipulative behavior is at times shocking (i.e. he kills another student in self defense.) but always interesting.

Ten years after the release of Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card decided to try his hand at writing a companion novel called Ender’s Shadow that would follow another character during the same time period.  Bean is that character.  And, as with Ender, Bean has a lion’s share of bullies in his life.

Bean grows up on the streets of Rotterdam somewhere in the world’s not-to-distant future.  At four years of age his powers of observation are far superior to an average man’s.  He studies how social interaction works to people’s advantage and disadvantage.  He decides to enter into a ‘family,’ or gang, of children scavenging for food.  Quickly, he informs the current leader, Poke, that she needs to recruit an older, tougher bully to work for them and protect them.  The family, by force, coerces a lame boy named Achilles to be their ‘papa.’

Because [Poke] had picked, not just the weakest bully, the easiest to beat, but also the smartest, the one that understood how to win and hold the loyalty of others.  All Achilles had ever needed was the chance.  ~page 38, Ender’s Shadow

Under Bean’s strategic plan, Achilles flips the soup line politics on its head and smaller children are able eat instead of spending their days foraging for food.  The older bullies gather their own ‘families’ and it seems like civilization returns to the streets.  However, Achilles has a long memory and the willingness to wait.  He remembers how Bean, a four-year-old small for his age, once had power over him, a bully.  Bean knows he must escape Achilles before the bully can exact his revenge…

Both Ender’s Shadow and Ender’s Game are highly recommended reading for anyone who has ever felt small.  Although Bean and Ender both take extreme measures against their bullies; they cannot be faulted for cowering.  Is their confidence in the face of danger reckless or the smartest course of action?

Bailey and team go on a hunt for the truth barring all odds in this high-flying, wild adventure ride.

If you’ve read a little about the Bully Prevention articles I’m doing lately, then I’m sure you’ll recognize the name of this author, J.Richard Knapp.  He and I met through Twitter (if one really ‘meets’ anyone online) and quickly struck up an easy back and forth.  As a result, he sent me a signed copy of his latest book, Truth’s Lair, which he agreed I could review here on Britty Books.  He also was kind enough to grant me an author interview, which can be found here. As you can see, he’s a pretty nice fellow all around!

Gist of the Story

This story is intended for young adults and is classified as juvenile fiction.  While I’m not one to restrict at what age any young person should read any particular book, I would give a guess that both young ladies and men between 13 and 20 years of age will enjoy reading this tale.

We begin at the end of WWII with Lt. Matthew Sanders and a top secret mission to blow up some stuff.  Blowing up some stuff is always a great way to get a reader hooked!

Skipping forward to current day, we catch up with Lt. Sander’s granddaughter, just after his funeral.  It turns out as the only surviving heir, she is entitled to a lot!  Put six digits behind that five, throw in a ranch and raise the stakes with a high-tech mystery and you have yourself one adventure tale!  Bailey joins up with a team of pre-doctoral candidates all as intelligent and uniquely gifted as she and are put on a quest to discover whether or not UFO’s do exist.

The search for the truth takes the team all around the world.  At each step of the way they are plagued with doubts of a mole within the group and who, exactly, are the enemies.  With multiple factions of ‘bad guys’ chasing them, the reader is often left off-balance wondering who is behind it all.  No spoilers here, folks, but just let me say you’ll never guess who the villain turns out to be.  (It got me!).  With a little romance on the side, Truth’s Lair effectively covers all the bases of a successful adventure tale.

If you have a young adventurer in the family, give this story a wild ride.  Other comparable adult reads would include Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons. Comparable youth reads (though a bit younger) would include Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet.

First Lines, Last Words

Lieutenant Matthew Sanders sat alone at the edge of the cobblestone road with his back against a large rock, as a column of American trucks carrying supplies and soldiers drove past him into the rubble of the once, small German town.

“The land always reveals the truth,” said Bailey with a smile on her face.

Quotable

“Looks like your insurance policy just came due.”

Book Rating

Truth's Lair overall rating 4.33

4.0 Beside the Bed. Yes, I’m a little embarrassed were I to die in the middle of reading a youth novel.  Especially one where there is kissing…;)

4.8 Sleepless for the Story. Once Bailey and gang get rolling, you won’t want to stop reading.

4.2 Regifting this read. Obviously, I’m not regifting my signed copy!

4.33 Overall Rating. Curious to how book ratings work?  Check out this information.

"Murder your darlings," so says Stephen King, quoting F.S. Fitzgerald on selective editing.

Regardless if you like Stephen King or his stories, you’ll like this book.  This is the best gift for any aspiring writer out there, with perhaps the exception of Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott.  Why not get the writer in your family both?  In fact, include a copy of the current Writer’s Market and you’ll have a fan for life.

Gist of the (non-fiction) story:

This book is divided into three-ish portions:

1.  A memoir of King’s early years that reads like fiction.  Short, captivating chapters that are meant to explain his interest in writing, how it began, why it continued, the struggles, the lead up to the publication of his first novel, Carrie, etc.  For many readers of Stephen King, they are familiar with a small note in the front or back of each of his books explaining how he came to write the novel, or what his thoughts are regarding it.   He addresses each of these as a personal letter, “Dear Constant Reader.”  I, for one, sometimes enjoy his musing on his book better than the book itself.  The front of this book reads like one long letter to me, his constant reader.  (And if you don’t cringe at the eardrum needle piercing, you’re not reading hard enough.)

2.  The bones of why writing works and why it doesn’t.  Very practical advice delivered by example.  This is my fourth (maybe fifth?) time reading this book through and I find something new every single time.  This time, I ‘got’ what he is saying about being dependent upon writing classes, circles or retreats.  I felt like he bonked me upside the head, ala V-8 commercial, saying that I don’t need any more training to write; I just need to do it.  Life happens anyway.  You might as well be writing while it’s passing you by.  Thanks, Mr. King!  (Again).

3. The third section is more memoir regarding his accident. For those not in the know, Stephen King was hit by a reckless driver in 1999 and was nearly killed.  He talks about the accident and the recovery and, more importantly, how to get back to writing after suffering trauma…or simply a disruption.  Because the book was written on the heels of his recovery, readers may not find this section as relative as it was when the book was released.  But, still, relative.  (There are also some interesting side notes here:  the man driving the van overdosed and died a few years after the accident.  Coincidentally, he died on King’s birthday, something which King has noted as “something I couldn’t have dreamed up.”  Also, King’s wife, Tabitha, ended up buying the van that struck King so it wouldn’t end up on e-Bay.  Rumor has it that King took a sledgehammer to it.)

3-ish. There are two small appendices at the back.  The first is a short story and then it’s rewrite, with hash marks made where appropriate.  I must admit, I’ve never read this section through.  Skim this.  The next is a list of good books to read.  Because I’ve read of the list, I’ll agree.  They’re good.  However, as with all books, some selections may seem slightly less popular than their release.  Still, read them.

Quotable

The rest of it [this book] – and perhaps the best of it – is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

Book Rating

4.5   Beside the Bed When I’m Dead. Though it’s likely to be beside the bed when I’m actually dead because I reread it near every summer, there still is a factor of people thinking that Stephen King is a popular writer, therefore not considered a “real” writer.

4.8 Sleepless for the Story. I always zoom through this.  Especially the memoirs at the beginning.  Suckers me in every time.

4.7 Regifting this Read. I would never dream of regifting my copy, but I have gifted this read to other writers, students and wannabes.   I think it may be difficult to gift this to anyone other than that or a huge Stephen King fan, however.

4.67/5 Overall rating. To see more on how these book ratings work, see here.

This book is titled Someone Knows My Name in the United States

If there is any one book I’ve been itching to read for quite some time, this is it.  I finally got my hot, little hands on a copy I won with my public library in a summer reading program, whoot!  It’s a beautiful, trade paperback with the offset pages (which look nice on a shelf but I find terribly hard to turn).  Zoomed through this, with some incentive from my mom-in-law who said she had begun it and was already on page 70.  Of course, she won.  And now we’re both finished reading it, lets’ get to what it was about.

Gist of the Story (Spoilers Ahead)

Aminata Diallo, or Meena for short, is an 11-year old girl happy with her life in the village Bayo in Northern Africa.  She is a Muslim, learning the language for the Qu’ran from her father and how to deliver babies from her mother.  She is a cherished child.

Slave-traders capture her and kill both her mother and father.  She walks for nearly three months to get to the coast where she boards a slave vessel bound for Charles Town (Charleston).  Much of what happens on the journey is almost exactly like Amistad, the movie.  Very thrilling, tense scenes.

Once she arrives in the United States, things progress much like Roots, the book by Alex Haley (and TV mini-series with Jordi from Star Trek).  Meena’s existence is very hard but she doesn’t seem to get the extreme punishments we see portrayed in film regarding this era.  I don’t believe the book ever mentions Meena ever being whipped.  She almost seems to make her own good fortune as most people she meets are eager to help her do more in life – learn to read, discover more about her homeland, farm, survive on the farm or in the city, find work, etc.  I wouldn’t go so far to say that Meena had a good life, but it surprised me how good it was at times, considering her situation.  She stays true to her husband and has two children by him and never falls in love with another.  Her faith is a bit of a mystery, picked up and dropped and picked up again and then never really mentioned.

She travels a lot.  From Charles Town, she travels to one of the nearby islands, then back to Charles Town, then to New York, to Nova Scotia, to Sierra Leone and then finally to London where she helps William Wilburforce (see the movie Amazing Grace) gain strength to lend to the end of slavery.

The book moves along as expected, with suffering and loss, small joys and then a return to suffering and loss.  I won’t spoil those exact losses as the story is written beautifully enough to keep the reader moving forward.  This book was originally titles Someone Knows My Name and won the Canada Reads award for 2009 and the Commonwealth Prize for Best Overall Book.  So, if this review doesn’t convince you, that should.  This story moves so fast, you’ll be finished this 470 page story within a week.

First Lines, Last Words

I seem to have trouble dying.

They can wake me with the news, when they come home.

Quotable

To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own.

Book Rating

Beside the Bed When I’m Dead: 4.7

Sleepless for the Story: 4.85

Regifting this Read: 4.5.  This one only scored as low as it did because of the new title of the book.  It catches your eye…but some may find it offensive.

Overall Rating: 4.67

See my book ratings chart in title bar to see how these categories work.

Photo: Eddie~S/Wiki

Welcome to Britty Books!

If you’re here to take a peek at the bullying prevention book review for this month, please see links below:

• September: Charlie, Charlie Fat Head Barley: A Book Review on Bullying in Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon
• October: Survival of the Cruelest: Bean’s Manipulation of Street Bullies in Ender’s Shadow: Orson Scott Card
• November: You’re Acting Like a Crowd of Kids…and Other Statements that Led to Piggy’s Downfall in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
  
• December: Strategies for Thwarting, Coping and Changing Behaviours for the Better in Confessions of a Former Bully: Trudy Ludwig, Beth Adams
• January: A Bully with a Background in Gregory Macguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
  

Thanks for visiting!  Why not subscribe to my RSS feed today so we can see more of one another?

To find out more about J. Richard Knapp’s International Bullying Prevention monthly newsletter or to subscribe to it, see his website.

Do all hitchhikers get propositioned? Photo by: Lycaon/Wiki

So far, “Road Trips” is my second favourite story in this book of essays, “The Understudy” being my first. I think when I find Sedaris being remotely sincere, I tend to have more of a connection with the story, hence my love of the ones that feature his partner, Hugh.

While I don’t believe that every hitchhiker is propositioned with an invitation to sex, I’ve never hitchhiked. Apparently Sedaris has…and quite a bit. I suppose if I was telling a story about hitchhiking, I might leave out all the times I just got a ride and only include the real off-the-wall instances, as well. Or, I suppose, I’d just make them up. (Statistic: hitchhikers are more likely to be run over than assaulted.) However, I do think that there is a believable element of truth in the two instances Sedaris is talking about in this essay.

At least, being a non-hitchhiker, I can imagine this could happen.

Funny first instance: Sedaris has not come out to family yet about his homosexuality but when pressed to have oral intercourse with the driver’s wife, he awkwardly blurts himself out of the closet and is quickly dumped on the side of the road. Funny.

Even funnier, the tow-truck driver with a dent in his forehead (from a hatchet, Sedaris speculates) persisting in a conversation about sex in a most diligent way when Sedaris desperately tries to change the subject by talking about a non-existent girlfriend. I find this situation most believable because I have had experience with people who won’t let it go (not sex and not in a tow-truck but the same idea). They think they are being very subtle and crafty, bringing up the subject of conversation a million different ways, but instead it comes across as sloppy and dogged.

Funny.

But the sentimental part of the story (which is a little deeper and not as transparent and probably just my imagination) was that Sedaris was a virgin during both of these experiences and waiting for that special someone. I think that’s sentimental, isn’t it?

Maybe I’m reaching.

First Line, Last Words

“The house I grew up in is located in a subdivision, and when my family first arrived the front yards were, if not completely bare, then at least close to it.”

“The man would pull over, and I would take my place by the side of the road, a virgin with three dollars in his pocket, and his whole life ahead of him.”

Quotable

“‘Oh goodness, I can’t give him a ride.  He looks too lumpy.’”