In Review

So I thought I'd keep up with these book review-y things ... not so much. I've finished Far From the Madding Crowd, and it was awesome. I kept reading, and it was weird because I totally remembered stuff because apparently I've seen the movie. I say apparently because as I kept on reading, I would remember stuff, but I didn't remember it well enough to remember the ending, which is kind of ridiculously awesome. I was very happy with it. After watching Return of the Native and reading Tess, I wasn't sure Thomas Hardy could write a happy ending. Oh, how wrong I was! How wonderfully, happily, entertainingly wrong! I think it's safe to say that a re-watching of that is going to be happening in the very near future! :)

Now onto Beginner's Greek. I do realize that I've not finished it yet, but I feel pretty qualified to make a call on this book. And that call is this: SO DISAPPOINTING. Okay so I was all psyched about the "Jane Austen fans will feel right at home." Lies. There's so much adultery alluded to in that book ... I mean, it's not enough for any guy to have just one mistress. Every guy who has a mistress has like 5 mistresses. And there are multiple guys who have many mistresses. And the girls NEVER find out about them. At least, so far they don't. I was thinking it was going to be all clean and stuff, ALSO wrong. People are always getting suggestive with each other and there are a couple of f-bombs towards the end. Apparently we don't have many words that make adequate substitutes in this grimy little culture we have.

I guess my main problem is that this book was really depressing. (Now I sound like Holden Caulfield. Isn't that just gorgeous? Blech.) I realize it's fiction. Very very fictive. But honestly I don't see how people can really relate to a story like this unless they are like the characters in the novel. And by "like the characters in the novel," I mean indiscriminate adulterers. So I guess what I'm saying is that the only way for this book to be successful is for the people reading it to be like the characters in the book, and the only way for them to be like the characters in the book is to be (or want to be) desultorily immoral and disgusting. And the book is successful. In fact, it's a national bestseller. What does that say about people in this country to you? I guess I'm just hypersensitive, having just gotten out of the bubble, but I find that very seriously depressing.

On the lighter side of life, I got a job at Old Navy last week. That's been fun ... I get to work on the truck team a lot, so I open up all of the boxes and distribute the goods throughout the store. Let me tell you, Old Navy needs to seriously reconsider the way that they distribute stuff. I opened one box and it was probably big enough to comfortably carry 15-20 shirts inside. Possibly even more. Anyways, this one box had one plastic bag inside of it with one shirt. There were TONS of boxes that could have carried that one shirt. Let's also point out how annoyed I am with the send only one of every size concept that they do with all of their really cute stuff. And the individually packaged shirt thing that happens way more than it should. All these things considered though, I'm going to have to say that I love, love, love, LOVE the employee discount. 50% off at Gap and Banana Republic? I vote yes. That's just super awesome. Guess who's going to have a ton of cute new clothes next fall? Yep. Me. That's right. :) Haha.