How to Build a Girl: In Which We Should All Be Kind... Later

It's 2:17am PST on Monday morning and there are 2962 people ahead of me in the internet queue to buy tickets to see Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet next fall. Not coincidentally, 2962 is the number of people I currently hate. It's up substantially from an hour ago but down from 10 minutes ago, when the number was 3045.

I really like sleep, so this evening before bed I was having second thoughts about this plan to rise at 1:55, buy tickets, and fall back into bed. I texted Megs to make sure I wasn't being crazy:

In the end, this was a sound plan.

Anyway, let's talk about other British Things We Love, shall we? Like Caitlin Moran and her delightful novel - which you can pre-order here! - wherein we spend most of this section learning about Johanna's deflowering, her adorable relationship with Krissi, and that Caitlin proooobably suffers from cystitis much like her heroine.

In time-honored teenaged tradition, Johanna amplifies her sex life before it's an actual Sex Life. But for her, once she actually has sex - a thing that is actually at issue as to when that happens because apparently I am not up on my British slang for making out and doing it (not ONCE has the word "snog" been used) - she is ready to do it all the time, forever and always. A sensible biological impulse, I suppose, but one that clearly amuses all of the adults in the room.

(This post is taking forever. It turns out that I have the focus of a particularly manic squirrel on crack at 3:01am, and there are still 2315 people on my I Hate You All list.)

Johanna's attempts to learn more about sex are hilariously true and so, so cringe-worthy. In the days before Internet porn, brought up in a strictly religious household in a small town with one high school, I learned about sex by piecemeal.  I built my own dubious library of knowledge based on Jean Auel and Jilly Cooper, with a fair bit of VC Andrews and Danielle Steele thrown in. Needless to say, reality did not match my imagination the first few times around. Perhaps if I'd had this book, I might have been better prepared for the "wait, what are you doing? Does that go there? Am I supposed to cuddle you now? Is it normal for you to fall asleep so qui-... okay I'm going to just lay here then. Can I reach my book?" realities of the relations between men and women.

Please remember it's 3:45am and there are still 1564 people I hate.

You can order this book here from Odyssey Books, employer of the fabulous and ever-patient-with-me  Emily Crowe, who is our hostess!


EDIT: 5:15am - I no longer hate anyone and am now in possession of an email that says I have tickets. Feeling pretty damned smug right about now.

How to Build a Girl - In Which We Do Not Have Nits

Last week I had a case of the Serious Mean Reds and couldn't function beyond Work/Come Home and Watch Merlin - a show which has managed to keep my attention despite 1) the use of the words "okay" and "wotcha" in Camelot, 2) the costumers use of zippers and bare shoulders, and 3) the writers completely ignoring Actual Pre-Medieval Behavior Guidelines whenever it suits them.

So this week I owe you two posts, and two posts you shall have!

Okay but for serious, first you need to pre-order this book because it is amazing. And then go thank Emily for the GIF-Fest that this readalong has become.

We begin with Johanna on a plane for the first time, and this whole sequence is adorable. She recognizes a thing that never fails to surprise me, too: it's always sunny above the clouds. This is the kind of "every cloud has a silver lining" cliche that should make me crazy, but doesn't because it's true. Awwww.

And then she falls in Teenaged Love with a Celebrity, which is surely the worst kind of love ever and paradoxically doesn't only happen to teenagers, as evidenced by the Victorian-lass-worthy swooning I did earlier this year over a person I will never, ever meet in real life (probably for the best...). Anyway. Back to Johanna, who is at least of a proper age for this kind of thing.

This book is mostly hilarious "oh god, I remember that bit of being a teenager...::cringe::", but it's peppered with heartbreaking moments that feel familiar and... not... all at once. Johanna carefully brings her father a glass of Guinness from Ireland - one of those pre-2001 things that will absolutely confuse younger readers - and his reaction is merely, "Christ, that's flat." Christ, I would like to flatten YOU, sir. Do you not see the gesture she is trying to make? The approval she is trying to win? That she lost her father the day he fell off that building, and now she's lost her mother to post-partum depression and she's struggling in a family raised by ghosts and being a teenager is just. so. awful. already you are making it worse and giving me italics?

I slap you! 

And then, everything that Johanna feared comes to pass. Her father's benefits are being reduced, and... oh my heart. Oh, Johanna. This cannot be your fault. Caitlin couches her extremely pointed, very cogent remarks about poverty behind an extra layer of novelization - John Kite's remarks in a magazine article - but they are powerful, nonetheless. And how will Lupin ever discover who killed Laura Palmer? Spoiler: he won't. But neither will we, so you dodged that one, kid.

And now, Johanna, we need to have a sit-down discussion about your Drink of Choice. Don't worry, it'll be quick:

Class dismissed.

How you made it onto your train after a bottle of MD 20/20, five gins, and whatever else came afterward will be a matter of cognitive dissonance forever more. Was it one of those magical nights when you can drink everything in sight and not get shitfaced? Because I've had those. They're fantastic and you can't plan them or trust that they'll ever happen again. The one thing you can trust is that they will assuredly not be those nights in your 30s and you've waited for 3 months for all of your friends with babies to have babysitters on the same night and you finally get together. Nope.

How to Build a Girl: In Which We All Wanted to be Dolly Wilde

Aaaaaand we're off! Not in quite the same way as the first section - AHEM - but moving along plot-wise. Get your minds out of the hairbrush and deodorant-filled gutter.

SO! Johanna Morrigan is dead, long live Dolly Wilde! Let us pause for a moment and fondly recall 1992, when we were in our early teens and the third wave of feminism was - I say in retrospect - just getting off the ground. Grrrrls were rioting, grunge was happening, and my mother was Distinctly Unhappy with the amount of Angry Lady Singers caterwauling from my bedroom. It was an abrupt shift from the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers & Hammerstein that were previously issuing from the CD boombox I got for my birthday. I had just begged for my first set of pointe shoes and was fantasizing about choreographing a full ballet to Little Earthquakes.

What I'm trying to say is that it's hard for me to stop relating for long enough to have a coherent thought about this book.

I have maybe a lot of feelings about 1992.

I love Johanna and her Dolly Wilde persona. I love how she likes music whose creators she could probably take in a fight, her vulnerable relationship with her father, and her initial terror and then love of a mosh pit. I love that she thinks Smashing Pumpkins are too mopey. I laughed hysterically at her opinion of band security, having talked myself backstage a few times and thought the same thing.

So, in conclusion,

and if you're beginning to feel the same way too, you can pre-order it right here from Odyssey Books, which is where our lovely host Emily works! Thanks for putting this shindig together, madam!

I luf you.

How to Build a Girl: In Which it Takes 28 Words

Remember last week when we didn't know about Johanna's preferred masturbatory equipment?

It was a tenser, yet simpler time.

Actually, Johanna's self-exploration is something I'm a little envious of. I grew up in a very religious household and believed with every fiber and nerve ending of my being that Jesus was watching me all the time, so needless to say I didn't discover the finer points of - well, anything really - until after I left home.

But with that one exception, Johanna is speaking my language. She lives in a world where most of her information is gathered from books. She researches things like Spiritual Midwifery. She is pragmatic and hopelessly naive and mixed up and more than a little in love with Gilbert Blythe. 

You can start by removing that shirt...

And woven in between those moments of hilarious contradiction that is a byword for adolescence, there are moments of gut-piercing truth about the pressures of growing up in an unstable home: 

In later years, I can always recognize someone else who received this shot of fear at an early age... Children raised on cortisol. Children who think too fast. (41)

That is all I have to say publicly about that. 

Because I've read the back of the book, I know that this is all leading up to Johanna's transformation into the Self that she thinks she wants to be. And because she is an odd bird, I am very much looking forward to seeing what that Self is. 

You should most definitely preorder this book from this handy link right here! Thanks to Emily for hosting this online shindig - once we meet up in the Caribbean, 

How to Build A Girl: In Which We Introduce Ourselves

Sup?

There's an embarrassing amount of internet dust on this blog. I haven't posted since Bleak House; how did THAT happen?!? I don't know what to say about The Goldfinch and Frog Music, you guys. And I read along with Lady Audley's Secret (mostly), but I just... didn't post.

Well, if there's any book that can make me want to blog again, it'll be the new one by Caitlin Moran that you can preorder from Odyssey Books right here. And huge thanks to Emily for hosting this online shindig!

I wanted those Docs so bad when I was in high school.

I've written about Caitlin on this blog before. In fact, I bought How to Be A Woman new with actual dollars at full price and not bookstore credit because I liked it and her and her Twitter feed that much. Her writing makes me want to stand up on the train where all the Silicon Valley techies are dicking around with Snapchat on their phones and say, "THIS is what feminism is! Sister Suffragette, I support you! ALAS FOR MRS. PANKHURST HAS BEEN CLAPPED IN IRONS AGAIN!" 

and then I would read sections of it out loud - or declaim it from memory - until they're all laughing and have also learned something, just like on Sesame Street but with feminism and wanking. 

ANYWAY. A bit about me to begin: 

- By day and sometimes by night I'm an executive assistant at a Silicon Valley start-up you've never heard of because we do investment banking... stuff. Bankers need startups too. Apparently.

- I like books and read them a lot. I like knitting and spinning and I do those things a lot too. I have serious opinions about the State of Handcrafts in this Country.

- Feminism, man, I swear to god. The more I think about it, the more I want to be independently wealthy so I can become a modern-day Alice Paul. She probably knitted, right? 

Okay, Cat-lin. Here we go. 

Harry Potter HFriday - Part the ENDENING

Alice pointed out that since we've been doing this for six months, we've nearly all found one another on gchat, Facebook, Instagram, and other corners of the internet that are not our book bloggy homes, so the end of the readalong isn't as sad as it could be.

[Side bar: seriously, Chrome? after six months you still don't believe "readalong" is a word? Don't make me come over there. (this is funny because my office is within walking distance of Google so I could. And I just might.)]

I'm saving all most of the GIFs I didn't use for the FUTURE when they will come in handy especially when I read a YA book that's not as good as HP (so any of them) and my reaction is largely

And then we can all be like, "remember when we did that readalong and it proved how clever we all are? That was a fun half-year."

I feel like bullet points are especially appropriate in this, our final group post (for now). In the last six months, I have:

• discovered that JK Rowling is crap at math, but super-duper excellent at characterization and the Long Game. 
• discussed and calculated at length the number of students at Hogwarts and whether Hogwarts is the only or just the best wizarding school in England (signs point to only, according to a line in HP7). 
• perused the Ravenclaw gear at Pottermore and wished for more subtle stuff, only to decide later that what my life is truly missing is a Ravenclaw couch throw - which is decidedly UNSUBTLE
• Spent an INORDINATE amount of time looking at Daniel Radcliffe's quite pretty self: 

I can't tell if I'm uncomfortable or just impressed.

Artists wear black and take monochromatic portraits. And do Equus.

So, this whole thing has been HUGELY entertaining, I'm so glad we took this trip together, and I'd like to suggest another Mini Readathon in July - maybe Saturday the 20th or 27th? 

I came across this image about halfway through the readalong (seriously, Chrome, keep up!) and it chokes me up every. single. time. Thanks for reminding me how it feels to be a part of a fandom, you guys. 

Harry Potter HFriday - Part the Battle then Battle Some More

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: that epilogue is pretty awful, what with the side-eyes between Harry and Draco and the everyone-having-a-zillion-kids. I read it once (and once will dooooo), so I’m ignoring it this time around.

That's right, JK, I said NO.

When Amycus spits at McGonagall and Harry is like, ::whips off cloak:: “you shouldn’t have done that!” and McGonagall is all, “Harry! Don’t be so gallant!” and then he’s like, “He SPIT at you!” NICE JOB, HARRY. Because like hell you spit at McGonagall and get away with it. Like. hell.

Exactly.

There are so many gorgeous parallels in this part of the book. Like when, Ron freaks out about needing to get past the Whomping Willow and Hermione is all, “Are you a wizard or what?" Turnabout: it's fair play, Weasley. And in Snape's memories where he's on the train with Lily, and James says, "I think if I were in Slytherin, I'd go home, wouldn't you?" Which, we've heard someone say something like that before... ::glares at Draco:: So basically Snape is Harry's foil, not Voldemort, who is just a regular ol' fashioned enemy, and James is Draco's foil. Ouch my brain.

At some point JK gives in to herself and actually lets someone talk about what a long game someone has been playing (I ran out of paper flags before this point so no quote for you!), and to that I say, well played indeed, Lady Jo. 

I don't really have a transition here, so now we come to all the SADS that hit me right in my solar plexus:

OMG

Snape telling Harry to look at him while he dies... because of Lily's eyes... those eyes that never saw him, never knew he longed to hold her close, to live at last, in Lilllllyyyyyy's eeeeeyes...

There are fresh tearstains next to the 2007 ones at the part where Percy comes back and Fred is the one to forgive him - but MORE this time because I knew what was coming and that made it WORSE (tbh I cried every time Fred showed up in this book), and then they’re joking – Percy! Joking! – and then… the world blows apart. Don’t try to tell me JK didn’t mean that figuratively as well as literally; she definitely did because she will kill what we love.

The line about the three homeless boys who made Hogwarts their home hurts a bit, doesn't it?

And Bellatrix’s laugh is like Sirius’s because they are cousins and sometimes families have weird little things in common including the way they die. 

Let’s talk about mothers in these books, SHALL WE?

That’s pretty much it, really. The mothers are all BAMFs.

AND SO WE COME TO THE END.  I am clinging to next week as the Last Week because I'm not ready yet.

11 out of 11 Blibbering Humdingers*


*I really hope someone else is going to cover Luna and the Malfoy's family structure, because they DESERVE IT.

Harry Potter HFriday -Part the Penultimate

And we’re back after the excitement that SOME of us enjoyed at BEA, and the excitement that the REST of us shared in the privacy of our own homes, far away from the City that Smells Like the Subway. And despite two whole weeks between posts, I still couldn’t bring myself to read this week’s chapters until last night because every time I cracked this book open and saw Xenophilius's name, it made me want to 

I KNOW he just loves his daughter. SIGH.

And then I cried - before I even started reading whoamIevenanymore - because despite all of our declarations about how fun this readalong would be and how much we were looking forward to the nostalgia of yesteryear and getting our veritable Hogwarts letters in January, it turns out this readalong is really all about crying ahead of time now that we are older and wiser and know what’s going to happen.

But before we get into that, let’s take a moment to make fun of Megs, who chastised us last week for moaning about how the camping, it is so long, and yet it only lasted a little while! Well, it DID, in last week’s chapters. But then they camp some more, for LO!, these MANY MONTHS, because Ron comes back around New Years and then suddenly it is MARCH. There is a point at which “camping” becomes “just living in the woods,” and you have crossed that point, Miss Jo. These kids have been out in the elements since school started in September!

That is a long-ass time to be sleeping in a tent, you guys.

Then Dobby shows up in the cellar and I started sniffling a little even though he kind of makes me crazy in the entire rest of the series. And then stupid BELLATRIX and her desire for Lord Voldemort’s wand, if you know what I’m saying – which I know you do because we’re all dirty birds over here – with her stupid knife and at this point I’ve forgotten whose actual wand is whose, but apparently Harry has a pocketful of them (and his homies do too).

Laid back.

Harry digs the grave himself and it's very contemplative and at one moment he thinks, "am I meant to know but not to seek?" and that is some mythic hero shit right there. And then he carves the letters into Dobby's headstone (it goes over where his head goes, get it??) and I think, oh, that's where those little wrinkly stains on this page came from. They are the ghosts of tears from 2007.

They bungle the stealing-from-Gringott's thing beautifully, don't they? And the apparate to Hogsmeade like idiots. It's almost like they're teenagers. Then there's Aberforth, at whom we have been sniggering this whole time and he turns out to have a secret pain and UGH that is just the worst way to make me feel guilty, JK.

The whose-wand-is-whose thing is always a little weird to me – I mean, if your wand is made of birch and mine is black walnut, then obviously I’m not going to mistake yours for mine. But would I mistake yours for someone else’s light-colored wand? Probably, because who pays that much attention to someone else's wand? And speaking of wands, I’m pretty sure I’d study wandlore if I were a witch. It’s so hazy and mysterious and somehow scholarly but also it would appeal to my inner Goth, who EXISTS, dammit! I was cool in the 90’s!

I was not cool in the 90's.

Harry Potter HFriday - Post the And We're Walking

I know we've been going back and forth and back again about JK's terrible math skills, but I think we can take a moment to note that THIS is the section where all the backwards math goes to hell. If JK hadn't put James and Lily's DOB in the book, or STRONGLY IMPLIED that Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in England (p.210), everything would have been

Hello, sweetie...

And we'd have all been able to discuss without throwing up our hands and calling JK a maths idiot. BUT NO, she had to be clever. At least we can all bask in the knowledge that there are Potternerds out there who put us all to shame - or rather, did the math so we don't have to. Bless them for allowing us to maintain our polite fiction of normalcy.

SO in this section Ron gets pissed (that's angry, not drunk, British and Australian friends - although that might have helped?) and leaves

And then... follows them? With the magic of the deus ex machina Deluminator? REASONS! And then Harry and Hermione camp for an INTERMINABLE length of time, which is like my own personal hell and 100% of the reason I never finished the LOTR books. Well, that and the really poor editing.

Bullet points! Or rather, quotes and discussion because I took too. many. lit. classes.

"He did it instinctively, without any sort of plan, because he hated the sight of her walking alone into the dungeon: As the door began to swing closed, he slipped into the courtroom behind her." 

This is who Harry is on the inside, why he's a Gryffindor, and why he's The Boy Who Lived. Of course, that all happens when he's not being THIS DOUCHEBAG:

"But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry to do." 

UGH HARRY. Why do you have to be so seventeen? (p.s. - props to my Mac for recognizing Dumbledore as a real word. Life imitating art, etc. etc.)

"The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years' worth of magical graffitti, all said similar things."

And that, friends, is when Tika broke down and ugly-cried so hard she scared her cat out of the bedroom.

"He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Gridelwald than he ever shared with me."

This ship is in the bag.
I'M NOT SORRY.

Ron is back! Saving Harry from his own stupidity, which was a nice touch.

"She stopped right in front of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide. Ron gave a weak, hopeful smile and half raised his arms." 

AGGGH JUST KIIIISSSSSSSS! But no. JK has learned restraint, to everyone's RAGING DISMAY.

*grumble*

Also, you guys? The HP 7+8 gifs? THE SADDEST. Do not want.

Harry Potter HFriday - Post the It's All Downhill from Here

FIRST, has anyone mentioned yet that Saint Hedwig is the patron saint of orphans? Someone had to have, but I missed it, so I flailed a little a lot when I read it JUST TODAY.

*weeeeeeeeeep*

NEXT:

Rest in peace, Old Battleaxe. You earned it. 

I'mma just be over here in my chair.

I am starting to get seriously upset that this readalong is ending. I love how we all let one another drift in and out (ahem: me, mostly) and don't worry, how Alice managed to pick the exact right amount of chapters so we can do this reading and other recreational reading on the side, and how we argue and discuss and roll our eyes at each other every once in awhile but have also forged what I, at least, consider to be some pretty badass friendships.

I never actually watched this show, but the GIFs are pretty good.

Also, Australian Kayleigh, I'm going to need you to get me a koala to live outside my house, please. Thanks.

SPEAKING OF FRIENDS, which we were, Dudley brought Harry tea and was trying to make him feel betterrrrr! And it's totes not Harry's fault that he misread Dudley's extremely subtle hints (I say, as an Extremely Subtle Hint Leaver myself...), but maybe there's hope for Dear Diddykins after all.

"Harry had spent the morning completely emptying out his school trunk for the first time since he had packed it six years ago." 

This has to be a boy thing. I mean, it could also be a Plot Point Thing for the Purpose of Reminding Us What Has Come Before [as if anyone would just pick up book 7 out of the blue - there's not even a book flap blurb! (which I liked a lot, nice job JK)] but I have six brothers and I am here to tell you: boys are disgusting.

"I've also modified my parents' memories so that they're convinced they're called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they have now done." 

DAMN, girl. That is badass and so sad. I don't know that I'd have the cojones to do that if it were my parents.

Ron on the Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches:

"You'd be surprised, it's not all about wandwork, either."

Keep telling yourself that, Roonil Wazlib.

Hey, did you notice that Arthur's patronus is a weasel? Because I did ::coughTHISTIMEcough::

Will Hagrid's gift of a bag no one but the put-inner (soon to be named the De-outer) can take things out of come in handy further down the Plot Road?

Luna's dad believes one should wear sun-colored robes to a wedding for luck. How charming is that? I might make my life imitate art at more weddings if I didn't look like a corpse in yellow.

"Vot," he said, draining his goblet and getting to his feet again, "is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?"

Oh Viktor, you are a gentleman. I've met a fair number of internationally famous people, and not one of them cared if the women they hit on were taken. My hat is off to you, sir.

Lastly before we move on to the genre-required endless walking portion of the program:

"Harry felt sickened by what he had seen, by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort."