#charles has been angry for the last thirty years and has been smiling the whole time

[mostlikelyshutup]

newsflash assholes, everyone in the butcher shop is repressed!

[redsnowdrop]

CHARLES LECLERC X OC

Chapter 4 -brother’s best friend; forbidden love-

-> F1 Masterlist <-

She accidentally looked out the window and saw her brother giving her the middle finger from the parking lot, but Flavia strangely smiled. She was amused by that scene. After a few seconds, however, she saw Charles come out and it was clear that the two had met on the stairs or even at the entrance. She followed him with her gaze until she saw him disappear into the distance. Her brother entered without knocking -I think you owe me an explanation-

-You told me the exact same thing when you saw me smoking for the first time-

-It's not the time to joke. What happened- he simply said, he didn't ask. He had his trousers on backwards, no one ever knew how it was possible, his shoes in his hand and dark circles under his eyes that reached his knees.

-Do you want to lecture me when not only have I brought you home but when your breath also smells like a dead mouse?-

-I think it was Charles who took me home- he pointed his finger at her –I saw him as I was coming in-

-Yes, I ended up getting drunk and he was kind enough to drive my car-

-Did he also put on you the pajamas? Why did he leave the house now?-

-How do you know how much time has passed since we returned?-

The hangover was starting to affect Antonio's mental clarity –You know what? I have a headache- he closed his eyes and lowered his head -Just tell me that you haven't had sex with him-

-Why would it be so serious?- she provoked him with a mischievous smile on her face but for Antonio it wasn't the ideal morning for joking.

-Because Rosa is already dating Lorenzo and I'm Arthur's friend, the situation is already messed up itself-

Flavia had a confused expression –What‘s wrong with that?-

-Think about when Rosa will leave Lorenzo for a man who has a fatter wallet, between me and Arthur it will be embarrassing and it would be even worse if two sisters went out with two brothers, who, coincidentally, are my friends, in some way. You've had so many nice and stunning boyfriends, is it really too much asking you to stay away from my friends?And what if after getting together you're the one who breaks up? What are we doing? Do I invite my friend and your ex to our house?-

-You are a friend of Arthur, not of Charles and Lorenzo and Rosa are thirty years old- the blonde underlined.

-I also remind you that I graduated and I am taking a sabbatical. I'll stay here, you leave for Milan tomorrow for your stupid photography course. When you argued with all your friends I did favors for you so, I don't feel like I'm asking you for the moon by begging you not to do it with my friends- he remarked with a hint of anger in his voice. He wasn't really angry though, he loved his sister and they had always been there, in some way, for each other and Antonio cared a lot about friendships and having fun. It seemed reasonable to him to ask her for this small favor after all the sacrifices he had made for her.

-Anyway I was just teasing you-

He lay down in the guest room because he couldn't stand after driving half an hour after a party that lasted until four in the morning.

-Nothing happened, don't worry- they looked into each other's eyes -and I promise you that nothing will happen- she smiled at him bitterly. An emotion which, however, his brother did not grasp as his vision was blurred.

It was just one kiss and I'm going home tomorrow, he'll forget about it and so will I. We will move forward and I will return the favor to Antonio. No one will ever know anything and we will all go our own way.

But that kiss happened and I loved it.

Hi guys! This is a small spoiler from my story! That will be posted on AO3!

I will prioritise other FF (Carlos and Lewis’ for sure) because this FF needs more work to do (not only I have to translate the whole thing in English but I desperately need to change the finale and her personality in the latest chapters as well because it’s the one I liked less overall)

(Flavia is the oc, Antonio and Rosa are her siblings! Just to clarify if it wasn’t clear enough!)

Hope you like it and let me know what you think! For any questions I’m always reachable!

See you soon, xoxo!

[flamehairedwritings]

The Fire In Your Eyes: Chapter Thirty

Characters: Arthur Morgan x Original Female Character

Rating: The whole series will be E, 18+ ONLY for violence, gore, character deaths, animal deaths, parent deaths, swearing, grief, sexual themes and unprotected sex, mentions of miscarriage, hanging.

Summary: Saved by Arthur Morgan when her town is attacked, a young woman’s past comes back to haunt her when she has no choice but to join the Van der Linde Gang.

Some scenes and dialogue have been taken from the game!

Read on AO3

The Fire In Your Eyes Masterlist

Please don’t copy, steal or re-post my work; credit does not count.

Epilogue

The sky was beautiful, a light blue and a dusky pink in some areas, orange in others.

Ada gazed at the colours, watching the sun slowly set behind the hills far away. All around her, crickets trilled gently and birds whistled softly. It was so still, so peaceful. 

Folding her arms, she rubbed at one of them lightly, looking towards the faint outline of the mountains beyond the hills, Mount Hagen somewhere amongst them.

She hadn’t wanted to die. The moment the bullet had passed through Dutch to her, the numbness had fallen away, crumbled, and she knew she wanted to live. So fiercely she wanted to live, and it was all that had gone round and round in her mind as Arthur had taken her down to Valentine. Coming in and out of consciousness, she’d felt terrifying waves of fear, anger, grief, denial, and, in one moment, she truly thought she had died as finally peace had suddenly washed over her.

A corner of her mouth lifted a little. Morphine would do that.

Somehow, deep in her mind, she’d always known that the final moments on the mountain was what it would come down to; her or Dutch, one way or another. And, once upon a time, she wouldn’t have known what decision he’d have made.

They hadn’t spoken about what had happened since the night before they’d returned home. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that they wouldn’t, not yet... though she’d had to with Thom, barely an hour after they’d arrived, in fact.

That had been a week ago, and he and Charlotte had left the next day, the former still cold towards her, the latter reluctant and apologetic.

“He just needs time,” her sister-in-law had murmured to her as they’d embraced, her lovely features full of concern for both of the O’Driscoll siblings.

“I know.”

Ada wasn’t angry at him, though, and she certainly didn’t blame him for being so, either.

Mercifully, they’d managed to prevent Millie from catching on to anything that had happened, despite the heated argument. She just thought her mother had caught a cold and bruised her stomach so “gentle hugs for a little while, angel.”

While she couldn’t help but dwell on her brother and his hissed words to her, full of a venom of a former self, there had been some bright moments since then, and not just from Millie making her laugh every day. John had written, telling them he’d wasted no time in asking Abigail to marry him... and she’d said yes. Ada had cried into her morning cup of tea while Arthur had grinned and grinned, reading the words over and over.

The wedding was due to be in a week’s time, and, as a result of her now strained relationship with her brother, Millie would be going with them, something the little girl was very excited about. Ada and Arthur didn’t think they could ever be separated from her again, anyway. Sadie and Charles would be there, too, naturally, and it was nice, having something to look forward to.

She should feel well enough to ride by herself, then, too, even though they’d take the wagon for Millie’s comfort. Her wound was healing, slowly, but healing. The first few days after they’d returned she’d just slept and eaten and drunk and slept, more exhausted than she had known, the argument with Thom having not exactly helped.

And, through it all, Arthur had been... well, Arthur. She’d never loved him more than she did right now. He’d tended to her, looked after Millie and kept her entertained, looked after the animals and had even started drawing up plans for the new stable. She’d catch the way he’d looked at her sometimes, though; sometimes grateful, other times like he was afraid, like he was reliving the days in Valentine, like he’d been reminded once again of how very much human they were.

They would just be brief moments, though, and then he would smile, fear turning to love. She knew he was waiting for a sign of melancholia, too, but none came. She’d learned to not just wait around for the spells or dwell on the possibility of them, knowing that, though they would come, they would also go, as surely as night turned to day, and life would continue on as it always did.

“Well, if that ain’t the prettiest sight in all the land. Sun ain’t bad either.”

Her lips twitched as Arthur pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his arms sliding around her. She leaned back against his chest with a quiet sigh, her hands settling over his.

“How long did it take you to think of that one?”

“‘bout thirty minutes. I’ve been stood by the window just starin’ at you.”

She laughed, the fingers on one hand lacing with his. “Wow, quicker than last time.”

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ there.”

Ada laughed again, and he smiled, pressing another kiss to the top of her head.

“You okay?” he murmured into her hair, and she nodded, tilting her head to lean it back against his shoulder.

“Yeah.” She traced light, absent-minded patterns on the back of his hand with a finger tip, the sky now turning from dusky pink to fiery red. “There’s gonna be good weather tomorrow.”

“Looks so. I was thinkin’ of goin’ out tomorrow, doin’ some huntin’ while Millie is havin’ her lessons with Martha.” His chin rested on her shoulder as he rocked her slightly. “Thought maybe you’d like to join me, if you feel up to it.”

He had to lift his head a little as she turned hers, smiling softly at him. “I’d love to.”

“All righ’. You can hold my coat while I shoot down that Grizzly that’s been spotted, I think I can get ‘im...”

Ada shook her head as she turned in his arms to face him, her lips twitching. “You’re a very funny man.”

His smile was wide, very much pleased with himself. “I know that by how much you laugh.”

“I should stop encouraging you.”

“Oh, you can try, sweetheart, but I see miserable failure...” he murmured, lowering his head towards hers.

And he was right. She couldn’t stop her smile as he captured her lips in a tender kiss, his fingers splaying across her back. Barely moments later, her arms slid up and draped around his neck, her lips moving slowly against his. He teased her for a few moments, his tongue gliding against her mouth, and just as a soft sound came from the back of her throat, he pulled away, one corner of his mouth higher than the other.

“C’mon, there’s still a God damn load of cake left that I am not lettin’ go to waste.”

“You and your insatiable appetite, Mr Morgan.”

He grinned at her as he took her hand, their fingers lacing together. “Oh, I’m insatiable all righ’, Mrs Morgan.”

And she failed again.

Her laugh was carried across their land by the gentle breeze, lifting it through the trees and into the air as she followed her husband into their home.

And life continued on.

The End

———————————————————————————————————

  I just wanted to take a few moments to thank each and every one of you for reading this story. I spent about a year planning it and writing the first half, then as lockdown here came in March, I thought why the heck don’t I just start posting it? And here we are, thirty chapters later!! I can’t quite believe I’ve done it, this is the first series I ever started writing and my longest to date.

I want to say a special, huge and just brimming with love thank you to those who have commented. You genuinely kept me going at times and I really can’t thank you enough, you all hold such a special place in my heart.

I’m sorry for making you all wait so long for the final two chapters! I wanted to make sure I was happy with them and that they were the best they could be. I’ve loved living in this world and thinking about Ada and Arthur and I really don’t want it to end... and I’m not quite done yet! I have a short story planned for Thom and Charlotte that will involve Ada and Arthur, their wedding and Millie, and so much more, and maybe some other stories in the future, too...

Thank you so, so much, everyone, I hope you’re all doing okay in these trying times, that you have a lovely day and end of the year, and 2021 brings you all that you hope for.

All the best x

Ghosts of Ourselves — 2021

———————————————————————————————————

Comments and reblogs make my day in a way I can’t describe.

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged or untagged in this series!

Questions?

Tagged: @belfry-bat​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​, @sistasarah-sallysaidso​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​, @ntlmundy​​​​​​​​​​, @monster363​​​​​​​, @cowboisadness​

[momentofmemory]

FICTOBER 2020 - day nine

Prompt #9: “Will you look at this?”

Fandom: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)

Characters: Michelle Jones, Peter Parker, Ned Leeds

Words: 1650

Author’s Note: Michelle’s in charge of AcaDec, which really shouldn’t be that much responsibility—except, of course, it is. Set a couple months post-HOCO, spring semester. Michelle POV.

>> i promise i’ll promise

“What is the melting point of mercury?”

Charles’s bell rings instantly, and its sound waves have hardly have the chance to make it to the back wall and bounce back before he’s following it with his answer. “Negative thirty-eight point eight celsius, or negative thirty-seven point nine Fahrenheit. Or two hundred thirty-four point three Kelvin. Or—”

“Correct,” MJ says, forestalling any further commentary. “No points. What does the term ‘amensalism’ refer to in—”

“Wait, rewind?”

MJ glances up over her notes at Charles.

“I got it right,” he says, “so why don’t I get points for it?”

Michelle sighs, blowing a stray piece of hair away from her face. She writes an extra study note next to his name. “The melting point of mercury is negative thirty-eight point eight, but if you'd paid attention to your flashcards, you’d know the Basic Guide says it’s positive six hundred and fifty degrees celsius. Presumably because they confused it with magnesium. So, the answer you should give is positive six hundred and fifty degrees celsius.”

Michelle doesn’t bother looking up when no one responds—the silence communicates her team’s confusion all on its own.

She flips to the next card.

“Soooooo.” It’s Betty’s voice this time. “You want us to give the wrong answer on purpose?”

“Does your textbook still describe Columbus arriving in America as discovering a new land instead of starting a mass genocide?”

“Uh—”

“Great, so now that we’ve established we’re cool with lying for grades, next question. Amensalism. Any takers?”

Charles’s previous enthusiasm for the bell must have evaporated, because her question is once again met with silence.

“The correct answer is ‘a relationship between species that harms one with no effect on the other,’” Michelle says. Then she gathers up the cards and straightens them by tapping the deck against the table. “We’re done with practice questions for today; break for individual study. And for the future, please cross-reference your answers and if you come across one that’s incorrect, memorize both the correct and stated answer and let me know about it for the record.”

The seven students on the stage just stare at her.

“So like.” MJ gestures towards the study tables. “Dismissed.”

She watches them slink off the stage and set up around the room, some in clusters of two and others preferring to study alone. Mr. Harrington’s out sick and the teacher that’s supposed to be helping is… incompetent, judging by the fact that she’s been snoring for the last fifteen minutes, so that just leaves Michelle in charge today.

It’s not a great day for that.

MJ sighs again, then swipes the Music Basic Guide off the desk and walks over to where Ned’s texting furiously in the far corner.

“Hey.”

Ned doesn’t seem to notice her. MJ reaches out over the table and then abruptly drops the book, which is considerably hefty, directly in front of him with a loud bang.

“Whoa!” Ned jerks upright. “Hi?”

MJ nods towards the phone. “That Peter?”

“Uh.” He tilts the phone away, suddenly very interested in her not seeing the screen. “Yeah. He uh, he said he’s on his way.”

“He always says that,” Michelle says. “Tell him MJ says that she’s highly aware of his growing absences—not in like, a creepy stalker kinda way—but in a she will literally kick him out of AcaDec kinda way. We only have nine spots and we need them all at one hundred percent if we’re going to win this year.”

“Good thing I’m here then!”

MJ turns just in time to see Peter, red-faced and breathless, slide into the seat next to her.

He drops his book bag onto the table—the noise once again startling Ned—and then has the audacity to ask, “Did I miss anything?”

She stares at him. “You’re half an hour late, Peter.”

“Which is still earlier than I was yesterday—”

“You realize that makes your argument worse, right?”

“—and Ned filled me in on pretty much everything, so, no need to backtrack for me.”

MJ pins Ned under the weight of her stare. “Oh he did, did he?”

Ned doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty about it, though he does shove his phone in his pocket awfully quickly. “You know what, now that we’ve established that I’m a great friend and teammate, I’m going to be even better and get us some snacks.”

Michelle’s eyes widen. “Ned, wait—”

“I’ll just run to the vending machine and back, don’t wait for me to get started!”

Ned then grabs his bag and is headed out of the room before she or Peter can get a word in, leaving both of them alone.

Michelle folds her arms on the table and lays her head in her hands, and groans.

Peter, mercifully and uncharacteristically, is quiet. After a few moments she hears his chair scrape against the linoleum floor as he finds a more comfortable position, and then the sound of the zipper on his backpack as he pulls out his study cards.

Michelle closes her eyes and ignores all the things she needs to fix, and probably all the eyes that’re pretending not to stare.

“So,” Peter says, somehow almost immediately after her heart stops pounding in her ears, “wrong answers, huh?”

“So many.” MJ drags her head back up and draws patterns on the table with her finger. “Or at least three, I guess. There’s probably more I haven’t found yet.”

“Still, the fact that you noticed them at all is really cool,” Peter says. “You’re good at detail stuff.”

“Or maybe just good at finding bullshit.” MJ chances a quick glance over at the sub to make sure she didn’t hear that. Mrs. Haney, predictably, is still asleep. “But I shouldn’t have had to find them at all. The USAD started charging for study materials this year instead of just handing out the topics, and the price was—a lot. Midtown’s already facing budget cuts, so they didn’t love the idea of spending money on a club run by a sophomore.”

Peter highlights a phrase on one of his cards before writing it down in his notebook. “But you got them, right? That’s got to count for something.”

“Yeah, until I found out they were a complete waste.”

“Complete might be an exaggeration—”

“Well, they’re not good enough!”

Peter pauses halfway through writing a sentence and turns his full attention to her, and it’s—a little nerve-wracking.

“I just—” Michelle grasps for words, then settles by dumping out the flashcards she’d made with the highlighted errors. “Will you look at this disaster? Switching up the melting point of a metal isn’t just a typo; it’s lazy. And easy to miss. We’re going to have to fact check practically everything in the books because there’s no way of knowing where the mistakes are, and who knows if they’re going to quiz us on the right answers or the wrong ones. They just… they charged all this money and they don’t even care who it hurts, because they still get what they wanted.”

“Amensalism,” Peter says.

“Wow, Ned really did tell you everything.”

Peter grins, and Michelle tries very studiously to ignore the way his smile makes her feel a little softer inside. “He’s a very efficient texter.”

MJ rolls her eyes. Peter doesn’t seem bothered.

“I just.  Liz chose me for this.” Michelle shrugs, picking at her cuticles. “And since she’s… I just feel like I owe it to her to do it right.”

Peter rubs idly at his wrists, suddenly uninterested in meeting her eyes. “Yeah. I get that.”

For once, despite his hesitancy, Michelle can tell he’s not lying.

It’s a nice change of pace.

Then she awkwardly fist bumps his shoulder and concentrates, intellectually, on how infuriating his flakiness and normal lying-ness is.

He is a disaster. And not interested.

She doesn’t need this kind of distraction.

“Anyway,” she says, abandoning her thoughts and pulling into a stretch, “it’s already done, so. I have to make this work somehow. I’ll figure it out.”

Except, there’s so much work to do already. Student profiles with strengths and weaknesses demarcated, logistics of traveling together for meets, a study plan complete with alternates, a recruiting strategy for next year, and not to mention all the drills she needs to run. Maybe an angry letter campaign to the USAD board while she’s at it.

Peter clears his throat. “Maybe I could help?”

Given his previous participation in AcaDec it is, quite possibly, one of the last things she’d expected him to say.

“I could go through the physics section pretty quickly,” he says, “and Ned can take economics, and—”

“Peter,” she says, still  recovering from the surprise of his offer, “you can’t even make it to practice on time and now you’re promising to do extra work?”

Peter has the decency to wince. “Okay, well. Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Yeah.” Michelle squares her shoulders, and resigns herself to the mountain of undeserved work. “But thanks for—”

“How about I just promise to help now? Since I am here?”

Once again, more staring.

“And then next time I’m here,” he continues, “I’ll just promise again.”

It’s utterly ridiculous, but he’s also utterly sincere.

“So you’re.” MJ frowns at him. “Promising to promise?”

“Yes, that.”

“…Huh.” Michelle squints at him. “You’re full of surprises, Parker.”

His eyes grow wide in that way that always makes her think, maybe. And then that stupid grin returns and makes her think a whole lot of other things.

“And one of those surprises is a highly informed understanding of physics.” Peter makes a ‘gimme’ motion with his hand. “Wanna give it a try?”

Michelle looks at him, and how genuinely earnest he is about the whole thing.

Maybe.

“Yeah,” she says slowly, opening the Math guide to the appropriate section. She scoots closer. “We can try.”

[potusburg]

Jay McWalsh

There is much to be saddened by as the US continues to spiral into a cesspool of extremism, anger, hate and violence.  However,  your shock and outrage at lack of civility in the current political discourse is not persuasive.  But we’ll get to all that.  Let’s go back thirty years.

In 1988 your semi-faithful blogger was 14 years old.  That was the year two movies came out that were hugely influential on a young life, and remain favorites to this day:  “Die Hard” and “Midnight Run”.  Die Hard’s terrorist-thwarting John McClane and Midnight Run’s mob boss tormentor Jack Walsh were in many ways the same character:  cigarette-smoking, wise-cracking, five-o’clock-shadow-bearing, firearm-wielding, haymaker-throwing, F-bomb-dropping, explosion-causing, lone-crusading assholes.  They were fighting bad guys and they were way too cool for school.

So much were they the same guy, that Bruce Willis and Robert DeNiro could have swapped roles at the last minute before filming those two movies, and neither movie would have missed a beat.  DeNiro had better comedic chemistry with his foil Charles Grodin than Willis did with Alan Rickman, but that could have been a script thing.  Essentially, John McClane and Jack Walsh were one and the same.  They were J. McWalsh.  Which we’ll morph into Jay McWalsh.  Your blogger wanted desperately to be Jay.  A knowing, wry smile while driving by a parked cop at 3 mph over the speed limit invoked an inner feeling of Jayness.  Too tough, too cool, and on way too important a mission to defer to convention and authority.

Jay McWalshes are everywhere.  They have both reflected and influenced generations of boys and men who grew up wanting to be them.  Jay McWalshes are littered across the landscape of 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s buddy cop and spaghetti western movies.  Think Martin Riggs (”Lethal Weapon”), or Jack Cates (”48 Hours”).  Would we not hide in a bunker and prepare for Armageddon should Clint Eastwood EVER play a character that is anything but Jay McWalsh? Jays are our favorite rock stars and rap artists.  They are the athletes we admire.  And they are politicians.  But we’ll come back to that later.

The influence of this persona extends beyond, and reaches back further than, late 20th-century pop culture.  This blogger grew up going to church and remembers being exposed as a young man to a New Testament story that has (by rough memory) Jesus going into a Temple and angrily knocking over tables of commerce.   If we are, as was sometimes taught to this blogger, to model ourselves after Jesus as best we can, this particular event models a willingness to defy authority, defy convention, and to do something that is, strictly speaking, quite angry and rude, in the name of what is right.  This is not to offend Christians by comparing Jesus to movie characters, but rather to point out the subtle and similar potential influence that this kind of Biblical story can have on the psyche of an individual or culture.

Jay McWalshism has probably gathered much more steam in this blogger’s lifetime, though, in a culture that identifies more with 70s era Han Solo than 40s era Superman.  Edginess trumps Boy Scoutedness.  We like—no, love—an asshole if he’s OUR asshole.  An asshole who’s really a good guy, who is really fighting for the good guys, is justified and even appreciated if they forgo civility and manners to get the job done.  There’s even a certain charm to the hero getting it done in a way that causes some pearl-clutching along the way.  It’s a bonus.  But did you ever notice a tendency to become much more focused on how rude, inconsiderate, offensive, and just flat out lacking in common decency the discourse is when it comes from the side with which you disagree?  Sort of like how the athlete on the team you aren’t rooting for is a punk and a disgrace when they display their Jayness in the arena of competition.

This is a pretty straightforward and harmless tendency in a movie, where it’s obvious who the heroes and villains are.  The audience isn’t divided on that.  There is division in sports, but usually those divisions are harmless.  Real life, however, is very different.  And that’s where it gets dangerous.   We have the same levels of certainty in politics about who the bad guys are that we had about who the bad guys were in Die Hard.  And if you’re that certain, of course you don’t want politeness.  Of course it is easy to justify massively elevated levels of anger and meanness.  So don’t be offended when the other side acts like Jay McWalsh.  You’re looking the other way when your side does it.   About eight different kinds of cognitive bias are firing in your brain whenever you make the argument that the other side has hit a new low.  You are setting higher standards for people who disagree with you than you are setting for people who agree with you.

Signs of this are everywhere.  Fox News and conservative talk radio do an outstanding job of keeping a rapt audience apprised of the latest assaults on decency, civility, and meaningful discourse, that have come from the left.  We have ample opportunity to tune in for accounts of Ted Cruz and his wife being harassed and chased out of a restaurant, death threats received by Brett Kavanaugh and his family, and a whole range of outrageous behaviors.  CNN and late night TV will similarly oblige us when it comes to recapping the transgressions of Trump and the right.  What’s more, being the more polite side might not be anything to brag about.  If the other side is behaving without maturity or persuasion, and yet half the country agrees with them, might that be because their beliefs actually have merit?  This may be a flimsy hypothesis, but the point remains—politeness doesn’t matter much in these debates except as a way to call foul on the other side.

Twenty years ago, President Clinton, whose preferred moniker at POTUSburg is Slick Willie, was the subject of a fierce debate over his conduct, and the direction of the outrage fell rather purely along party lines, just as it does today when it comes to President Trump.  A historical re-examination of Slick Willie’s behavior (your blogger recommends Season 2 of Slate’s “Slow Burn” podcast) points us toward the same sort of pathological narcissism that we accuse Trump of today.   The politics of the two differ, as do their communication abilities and styles, therefore invoking inverse reactions in the relevant demographics and media.  Let us make no mistake, though.  It is highly implausible that a sense of goodness, decency, and morality is what stopped Slick Willie from communicating with the same words and mannerisms that Trump uses.   It comes down to what communication tools each power-hungry and charismatic populist politician has in his personal arsenal to advance his own agenda.

The inspiration for this blog is the absurdity that is our current President.  This blogger believes in a distinct separation of three lenses through which one might view the President.  

The first lens is policy and ideology.  In our country, there are honest, informed, and well-intentioned disagreements on policy, and we don’t think attempting to persuade people to the other side of the deep policy and ideological divisions of today are a worthwhile pursuit for POTUSburg.  

The second is conduct.  The view enumerated above is that the conduct and tone of the President and his supporters probably only matters to you if you disagree with them on policy.  People criticize the manner of delivery when they don’t like the message.  We’ve all experienced this.  Therefore, a debate over the President’s conduct and tone is mostly a farce, just as the debate 20 years ago over our President’s conduct was mostly a farce, and is not the purview of this blog.  Recent threats and actions of political violence and hate are horrific and may well be manifestations of an environment sowed by uncivil rhetoric. The trouble is that extremism isn’t solely the domain of one side, and we only seem to recognize the toxicity when it emanates from others.   

The third is merit.  If the tactics of this President seem childish to you, it is because he is demonstrating the intellectual capacity, attention span, and self-awareness of a child.  Even more alarming than the antics are the leadership and cognitive abilities, or more specifically the lack thereof, that lie behind them.  The President’s techniques in persuasion (however effective with many) are unsophisticated because he is unsophisticated.  That should matter to us all.  It is dangerous.  It doesn’t mean his politics are dangerous (though you may find them dangerous for separate ideological reasons)—it means his leadership is.  Recognizing that our President is mentally incapable of grasping and navigating the ins and outs of his job doesn’t have anything to do with whether conservatives or liberals are right.   But it’s a recognition that is sorely needed and lacking.  We are witnessing the void that is left where there should be some semblance of coherence, being filled instead by ignorance, anger, and fear.

This is POTUSberg.

--SKS

[fadingfartconnoisseur]

The Worst Books I’ve Ever Read

Every month, I tell you what I’m reading; every year, I rank my favorite books of the year. Reading is a huge part of my life and I make an effort to read the best books I can find. (See the best of 2016 and best of 2015 here.)

That being said, anyone who reads this much knows that there’s no attraction in, “This is good, this is good, this is also good.” The bad stuff — the drama, the conflict — is what gets readers really interested.

And so I think it’s time to talk about the WORST books I’ve ever read.

I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey and don’t plan to, so you won’t find that here. Nor anything by Ann Coulter — in fact, I’ll exclude political books altogether. Nothing by L. Ron Hubbard. The Da Vinci Code won’t be on this list, either (Dan Brown gets a lot of hate, but dude knows how to write suspense and I can’t hate on him for that). And while some people can’t stomach it, I happen to love Lolita.

Here are the worst books I’ve ever read, in my opinion. Some are great works of literature that happened to rub me the wrong way. Some are more embarrassing than that.

And the worst book of all, a book that made me physically angry for having read it and forever changed my opinion of the author, is listed last.

The Worst Book from High School: Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Sophomore year was tough for me, capped by my experiences in Honors American Lit. My teacher and I butted heads from the start and I disliked much of the literature we read. I struggled to keep up, even deciding to drop Honors British Lit the following year in favor of English electives. (This is why I didn’t read Hamlet until 2015.)

And then came Walden near the end of the year. A book lauded by so many people — often including the travel blogging community. A book that took place and was written just a few miles from where I grew up.

Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin in the woods. He read, he wrote, he observed nature and grew his own food and tried to create art from it.

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” –Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

Revisiting Walden after years of reading about privilege in America, it becomes more striking that Thoreau was only concerned with what a wealthy independent man could do with his time, ignoring everyone else in society.

Another problem was that much of what Thoreau actually wrote was cloaked in hypocrisy. In between talking about the beauty and fragility and nature, he described how much he loved burning down half the forest. He would go on and on about how the only books people should read are classic Greek literature — as he writes a new book for them to read. Also, his mother would do his laundry.

I wrote a scathing paper decrying Thoreau’s hypocrisy.

My teacher gave me an A-.

I consider that one of my greatest academic victories.

What To Read Instead: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. It’s pretty much as much an opposite of Walden as you can get, and I found it far more entertaining.

The Worst Conclusion to a Series: Allegiant by Veronica Roth

I get it — it’s hard to write a good ending to a book, much less wrap up a three-book series. But I haven’t seen anything crash and burn as badly as Allegiant, the conclusion of Veronica Roth’s Divergent series.

The series as a whole intrigued me a bit but ultimately made my eyes roll. In a futuristic society, teenagers take a test and are sorted into one of five groups based on their personality: Abnegation (the selfless), Erudite (the intelligent), Candor (the honest), Amity (dirty hippies), and Dauntless (the brave). But when Tris displays the traits of multiple groups in her test, she finds out she’s Divergent and she could be killed for it.

Now: the first two books were told from Tris’s point of view. In Allegiant, the story is suddenly told from two points of view, Tris and her lover Four — but both voices are exactly the same. They witness the same events. They have the same feelings. Their vocabularies and cadences are identical. I could never tell who was speaking.

Beyond that, the “big revelation” at the end of the book landed with a thump, and so many people died throughout that the deaths became meaningless.

“When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable- except that she had jumped first. The stiff had jumped first. Even I didn’t jump first. Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful.” –Vernoica Roth, Allegiant

Another theme throughout the first two books is that characters would occasionally get injected with serums that would create simulations — and sometimes led them to do evil things. The final book was a series of, “Okay, it’s time for another serum!” “Wait, here’s a serum to override that serum!” “No, that’s a bad serum, we’re the good guys, this one’s a GOOD serum!” Again and again, another serum. You’d think Roth owned stock in skincare products.

What to Read Instead: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Not only is it a fantastic novel, the story is told through several different narrators and each of the voices are unique and different.

The Worst Book Receiving Bewildering Levels of Praise: The Girls by Emma Cline

One of the buzziest books of 2016, The Girls is a fictionalized retelling of the Manson murders of the 1970s, focusing on the relationships between the women in Not Charles Manson’s cult.

One of the things I can’t stand the most is wasted potential. This book could have been so good in the hands of another author!

Emma Cline focused more on creating elaborate prose than telling a story. And when I say elaborate, that’s not a compliment — she stuffed her paragraphs with enough bewildering metaphors and similes as if they were banana peppers on a Subway sandwich (yes, I know what I did there). It goes to show that no matter how you write, if you don’t know how to tell a story, you’ve got nothing.

“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of life. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like ‘sunset’ and ‘Paris.’ Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus.” –Emma Cline, The Girls

At the same time, the book moved at a glacial pace. By the time the action started, I was psyched to finally have some excitement — only it withered and died instantly. The big showdown I had been expecting didn’t even come to fruition.

What To Read Instead: American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin, a much better book about 1970s Bay Area counterculture. This one focuses on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and it was so exciting I couldn’t put it down.

The Biggest Disappointment From An Author I Love: A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain

I love Uncle Tony. I worship the man. But A Cook’s Tour was not his best work.

You think combining Anthony Bourdain and world travel would be amazing, especially after his wild and raw Kitchen Confidential (one of my all-time favorite memoirs). This book is a collection of essays about his first major international trip as a food writer and personality. And he loved every minute of it.

But that was the problem — Kitchen Confidential was full of conflict. Pirate-looking chefs fucking brides in their wedding dresses in the walk-in. Crawling along the bar after work, snorting six-foot lines of cocaine. Going from cooking in world-class restaurants to flipping burgers in a crappy diner, the metallic taste of methadone in your mouth. It was gritty and ugly and utterly compelling.

A Cook’s Tour was just Uncle Tony eating food and having a good time traveling. There was no story, no narrative arc. It was just a lot of, “Hey, this is great.”

“What is love? Love is eating twenty-four ounces of raw fish at four o’clock in the morning.” –Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour

And while I enjoyed his stories from Russia and San Sebastian, Spain, they weren’t enough to sustain a full book.

Luckily, his writing changed direction in his subsequent collections, and I suspect he had a better editorial team behind him. Uncle Tony is at his best when he’s ripping on people he can’t stand.

What To Read Instead: Kitchen Confidential is great, but Bourdain’s best post-fame work is The Nasty Bits. It still has a lot of food and travel, but with a sharper, more ardent point of view.

The Worst Impulse Kindle Buy: On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves

On the Island was an Amazon bestseller and I liked the concept: a teenage boy and his thirty-year-old tutor survive a plane crash in the Maldives, end up living on a desert island for years, start a romantic relationship after he turns 18, and are rescued following a tsunami and have to deal with the aftermath at home.

And absolutely nothing that happened was believable. This sixteen-year-old boy acted like a 40-year-old man the whole time. Neither character changed or transformed in any way. And even after being rescued after living on a desert island for THREE YEARS, the only thing they worried about was how people would judge their relationship that they started after the kid turned 18.

“You weren’t supposed to fall in love,” she whispered. “Well, I did,” I said, looking into her eyes. “I’ve been in love with you for months. I’m telling you now because I think you love me too, Anna. You just don’t think you’re supposed to. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I can wait.” I pulled her mouth down to mine and kissed her and when it ended, I smiled and said, “Happy birthday.” –Tracey Garvis Graves, On the Island

Yes, that’s an actual quote from a bestselling book.

It’s been translated into 27 languages.

I hate people.

What To Read Instead: Euphoria by Lily King. Now, THAT’S a great controversial love story set in a remote location — in this instance, Papua New Guinea in the 1930s.

The Worst Smash Hit: The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

I’ll be honest — I was hooked on the Twilight books during their height of popularity. I didn’t like them, but I couldn’t stop reading them. And my friend Beth and I made a tradition of seeing the movies on opening night amongst the superfans, only somewhat ironically.

Nothing I say here is anything you haven’t heard before. These books are poorly written. The character development is scant at best. The plot holes are the size of football fields.

But the worst part is that these books glorify intimate partner abuse to an impressionable audience of young women. The behavior that Edward exhibits — stalking, controlling, threatening, saying “no one will ever love you like I do,” leaving you with bruises and suggesting you tell people you fell down the stairs, and ultimately leading you to give up your future for him — should be recognized as alarming, not held up as a model for romance.

“The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.” –Stephenie Meyer, New Moon

Also, a werewolf falls in love with a baby.

What To Read Instead: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. It’s a much better, more intellectual book for teens that focuses on issues of justice, bravery, brutality, media culture, and utopianism, just to start.

The Best Book I Happen to Hate: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a fantastic, gorgeous book worthy of its Pulitzer Prize and every other honor it’s received.

And I fucking hated every word of it.

It’s an incredibly frightening tale of a post-apocalyptic world after a series of unspecified disasters — a barren planet where survivors hide in the shadows and the world is pillaged by tribes of cannibals and rapists. Through the book, a dying father takes his young son on a journey to the sea, not knowing what lies there but hoping they’ll find something better than what they’ve left behind.

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.” –Cormac McCarthy, The Road

This book is terrifying. And realistic. And that’s why I hated it with everything I had.

Maybe it shouldn’t be on this list. I appreciated every beautiful word. But it still makes me upset, years after reading it.

What To Read Instead: The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Also a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, it starts with an incredibly bleak beginning but blossoms into joy and forgiveness.

The Worst Book of All Time: Cleaving by Julie Powell

Julie and Julia was a commercial success, and deservedly so — a sweet if not overly literary memoir about how a directionless woman finds joy and meaning in cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes.

A feel-good tale about an everywoman with a sweet husband who supports her, encourages her, and makes her a better person. It got some hate, but it was overall a fun and engaging memoir, and it was commercial as hell, working even better as a film.

Cleaving, the sequel, destroyed all the goodwill Powell earned with her first book.

Following the success of Julie and Julia, Powell began an affair with a former boyfriend. Her husband found out. They decided to open their marriage, though it seemed like they didn’t want to actually work on their marriage, either. And she decided to go apprentice at a butcher upstate because…food is continuity? And this memoir is about, um, all of that. It’s unfocused at best; I suspect her publisher rushed it.

But it mainly focuses on Powell’s affair with the former boyfriend, her enjoyment of the affair and obsession with her lover, and her complete lack of remorse while her husband waits in the background.

The worst part is when Powell is out with her lover and gets recognized by a blog reader. Her lover introduces himself as her husband to save face and they both get off on the scenario. This sums up the book: Powell runs wild with her id, doesn’t care about who she hurts in the process, and learns absolutely nothing.

How did her publisher agree to release this?!

“Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart… It’s sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds.” –Julie Powell, Cleaving

I’ve read raw memoirs that overshare the intimate details of a marriage — Glennon Doyle Melton’s Love Warrior comes to mind. But Cleaving is far worse. I find it to be a cruel book. Cruel in its lack of accountability.

The other part I hated was that Powell clearly discovered she was into rough sex — only she never explicitly says so. She implies things and hints at others, conveniently evading details. Dude, you’re not the first person to suddenly realize you’re into a new kind of sex. Stop patronizing your readers and actually say it.

The book ends with what I’m sure she imagined was a heartfelt revelation: her lover, who had been called D up until the final page, was actually named Damian.

Hey Julie — nobody cares. Literally everyone hates that guy.

Many reviewers focused primarily on Powell’s infidelity; I don’t thick that’s fair, and much of that criticism is rooted in sexism. Infidelity itself is not the issue here. What matters is that she went about her infidelity, as well as her apprenticeship and travels, with a complete lack of self-awareness. Powell wrote a sloppy memoir about her darkest, most selfish moments without a shred of insight or transformation by the end of it. The Julie at the end of the book is the same Julie at the beginning of the book.

This book is the reason why I eat grass-fed beef today, and that just makes me hate it more. I hate that something good came out of it.

What To Read Instead: Wild by Cheryl Strayed. She flew into a tailspin after her mother’s death, cheating on her husband and using drugs, but she acknowledged her failures, strenuously worked through her shit, and transformed as a result.

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?

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Book: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

Right from the beginning we know that the main character, John Wayne Cleaver, is perhaps not quite a normal teenage boy. He is very interested in death and seems to no longer associate humanity with corpses. His mother and aunt run a mortuary out of their home (although the aunt, Margaret, lives elsewhere) and John has been helping with the embalming since he was a very much younger boy.

(spoilers below the cut)

His mother and aunt don't approve of his fascination with death, his irreverence of corpses as once having been living and breathing human beings, and often lecture him about his interest in serial killers.

"You're really a smart kid," said Margaret, "and I mean that. You're probably the only student that's already finished with the essay. But you can't...it's not normal, John. I was really hoping you'd grow out of this obsession with murderers." "Not murderers," I said, "serial killers." "That's the difference between you and the rest of the world, John. We don't see a difference." She went back inside to start work on the body cavity---sucking out all the bile and poison until the body was purified and clean.

This is sort of a running theme throughout the book with his family. It's a little more subtle from his sister, but his whole family is worried about what they see as unnatural behavior. I'm sure that they mean well, but the constant nagging has got to wear on John. His feelings about the nagging itself don't really get a huge role in this book, and I really thought that they should have. It has to be annoying and disheartening to know that every time you try to do anything, your family is there to tell you that it isn't normal and you have to stop it. But, the author gets around this by making it plain that this is just how John's life is and always has been and he is used to it now and as long as it doesn't get to the point where it actually interferes with what he wants to be doing, he can more or less roll with it pretty easily.

At this point, it's probably good to mention that John is also a sociopath. He's too young for a formal diagnosis, but his psychiatrist went ahead and diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder. Which is just a nice way of saying that John is a sociopath.

"'Happy' is not having a son who has to follow rules to keep himself from killing people," she shot back. "'Happy' is not a psychologist telling me that my son is a sociopath. 'Happy' is---" "He said I was a sociopath?" That was kind of cool. I'd always suspected, but it was nice to have an official diagnosis. "Antisocial personality disorder," she said, her voice rising. "I looked it up. It's a psychosis." She turned away. "My son's a psychotic." "APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy," I said. I'd looked it up, too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sound; without it you become emotionally deaf. "It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one."

It's very clear that his mother doesn't quite understand what being diagnosed with this means. She seems to think that she can change him by forcing him to change his behavior (keeping him out of the mortuary and away from the dead bodies) or just telling him to act like a normal person (chase girls, make friends, be sociable) or simply telling him to stop being a sociopath.

I understand that she probably doesn't want her child to be a sociopath or in any way abnormal to the rest of society to such an extent, especially since sociopaths are only in the news for doing terrible, nasty things to other people. But, she seems to be taking leave of reality here. You can't just tell people to stop being who or what they are and expect it to work. Reality doesn't work that way, no matter how hard you try to make it work that way.

Generally, telling your kids that you are ashamed of them and that they are not normal isn't a great parenting tactic.

Also, while we're at it let's lament the trope of the overbearing single mother making an appearance here in the book. It's overused when there's a male as the main character, especially young males. Abusive father, wishy-washy mother. Absent father, overbearing mother. Both parents dead. These are tropes that generally always make it in when there's a male character as the main character.

However, I think that in this case I can look past it because it seems to be serving a purpose other than being a trope or being in some way misogynistic. Instead of working like that, what I think Wells is doing is setting up the character's background to be classic for a sociopathic personality. Most of the time when we look into the backgrounds of high profile sociopaths, it's practically textbook that they've got an absent father and an overbearing mother (or a present father who is so henpecked he may as well not be there).

This doesn't mean that overbearing mothers and absent fathers cause sociopathy, but most readers are going to be familiar only with high profile serial killers and terrorists who have been said to be sociopaths and he wants this background to be familiar for them. To set it up to show that this boy is a sociopath in a way that is simple and easily (and quickly) understood. To keep it in mind, but move past it enough to let the rest of the story progress the way it will.

There are other ways to do that, but I can forgive it because I think it was an attempt at some simplicity. Then again, just because I can forgive it doesn't mean that other readers will. This is a YA book and perhaps not the time to use simplicity if it goes along with a misogynistic stereotype. Giving young girls or young boys this view of women is not a great idea.

Also, let's be clear here: I'm not calling Dan Wells a misogynist. I'm just pointing out that this view of women screwing up their sons by being overbearing whenever a strong father figure isn't around to stop that from happening is overused and misogynistic. I'm willing to bet that he didn't even stop to think of it like that, and if he had he may have changed it a bit. That's an ingrained societal problem.

Now, let's get back to the rules that were mentioned. John has made up rules for himself as he's gone along, ever since he's realized he isn't quite normal, in order to keep himself from doing something wrong or bad. He doesn't want to hurt anyone and he's taken proactive steps to make sure that he does not. That his sociopathy doesn't get too out of hand. I think that this alone is fascinating, but he also gives some examples of those rules.

He likes to watch people, but he makes certain that if he catches himself watching someone for too long that he forces himself to ignore that person for a week and not think about them. He stays away from animals, won't even accept the idea of a pet around the house or pet someone else's. If he's being bothered by someone to the point that he's getting angry or thinking of hurting them, he gives them a compliment and smiles at them to force himself to think good thoughts and to stop himself from doing anything bad.

This is fascinating to me, because I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing something like this before. He's very intelligent, which is not abnormal in sociopathic people, and has been making rules since he was eight-years-old when he first realized he wasn't like other people. Instead of ignoring this, because it was upsetting think he wasn't normal or worrying that he would get into trouble so just hoping it would go away on it's own, he began to take proactive steps to stop it from getting worse. And, every time he notices a new or different tendency or trait that is not normal, he will make a new rule.

He sees this as taking responsibility for who and what he is, the fact that he is the type of person that could grow up to be dangerous and that he is already exhibiting a lot of the tendencies and traits that show up in the types of sociopaths that do commit heinous crimes. Like those serial killers he's so fascinated with. In fact, I think that's why he's so fascinated with serial killers and the information out about them. He wants to find out what he has in common with them in order to stop himself from becoming like them. But, also they're kind of cool to learn about anyway, and I think even non-sociopathic people would say the same. Otherwise, we wouldn't be so fascinated with them ourselves and there wouldn't be so many people interested in getting their hands on books about Charles Manson, the Zodiac Killer, the Green River Killer, etc.

Something else about John...is that he thinks that fate wants him to become a serial killer. Not only was he born without empathy, making him -- as he put it -- emotionally deaf, but he seems to be surrounded by personal reminders of serial killers.

"I say 'fate,'" I explained, "because this goes way beyond some simple behavioral quirks. There are some aspects of my life that I can't control, and they can only be explained by fate." "Such as?" "I'm named after a serial killer," I said. "John Wayne Gacy killed thirty-three people in Chicago and buried most of them int he crawl space under his house." "Your parents didn't name you after John Wayne Gacy," said Neblin. "Believe it or not, I specifically asked your mom about it." "You did?" "I'm smarter than I look," he said. "But you need to remember that one coincidental link to a serial killer is not a destiny." "My dad's name is Sam," I said. "That makes me the Son of Sam---a serial killer in New York who said his dog told him to kill." "So you have coincidental links to two serial killers," he said. "That's a little odd, I admit, but I'm still not seeing a cosmic conspiracy against you." "My last name is 'Cleaver,'" I said. "How many people do you know that are named after two serial killers and a murder weapon?"

I'm not sure if this is also a trait he should've been looking out for, but I find this sort of thinking to be delusional. I'm not sure if he's just hoping that some of this is out of his control, that there is someone or something working his life and the circumstances around it to make him into something he doesn't want to be. Something or someone he must fight against, to give him a goal and reason to defy his "fate" rather than just simply trying to conform to societal norms and mores. Also, I must take into account that he is just a fifteen-year-old boy. Children and teenagers are prone to delusional thoughts and illusions of grandeur just because of their age and the way that their brains are not yet finished developing. Plus, this time of his life is going to be filled with hormonal issues, as well. Hormones can effect brain chemistry and the way that you think and see the world in general. Which must be difficult seeing as he is already struggling with this other huge issue of the brain, a lack of empathy and (perhaps) conscience.

Because, let's not forget that knowing that you are doing something wrong and taking steps to stop that behavior is not necessarily the same thing as understanding WHY what you are doing is wrong and feeling bad about that.

Frankly, despite the fact that being able to talk to Dr. Neblin helps him and he recognizes that (he has no one else he can talk to about serial killers or other things he likes or dislikes), I'm surprised he even continues to speak to his doctor. I'm surprised he goes there without being prompted directly after school on the days he has to, and I'm surprised he does more than sit there and stare at the floor or the desk or out the window.

However, despite these issues (and in some instances because of them) it's a good read! It actually is very interesting and the process by which John goes about figuring out who the monster is and how to defeat him (and his social problems within his school and community thrown in for good measure) makes this a book that is very easy to get into, it's very easy to read, and I think anyone would enjoy it regardless of gender or age.