the fatling

This one is for OJ.

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:17:42 -0800

This one is for OJ.

75 Days of Fatling

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:18:00 -0700

All right, chickens! This shit is back on! I started the Beck book in earnest yesterday and elided the first two days of tasks, so today is technically Day 3—Learn to eat sitting down. I have very little issue with eating sitting down, but eating at the table, not in front of the television, is a huge challenge.

Days 1 and 2 are writing my Advantages Response Card and choosing my diet plan—creating an index card with all the reasons I want to lose weight, and itemizing my ideal food intake based on the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate, which is a more functional version of the food pyramid. I’ll also be counting calories, not to exceed 1200 calories per day.

I am definitely feeling a little more optimistic about this whole shindig. I’ve downloaded some handy and fun-looking apps to help me keep things in hand. I’ve been using Libra to track my weight daily, and will likely continue to do so. At the suggestion of Adoring Husband, I just got RunKeeper, which will allow me to track my runs and other exercise. And I also downloaded a calorie counter, which will hopefully take some of the difficulty out of calorie tracking and meal planning. I’m not totally up to speed on the functionality of all these yet or if there’s any overlap, but I am sure I’ll figure everything out as I go along.

This morning, I remembered how good it feels to exercise self-control. It’s difficult, especially since I’ve been riding the other end of the spectrum into the ground for the past few weeks, even as I’ve been officially doing this “90 Days” business. I remembered how good it is to follow the Beck solution, how much placing reminders about my goal throughout my day helps me to focus and stay on target.

Speaking of which, given the two weeks I essentially lost, it seems unlikely that I’ll achieve my 30 pound weight-loss goal in the time still left, so my long term goal will be knocked down to 25 pounds. If I want to drop the additional 5 after I get to the last day, it will be incentive not to go hog wild over the holidays.

So, yeah, that’s where we’re at today!

Bonus: I was inspired to write this post after reading this article on Cracked.com, which actually makes me feel way better about how difficult I find changing my habits and provides some things to watch out for on the rest of this journey.

76 Days of Fatling

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:28:13 -0700

So, clearly, I underestimated how dedicated I am to this here “90 Days of Fatling” plan.

I totally ignored updating this blog, and also completely ignored my desire to lose weight. The good news is that I haven’t particularly gained a lot of weight (although I am retaining a lot right now, most likely due to the ungodly amount of sodium I imbibed over the weekend), but the bad news is that I haven’t lost weight/implemented any life changes, either.

Instead, I’ve doubled down on eating huge portions of delicious food and going back to drinking beer a lot. It hasn’t made me particularly happy or healthy, and it certainly hasn’t made me feel like writing about this journey.

That’s really too bad, because I had this amazing, life-changing experience the weekend before last when I saw The Master. In that film, women with “real” bodies were featured in the nude—not airbrushed, not sitting passively, but walking around, dancing, clapping, fucking—and I felt like this enormous weight lifted from my back, chest, whatever. Somehow, for the first time since I decided I was “fat,
I felt like I just might be okay, just the way I am.

And frankly, why shouldn’t I be okay? I have a great job, I have a wonderful Adoring Husband, I have a terrific apartment, I have lots of sex, I have a group of friends who love and support me, and literally the only thing I don’t like about myself is that I’m packing a little more square footage than I’d like. Even my acne has gotten way more manageable since I realized that even the gentlest of exfoliating face washes was clogging my pores. I am thisclose to being everything I always wanted to be, and if I could just let go of my obsession about my weight/size, I would already be everything I always wanted to be!

But as usual, my confidence dissipated after a few days as I continued to not exercise, to not plan my meals, to not monitor my alcohol/cigarette intake. Finally, finally yesterday, I picked up The Beck Diet Solution in an attempt to funnel the chaos of my diet into something productive. As usual, I found myself throwing up mental blocks, wanting to believe that I don’t have to change my behavior to yield different results. But as I worked my way through the early chapters, I remembered how proud of myself I was when I was doing the program, how good it felt to get all the way down to 146 pounds (nevermind that I shot right back to 155 within a month or so), and how good it still feels that I’ve kept my weight under 160. I wanted to try again, really try this time!

Fast forward to this morning, when I went to work with only the vaguest of plans w/r/t my food for the day. This resulted in eating a cup of applesauce, two bags of BBQ Baked Lay’s, a bag of pretzels, and two fun-size Milky Way bars. I feel like shit, and I have zero desire to eat the protein bar that’s been languishing in my purse for a couple days. I’m not happy about all this, but it’s reminded me again of how vital it is for me to plan my meals, even if I’m not trying to lose weight.

So when I get home today, I’ll continue re-reading the Beck book and count tomorrow as “Day 1” of the program. I’ll try to be more aware of what I’m eating, and remember that my reasons for wanting to be healthier, lighter, and fitter are just as valid when I am sticking to my diet as when they’re not.

88 Days of Fatling

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:32:01 -0700

Oy. This is hard, everyone! I ran out of time to blog yesterday, and I haven’t had time to even begin getting back on the Beck Diet Solution bandwagon.

Remember how I was all worried that I’d have some miraculous weight loss right after I stopped drinking? Yeah, that didn’t happen (yes, I know it’s only been two days. I’m a child of the 90s. I expect immediate gratification!) On the plus side, I haven’t had a drink or a cigarette for two days. On the down side, yesterday I ate a bunch of unplanned stuff and had some candy, a Sprite, and almost an entire sleeve of saltines (I am so addicted to saltines. The ones I had are actually from our emergency earthquake kit, so it’s really going to suck when the big one hits and I’m craving saltines. I even bought shitty, off-brand saltines for the kit so I would stop eating them for snacks, but it didn’t work. I guess it’s time to invest in some emergency crackers that aren’t so appealing to me).

I also ate a bunch of peanut butter, almonds (which are SO GOOD if they are blanched and slivered), peanuts, and dried cranberries. That wasn’t really on purpose—I walked down to the local Verizon Wireless store because I shattered my phone screen last week (because I am very responsible with my belongings) and I wanted to get a new one because shards of glass keep getting stuck in my face/fingers. On my way back, I became SUPER HUNGRY and overheated. My blood sugar was clearly crashing. This happens to me on occasion when I am walking somewhere, and I suspect it also has something to do with being dehydrated. I did manage to get all the way home without buying any milkshakes, candy, bottled water (which probably would have been okay), french fries, or pies, even though I wanted to and had ample opportunity, so I still count it as a victory, even though I included so many add-ons to my snack of a nectarine and celery sticks (by the way, I LOVE celery sticks, so don’t get concerned that I am noshing on them all the time. They are crunchy and juicy and weirdly salty. They make mouths happy).

So I learned a few things yesterday.

Even if I have a tuna salad with hummus sandwich and salad for lunch, I probably want to have a handful of nuts or something before I go on long walks in the heat. Or the cold, just to be safe.
Ditto water. In fact, probably a good idea to find some sort of mini water bottle to take along for emergencies.
Even if I experience a terrible blood sugar crash, I should try to stick to my food plan as best as I can, without throwing a bunch of high calorie extras in there.

I also learned that if there is junk food in my house, I will sniff it out. I discovered a Hershey bar left over from some long-ago camping trip. I remembered the French Chews chilling in my freezer. If I get desperate enough, I may eat the homemade 60% bittersweet chocolate ice cream left over from Adoring Husband’s birthday party. That birthday party was in May, so I’m thinking I’ll pitch that before I get crazy. So if I’m going to get serious about losing this weight, I gotta remove all this crap. Preferably not with my mouth.

All of which is to say that I have gained a pound since embarking on this journey on Monday. Granted, I haven’t been 100% perfect, but I am a bit surprised. I’ve been relatively active, and nearly everything I’ve eaten has been “whole” foods. But I also know that I’m expecting too much, too soon (immediate gratification!) Looking back at my weight chart (I use the Libra App on my Android phone), I can see that I’m still 2 pounds lighter than I was on Saturday, and my goal is to lose just over 2 pounds per week. So I’m kind of sort of on track. Plus it’s probably going to take a hot minute for my body to really adjust and respond after being fed lots of junky stuff for such a long time. The important thing is that I’ve been adhering to some of the goals I’ve set for myself, and I’m going to get better at that as I start using the Beck tools in earnest. I keep sort of momentarily flashing on those and then not quite following through, but I feel pretty confident that I’ll do very well. The program proper only takes 6 weeks, so I’m glad I’ve built in some buffer time at the beginning and the end to make sure I can ease in and stay in.

90 Days of Fatling

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:54:41 -0700

It’s here.

Today is the day my life changes…for at least 90 days. Although I am still feeling pessimistic about my ability to sustain a healthier diet, lower calorie count, and more frequent exercise, I do feel more confident that I can stick it out for three months.

I haven’t done my Beck reading for the day, so I’ll post about that later, but I’ve been thinking a lot about a chapter that comes up much later in the book—“Decide About Drinking.” When we first went through the book, Adoring Husband and I joked that the chapter comes up late in the program because people can’t be expected to deal with their alcoholism and their food issues all at once. But I’ve been considering it more seriously this time around, and my basic plan is not to drink unless I’m out with friends (one of the solutions Beck suggests). I don’t know when drinking daily became “a thing” in my life, but I know it’s certainly time to reconsider. I do feel that it’s going to be really depressing if I lost like 10 pounds immediately because I haven’t been drinking. I mean, I’ll take it, but it will be a sad referendum on how much I’ve been drinking.

Anyway! I’m pretty happy with how the day is going so far, especially considering that my weekend was incredibly busy and I wasn’t able to cook/plan for the week yet. Fortunately, I knew what I wanted to eat on this, the first day of 90 Days of Fatling, so I’m working my way through a protein bar and some carrot/celery sticks. I’m debating whether I ought to just eat something from the freezer for dinner so that I can go to the store without being super-hungry and then make a very yummy 3-bean chili that will see AH and I through the week.

I had a very good conversation with Her Fatness and our friend, 6-Pak about time management as it relates to dieting, and they have both expressed interest in accompanying me on this weight loss journey. I’m really glad, because this is going to be incredibly hard work. I think it will be rewarding, and I think I’m going to achieve a lot of goals, but it’s going to be damn near impossible to do without a support network around me. So if you two are reading this, THANK YOU!

One down, 89 to go…

90 Days of Fatling (T-Minus 4.5 Days)

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:23:25 -0700

I’m not feeling super-optimistic about this project today.

I love eating crappy food. I must, right? That’s why I keep going back to it after short periods of being healthier. Is there a difference between “habit” and “love” in this context?

I’ve never been much for self-control in any context. One of the unfortunate side effects of being raised by restrictive, religious parents is that control is something that gets farmed out to whatever higher power, which one’s parents tend to represent. In my case, I was always looking for a loophole, ways to act out without ever being caught—procrastinating on damn near everything but still managing to pull out excellent grades, for example.

One such loophole involves food. My parents didn’t keep a ton of “good” junk food in the house. We didn’t have a lot of money, so instead of Gushers, we got generic fruit snacks. Instead of individual snack-size bags of Doritos, we got huge white bags of NACHO-CHEESE FLAVOR TORTILLA CHIPS (these were actually tastier than real Doritos, but as a kid, branding on snacks is a status marker). We never, ever got Dunkaroos, so sometimes, if I could manage it, I would just eat spoonfuls of chocolate frosting out of the can that was usually in the fridge after a church picnic or family party.

In general, my only opportunities to eat candy, brand-name cereal, and drink pop came at my grandparents’ houses. On both the maternal and paternal sides of my family, there was a special drawer or shelf in the pantry that was perpetually stocked with tooth-rotting, fatty, delicious snacks. This was always presented as a special treat, but like any greedy kid, I wanted these special treats to be available all the time. I remember sleeping over at my grandparents’ apartment in my early teens and absolutely blowing through their stash of mini-Twixes after they went to bed. I remember feeling guilty about it. I remember being unable to stop.

There was always this thing in the back of my mind when it came to food—maybe there won’t be enough for me. I’m not sure where it came from. Maybe it’s primal, a leftover from a time when “survival of the fittest” was the order of the day. Maybe I wanted as much junk food as possible at any given moment because I didn’t know where my next fix was coming from. Maybe I just have an addictive personality. Regardless of the specific reason, I’ve carried this impulse with me into adult life, and with it, an attitude of helplessness that I can overcome briefly, but it always manages to creep in and derail my successes in diet and exercise.

So this, in part, is the reason for the 90-day time limit on this project. I desperately want to cross the days off this calendar here, even if I just check in briefly, and at the end of 90 days be able to look back and feel proud. I want to feel that I’ve changed somehow, and that I’ll be able to point to this period of self-control and chase that creeping doubt and sense of inevitable failure away.

I know it’s possible to change myself for the better. I just don’t quite believe it yet.

90 Days of Fatling (T-Minus 5.5 Days)

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:40:00 -0700

All right, Fanlings. I’ve been posting the odd book review on here, the random other thingy (I really have no idea what I’ve been posting on here. Did I write an essay? Or was I just thinking about writing an essay and then I got drunk and—)

That’s it. That right there. That sort of parenthetical, rambly, bad decision-making has to stop. It’s time to get in touch with my adorable, chubby roots as a crash diet/health & fitness blog.

You see, Adoring Husband left town for 10 days a little while back, and I made it my personal mission to eat ALL the things while he was gone. Yes, even the things I didn’t particularly like. I did this, and it was pretty fun. But I also gained some pounds. Crucial pounds that have put me back in striking distance of all my cute clothes not fitting anymore. This must not stand.

So here we are, with 90 Days of Fatling, a reasonably reasonable diet and exercise plan that should result in an approximate weight loss of two pounds per week, which should result in me looking really smoking hot when I go home for the holidays this year (at which point I imagine I will eat ALL the things again, but we’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it).

It’s going to be difficult, but to be perfectly frank, I am tired of carrying around excess weight, losing it, and gaining it back. Part of the issue is the concept that I have to change my eating and exercise habits forever and never again know the joy of eating ALL the things. But as you can see, eating ALL the things hasn’t exactly made me a happy (or healthy) human being. There must be a road to moderation, and I think I may have found it.

First of all, I’ll be revisiting the extremely helpful Beck Diet Solution. I completed most of the program a few months ago, and then decided I’d be fine without meticulously planning out my meals and limiting myself to eating just A FEW of the things. Secondly, I’ll be focused on getting refined carbohydrate and dairy out of my diet and being sure to eat lots of veggies, protein, and fruit. It’s going to be fairly restrictive, but I feel pretty confident that I can do it. Thirdly, I will be increasing my exercise to about a half hour per day, plus running for an hour or so on weekends.

“But why is the Fatling telling me this?” Well, I have been trying to come up with a good way to track my progress, and I thought that posting even a little something each day while counting down in the title would be helpful. So you can expect posts like “Fuck this I fucking want a pizza roll and some sour gummies RIGHT NOW” or “Ow, working out makes my thighs hurt when I sit on the toilet!” on a daily basis. This is my pledge, this is my quest. I start on Monday. I hope it works.

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #18: America Pacifica by Anna North

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:44:21 -0700

I really wanted to like this one, but unfortunately, author Anna North made that pretty difficult.

Set in a near-future dystopia, the story follows Darcy, a first-generation native of America Pacifica, the island where survivors of a sweeping North American Ice Age have decamped in an attempt to rebuild society. Unfortunately, their founder’s plan to build out the island’s square footage with landfill and power creature comforts with an all-purpose fuel called solvent has resulted in staggering, widespread poverty for most of the population. Darcy and her mother, Sarah, eke out a sad existence in a squalid apartment in a world where even a shower costs two dollars.

Scarred by mysterious events in her past, Sarah has sequestered her daughter in a world not much bigger than their shared home and severely curtailed her relationships. Sarah is Darcy’s whole world, and when Sarah disappears, Darcy sets out on a journey to find her, uncovering America Pacifica’s seedy underbelly and her own inner resolve, blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The trappings of a good story appear fleetingly on the page, but they hover near the edges of the terminally dull Darcy’s quest. There is a sense of growing unrest as Darcy moves through the island, but Darcy tendency to cower in her apartment limits the reader’s sense of how deeply the revolutionary spirit runs amongst the other restless residents. Darcy is the protagonist, but she suffers from “Harry Potter” syndrome—despite having few heroic qualities, the other characters tell her constantly that she is Important, that she can make A Difference. To her credit, Darcy takes a long time to believe them, but when she does embrace her destiny, the payoff feels strained. The story of founding America Pacifica under the watchful eye of not-so-charismatic leader Tyson probably would have been more compelling on its own, but North simply has a cadre of characters vastly more entertaining than Darcy relay an incomplete version of that tale to Darcy as she bumbles from place to place.

There are some interesting ideas about economic inequality, class warfare, and government corruption underneath North’s carefully studied Iowa Writer’s Workshop style (no, tell me again which three smells and/or colors characterize this setting! Please, keep cutting people’s monologues off just when they become interesting!), but Darcy’s single-mindedness in her quest to find her mother and North’s obvious inability to truly relate to the horrific living conditions she’s created for America Pacifica’s underclass cause them to fall flat. Darcy herself just doesn’t make much sense. She seems to be going through her paces, doing whatever the novel requires. She is North’s puppet as the author ticks off dystopian tropes like a kid at a spelling bee—funky names for new products? Check. Menacing police force? Got it. Sexual assault? Cut and print!

Without spoiling anything, the novel’s ending is frustratingly vague. A book that ends without offering up easy answers or tying up loose ends to satisfaction can be effective, but a book that purports to be about a young girl looking for answers without actually providing any is a cheat. The paperback edition I read contains some interviews with North where she namechecks luminaries like Margaret Atwood and David Foster Wallace as her inspiration, which is a disservice to her work. She appears to be teetering on the shoulders of giants, and in the end, she tumbles down without having distinguished herself.

A Side of Feminism with that Fart Joke

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:19:14 -0700

jessicalanglois:

The first sketch of local comedy group Femikaze’s Summer’s Eve showcase, “Go Fuck Yourself,” sets the mood for the evening. A girl asks her mom what do if a boy doesn’t like the way she maintains things down there, and the mom (Carinne Salnave), stirring a bowl of cake batter balanced on her hip, advises her daughter in über wholesome, after-school-special style to give that fellow a health dose of — you guessed it! — Go Fuck Yourself. Aaaaaand, we’re off and running.

In its current show, playing this weekend at Subterranean Art House, Femikaze delivers all the favorites—fart jokes, social media cracks, reality TV spoofs, F-bombs, infomercials, drunkenness—but with a fresh, feminist perspective that isn’t didactic, clichéd, or overwrought. The supershort sketches, performed by diverse cast of women, are just twisted enough to keep us hungrily clinging to each line. Pushing the “radical notion that women are funny,” Femikaze, founded by comedians Kelly Anneken and Isa Hopkins, not only intends to but actually does “create opportunities in comedy for self-identified women of all shapes, sizes, kinds, and colors.”

When I saw a sketch called “Peer Pinterest” in the program, I’ll admit, I was at first dubious, doubtful there were any new takes left on social media criticism. But the writers shifted the paradigm and kept it timely and local. A woman (Kristen Macaulay) who has just sprained her ankle after slipping in human feces (per last week’s story in the Chronicle on the ‘sheer volume of human waste’ found in the escalators) enters the BART station to find her friend and everyone else on the platform more interested in retweeting a Twitter star’s quips than hearing her malodorous story.

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TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #17: Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:50:05 -0700

I read all of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” saga in a mad dash last year after being introduced to it through the HBO adaptation of the books. Although I found the detailed descriptions of meals and clothing a bit tedious the first time through, my attempt at a series reread is spinning is wheels due to the pages and pages of elaborate fluff. Of course, the plot was supremely compelling the first time, but knowledge of the tangled morass that waits at the end of A Dance With Dragons has dampened my ardor to revisit events in Westeros I’ve already read about.

It’s not a totally pointless exercise, though. I did appreciate certain details (none food-related, alas!) I missed when I read GoT previously, and once I get into a sort of groove with Martin’s writing style and resign myself to skimming chapters from the POV of stupid, stupid Catelyn and sweet, dull Bran, I find myself invested in the plot again—enough to overlook Martin’s annoying prose tics and obvious need for an editor (fortunately, he doesn’t discover his love of “is this character dead?” cliffhangers until the late chapters here).

Game of Thrones does such an excellent job of setting up a subversion of the traditional fantasy genre while still embodying traits of that genre to the point where every reversal still feels like a fresh shock, and the following four books each do a reasonable job of showing the reader what life in this world must be like. I just hope that the execution of the whole series matches the narrative punch packed by its first entry.

Person of Fatrest

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:31:12 -0700

You didn’t think I meant it before when I said I’d be resuming regular posting again at erratic and unpredictable times, did you? Whether you thought I wouldn’t post again or that I would post on a regimented schedule, you were wrong, dead wrong!

I’m back, Fanlings! Back and blogger than ever! Look, I know that last bit doesn’t actually make any sense, but just go with it, okay? I’m just riding out an hour or so before an appointment, so I thought I’d update this personal blog with various interesting tidbits.

First off, whenever I have to be somewhere, I say I have “an appointment,” because it sounds like I am a very arch, classy lady from the 1960s, like Tippi Hedren or Roger’s first wife on Mad Men. It also mitigates the embarrassment I feel when I have an actual doctor’s appointment, since I always feel ashamed that my body and/or mind is anything but factory condition and worry that others are judging me for taking myself to the shop, so to speak. I do not have a doctor’s appointment this evening, but I did have one this morning, so I’m feeling just regular, graduated-from-Catholic-school levels of shame.

I’m mildly ashamed that I’ve fallen off wildly from my Cannonball Read goals. 52 books in a year? Wow, I really underestimated both my time and inclination to read that much. I mean, if I was logging hours spent dicking around on the Gawker family of websites, I’m sure I’d have completed 52 books worth of celebrity gossip and hilarious poop stories. I am all fired up to read something, but unfortunately, it’s Oryx & Crake (again), and then probably Year of the Flood (again), and I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to submit second reviews of those. But I’ll keep trying to get closer to that goal by reading new books, because my identity as a pedantic know-it-all is very important to me, and reading books is integral to being a pedantic know-it-all.

Also integral to me is exercising and not smoking! You definitely didn’t think I could do those things, did you? I haven’t been perfect (another chink in my otherwise impeccable armor, alas!), but recently had an awful, awful experience with cigarettes, the sense memory of which is likely to preclude future slip-ups. I agreed to act in a series of short sketches with a couple of friends about taking smoke breaks, not realizing that this would entail smoking for almost two hours straight. It was extraordinarily unpleasant and by the end of the day, I felt like a 40-year-old Kentuckian who worked at the Brass Ass until she finally, emphatically lost her looks, her teeth, and her sense of taste in one devastating afternoon (S/O to Her Fatness!) So I’m pretty sure that’s mostly over, but considering that smoking on camera is, for me, the equivalent of other people doing amateur pornography without condoms (illicit, intimate activity that will most likely end in death), it’s a good story. If only I’d studied English in college like my mother insisted, I could write a crackerjack story about it and then have it summarily rejected by prestigious publications the world over!

Fortunately, I did not study English, and the things I did study have been coming handy on a variety of projects. As I mentioned above, I’ve worked exercise into my routine on a semi-regular basis, and I’m eating relatively well, though my busy schedule makes it tough to relax by cooking fabulous things very often. This does mean that The Fatling isn’t quite as fat as she once was, but don’t panic! I will never have washboard abs, and I’m certain my thighs will always possess a certain insouciant jiggle. So I will continue to be your Fatling, the people’s Fatling, if you will.

As always, I’d like to promise more angry rants/pithy insights into popular culture, but you know The Fatling never made a blogular promise she couldn’t wait to break. If you’re really jonesing for that sort of thing, head over to my pal Pauncho Villa’s joint, she does that shit all the time.

Peace out, til my next book review!

Factling!

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:24:55 -0700

Okay, it’s been confirmed that Her Fatness is all caught up on this blog, so I’ll pick up regular posting again at erratic and unpredictable times. Like right now!

I just did a Google search on “the fatling,” because I am very humble (you can tell because I didn’t use any caps). This site is the first result, but I also discovered that, according to the free dictionary by Farlex, the word “fatling” actually means “a young farm animal fattened for killing.” Which is disappointing. I’d always thought I was fattening myself up for a natural death at a ripe old age. Although according to this definition, I will be forever young (yay!) and a farm animal (boo! Or baa…).

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #16: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:39:21 -0700

I didn’t like The Year of the Flood quite as much as I liked Oryx and Crake, but it’s an excellent second book for Atwood’s Maddadam trilogy (she’s writing the third right now, as she informed CBR and myself on Twitter. Swoon). I do appreciate that rather than a straight sequel, Atwood chose to tell stories that run concurrent with the events of Oryx and Crake. This time there are two POV characters: Toby, a reluctant member of the God’s Gardeners faith/ecoactivist group, and Ren, and exotic dancer who grew up in the same God’s Gardener group that Toby belonged to. The action here takes place largely in the near-future pleeblands, economically depressed communities that buttress North America’s hermetically sealed “compounds” reserved for the rich and their scientific research teams.

Both Crake/Glenn and Snowman/Jimmy from the first novel show up periodically throughout the story, but this one belongs to the women. Atwood expands on the themes of desensitizing sexual commodification she broached in Oryx and Crake by exploring Toby’s victimization at the hands of a sadistic employer and the way the specter of her rape impacts her life. Saddled with a pretty horrific mother who joined the God’s Gardeners to be with her lover, Ren grows into adulthood with a split consciousness—aware of the material excesses of her world, and yet disconnected from the faith that more or less raised her. Atwood handles the idea of sexual victimization gently and with pathos—there are no squicky, highly detailed rape scenes that could be confused with titillation, and Ren chooses to become a trapeze dancer at a high-end sex club and neither she nor Atwood think she has anything to apologize for.

My favorite parts of the book revolve around the God’s Gardeners, which is fleshed out and proves to be a fascinating blend of faith, science, and stewardship plagued as all religions are by human frailty. In particular, I loved Ren’s friendship with the young con artist extraordinaire, Amanda and Toby’s slow evolution from frightened refugee to doubtful believer. The sermons by Adam One (the leader of God’s Gardeners) work on both an earnest and an ironic level, and the attention to detail in the rituals of worship is really impressive.

This book can absolutely be read independently of Oryx and Crake, but considering how great that book is, it would be silly to deny yourself the pleasure of fully immersing in Atwood’s terrifying, beautiful vision of a future we might still have a chance to subvert.

*This is a total aside, but in reading some of the existing criticism on these books, Atwood is unfairly taken to task for the pun-heavy names of products and corporations in this world (i.e. CorpSeCorp, Chickie Nobs, SecretBurgers, etc). Atwood’s puns are no less heavy-handed than any of David Foster Wallace’s, specifically in Infinite Jest (ONANtiad, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, John “No Relation” Wayne anyone?), which presents a near-future not too far removed from Atwood’s. In this exploration of Atwood’s works, I’m surprised by how much critics seem to do everything in their power to discredit her, but that’s perhaps another post entirely.*

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #15: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:44:00 -0700

I’m going to wax philosophical here. This wasn’t my favorite Atwood book (it was really just a stopgap solution while I waited for The Year of the Flood to arrive at my library), but I so enjoyed the experience of reading it that my lack of enthusiasm for the content didn’t negatively affect my overall view of the book.

In part, it’s just an extension of my lifelong obsession with words. As a kid, I’d read pretty much anything that was within reach. I’ve become a bit more discerning as I’ve gotten older, but in general, the rule still stands that if it can be read, I will read it.

Reading is really the only form of entertainment I can think of that still manages to be legally available for free to pretty much the entire population of America. If you’ve got an address, you can get a library card, and if you don’t, you can still hang out in the library all day. You can go hang out in a bookstore and read for hours without ever buying anything. No electricity is required to read a book, although a good light source helps, and I am so happy that I chose to be a reader.

I’m also happy that I’ve been binging on Margaret Atwood. I had counted her among my favorite writers for years, based solely on having read The Handmaid’s Tale at age fourteen and The Blind Assassin a few years ago. Cat’s Eye is her semi-autobiographical novel, based loosely on her childhood as the daughter of an Ontario entomologist and her destructive friendships with other girls at her school. While I was annoyed by Atwood’s choice to make protagonist Elaine Risley a painter rather than a writer (seriously, writers, reading about writing isn’t more boring than reading about painting or sculpting or what have you, and aren’t you supposed to write what you know anyway?), her description of female friendship and the cruelty that women inflict on one another from an early age is spot on.

The back and forth narrative between Elaine as a middle-aged woman attending a retrospective of her artwork and her coming of age in a Toronto suburb is very Atwoodian, with both threads finally converging toward the end. In many ways, this is the bleakest of Atwood’s works I’ve read to date, because the lack of any speculative fiction angle denies the reader the hope for redemption that always accompanies tales of humanity’s demise. For Elaine Risler, the only comfort to be had is cold, the knowledge that she has overcome her childhood rival, Cordelia, but at a great cost.

The story itself is unremarkable—the protagonist is abused, and then turns the abuse back on her tormentors—but what Atwood captures brilliantly is the emotional limbo of being a woman, the aching sadness of knowing how much you’ve been hurt by other women, and how much they’ve hurt you, and having no idea what to do about it. Elaine is an extremely passive narrator, and yet that is the book’s strength—Elaine is on a journey she didn’t particularly want to take where her life simply happens as she drifts by, and it’s still compelling every step of the way.

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #14: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:35:17 -0700

I’m a huge fan of Margaret Atwood, despite the fact that I’ve only read The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin. It’s rare to come across a writer who can build worlds and characters equally well, and her lyrical writing style is absolutely gorgeous. Every time I read one of Atwood’s novels, I am deeply affected, and Oryx and Crake is no exception.

Set in the post-apocalyptic near future, narrator Snowman eases the reader into the new normal—salvaging for food, water, and shelter in the absence of other humans, with only the strange, alien Children of Crake for company. In flashbacks, Snowman recalls how the world came to be in its present state, going back to his childhood as “Jimmy,” his close friendship with scientific wunderkind Crake, and their mutual obsession with a young girl they once spotted on a kiddie porn website. Atwood does a really admirable job of extrapolating the online entertainment and technology of the early aughts (when the book was written) into a nasty, amoral web of consumer exploitation that consumes the entirety of North America (and, we are to understand, the world at large).

I ripped through this book in about four hours total. It’s a really compelling read, and Atwood manages to keep the tension in both the past and present storylines ratcheted up high throughout, and Snowman’s overall arc is very well done. He changes gradually and without self-awareness, whichis very refreshing. I also really liked Atwood’s handling of a male protagonist, since I’ve only read her female protagonists. Her voice is believable as a man’s, but is also a unique take on the male perspective. I’m really looking forward to reading Atwood’s 2009 followup, The Year of the Flood, as soon as I can get my hands on it.

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #10 #11 #12 #13: The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman/John Ney Reiber

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:08:52 -0700

My Vertigo tarot deck recently reminded me that I’d been meaning to read The Books of Magic for quite some time (due to some BoM artwork on the cards, my tarot isn’t actually psychic or anything). I’m only four volumes in, and apparently my local library doesn’t have the fifth book. I’m really on the fence about continuing with the series. It hasn’t held up anywhere near the standard of Gaiman’s Sandman series, either in story or artwork, and I’m not willing to spend money on the next book in the series.

The Books of Magic follows Tim Hunter, a bespectacled young boy who lives with his negligent father. His mother died in a car accident years before, and the accident appears to have been caused by his father, who drinks and watches television to avoid dealing with life. One day, Tim is visited by a mysterious foursome—John Constantine, the Stranger, Dr. Occult, and Mr. E—who tell him that he has a lot of magical potential. They take him on a journey through time, space, and magical history, ostensibly to allow him to choose an ordinary life or a life of magic, though of course he chose a life of magic by agreeing to the tour. The first volume’s artwork is beautiful, but the story is labyrinthine and slight when all is said and done.

The second volume, Bindings, sees John Ney Reiber taking over for Gaiman in the story department, and the difference is clear. This is easily the worst of the series so far, involving a convoluted paternity dispute as an excuse to spend time with Death, Gaiman’s most famous creation. It doesn’t help that in both the first and second volumes, Tim is as petulant and whiny as Order of the Phoenix-era Harry Potter—and I’m not just saying that because both boys have spectacles and pet owls. He’s still unpleasant in the other collections, but in these two, he’s pretty unbearable.

Summonings, the third volume, is a marked improvement, with the introduction of Molly, Tim’s once and future love interest, a steampunk villain, and a charming succubus named Leah. Things take a turn for the confusing in Reckonings, the fourth volume, wherein an adult Tim’s dealings with a cynical demon named Barbatos have consequences that reach back through space and time to affect present-day Tim and Molly.

Tim doesn’t appear to actually be going through any magical training, forced to muddle through and learn by trial and error, which is actually an interesting concept. Unfortunately, the series’ heavy-handed moralizing and confusing timeline haven’t really paid off for me. I’m invested just enough to be curious about how everything ultimately hangs together, but it looks like the collected volumes don’t actually include the conclusion of the story. If I happen to find a cheap copy of the next volume, I’ll probably read on, but otherwise I’m sure I’ll manage not knowing what Tim Hunter’s future holds.

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #9: The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:45:00 -0700

As a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent Mars trilogy, which chronicles man’s colonization of Mars in painstaking detail, I had been meaning to read The Martians for quite some time. I read two of the short stories in the collection a while ago, but found myself put off by the fact that one of them (“Maya and Desmond”) didn’t fit into the chronology of the original trilogy.

This time, I read the collection from the beginning, and realized after the first story (“Michel in Antarctica”) that deviations from the canon chronology are the point of this collection. Sort of. Certain stories fit in seamlessly with what we know about the Martian colonists and their descendants (my favorite, “Jackie on Zo,” for example), while others imagine wildly different outcomes of the Earth’s space program or events from the previous books, and still others push far into the Martian future. Robinson paints a lovely series of vignettes that illustrate the range of possibilities he had with his previous characters, and manages to enhance and enrich the original books even further.

Robinson effectively creates an emotional and temporal throughline in this collection by checking in with new character Roger Claybourne every few stories and tells the tale of his political, emotional, and romantic evolution throughout his artificially extended lifetime (Note: everyone on Mars has an artificially extended lifetime.) The tales range from silly to bittersweet to topographical (I admit to skimming those stories; I’ve never been a big fan of reading about landscapes), and only become self-indulgent toward the end, where Robinson has included a list of music he listened to while writing about Mars, a bunch of poems, and a short story about the day he finished his novel (Red Mars, presumably, although the chapter is called “Purple Mars.)

This is definitely a book for those who have already read Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. Out of context, I’m not sure how much impact the stories would have, since prior knowledge of characters’ personalities and relationships are often vital. In some ways, it’s just fan fiction from the author of the source material, but it’s such a delight to spend just a little more time with the Martians, that doesn’t really matter.

The Fatling's #CBR4 Review #8 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns by Mindy Kaling

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:48:18 -0800

I’ve read a few books by female comedians over the years, and Mindy Kaling’s is by far my favorite. It’s breezy and fun, assertive without feeling hyperdefensive, and a fascinating look at Kaling’s path to becoming a writer for The Office.

Kaling also owns her femininity, which is refreshing, since many female comedy memoirists seem to classify it as a burden or annoyance. There are the obligatory chapters chronicling Kaling’s obligatory struggle with body image, weight loss, and self-esteem, but she delves in deep rather than tossing them off with a sentence or two.

As a married person, I found a lot of Kaling’s grandstanding about marriage and constant proclamations that she wants to get married to be sort of irritating, but maybe it resonates more with single people. It just struck me as odd for her to spend so much time dealing with that topic.

On the other hand, I was delighted every time Kaling’s contempt for Office co-star Rainn Wilson bubbled to the surface. I have no idea why there’s so much ill will between the two of them, but it sounds like there might be an entire book to be written about their really twisted relationship.

In general, I usually think comedians’ memoirs don’t come off particularly well. Those who are prominent stand-up or sitcom writers aren’t great prose writers, and as a result, the books they produce feel choppy and thrown together. This is still the case with Mindy Kaling, but her tone and the jokes she writes elevate it above the run-of-the-mill comedians bio.

The Fatling's #CBR4 Review #5 The Shooting Party by Isabel Colgate

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:30:00 -0800

This book was 100% awful. At only 197 pages, I assumed it would be a breeze to read, only to find myself mired in a swamp of pronouns without antecedents, two-dimensional characters not even a mother could love, and the dullest plot known to man. I’m pretty sure it took me three weeks to finish because I could never find any sort of emotional hook to keep me interested.

Isabel Colgate’s The Shooting Party takes place at a shooting party (I know, you’re shocked) on a country estate in Oxfordshire, England during the height of the Edwardian era. Since my husband and I host a weekly podcast covering Downton Abbey, I figured reading this book might give me more insight into the time period.

Nope. The only insight I got was that Julian Fellowes definitely read this book before writing Gosford Park and Downton Abbey and thought, “Hmmmm, what an interesting time period. I bet I could make all these plot points suck a lot less!”

The titular party is hosted by Sir Randolph, a crotchety old Baronet who sees his agrarian way of life slowly slipping away, and his wife Minnie, a card shark who loves gambling and a well-executed meal. Their guests include Lionel Stephens, a dopey intellectual who is in love with the sensitive, intelligent Olivia, who is married to some guy named Bob Lillburn, who’s sort of the Bluto in this scenario. There’s also Aline Hartlip, a social climber famous for her affairs, and her husband, Gilbert, who is widely known as one of Britain’s finest shooters. Sir Randolph and Minnie’s grandchildren are also in attendance, Marcus, a student, Cicely, a flirt, Osbert, a mentally-deficient duck-owner, and Violet, a spoiled brat.

There are other people involved—a maid and footman who are romantically linked, an animal-rights activist, the head gamekeeper and his son, and a poacher who’s been hired as a beater for the festivities, but they, too, are rendered dull as paint by Colgate’s indifferent, spare prose. I never got the feeling that Colgate cared much for any of these characters, and without anyone to root for, this book is like a newspaper account of a country shoot that goes on for far too long. There’s all the usual noise about the class system and the whisperings of WWI, but it never adds up to a story worth telling.

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #7: Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:46:33 -0800

Tamora Pierce does a lovely job here of tying up her Trickster duet. Duchess Winnamine Balitang, recently widowed, returns to Rajmuat from exile in Tanair with her children Petranne and Elsren, and her stepdaughters Saraiyu and Dovasary. Also with them is the clever Aly Homewood, charged by the raka god Kyprioth to keep the children alive through the winter, and now promoted from lowly maid to the household’s spymaster. The household is filled with conspirators working to bring about the overthrow of the luarin regents who rule the Copper Isles

The former crow Nawat has been courting Aly all through the winter, but feels that she doesn’t respect him as a man, and so leaves the capital city to assist in raka revolts on some of the far-flung islands. Aly works tirelessly with her network of spies to weaken the regents, Prince Rubiyanan and Princess Imajane, with rumor and destabilization of their own spy network.

The book spends far more time below stairs with the servants/conspirators than the first volume, fleshing out leaders of the rebellion like Ulasim and Fesgao. Aly’s frequent field trips to the palace with the noble family she serves are tense and gratifying, particularly her careful spy’s dance with Taybur Sibigat, head of the King’s Guard and special defender of the nation’s boy king, Dunevon. The addition of Lady Nuritin, the late Duke Mequen’s imperious aunt, is a welcome one, as is the depiction of the Balitang’s place among the luarin nobles in Rajmuat.

The one element that doesn’t quite work is Aly’s darklings—tiny black balls of special matter deus ex machina‘d into her lap by a family friend from Tortall who happens to be visiting in the Copper Isles. The darklings are sentient and magical, able to spy and report back to Aly via her constant darkling companion, Trick. Magic and intervention from the gods are a given in this universe, but it would have been more interesting to see Aly bring down the government with only her wits and command of spycraft.

Pierce doesn’t pull any punches. Numerous beloved characters perish in their fight for freedom and innocents die merely because they got in the way of someone powerful. She’s also very canny about sex and birth control, treating both subjects very matter-of-factly and without any moral teeth-gnashing. There is a happy ending, and I only regret that there are no more books detailing the further adventures of Aly.

Question: Does anyone know which characters the girls pictured on the covers of Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen are supposed to be?