Book #42: Size 14 Is Not Fat Either by Meg Cabot

This is the second book in the Heather Wells series. After solving the murders in the first book, Heather thought they were in the clear--until one morning someone finds a cheerleader's head in a pot on the stove in the dorm kitchen. Nobody knows what happened to her or to the rest of her body--so Heather starts trying to figure it out. She gets much more over-the-top involved in this one--she goes undercover into a fraternity to investigate the guys she suspects there, she involves a student that she's befriended to help her, and she ends up in a dangerous situation in the end after she's figured out who it was. Thank goodness for her or else nobody would know who did it!

The other funny aspect of this series is Heather's obsession with her landlord and ex-boyfriend's brother, Cooper. She is totally in love with him even though she paints a picture of him as being totally unreachable and unattainable: smart, educated, hardworking, mysterious, into artsy things and not reality TV--and yet he's obviously interested in her even though she's kind of the opposite in every way. I don't know if the whole romance is totally believable to me--mainly because since we're inside Heather's head, and she sounds kind of ditzy, in a fun and friendly way, but not in a way that Cooper would really be interested in her. But oh well--it's still fun to read.

Book #41: Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot

I read basically all of the Princess Diaries series when I was in high school, and always enjoyed Cabot's easygoing and fun writing style. While I was in Utah, I found out about the Oyster reading app, and downloaded the free trial--and read all five of her mysteries with heroine/amateur sleuth Heather Wells. Size 12 Is Not Fat is the first one--and you wouldn't have any idea what the book was about from its title. Heather Wells is a washed up pop star who lost her recording contract when she gained weight and her money when her mom ran off with her agent and her savings, so she ends up getting a job as an assistant residence hall director at New York City College. I loved this backstory and persona for Heather--I thought that was a super interesting and hilarious aspect of the story. But the main plot actually had nothing to do with Heather's past--it revolved around her trying to figure out what happened to several kids who died falling down the elevator shafts in her building. It doesn't feel like she gets obnoxiously involved, but she just does her job and keeps stumbling on questions and problems--and she ends up solving the mystery and finding out who is murdering people and why--and ends up getting in serious danger at the end with the murderer as well.

Like I said, Cabot's style is so funny and easy to read, it really feels like you are in Heather Wells' head and that you get to know her specifically as you read the book. She's got insecurities about things (like her body, as you might imagine from the title) but she's also really funny and frank about them and doesn't mind admitting that she eats cream-cheese-and-bacon bagels every morning for breakfast and that she wears Spanx when she needs to.

Book #40: The One by Kiera Cass

After America's obnoxious ambivalence about her two suitors in the previous two books in this trilogy, I was ready for her to make a decision (and luckily, she HAD to, since this was the last book). However, Cass was determined to turn America into a sort of Katniss overthrowing-the-evil-government figure and got her into developing and meeting with all these rebel groups even as she's deciding (spoiler-but-not-really) that she wants to marry Maxon and take on the responsibility of being a princess. I just didn't really understand the rebel groups in the whole series--they were really terrible at what they were doing and it wasn't clear at all what they wanted. It was seriously contrived and didn't feel like a real conflict at all. I know I've said this in the last two posts about the other books in this series, but that was the main problem about these books--they would have been a lot stronger with a much more condensed plot and a lot less convoluted journey to the climax. I think the main idea behind the original book was interesting, but this money-grubbing idea to turn everything into trilogies that everyone has lately really ruined what promise it had. But in the end, America ends up with Maxon (after one final huge rebellion) and they live supposedly happy ever after. And, to be fair, I felt like Cass's writing style improved over the three books, and even though I didn't ever love how she wrote, her dialogue stopped making me want to hit her and it was much easier to get through by the end (or maybe I was just desensitized to how bad it was).

I know I'm making it sound like these books were terrible, but obviously they weren't that bad because I finished all three of them. I guess that's the thing about these love-triangle stories--even when there are lots of annoying things about them, it's hard to put them down until you know what happens.

Book #39: The Elite by Kiera Cass

I can't honestly say why I decided to read through this book. It's been over a week since I finished it and I can't remember anything about it--other than America just goes back and forth between her two love interests, Aspen and Maxon, and cannot make up her mind about which one she wants--and they both still apparently really love her and are perfectly happy waiting while she just tells them she needs more time. I really didn't buy the whole love triangle here--Aspen definitely wasn't very developed as a character and her problems with Maxon seem very contrived (he's forced to abide by the laws of his country, as the prince, and do things she disagrees with, so therefore she gets mad at him). Mainly, this book shouldn't even exist, since this series should really have just been ONE book instead of three, so there wasn't enough action to keep it going. And yet I finished!

Book #38: The Selection by Kiera Cass

I have seriously seen this book around for a year or more, and never forgotten it because of that unforgettable cover (such a beautiful dress!). But I've avoided it because after I read the blurbs about it I decided not to read it--all I kept seeing about it was that it was a cross between the Hunger Games and the Bachelor--and the main character is named America Singer. That seriously is enough to turn me off. America Singer? That is the dumbest thing I've heard in forever. But my sister-in-law Kristen persuaded me to read it, if only to make fun of it with her, and it seemed like the perfect beach read while we were hanging out at Bear Lake all week for the Leininger family reunion. So I read it, and on the one hand hated it and on the other hand really enjoyed it--enough that I did end up reading the next two in the trilogy (although it TOTALLY should not have been made into a trilogy--seriously only had enough material to be one book).

In this dystopian version of future America, a monarchy has been set up and the masses are divided into numbered castes, each caste being assigned a specific career path (the higher castes getting the better jobs and more money). The prince, in order to choose a bride, has a Queen Esther/Cinderella type lottery for all the young women in the land to submit themselves as his potential new princess. So of course America Singer, a 5 and a musician, submits herself, despite the fact she's madly in love with Aspen (seriously, these names), and she's chosen as one of the few to go to the palace and meet prince Maxon to see if she's the prince's bride. She meets Maxon and immediately goes into angry chick mode, fighting with him and somehow making him fall in love with her anyways, and they become friends despite the situation. America stays at the palace as one of the prince's favorites as the pool narrows down.

There are so many ridiculous things about this book that it's hard to describe it all at once. The thing I hated the most was how obnoxious the dialect was. Cass obviously does not know how to talk if that's how she thinks normal conversations between people go. When she meets Prince Maxon for the first time, he calls her "my dear," and she says something like, "Don't call me your dear when you're keeping me in your gilded CAGE!" Seriously? Also, the whole plotline seemed pretty far-fetched to be set in the future--sure, maybe that happened in Queen Esther's time, but a super-strict caste system and lottery for the prince in future America? And Cass's version of American history is completely hilarious--America gets so in debt to China that China invades and makes it the American State of China until people revolt and set up the monarchy of Illea. Yes, that seems very logical and believable. I really shouldn't have liked it at all, but for some reason I was driven to find out what happened between America and Maxon (because she obviously will end up with him, despite her dumb obsession with Aspen), so I kept reading the sequels despite it all. This was the best plot of the three books, but probably the worst writing of the three (she seems to get better as time goes on).

Book #37: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

I've been using a chapter from Bird by Bird for my writing classes for years now, but for some reason, it had never occurred to me that I could/should check out the whole book until a few months ago. I loved the chapter I've used in the past (titled "Shitty First Drafts," don't get mad at me, Mom) because it helps my first-year students break down their fear of writing and their worries about perfectionism; she writes in very approachable and easy language about how hard it is to write in drafts and how important it is to get rid of our goals of writing perfectly the first time. My students over seven or eight semesters have almost universally loved this essay and many of them have said it really helped them appreciate the importance of draft writing, especially knowing that such a capable and professional writer (although they don't know who she is) has to do this too. In that essay, Lamott writes very hilariously about how hard writing is and how much work it takes to get anything worthwhile out on the page, and she gives very concrete and manageable tips for new writers to try and improve their writing. And that is basically all the entire book is: lots of mini-essays dedicated to what Lamott thinks are the most important elements of learning how to write. Lamott is mostly a fiction writer--she's written five or six novels (and I don't know if I've actually read any of them) but she honed her craft writing magazine articles and you can really tell by her skill at writing here in these essays. I totally enjoyed reading this book, and if I ever get interested in writing anything seriously, this will be one of those books I will revisit to help me do that.

Book #36: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I feel stupid, but for some reason it had never occurred to me that the movie Stardust was based on a book by Neil Gaiman. I loved that movie, and thought it was so creative and fun, so when I found out it was a book I knew I had to check it out. Tristran Thorn enters the magical world of Faerie in a quest to find a fallen star for the girl he loves, and in the process of bringing back the star he had lots of adventures, meets lots of magical people, and runs into lots of danger. The movie actually follows the plot of the book pretty closely, so it was easy to keep track of what was going on--but I wonder if I wasn't familiar with the movie if I would have been confused at all with everything that went on. The book was actually surprisingly short with not all that much detail in a lot of the scenes or in describing the characters--which might be more a part of the style of fantasy writing instead of the modern fiction I'm more familiar with--although it did give a lot more backstory at the beginning than the movie does. But it was a lot of fun reading about the adventures of Tristran and Yvaine (the star), and it went very quickly. Anyone who likes the movie would enjoy reading this book.