All Consuming : avphibes

Consumed "Prep: A Novel"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:25:44 GMT

Prep: A Novel

by Curtis Sittenfeld

WORTH IT!

Consumed "Watchmen (DC COMICS)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:46:51 GMT

Watchmen (DC COMICS)

by Alan Moore, John Higgins & Dave Gibbins

WORTH IT!

Consumed "The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:50:22 GMT

The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable

by Hadley Freeman

NOT WORTH IT!

I mean, c'mon...

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:46:02 GMT

The Non-Designer's Design Book

by Robin Williams

Okay, there is a lot of valuable information in this book to help novice designers make nicer-looking work, but… am I the only person who thinks this is the most hideous cover design ever? It’s like a bad mexican resaurant menu, only worse. The font, the colors and the ghetto clip arts all make me want to gauge my eyeballs out. And the back… oh god… it’s got bevel/emboss… NOOOOOOO!!! All the design on the interior of the book is fine, I don’t know how the cover went so horribly awry. Someone recommended I read this (which, to be honest, I’m kind of pissed about since the implication seemed to be that I’m an incompetent designer. So I centered some text… Sue me! It looked like ass when I left or right justified it!) But, seriously, how can a book telling people the priciples of design have such a heinous cover? Exercise #1 in the book should have been “Redesign the cover of this book to make it actually look like a credible reference.”

Consumed "The Non-Designer's Design Book"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:46:02 GMT

The Non-Designer's Design Book

by Robin Williams

Consumed "The List Maker"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:33:04 GMT

The List Maker

by Blake Madden

WORTH IT!

Consuming "Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:11:46 GMT

Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century

by Laura Shapiro

Consumed "First Four Hundred : New York and the Gilded Age"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:10:07 GMT

First Four Hundred : New York and the Gilded Age

by Jerry E. Patterson

WORTH IT!

Might have possibly worked if it were 2/3s shorter...MIGHT

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:46:37 GMT

The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable

by Hadley Freeman

Every so often I read a book where I start off thinking it’s clever and fabulous, but by the end I hate it and thank god it’s over. This is one such book.

Hadley Freeman’s style, at first glance, is delightfully witty and clever, but the book’s total lack of structure and overarching point (it’s basically 234 pages of short, snarky essays on fashion topics), made the aforementioned wit feel tedious and repetitive by page 80. At this point the author’s opinions also started to feel wildly schizophrenic, with the author decrying the denizens of the fashion industry as shallow, elitist, coke-snorting megalomaniacs with one breath and then defending them as artists and feminist heroes in the next. We see this same sort of flip-floppery in the way the author expresses her fashion opinions: If she dislikes something, she lambasts it as the worst kind of torturous, sexist stupidity which could only be embraced by people without brains, self-esteem or taste…but if she favors something it becomes an expression of choice and self-expression, which, if anyone criticizes it, makes them a sexist monster or a snotty killjoy. The author seemed to have an ongoing internal battle between wanting to be a pious, above-it-all feminist and a bitchy fashion writer. Apparently she opted for both.

The thing I started finding the most grating as the book DRAGGED ON, was the outrageous hyperbole the author employed to make the things she disliked seemed blatantly stupid and illogical (Apparently high heels make you walk like a knock-kneed hunchback and kitten heels make your calves “swell up like waterlogged balloons” who knew?) Her section on stiletto heels was actually so over-the-top in it’s frothing vitriol that one would be inclined to presume that perhaps a stiletto heel killed her parents.

Less than halfway through the book, I pretty much got what I presume the author’s point was (what I like=good, what I don’t like=evil, and aren’t I clever for saying so?) and started thinking the only way I could possibly drag through the rest of the book were if made it into some sort of drinking game where I took a shot every time I saw the word “sartorial.”

And so I think over this book and wonder if, had it been 80 pages long (maybe padded out with some illustrations or large print?) would it have seemed like the breezy, witty little book it was trying to be and not have become so tedious that when I reached the end I threw it to side saying “sweet Jesus! Thank god I’m done with THAT!”

Maybe.

Consumed "Better than Beauty: A Guide to Charm"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:36:51 GMT

Better than Beauty: A Guide to Charm

by H Valentine

WORTH IT!

Consumed "Babylon Revisited: And Other Stories"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:47:53 GMT

Babylon Revisited: And Other Stories

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

WORTH IT!

Consuming "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:46:20 GMT

Guns, Germs, and Steel

by Jared Diamond

Consumed "Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:31:54 GMT

Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)

by Truman Capote

WORTH IT!

Consumed "The Mere Mortal's Guide to Fine Dining: From Salad Forks to Sommeliers, How to Eat and Drink in Style Without Fear of Faux Pas"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:45:41 GMT

The Mere Mortal's Guide to Fine Dining: From Salad Forks to Sommeliers, How to Eat and Drink in Style Without Fear of Faux Pas

by Colleen Rush

WORTH IT!

Consumed "A Cat Abroad"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:39:41 GMT

A Cat Abroad

by Peter Gethers

Consumed "The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:38:58 GMT

The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment

by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman

WORTH IT!

Consumed "The Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:11:58 GMT

The Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics)

by Edith Wharton

WORTH IT!

Consumed "Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:55:22 GMT

Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini

by Mark Leyner

WORTH IT!

Consumed "In Defense of Food"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:47:32 GMT

In Defense of Food

by Michael Pollan

WORTH IT!

Consumed "Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 04:27:10 GMT

Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook

by Izumi Evers

WORTH IT!

A story about "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia"

nobody@allconsuming.net (avphibes) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:34:30 GMT

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

by Elizabeth Gilbert

This book was breezily and digestibly written, but was at times excruciating to read. Our narrator is a pathological narcissist who seems to need constant validation and makes overly dramatic mountains out of the molehills of her bourgeois angst. Throughout the books, she tries to play off her grating flakiness as lovable quirk and paints very two-dimensional pictures of the “friends” she makes on her journey, who seem to only exist to validate and encourage our self-absorbed heroine.

I couldn’t help but think the whole time I was reading this book that a month of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy would have done infinitely more good for the author than her year of navel-gazing in exotic locales, but then, that doesn’t get you a fat book advance and a spot on Oprah.