The Lost in Academia guide to books you shouldn't read, the first one.
Being, incredibly boring, the Lost One feels he needs to add something to excuse the boring stuff he writes about. So as part of his new commitment to community service, the Lost One proudly presents his first installment of, Books you shouldn't read. Now as part of my new self appointed position as the literary canary of the blogo-sphere, I will consider it my personal duty to read every crappy book suggested to me by those brave souls who only wish to share their personal joy with the Lost One. And then of course, to use vicious insults to crush the poor fools, brave enough to put forward a personal recommendation, into a gibbering state of wretchedness. This is going to be fun.
First on the chopping block... Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus recommended by the lovely young lady from EBC (in fairness to the lovely lady, she recommended The Nanny Diaries, which was much better, but the Lost One is holding her responsible for his having picked up the book because he never would have dreamed of touching it, had she not turned him on to the authors [figuratively speaking]). The Sophomore effort from this duo of young authors, virtually assures their young careers as authors die slow, bloody, and needlessly painful deaths. And that was after having read half the book (Citizen Girl enjoys the dubious honor of having been one of only three books the Lost One failed to complete). So what was specifically bad about it? Read on.
First, and foremost of this books many gaffes was a substitution of political ideology for story. The Lost One is not of the opinion that a book must be politically neutral to be a good story (two authors capable of intertwining their political beliefs with good story telling are John Ringo, and Meg Cabot [a fellow chick lit author] representing the political right and left respectively), but where Citizen Girl goes off the reservation is in assuming its own self-righteous position is correct, and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. The story moves with a rhythm that baffles the imagination, because the fun house world of Citizen Girl is not easily recognizable as anything approaching the real world, but instead a series of happenstance, and chance encounters governed by the authors' beliefs in what the world really is like. As a for instance, Girl, the protagonist in this sad little leftist morality play, is hired by My company, the personification of evil for the soul purpose of using her as a token, a nod to the political left. This is seen as the main means by which Girl is oppressed. The Lost One's Main problem with this is the assumption that this is the way right wing corporations want to run their businesses. Tokenism is a creation of left wing attempts to legislate morality (I.E. the belief that by requiring certain hires to meet a lesser standard of competition based on unrelated characteristics, like race, or gender, purely as a for instance), yet Citizen Girl winges on about the unfairness of it all.
Second, and related to the first problem is that Citizen Girl continues the morality play nomenclature from the Nanny Diaries. While this worked in Diaries, where the situation was so real, and generic the reader was almost positive that a trip to Manhattan would reveal a ton of young nannies all struggling under the tyrannical weight of self obsessed employers, the story problems in Girl (see above) left the Lost One wondering if the authors were simply incapable of coming up with a realistic sounding character name (its harder then it looks, incidentally Roger Smith? Sounds made up, too generic. Cornelius Summerson? Too specific. Get it?). In the end, reading the book began to feel like be bludgeoned over the head with "cute" double entendres.
Finally, the book is kind of depressing. Sure this could be because the Lost One wasn't able to finish it and get to the "happy" ending, but even so, it felt like Citizen Girl was aiming for pressured and missed by a good bit. In the end, the Girl just ran from one disaster to the next, with no rest for the reader, and little support from the other characters. In the end, this flaw is probably why the Lost One couldn't finish the book, it sucked any joy from the story, and turned pleasure reading, into a chore.
So there you go, the first in a random, bit of hating on various books. The first, but not the last. Until next time.
First on the chopping block... Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus recommended by the lovely young lady from EBC (in fairness to the lovely lady, she recommended The Nanny Diaries, which was much better, but the Lost One is holding her responsible for his having picked up the book because he never would have dreamed of touching it, had she not turned him on to the authors [figuratively speaking]). The Sophomore effort from this duo of young authors, virtually assures their young careers as authors die slow, bloody, and needlessly painful deaths. And that was after having read half the book (Citizen Girl enjoys the dubious honor of having been one of only three books the Lost One failed to complete). So what was specifically bad about it? Read on.
First, and foremost of this books many gaffes was a substitution of political ideology for story. The Lost One is not of the opinion that a book must be politically neutral to be a good story (two authors capable of intertwining their political beliefs with good story telling are John Ringo, and Meg Cabot [a fellow chick lit author] representing the political right and left respectively), but where Citizen Girl goes off the reservation is in assuming its own self-righteous position is correct, and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. The story moves with a rhythm that baffles the imagination, because the fun house world of Citizen Girl is not easily recognizable as anything approaching the real world, but instead a series of happenstance, and chance encounters governed by the authors' beliefs in what the world really is like. As a for instance, Girl, the protagonist in this sad little leftist morality play, is hired by My company, the personification of evil for the soul purpose of using her as a token, a nod to the political left. This is seen as the main means by which Girl is oppressed. The Lost One's Main problem with this is the assumption that this is the way right wing corporations want to run their businesses. Tokenism is a creation of left wing attempts to legislate morality (I.E. the belief that by requiring certain hires to meet a lesser standard of competition based on unrelated characteristics, like race, or gender, purely as a for instance), yet Citizen Girl winges on about the unfairness of it all.
Second, and related to the first problem is that Citizen Girl continues the morality play nomenclature from the Nanny Diaries. While this worked in Diaries, where the situation was so real, and generic the reader was almost positive that a trip to Manhattan would reveal a ton of young nannies all struggling under the tyrannical weight of self obsessed employers, the story problems in Girl (see above) left the Lost One wondering if the authors were simply incapable of coming up with a realistic sounding character name (its harder then it looks, incidentally Roger Smith? Sounds made up, too generic. Cornelius Summerson? Too specific. Get it?). In the end, reading the book began to feel like be bludgeoned over the head with "cute" double entendres.
Finally, the book is kind of depressing. Sure this could be because the Lost One wasn't able to finish it and get to the "happy" ending, but even so, it felt like Citizen Girl was aiming for pressured and missed by a good bit. In the end, the Girl just ran from one disaster to the next, with no rest for the reader, and little support from the other characters. In the end, this flaw is probably why the Lost One couldn't finish the book, it sucked any joy from the story, and turned pleasure reading, into a chore.
So there you go, the first in a random, bit of hating on various books. The first, but not the last. Until next time.
posted by Lost in The World at
11:39 AM
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