I didn’t know much about John Green’s “Paper Towns” before I started reading, but a few weird coincidences quickly presented themselves.

First, the story about a pair of kids, Quentin and Margo (and their friends), as they finish up high school in Orlando and do a bunch of “last” things together came as I was doing some last things with one of my closest friends before she moved to…Orlando.

Second, I started reading this book on May 5, and, well, this happened on page 27:

I could have read this book last year or four months from now, but apparently I got to it at exactly the right time.  And that time was following a couple of pretty heavy books, leaving me wanting something much less intense.

Margo convinces Quentin to go on a mission one night that he later learns involves getting a whole lot of revenge on a long list of her enemies.  But they have to stop for supplies:

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Well, first we’re going to Publix.”

This was the most true statement in the entire book for me.  When I lived in Florida, Publix was my life, especially their mango yogurt.  I visited a few years ago, and my first stop upon arriving at my aunt’s house was to stock up at Publix.

Margo is easily the badass of the two, and the one prone to offering epic assessments of their situation.  At one point she throws a fish through a guy’s window, much to the shock of Quentin.

“I mean, you couldn’t have just left it in his car?  Or at least on his doorstep?”
“We bring the fucking rain, Q.  Not the scattered showers.”

I may be borrowing that line to inspire my softball team. 

Another favorite line of Margo’s came as Quentin questioned whether she was worried about the future and what was ahead, what he called “forever.”

“Forever is composed of nows,” Margo says.  No matter how long you have, no matter how you spend it, it’s all a bunch of nows that come one after another.  And while you can do things to alter your future nows, when you’re in those moments you get to decide how to make them count.

Ultimately that’s all about connecting with other people, something Quentin identifies as happening only when we let ourselves be seen instead of the projected selves we want others to see.

“But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart.  And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs.”

Khaled Hosseini’s second book is called “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and his third could have been titled “A Thousand Times Your Heart Will Break.”

“And The Mountains Echoed” is a ridiculously gripping story about a brother and sister in Afghanistan who are separated by their struggling widower father, along with the often tragic circumstances of his wife, her sister and brother, and many others they all become interwoven with throughout their lives.

It is a beautiful story, there is no doubt about that, with the way Hosseini paints these relationships in a way that makes you care so much about each person.  At some points though, you want to beg him to stop and have one of them win the lottery or something instead of enduring the profoundly sad.  When Abdullah and Pari, the brother and sister, go to Kabul and Abdullah realizes only he is going home, I wanted to yell out on the Metro, “WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO THEM?!”

Nabi, the children’s uncle, has his own struggle with knowing he loves someone and can’t be with, and yet retains the hope that somewhere, somehow, he could.

“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us,” he says.

That kind of hope underpins a lot of the characters as they try to overcome what they’ve been dealt, to try to make others proud, or in some cases throw success in the face of those who doubt.

I think Pari is the best example of getting up every day and moving forward despite what’s in her past, and is the most sympathetic character with how she treats others, and yet late in life she feels like she is a disappointment.

“I should have been more kind,” she says.  “That is something a person will never regret.  You will never say to yourself when you are old, ‘Ah, I wish I was not good to that person.’  You will never think that.”

Exactly.

This is one of those books that when you finish, you just want to sit and think about it for a while.  And then maybe hug someone.  And do a thousand favors for people.  Generally do something to make the world a better place.

One more note, courtesy of a Greek doctor who ends up renting Nabi’s house:

“Thalia puts before me a glass of milk and a steaming plate of eggs on a bed of tomatoes. ‘Don’t worry, I already sugared the milk.'”

I read this shortly after having a postgame lunch with my work softball team where one member talked about how his mom only let the kids have soda with their dinner if they mixed it with milk.  I’m fairly certain he called the concoction “pop milk.”  I can’t decide if that was designed to be so gross the kids wouldn’t ask anymore, or some attempt to make the experience slightly healthier.  I have no desire to test for myself.

Pulling off a multi-narrator story in a way that is both true to each character’s voice and not jarring and confusing to the reader is one of the tougher challenges an author can take on.

In “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” Jennifer Egan gives us a narrator, then another, and another, and another, all while shifting time periods and taking us to a different angle of the overall tale through the eyes of another character.  These chapters could easily exist on their own, but she weaves the narratives together in a way that made me on multiple occasions go, “Oh THAT guy is back!”  It should come with a “Beautiful Mind”-style chart to keep everyone straight.

This book won a Pulitzer Prize so my endorsement is hardly going to add to the likeliness people will read it, but the interwoven story of an aging record executive, his younger self, his former band mates, his assistant, her college friends and boyfriend is, in short, delightfully written.  The people themselves are rich, complicated characters who for the most part all have problems, but in the most human of spirits, they try, even when that’s trying at being destructive to themselves and others.

The sign of a good read for me is being so into the story that I don’t flag many pages.  This is one of those.

And nothing I marked this time was to make a really substantive point.  The closest thing to that comes in a chapter narrated by Rhea, a young woman who likes the (then young) record exec named Benne, who himself likes another girl named Alice, who likes another from their group named Scotty, who likes another from their group named Jocelyn, who likes a then record exec who becomes Bennie’s mentor.  (That’s only a fraction of the kind of interplay at work here).

Rhea doesn’t think a lot of herself, especially in comparison with other girls.  Oddly enough, the main thing she dislikes about her appearance is that she has freckles.

“I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face,” she says.  “When I was little, my mom told me they were special.  Thank God I’ll be able to remove them, when I’m old enough and can pay for it myself.  Until that time I have my dog collar and green rinse, because how can anyone call me ‘the girl with freckles’ when my hair is green?”

I love that last line.  A lot of us have “freckles,” that thing we see so clearly in the mirror or hear when we open our mouths.  In most cases, nobody else notices.  It’s silly, but something in our mind makes us self-conscious.  So what can we do?  Dye our hair green or compensate in some other way that makes us care less about that supposed problem.

Speaking of what we see in the mirror, this other thing is completely random, but has been staring at me forever and certainly jumped out when I saw it on the page.  Rob narrates this chapter, and in this section talks about his close friendship with Sasha, Bennie’s later assistant.

“You know the scar on her left ankle from a break that had to be operated on when it didn’t heal right; you know the Big Dipper of reddish moles around her belly button and her mothball breath when she first wakes up.”

I’m missing one star (represented by the green), but have always thought there was something resembling a Big Dipper around my right collarbone and extending up onto my neck:

Let this be the only time I take my shirt off for a blog post.  Who would have guessed it would come in a book discussion?

I didn’t need any more reasons to like everything from the Veronica Mars universe.  First the television show grabbed me, then the movie and now the book series.

“Mr. Kiss and Tell” is the second one to follow the storyline after the movie, and just like “The Thousand Dollar Tan Line” has the great mix of major and minor characters from the TV series as well as a fresh cast involved in this story’s mystery.

Most importantly, it has a killer Simpsons reference that comes after Veronica remarks that her dad is being especially nostalgic.

“Keith put on a Grandpa Simpson voice and bent over.  ‘That reminds me of the time I went to Hampton, which is what they called Hampstead in those days, so I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.'”

I always liked Keith.   Veronica is pretty awesome too, and has her own reference to further endear her to my cultural world.  She is at Keith’s for dinner, along with boyfriend Logan and their new dog:

“The puppy capered over to Logan suddenly, setting one paw against his shin and gazing up at him.  Veronica fought the urge to coo.  Channel Philip Marlowe, she told herself sternly.”

There is a whole section of my bookshelf holding the tales of Philip Marlowe, and it’s probably no surprise that Veronica and her more modern version of the hard-boiled detective would appeal to me.  And now I’m imagining the two of them having a conversation and the physical contrast could not be more stark.  Marlowe would probably like the puppy though.

I tend to flag a bunch of extra things in books that don’t make anything close to a blog appearance, usually things like words or historical references I want to further explore.  There is a character in “Mr. Kiss and Tell” with the last name Malubay, and that last name is the only thing I highlighted on that page.

It took me a few minutes to remember why, and then the face of Ramiele Malubay, American Idol contestant from 2008, flashed into my brain.  Other than the first season, that was the only one I’ve really watched and for much of the time Ramiele was one of my favorites.  So since my note to self made me look this up, I can share that she recently finished nursing school and is still doing some singing.

That was a long and far diversion from the book, but if at this point I haven’t convinced you to consume everything involving Veronica Mars, there may not be any hope for you.  Go watch and read!

“Sleep and I do not have a good relationship.”

That probably sounds like a direct quote from an earlier post here or my Twitter feed, but is actually a quote from Amy Poehler’s book “Yes Please.”

She is a far busier person than I am with a million more responsibilities in life.  At bedtime though, our brains do the exact same thing.

“As soon as I become prone, my head will begin to unpack,” Poehler writes.  “My mind will turn on and start to hum, which is the opposite of what you need when you begin to switch off.  It is as if I were waiting the whole day for this moment.”

My mind is most guilty of this on the opposite end of the cycle, when I wake up before I intend to, particularly on the weekends.  It starts rolling through all the things I could be doing, and if one of them is something like writing, it will start actually doing the task mentally to the point that I have no real choice but to get up and write it down. (See: blog post, this one)

No amount of “shut uuuuup and sleeeep” can halt this process.  But at least it makes me productive.  Yeah, let’s put that as a never-sleep-until-noon silver lining.

What’s great about this book, like Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me” is that it is the type of behind the scenes look into the life of a fabulously successful creative person that I really enjoy reading.  I’m not on their level, but knowing that we go through some of the same challenges and thought processes is comforting.  Seeing how their hard work on things that started very small is inspirational.

One such section goes in depth with her show Parks and Recreation, with the help of creator/writer Mike Schur.  They talk about what drew them to the show and the way they approached their characters that made them special.  She ends with a piece about each of the show’s stars in the rare opportunity people take to say amazing things about how they feel about their friends.  It’s nice to see a reminder that famous people appreciate the kickass people in their life too.

If you want to watch that kind of thing play out, the cast appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers the night of their series finale and toasted one another.  Here’s part one, and part two of that.

Poehler shares a lot of interesting tidbits from her career, but it’s always funny to see the things that didn’t work out for one reason or another.  She talks about a particular TV failure before Parks & Rec came along.

“Years before, I had worked on a single-camera pilot called North Hollywood, which was also not picked up to series,” Poehler writes.  “Though looking back, it made sense that the show didn’t go — it starred a bunch of losers named Kevin Hart, Jason Segel, and January Jones and was produced by the obviously talentless Judd Apatow.”

Where is our network of failed TV pilots?  Imagine one single episode after another of projects like that.

Throughout the book she also provides a lot of insight, including her take on the adage that the only thing for certain in life is change.

“Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being,” she writes.  “If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier.”

Surf on, my friends.

If you’ve never used Twitter to yell at your friend about a book you’re both reading, you haven’t truly lived.

You may remember last fall I read Pierce Brown’s Red Rising.  In early January, the second book in that series, Golden Son, was released into the wild for my friend Brooke and I to read. [AND FOR YOU THESE BOOKS ARE AWESOME GO READ THEM.]

Even a week before the release date, she resumed taking shots at Eo, the [minor spoiler redacted] wife of protagonist Darrow:

@txtingmrdarcy Eo is the jewel of all creation. YOU WILL SHOW SOME RESPECT.
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) December 30, 2014

Eo remains an inspiration to Darrow in Golden Son, guiding him on his quest to “break the chains” of a society that subjugates everyone in a system of colors with their Reds on the bottom and Golds on top.  Darrow is trying to infiltrate the Golds and burn the house down from within, beginning with competing at an academy for elite young leaders under the flag of his benefactor.

“He’d have me win for him, but I’d win for the Red girl with a dream bigger than she ever could be,” Darrow says.  “I’d win so that he dies, and her message burns across the ages.”

EO.  At one point Darrow goes into the underbelly of a city to meet with someone and sees Eo celebrated by the lower classes in graffiti.

“How cruel a life, that the sight of my dead wife means hope,” he says.

This scene set off a 12-tweet burst about Eo vs. Mustang, the other main female in Darrow’s life and one that Brooke much prefers.

@cjhannas what takes more courage- dying with nothing to lose or tearing down the system from the top?
— Brooke Shelby (@txtingmrdarcy) January 18, 2015

It didn’t help when Darrow’s mother weighed in:

“‘I never liked Eo,’ she says quietly.
I twist my head up to look at her.
‘Not for you.  She could be manipulative…'”

Whatever, mom.  EO FOREVER.

After we furiously talked about the INSANE way the book ends, the author saw our exchange and responded with what I’m considering a virtual mic drop:

@txtingmrdarcy @cjhannas Hic Sunt Leones, bitches.
— Pierce Brown (@Pierce_Brown) February 5, 2015

And now we have to wait more than a year to read how it all ends.  Plenty of time for you to catch up and join the conversation.  Next year you can taunt me on Valentine’s Day too!

@cjhannas Mustang is Gold, and Darrow’s a Red/ Eo can’t be your Valentine/Because she is—
— Brooke Shelby (@txtingmrdarcy) February 14, 2015

Hey we already made it a full week into blogging every day in January!  Give yourself a hand for hanging in there this long.  I can’t promise what I’ll have left in the tank on day 22, but I feel good about everything so far.

It was only a matter of time before we got to the first book post, and I’m kicking off the literary year with John Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony.”

As you can see, this is one of Steinbeck’s super short books.  I did that on purpose because a book I preordered (Golden Son) came out this morning and I didn’t want to be tied down with something else and not get to it for a few weeks.

If you’ve read “Of Mice and Men” this has a similar structure in that Steinbeck paints a whole world full of characters who could carry a whole story, but instead at some point he basically walks away from the typewriter and leaves them be.

The version of many of my Steinbeck novels has an academic introduction discussing the text, which I often just skim to have an idea of how that one fits within his collection.  This one notes that the book is definitely not a children’s book, though it is about children.  I could not second that opinion any harder.  Animals die in all sorts of books, but the way they die in this one is quite far from rated G.

The story is about a boy named Jody who lives on a northern California farm and, as you might guess, at one point gets a pony with a red coat.  I won’t say more about this pony except do not get attached to this pony.  You will be mad at someone and I don’t want that to be me.

I mention in every Steinbeck post that what I like most about his writing is the way he describes things.  In only 95 pages I didn’t flag a lot, but late in the book this absolute gem appears while Jody walks down a road:

“Jody tried to leap into the middle of his shadow at every step.”

If that’s not evocative, I don’t know what is.  Also, I want to go outside and walk like that right now.

Steinbeck also gets credit for bringing up fond memories of the Washington Nationals even though no such thing would exist for decades after he wrote this.  Jody is asking his mom about what lies up in the nearby mountains.

“She looked at him and then back at the ferocious range, and she said, ‘Only the bear, I guess.'”
“What bear?”
“Why, the one that went over the mountain to see what he could see.”

What does that have to do with baseball?  Well, the Nats have a relief pitcher named Aaron Barrett, aka “The Bear.”  What music plays as he runs in from the bullpen?

One book down, 19 to go.

I’ve ready plenty of books that were later turned into movies, but I think “The Thousand Dollar Tan Line” is the first book in my library that follows a movie that was based on a TV show.

Perhaps I should explain that.  Veronica Mars was a show that lasted three seasons on TV before being rudely cancelled.  Fans (such as myself) rallied to Kickstart a movie that picks up the story years later.  As part of the renewal of the story, the show’s creator and main writer Rob Thomas teamed up with Jennifer Graham to write a series of books that come after the movie.

If any of that is new to you, I recommend you finish reading this and immediately put all of your other life plans on hold until you’re caught up.  Actually, go now.  Stop reading.  It’s that important.

What’s interesting about this construct is that I didn’t have to spend any mental energy trying to imagine the town of Neptune, or what a conversation between Veronica and her dad, Keith, looked like.  That universe is fully vivid in my head.  Dialogue came out in each character’s voice just as if I were watching the scene play out on my television.  It was like reading a David Sedaris book after hearing him on the radio.

The best part of all that?  There are some kickass characters in Veronica’s world, with her chief among them.  She’s back in town after being away at law school, helping out at the family private investigation agency while her dad recovers from [THIS HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE GO WATCH IT].  Veronica is a tiny human but has little fear and loves nothing more than nailing people who deserve to be taken down.

The narrator describes her perfectly as she talks with boyfriend Logan:

“Logan had once told Veronica she didn’t have any flight — just way too much fight for her own good.”

Each episode of the show involves one case that needs to be solved, plus pieces of a season-long mystery that slowly comes together over time.  The book has one main case, tracking down a pair of girls who go missing during spring break in the seaside California town.

The investigation takes Veronica to the mansion where the girls each attended a party and where she encounters drug cartel-linked Rico and his associate Willie.  The boys are side-stepping that night’s festivities to play some video games upstairs and talk about how they can use a Ferrari to impress the ladies.

“‘Then we’ll load up the honeys and take ’em to Taco Bell.’
‘Taco Bell?  Man, there’s, like, smoked salmon and asparagus in truffle oil and, like, crudites downstairs.  Why the hell do you want to go to taco bell?’
Rico shrugged.  ‘I like their chalupas.’

So let’s recap.  We have a series I already love with characters I could watch forever, and then they add a Taco Bell reference?  My reading year is ending on the happiest of notes.

Don’t let me borrow your books.

Okay, do let me borrow them, but maybe not ones that have crazy geometric things going on with the front cover.  Otherwise, this might happen:

Sorry, Anastasia.  I did fix it!

“Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” was the first book by Haruki Murakami that I read despite years of walking past them in bookstores and meaning to pick one up.  Anastasia told me it was “fantastic” but that it left her and our other friend who read it “super disoriented.”

I think that’s an entirely accurate description.  It’s not a feel-good book really in any way, but we should read those once in a while.  Life isn’t all puppies and butterflies, after all.

The story basically follows Tsukuru through two periods of his life — late teens/early 20s and his mid 30s.  The events and experiences of the earlier time play heavily on the latter as he tries to deal with how his close group of friends suddenly cut him off for reasons he could not begin to figure out.

Murakami really brings out the book’s central theme during a conversation older Tsukuru has with a woman he is dating named Sara.

“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them,” she says, in a phrase that gets repeated a few times later on.  “If nothing else, you need to remember that.  You can’t erase history, or change it.  It would be like destroying yourself.”

No matter what he does or what face he slaps on to face the world, what happened in the past never changes.  Tsukuru has so much that doesn’t go his way, and yet, he accepts everything as either blameless or his own fault.  He has a way of being sadly optimistic that straddles the line between looking to immediately move on and a thinking akin to “what can I do but accept it?”

A few people have asked me if I would recommend they read this book.  It’s really well written and grabs you in a certain way, but you have to be prepared for the mindset it leaves you throughout.  So maybe?