Book Review-Lolita

I wish that I were on better terms with the people from my office. Well, not all of them. Mostly just Matt. See, Dan never made any secret about the fact that the assistants were "less" then him. We were there to do his bidding, and he was upset when we didn't jump when he called. I remember one instance where I was doing something for Jean on another office computer because my computer was not working. She had a client there and was shouting things at me to put on an addendum that I was creating.

All of a sudden, Dan walks in with a client and is like "you need to move. I need to write an offer with my client." And I flat out said NO. I said I'm sorry, but no, I'm doing something for Jean and I'll be done in a minute. He was baffled. His client was standing right there. HOW DARE I!? He said to me, "I have a client right here, and I need to write and offer NOW. You need to give me the computer." And I said, "I'm sorry, but Jean is in the other room with a client as well. She is shouting things at me. Can you hear her? I'll be done in just a minute"

Well, he later complained to Jean that I was RUDE to him in front of a client. Jean actually brought it up to me to tell me how I was a bad person. And I told her that I would do it again if given the chance. Because I would rather have Dan mad at me then Jean. Basically, he was upset that I said no to him AND in front of a client. He thought that he would walk in and boss me around and show his client what a big wang he has. He was wrong. I cock blocked him and he was pissed. That's just a little example of how he didn't respect me and how he thought I was there to be bossed around.

So that's how Dan thinks of us assistants. And you all know how Jean feels about assistants: Disposable. Once she gets tired/upset with you over some imagined wrong you have done to her you are on her s*** list and on your way out. But Matt was never like that. Matt was usually very respectful to the assistants. He would thank us for things that we did. He wouldn't assume we were there to serve him. He was pretty nice.

I actually considered him a friend. I should've realized that his ties were much stronger to Jean then to me. Even though she talks about him behind his back and tells people private things about his life, he still feels tied to her. Maybe he doesn't know she does this, but I'm sure he suspects it. I mean, she does it to everyone else, why would he be any different?

Anyway, this little trip down nausea lane was with the point of saying this: I'm sad I'm still not friends with Matt. Matt and I would talk about books all the time. One of his wife's favorite authors was Marquez, who is my favorite author. And for the longest time he kept trying to get me to read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I wanted to read it, but I never got around to it. (And I wasn't going to read it until I finished 100 Years of Solitude). But then at the library I stumbled upon it and decided now was the time to read it.

I SHOULD'VE READ IT YEARS AGO!!!! This book is amazing. Breathtaking even. See Nabokov (as you might have guessed) is Russian. And English is his third language, after Russian and French, but he wrote this book all in English. And it's AMAZING. I can't gush enough about how much I loved this book.

Let me tell you right off, the book is not for casual readers. You must be invested. And you should know what it's about: a pedophile. See the narrator is a man in his late 30's (nearly 40) who falls in love with and has a relationship with a 12 year old girl. Yeah, like I said, it's not for casual readers. H.H. (the narrator calls himself. Short for Humbert Humbert) has always had a thing for little girls. He calls them "nymphets" and he seeks them out. Usually it was just to look at them, dream about them, imagine what they would look like up close. But then he becomes a border at a house where a woman has this daughter. Her name is Dolores. Or Dolly. Or Lo. Or Lolita.

And he's obsessed with her. He dreams about her and spending his life with her and how she would make him so happy. But her mom is always around (GOOD FOR YOU, MOM!!!) and so he can hardly ever talk to her. After a series of strange/tragic/funny/impractical and yet shocking events happen, her mom is out of the picture and they are all alone in the world. That's where it gets bad.

You should know this book is not vulgar in the general sense of the word. There are no graphic words, no horrible language depicting lurid acts. But the acts are there, and the way he alludes to them makes it clear what he's trying to tell you. And then you realize what has just happened, and you are appalled. They are horrible things, but Nabokov just puts it so dang beautifully! Dang him and his genius of prose. Anyway, back to H.H. The fact that he rationalizes his actions and thinks that they have a RELATIONSHIP shows just how delusional he really is.

But this book is BEAUTIFUL. I cannot gush enough about how much I loved it. How much I loved the language, the style, the humor. It really is a funny book. I laughed out loud several times especially at the end. The end is especially funny. But I keep coming back to the language. It's so amazing. And again, knowing that he wrote it in his THIRD language is so crazy. I mean, I don't think half of the writers these days could write a sentence HALF as beautiful as him, and they have lived here all their lives.

I think that this is a great American novel. Which is funny because back in the mid 1950's when it was written one publisher wouldn't publish it because he said it was "anti-American." Uh, are you crazy? Almost 50% of the book talks about the different sites and scenes of the America few people know. It is brilliant in every way.

Let me just give you a little example of the style of Nabokov's writing: "A thunderstorm accompanied me most of the way back to Grimm Road, but when I reached Pavor Manor, the sun was visible again, burning like a man, and the birds screamed in the drenched and steaming trees."

HOLY CRAP!! HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH THAT STUFF??? Just gorgeous. I think everyone needs to read this book. Especially if you love writing, and you want to learn how to be a better writer. This book is the Mecca of writing.

So anyway, I loved this book. Go read it. It's for everyone. As a matter of fact, as I was in the car coming back from our cabin, my mom asked me about it, and I told her the premise. I was about 75 pages from the end, and she wanted to read it with me. We read it out loud all the way home and then she HID it from me so I couldn't find it and read the end without her. Now THAT is dedication to a book. And you know what? My mom is a total prude. If she loved it that much, then I'm sure you will too.

It's just too bad Matt and I can't talk about it.

Eureka

I am currently sitting in the kitchen of my youth, with every part of my body freezing. See, I'm from Eureka, CA and there is only one way to describe the North Coast: COLD. Current Temp outside: 54 degrees. And the high is only expected to go to 62. That is it is every day of the year. It really doesn't get any colder than that, nor does it get any hotter. (It does however get rainier)

Many people know my aversion to the cold. However, for some reason I still love Eureka. I love the smell of Eureka most of all. It smells like the ocean, salt water, wind, fresh bread, fish. I love it so much. I just roll down the window and breathe and breathe and then roll it up quickly so i don't freeze.

I love sleeping with three quilts on my bed and having all that weight on me and waking up all snuggled up. I love steaming cups of hot chocolate, lighting a fire in our den and watching TV with my baby curled up by me. I love going for walks and getting damp in the mist and walking through the Redwood Forrest and jumping around on the springy earth. I really love Eureka.

I do NOT love my mom's house. First off, it's old. It was built in the 1930's, and when all the other houses of that era were getting updated and getting bathrooms upstairs, I had a father who didn't want to do that and so I grew up in a nasty house. 4 bedrooms, ONE bathroom. Sunday morning before church was a joke. Literally a horrible horrible joke where the punchline is that there are 3 people crammed into the shower together all trying to wash their hair without crashing into the person next to them.

Second: There is a funny smell at my mom's house. I think it's all the wood. Wood absorbs smells, and it's hard to get them out. Also, there is lots of moisture here, so it smells like damp, stinky wood almost everywhere. She got rid of the carpets and re-did the hardwood floors. But the slight smell still lingers. I don't know how to get rid of it. I don't know if it can be done.

Third: My mom has a giant house to clean all by herself. She is living alone now, for the most part. Her sister + husband are here lots, and they don't do anything to make the place cleaner. They leave their messes everywhere, and then my mom has to come home from work and decide whether or not she wants to clean them. Basically, if my mom had a fully cleaned house it would never get dirty. She's at work all day, comes home, eats a little food, and then is of to walk the dog. So when others come and leave messes, she won't clean them up. (And why should she? She was working all day and she didn't make the mess) Anyway, because she's almost never here, she really doesn't care what it looks like.

But I do care. I have to be here for the next 2 weeks, so you'd better be sure that I'm going to clean it. (which is what I should be doing now because my baby is still asleep at 9:44 am)

Finally, I have a problem. I forgot to bring warm pants/PJ pants. I'm used to sleeping in my chones. I mean I do have warm fleece PJ's, but I just forgot them back in Utah. So I'm freezing once I get out of bed. I also forgot a SWEATSHIRT!!! I'm not going to be able to last too long without that.

Luckily, I brought plenty of warm stuff for Evi. She's going to be bundled up all the time and I'm so excited to put on this ADORABLE outfit that Melanie got me. But as for me? I'm in trouble. Serious butt freezing trouble. But at least I'm in Eureka!!

Book Review-In Her Shoes

This book was like a chick flick in 500 pages. Actually I guess they DID make a move out of it. I'm sure it was a chick flick. (I didn't see it. But now I'm kinda tempted to. I want to know if it's better then the book) Let's see if it contains all the necessary elements of a chick flick:

* Lots of talk about ridiculously expensive shoes? Check
* An estranged grandmother who sends birthday cards that a parent hides because they think it will be "best" for the kids. And then one of the kids find them hidden in a shoe box in the closet (of course) and then she confronts the parent about how he hid them from her and there is a sappy crying scene. Check
* Someone has a boyfriend that cheats on her. Check
* The protagonist dumps the cheating boyfriend and then finds her "prince charming" who she knew all along, but overlooked him because she was all caught up with the sleazy cheating boyfriend: Check
* There is a wedding. Check

Now as you read those details about this book, couldn't you have replaced the title "In Her Shoes" with any other generic chick flick book. (I know that the work FLICK means movie, but you know what I mean)

I found the book enjoyable enough. I went through it in 2 days, it was like cotton candy. I didn't like how things were all tidied up in the end. Like a girl has had a learning disability for 28 years and then all of a sudden she sneaks into a few classes at Princeton and now she can read and recited poems like a freaking master.

And one sister steals another sister's boyfriend and that sister walks in on them . . um. . doing stuff and then in a few months all is resolved, and they are happy with each other again. Tra-la-larita-la.

And they are all happy at the end, one big happy family with a big white wedding dress that somehow amazingly makes her size 14 body look like a size 6. It was just to NEAT and clean for me. Not enough angst. Not enough tragedy.

Maybe I have been reading too much Ian McEwan and too much Marquez, but this one just felt so contrived and just too fluffy. It didn't make me want to change my life and it didn't make any smarter after I finished it. It almost felt like it was insulting my intelligence. Like it thought that I couldn't understand more complex or deeper issues to it had to spell them out for me really slow like and keep it simple. I wanted to say, "I can take it, you can delve a little deeper. I swear, I'll follow you."

There were some enjoyable parts. Rose is a lawyer and someone tries to tell her a dumb lawyer joke and she plays dumb. She says, "What? I don't get it. Say it again. Are you sure you have the joke right?" and the guy feels dumb and starts to talk away and she shouts after him "wait, you can't go yet!! you have to finish explaining the joke to me!!" Hilarious.

So if you want some fluffy reading that won't stay with you after you close the book, definitely pick this one up.

Jam

Did you guys see that episode of Friends where Joey is obsessed with Jam? Here is a little clip to remind you.



That's EXACTLY how I feel about jam too. NO KIDDING. I love jam. And my mom makes the best jam in the whole world. It's Blackberry and the berries are fresh. Usually picked that day. Whatever we didn't use in a cobbler or in a pie we make into jam. See, I'm from the Pacific Northwest and blackberries basically grow everywhere you look. It can be annoying when you are trying to walk to school and then your jacket is snagged by a blackberry bush. I've lost many an article of clothing that way.

But the nice thing is that there are whole patches where they grow and they are free to the public to go and pick them and eat them. My Grandma's back fence has a sizeable growth and her neighbor's has even more. It's worth every scratch you might get to get those berries.

I had two grandmas named Grandma Bingham and we designated one as the "swimming pool grandma" (because she lived in AZ and had a pool-Duh!) and the "Berry Grandma" because she lived in Eureka with rows of blackberries out back. And when my mom wanted to get rid of us so she could talk to the adults she would ask for some containers and we would go out and pick berries. Truthfully she never had to force us out because we would ask to go out there on our own. And of course OF COURSE the berry picking rule is this: put 1 in the bucket and then put 3-4 in the mouth. So when my mom called us in to show her our "spoils" we had black/purple teeth and tongues and only about 7 berries in the bucket. Good times. No wait, GREAT TIMES!

So back to this Jam that my mom makes: It's heaven. It's so good. The best is on a piece of homemade bread that has been toasted (Holy crap, my mouth literally just watered as I typed that!!) Jules and I would make the toast, and use a SPOON to apply the jam. Why a spoon, you ask? Well, with a knife, you just put the jam on the bread with no fanfare. But with a spoon, you use the back of the spoon to spread it, and then whatever is left over in the concave side of the spoon is yours to lick off. It's the rule.

So you use the spoon for one piece,and then you lick the spoon. And then you use it for the other piece and again, you lick the spoon. (YES, there is double dipping in my house. Wanna make somethin' of it? Fine! you can't have any of my jam!!) And then you stick the spoon back in the jar one more time for good measure and lick the spoon for the last time. You basically aren't making the toast for the bread: it's all about the jam. You need a vessel to bring more jam to your mouth, and a piece of toasted bread is the easiest/most delicious option. Trust me. We've tired many different jam conveyances. Toast is the awesomest.

There has been a line for jam in my house before. If you use the last of the jam and there is no more, expect one or more of your siblings to ask for a "bite" and then chomp off half the piece of toast with the jam. There is no mercy when it comes to blackberry jam. We love the stuff.

So my mom made some Strawberry/Blackberry jam with my nieces and nephews when they were in Eureka the first week of July. (The majority of the blackberries aren't ready until late August, so that's why she had to use some strawberries and couldn't use all blackberries.) Anyway, she makes this jam and brings back 3 jars of it here to Utah. These are not big jars. These are like 1 1/2 cup jars. What is that? like 250 mL? Anyway, they are not big. She had one for Marcelo and I , one for Jacob and one for Nate/Denisse. She didn't get Julie and jam because she didn't have enough, and she figured that Julie was going to Thailand and wouldn't use the jam up before she went. I think mom forgot about our devotion to jam. But oh well.

So she SAYS she loves all her kids equally, but apparently when that love is translated into jam, one person is left out. But Julie went to Thailand and I don't think she was none the wiser about the jam. So my house has 3 jars of jam. Mom keeps trying to tell me to take the jam to my brothers. She put them on top of the fridge so that they would see it and remember grab it when they left. They didn't. And then we moved. And then Jacob moved to Vernal. And Nathan is a WHOLE CITY AWAY. I didn't know what to do!!

I'm lying, of course. I stole their jam. Maliciously, deliberately, and without regret. I stole it. And Marcelo and I ate nearly 3/4 of a jar of it today on our waffles that we had at 11:00 pm. AND IT WAS WORTH IT!!! Oh man. There is one jar left. The only reason it's still here is because I'm trying to eat less, so I don't have bread in the house anymore. If there were a slice of bred here, you'd better believe it would' have jam on it in an instant.

When I go to Eureka this week, I'm so excited for the berries and the berry jam. I might even make enough for some SPECIAL people to try. Then again, I might just eat it all myself. We'll see.

P.S. How many times did I use the word jam in thins post? Holy crap, I think I like jam a little TOO much!!

Book Review-On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwen
203 pages

Yes, I read another book today. You SHOULD be impressed about this one. Because I did it in about 3 hours. I didn't have so much time today because I spent all day at Lisa's house to celebrate her birthday. In case you care, you should know that we only got through about 2/3rds of the songs before the wicks ran out and we had to end so that there was eventually SOMETHING to blow out. We should've done more songs. Happy Birthday Lisa!!!

Anyway, even though this one was only 203 pages, you should still be impressed. I also made breakfast for my husband and fixed the TV. I rock. Begin praising now.

So this book is a little "racy." By "racy" I mean that the main theme is sex. It's all about sex. Or rather the miscommunication that happens between husbands and wives about sex. See, it's about this newly married couple and they are in their honeymoon suite and the guy is READY to go, and the girl not so much. They are both virgins, inexperienced, nervous. You know what I'm talking about. I think most (if not ALL) of my readers have TOTALLY been there.

But there is a little more then just "nerves" on her part. But I'll get to that in a minute. The main part of the book is a nice set of flashbacks about how they met, and their families and things like that. The boy is a history major and the girl is a musician and in a string quartet. And they meet and fall in love and get married. And the guy is ready to go.

And the girl is terrified. More then terrified, she realizes that she really has no desire for sex. She wants kids, she likes kids. But she wants to have them "immaculately conceived" like Jesus. She's not looking forward to the act. She wants nothing to do with it and never wants to think about it if possible.

But she decides she needs to do her "wifely duties" and buck up and just do it. She loves her husband and wants to make him happy and it's been obvious in their courtship that they love each other lots. And it's obvious also that the husband has NO IDEA that she's feeling this way and he fully expects things to go great on the wedding night. Sure, she's been a little modest (AKA prude) before the wedding but he figures that's just her being chaste. He never things that will happen after they are married.

I actually thought that there would be more to the story. Like maybe she had been abused as a child, or that she had walked in on her parents in some sort of weird sex act and that is why she doesn't want anything to do with it. But no. That's no the case. She just doesn't have a desire, the thought scares her, and she's just not interested.

So back to what I said about it being racy. It goes quite in detail about the very limited amount of foreplay that goes on in the honeymoon suite. TMI if you ask me. But that's not what the story is about, so you quickly move through that to get to the real story. Which starts when she eventually runs out on him after some over excitement on his part (You know what I'm talking about here. Don't make me say it) and that's where the story gets upsetting.

They both blame each other for the mes they are in. He thinks she's been deceiving him. Why didn't she bring this up before? Why has this become a problem now? Why did she let him even touch her if she didn't want that?

And for her part, she's pissed that he's pushing for it. She's pissed knowing that if they go back in the bedroom, it will just be more of the same: him wanting it and she not. And she's mad that he can't see that she's just not comfortable doing it. She just wants to be with him and love him and be his wife and not have to do THAT.

But here's the aggravating part: THEY NEVER SAY THESE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS TO EACH OTHER OUT LOUD!! You, the reader are the only ones that get to see their full thoughts and feelings, their fears and worries. To each other, they get frustrated, angry and then start accusing each other of irrelevant things. She talks about how she wants to play music, and that is her goal. And he talks about how she comes from all this money, and how that's so important to her so she forced him to take a job with her father and he never wanted it.

What? Money? Music? What? No!! You aren't mad at him about music and you aren't mad at her about money! You are feeling frustrated about what just happened ind in the room 10 min ago, TALK ABOUT THAT, YOU IDIOTS!! And you are mentally screaming those things to the characters in the book. But they don't listen. Morons

And so what happens? It's not good. Like the book Atonement that I finished yesterday, this book does not have a super happy ending. I'm going to spoil it for yo and and tell you that they break up. And 8 hour marriage in the crapper because of some lousy communication. And as the years go by, they both never marry again. They live their separate lives and accomplish things alone, but they never get married. And in the end, they both lament that they didn't go back and talk on the beach. He laments the beautiful girl he never got to grow old with, the children they might have had, and the life they might have lived. She laments that he didn't call after her when she walked away form him. She would've gone back to him if he had just called for her. And it would've been all different.

Point simple: It was a depressing way to spend 3 hours. The moral of the story is this: most people are nervous about sex so you have to talk about it. Silence can ruin everything between two people. And I think that holds true for everything, not just sex: Silence can ruin anything in a relationships if you let it. So talk to each other people!! And don't let misunderstandings ruin your relationships and wonderful times that could be.

Book Review- Atonement

Atonement
by Ian McEwan
480 pages
Rating: Tragic and Melancholy. Makes me happy that I don't live in England during World War II. And that I was never falsely imprisoned.

Yes, I read this book in one day. But I think you need to know somethings about me before you are horrible impressed:

1. I still don't have TV. We have it all hooked up, but our old house and faulty wiring doesn't allow the TV to be plugged into a breaker with any other electronics. So I kept tripping the breaker all day today when I was trying to get it to work. So with no TV I had to waste some time. Turns out I can get a lot of reading done when I don't watch TV!!

2. My baby slept so much today. Last night we had a late night going to bed because we were finishing moving the last of the things from the old apartment. We were probably awake until 1:20 in the morning, and then we had to give her a bath, and then feeding, and then bed. So she slept in and then continued to sleep the whole day. I don't know if the heat had something to do with this. Like she wanted to get away from the heat and sleep was the only way to do this. I know I feel that way sometimes. So that is the other reason I had so much time to read.

3. And finally, I'm just a fast reader. I don't know what it is about me. I like sense the words before I actually see them. And I don't really read the words, I let them come into my brain visually. I think everyone does this, but I'm a visual person ANYWAY, so that's how I read. That's why I pronounce words so incorrectly (Lynn, I know you are thinking about the "admonent" situation) I just saw the word for so long, and never had to pronounce it till that day.

Anyway, that's why I was able to read this book so quickly. Plus the fact that it was awesome. I saw the movie that was made out of this book, and for some reason I read the book hoping it would end differently. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that it doesn't have the wonderful happy ending that everyone wants.

It's about a young girl who sees her sister and the son of their house lady (who has been her childhood friend forever-he grew up in a house living on their property) involved in a little, um flirtation? Can you call it that? It's more like they were fighting and they didn't know that they liked each other. Which I think is literary bull crap. Of COURSE you know if you like someone!! They just put that in there to be more "romantic" and "English" :)

Anyway the little girl is 13, and she sees her sister of 23 get in a fight with the boy and this vase is broken and a piece drops in the big fountain and the girl in her "unthinking state" strips down to her 1935 underwear (which you can assume is pretty modest compared to underwear these days) and gets in the fountain to get the piece that is lost. She still feels like she's mad at the neighbor boy and only does it to "show" him. Show him what? That she doesn't "need him" or that she's "immodest?" Anyway, in her mind at that time it was a bold move to show him that he may have graduated first in his class at Cambridge (where they both went) but he wasn't better than her.

Why does she think getting in a cold fountain will do this? I don't' know, and neither does she after she thinks about it. She immediately regrets it and is embarrassed to see him again. Well he has been thinking about her in a different way for some time, and the little fountain incident
(actually, I think we can call it an EPISODE) makes him want to tell her how he feels.

He writes a letter. His first draft is somewhat crude. He laughs to himself as he imagines her reading it. He decides to write out the revised letter again. You can guess what happens: He picks up the wrong letter. He doesn't realize it until he asks the young 13 year old to run ahead of him and give the letter to her sister before he gets there. She reads the crude letter. She thinks he's a "maniac" and a sexual deviant and this prejudices her and makes her make a HUGE mistake.

I'm taking too long in this summary, but it's just a great book. It's told from the point of view of the 3 principle characters: Briony, the 13 year old, Robbie the housekeeper's son and Cecelia, the sister of Briony. It's a story about mis-understanding and how "out of the mouth of babes" isn't always a reliable source when someone's life is on the line.

The book takes place in England during the second world war, so right there you know it will be sad. And it is. And I didn't want it to end. Again, I was hoping that it ended differently than the movie. But the movie and the book are very different similar. The movie does a GREAT job of telling the story from the different perspectives of every major character, and we can see how misunderstandings happen. The book does this even more diving into the thoughts of the characters as these things are happening.

Oh, and it's a quick read. Well, if you have a sleeping baby, nothing to distract you and you are a lightning fast reader. Otherwise you can slow-poke it out with the other "average" readers. :)

Oh, and congratulations to Jen (Delahunt) Sanders who got "Love Story" right on the last book review blog. Has no one read that book before? Go and read it, right now. It will make you bawl. If it doesn't, you are heartless and we can't be friends.

Book Review-100 Years of Solitude

417 Pages
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Rating: Fanciful, Awesome and Magical

"What do you say about a 25 year old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me."

Who can name that book that I just quoted? You get a prize if you can name that book, and NO CHEATING. No Googling it or anything. Anyway, like the "Mystery" book i just quoted above, One Hundred Years of Solitude has the awesome habit of telling the end of the story before it actually tells the story. This is actually a great habit of Marquez that he repeats in lots of his other books. In "Love in the time of Cholera" he talks about the heroine's husband's death that day. But before he talks about how he dies, he goes on about a parrot, and suicide and a mulatto woman and her kids and, well, you get the idea.

But I LOVED this book. BAAAAAA!!! It talks about the history of a family for 100 years and how they are just destined for destruction and solitude and sadness. The book ends with the total destruction of their line. There are no more descendants to further their family name but I think that's a good thing. Why? BECAUSE THEY KEEP NAMING EVERY KID THAT COMES OUT AURELIANO!!

One Aureliano is a soldier and he is referred to as "Colonel Aureliano Buendia" (you know, to keep him distinct from the other ba-zillion Aurelianos) and sews his wild oats all over the country. And one by one the women come and bring them his sons. . .there are 17 of them. And they are all named Aureliano.

That is just one of the crazy things that happens in this book. I really loved how the author weaved magic into the story and didn't make a big production about it. Like he will be talking about how Aureliano Segundo was upset about something, so he went into the study of his father, where the ghost of the gypsy waited for him and had a conversation with him. And it was just normal. Actually, at the end, the two last surviving members of the family are happy to be walking around with so many ghosts because they know that when they die they will not be gone but will continue to inhabit the house walking around still together. Just magical stuff like that happened all the time.

Oh, and one more thing. Hey Beth, remember when you were taking that history class (I know, I need to be more specific that that, right?) and you talked about how millions of Chinese died and how the government lied and said it never happened? Or am I making that up? Anyway, that happens in this book. There is a whole deal with a Banana Plantation being set up, and then they get mad when the workers revolt, and they call them into the town square and kill over 3,000 of them and haul them away in trains.. And then they lie and said it never happened. Not only that, they say that there never was a plantation there. And for some reason, everyone kind of accepts it, because they change the history books to say that it never happened. Of course, it makes no sense, right? That's part of the magic.

Anyway, I loved this book. It took me a really long time to finish it because I got so confused with all the Jose Arcadios and the Aurelianos and the Remedios. But mostly with the Aurelianos. Actually the women in this book usually were a lot better off then the men. They almost always lasted longer than their male counterparts. But that might've been because the men kept running off with the gypsies and to go to war. Who knows?

Anyway, I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. It's a classic. Go read it now. You'll thank me later.