Jennifer's blog

Flawless, a Pretty Little Liars Novel, by Sara Shepard
Melanie Dee

Flawless, by Sara Shepard, is the second novel in the Pretty Little Liars series. I first fell in love with her writings when I got hold of the first book Pretty Little Liars. (Read Review Here).

I fell in love with the group of teen girls in the first book. In the second book, Flawless, all 4 of my favorite bad girls are back. Aria, Hanna, Emily, and Spencer. Each with their own dirty set of
secrets.

As we learned in the last book Pretty Little Liars, Allison's body had been found. Yep, Allison is dead, long dead. The girls had been receiving text messages and emails from someone named 'A'. A seemed to know all of their dirty secrets, and she was going to tell! With Allison not being alive to be the mystery 'A', the girls are sent into a shock-wave, as they know someone else besides Allison knows their secrets...but who?

We also learned the big secret that wasn't discussed in Pretty Little Liars. It turned out that the big secret was that Allison was responsible for Jenna's (a dorky girl in the neighborhood) going blind. Turns out though, that Toby Jenna's step brother, also knew that it was Allison, who lit the firecracker which caused Jenna to go blind. He saw her do it!

Allison though has dirt on Toby, and if Toby wants Allison to keep her mouth shut, he better take the blame for Jenna's accident. Toby goes along with it, and you are left clueless as to what Toby's secret is.

Anyhow, it turns out Spencer was there when Allison was caught by Toby. So now she knows that Toby knows that they are responsible for Jenna's accident.

Bushnell, Carrie Bradshaw, Charlotte, drag show, gay men, Gossip Girl, Manhattan, Mary Elizabeth Williams, Miranda, Salon.com, Samantha, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City, Shane Watson, The Carie Diaries, the London Times, the New York Observer, West Virgnia
by Chauncey Mabe

Carrie Bradshaw at 17 --er, I mean Candace Bushnell.

Today I come not to bury Carrie Bradshaw, but to praise her. I’m talking, of course, about the real Carrie Bradshaw, found only in Candace Bushnell’s book, Sex and the City. Being a heterosexual man, I could never watch the TV show for more than a few minutes without itching all over and running out of the room.

Some people may view Bushnell’s new novel, The Carrie Diaries, as a cynical bid to find readers in the Gossip Girl demographic. But it looks to me like a smart attempt on the part of a writer to regain proprietorship of a character that’s been co-opted by television.

Bushnell’s extensive book tour brings her to the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables on Friday at 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by Books & Books, this is a ticketed event. For more information, visit the bookstore’s website.

Just how completely Bushnell has lost control of Carrie and her story is, among other things, a testament to the power of television. If you want proof, graze through a few readers’ comments at amazon.com or bn.com. A representative sample: “The Carrie Bradshaw that was depicted in the book is not like the Carrie Bradshaw from the series at all, at least not as far as I can tell.”

Aw — you say that like it’s a bad thing.

It’s forgivable for civilian fans of the show to fall into this type of confusion, less so when expressed by a professional critic. At the usually reliable Salon.com, Mary Elizabeth Williams complains that Bushnell, in telling the story of Carrie’s high school years, doesn’t stay true to “to the clues of Carrie’s previous life glimpsed during the run of the series.”

The depth of stupidity in this comment is beyond reckoning. After all, Bushnell had little or nothing to do with creating the TV show. But she did start the whole Sex and the City empire with a column she wrote for the New York Observer in the mid-1990s. She has the right to tell Carrie’s story, with or without regard to what happens on the show.

Bushnell based the Observer column on her own experiences as a single woman in Manhattan. “Carrie Bradshaw” is an alter-ego, invented to give the author some fig leaf of privacy. The book Sex and the City, published in 1996, is a collection of essays — readers coming from the tv show are invariably disappointed it doesn’t have a stronger narrative arc. They seem to have no clue it’s not that kind of book.

When producer Darren Star bought rights to adapt Sex and the City into a television comedy, he approached Bushnell’s book the way a coal mining company approaches a mountain in West Virgina. He dumbed Carrie down with what Shane Watson, in a long Bushnell profile at the London Times, calls “little girly tics and self-conscious kookiness.”

Candace Bushnell today, at 51.

Watson finds Bushnell “altogether smarter and funnier, and her story is way more interesting, because it has been ugly and sordid at times.” That’s a perfect description of how I’ve always viewed Carrie in the book vs. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie as a vapid, materialistic shoe fetishist.

By the time I read Sex and the City the TV phenomenon was already in full swing. Any criticism I offer here of the HBO series, I’ll admit, is like someone reporting on a party while banging on the ceiling of the apartment downstairs with a broom handle.

The number of episodes I’ve seen can be counted on one hand–not enough for a valid assessment. Still, I must note that it always seemed like a drag show to me, one in which the women talked and behaved, in their attitude toward romance, more like gay men than any women I’ve ever known. Many of which, I’ll concede, love the show.

Yet none of what made me itch about the show is present in Bushnell’s book. Yes, Carrie chases sex and romance, but she’s more focused on her career. She goes to a lot of glamorous parties and reports how empty and pointless they are. She struggles to make ends meet.

Most of all, the four-sided friendship that is the heart of the television show is completely absent from the book. Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda are minor characters, with personalities dramatically different from the TV versions. Far from a celebration of female bonding, Sex and the City, literary version, carries a strong note of alienation, isolation and female competition.

I’m not going to make a case for Bushnell as a great stylist, but she is competent. Sex and the City, the book, has far more depth and texture and honest observation than I’d expected. If readers can set aside the cotton-candy expectations enflamed by the sugar rush of the TV show, they might want to give The Carrie Diaries a chance.

Okay, now you can tell me how wrong I am, how the show is a brave and honest depiction of the way women really are.

TOP 11 WORST SONG IN 2010



Willow Smith - I Whip My Hair

Okay, it was bad enough that 2010 brought us the Karate Kid remake with Jaden Smith, but now Will Smith's other spawn is getting into the celebrity act. And let's just say that she sings about as well as her brother acts. "I Whip My Hair" is a nightmare of a brain-drill that's no better than what you'd hear in a junior high talent contest in Oklahoma. But her dad's famous, so Jay-Z signed her to Roc Nation.


BrokenCYDE - Teach Me How To Scream

Emo: bad. Screamo: worse. Whatever the living hell BrokenCYDE is: the absolute worst ever. The "crunkcore" trio from Albuquerque, New Mexico have been universally reviled by just about every living human being in the world, but there are still enough pre-teens who hate their parents out there to make their album debut at #86 on the Billboard Top 100.


Countess Luann - Money Can't Buy You Class

People who shouldn't have music careers: reality show "personalities." Special negation goes to Countess Luann duLesseps, star of Bravo's atrocity The Real Housewives Of New York City. Some genius decided to put her on wax with a horrendous auto-tuned monstrosity called "Money Can't Buy You Class," which is rich coming from a nightmare of this caliber.


Lil Wayne - Paradice

It's fair to say that Rebirth was one of the worst albums of 2010. Lil Wayne's pre-jail attempt to venture into rock music was a desperately bad idea, with Wayne proving that his trademark languid rhyming style really doesn't translate to dramatic rock singing. Like, at all. We could have picked just about any track off of this one, but "Paradice" might well be the worst.


Ke$ha - Blah Blah Blah

Where to even start with Ke$ha? "Tik Tok" dropped at the very end of 2009, introducing the world to the horrible trashbag songstress, and 2010 just brought song after song of her atrocious auto-tuned garbage to the airwaves. Every song was bad, but "Blah Blah Blah" was probably the worst - there's barely even a melody, let alone lyrics.


Soulja Boy - Pretty Boy Swag

Okay, I have to admit I felt a little affection for Soulja Boy earlier this year when "Bitch I Look Like Goku" dropped - the ridiculous rapper comparing himself to Dragonball Z was hilarious in the best way. Unfortunately, his year-ending single "Pretty Boy Swag" is hilarious in the worst way. Tell'Em hasn't gotten any better behind the mic since his debut with "Crank That," and he may have actually gotten worse.


Jackyl - Just Like A Negro

Yes, that Jackyl, the horrible 90s metal band where the singer used a chainsaw on stage. I guess that gimmick doesn't work in the 2K10 because they've moved over to horrendous versions of racially inappropriate songs. "Just Like A Negro" was originally recorded by Atlanta funk band Mother's Finest in the 70s. Let's just say that this cover isn't an improvement, despite the presence of DMC vainly trying to capture the Aerosmith spark in a bottle again.


Travie McCoy - Billionaire

What kind of spectacular pussy do you have to be to go by "Travie?" Like, seriously, you might as well be a Cabbage Patch Kid. But the lead singer of the Gym Class Heroes (a band that sucks) proved that his music is just as pussified with this solo outing, featuring the overexposed Bruno Mars and the most sub-Beach Boys reggae riff. Seriously, lyrics this stupid have rarely been released into the atmosphere without bursting into flame.


Black Eyed Peas - Imma Be

The Black Eyed Peas are Not A Good Band. I'm sorry, they're just not. Ever since "Let's Get Retarded," they've specialized in extruding the most nondescript, odious, radio-friendly Soylent Green the music industry has to offer. 2010's entry in their hall of shame was "Imma Be," which is exactly the kind of content-free crap that made them so famous, but this time with future cars and robots. I used to like future cars and robots.


Jedward - Under Pressure

Okay, America doesn't have a monopoly on horrible music. Britain's The X Factor unleashed this horror on the Earth last year. Jedward are a pair of identical twins who captivated that bad-toothed island nation with... well, I don't know. Who knows? So they got a record contract and proceeded to put Vanilla Ice on their first single, a nightmare mashup of Queen's "Under Pressure" and Ice's "Ice Ice Baby." It's as bad as it sounds.


YG - Toot It And Boot It

So hip-hop is basically dead, right? I know that us old people have been saying it for a million years but 2010 was the last shovel of dirt on the coffin. How else can you explain the existence of "Toot It And Boot It" by YG, a 19 year old MC from Compton with a massive Myspace following? I get it. You have sex with girls and you make them go home. That's cool. Could you just, I dunno, get some flow or something? You rap like Stephen Hawking skateboards.

1. "Baby" featuring Ludacris - 2010

Courtesy Island Records
"Baby" was the first single from Justin Bieber's second album My World 2.0. It has a soaring chorus that gives a nod to classic doo-wop while the guest rap from Ludacris keeps "Baby" firmly anchored in the present. The song peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 2010 and was ultimately certified double platinum for sales.

2. "One Time" - 2009

Courtesy Island Records
"One Time" was Justin Bieber's first single. It is a confident performance that many compared with Chris Brown's debut on "Run It!" "One Time" peaked at #17 in the US and sold over a million digital copies.

3. "Somebody To Love" - 2010

Courtesy Island Records
"Somebody To Love" moved Justin Bieber into club dance territory. A remix and accompanying video that featured his mentor Usher is now considered by many to be the definitive version of "Somebody To Love." The song peaked at #15 on the charts.

4. "One Less Lonely Girl" - 2009

Courtesy Island Records
Justin Bieber demonstrated that he knows his way around a pop ballad with the release of "One Less Lonely Girl." The romantic video shows him tracking down a girl for a date. Ultimately Justin Bieber is successful. "One Less Lonely Girl" hit a chart peak of #16 and was certified gold.

5. "Eenie Meenie" with Sean Kingston - 2010

Courtesy Island Records
This collaboration melding the pop-R&B sound of Justin Bieber with the island reggae pop of Sean Kingston buoyantly led the way into the summer of 2010. There is clear, fun chemistry between the pair in the accompanying music video. "Eenie Meenie" peaked at #15 on the charts and was certified platinum for digital sales.

6. "U Smile" - 2010

Courtesy Island Records
Justin Bieber the blue-eyed soul crooner shows himself on "U Smile." He dedicates this song specifically to his fans. "U Smile" would likely charm older music fans as well as his teen base. The single peaked at #27 on the charts in late summer 2010.

7. "Love Me" - 2009

Courtesy Island Records
Justin Bieber heads in a playful electro direction here. "Love Me" borrows from the Cardigans' classic "Lovefool." It was released as a digital only single and peaked at #37.

8. "Never Say Never" featuring Jaden Smith - 2010

Courtesy Island Records
Justin Bieber invades the world of movie soundtracks with this inspirational track from the soundtrack to the 2010 version of The Karate Kid. The movie's star Jaden Smith adds in a rap. "Never Say Never" hit a chart peak of #33, and the title was used for Justin Bieber's biographical film due in theaters in early 2011.

9. "Never Let You Go" - 2010

Courtesy Island Records
"Never Let You Go" was released as a digital only single by Justin Bieber. It has been compared to Chris Brown's hit single "Forever." "Never Let You Go" peaked at #21 on the Billboard Hot 100.

10. "Favorite Girl" - 2009

Courtesy Island Records
"Favorite Girl" was released as a digital only single from Justin Bieber's first album My World. The song is firmly in an R&B groove. "Favorite Girl" hit #26 on the pop chart.

1. E.T by Katy Perry Featuring Kanye West
Teenage Dream

2.Rolling In The Deep
Adele
21

3.Just Can't Get Enough
The Black Eyed Peas
The Beginning/The Best of the E.N.D.

4.S&M
Rihanna
Loud

5.Down On Me
Jeremih Featuring 50 Cent
All About You

6.The Lazy Song
Bruno Mars
Doo-Wops & Hooligans

7.On The Floor
Jennifer Lopez Featuring Pitbull
Love?

8.Look At Me Now
Chris Brown Featuring Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes
Look At Me Now

9.Blow
Ke$ha
Cannibal

10.F**k You (Forget You)
Cee Lo Green
F**k You

Even though 80 years have elapsed since he wrote it, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is still legally banned in Germany. And we fear the ghost of Hitler so greatly that few wish to mark, or even acknowledge, the anniversary of Mein Kampf's publication.

You may hate the book and its author, but it would have to be included on any list of books that changed the world.

The first part of Mein Kampf was published under the title Eine Abrechnung (A Reckoning) on July 18, 1925. The second part came out in 1926.

Hitler's preferred title was Four-and-a-Half Years Of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity And Cowardice; his German publisher sensibly condensed this to My Struggle.

Mein Kampf had few readers -- the style was as rambling, hectoring and unwieldy as Hitler's original title indicated. A bare 9,000 copies sold in 1925, though by 1930, sales had reached a respectable 54,000.

In 1933, after Hitler won the election, the book sold an estimated 1.5 million copies.

As Mein Kampf sold briskly, other books burned. On May 10, the Nazis held mass bonfires of books that expressed an 'un-German' spirit.

Works by Marx, Freud, Proust, John Dos Passos, Brecht, Helen Keller, Hemingway, Einstein, Thomas Mann and Jack London were consigned to the flames.

Photographs from that time show huge bonfires surrounded by exulting students. A quote from Heinrich Heine was passed around at the time; no one knew how grimly apposite it would be: 'Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.'

In Hitler's Germany, Mein Kampf was a bestseller: a copy was given to every German couple who got married, every Nazi was expected to own the book. By 1945, eight million copies of the book had sold.

Today, Mein Kampf is still widely available everywhere, bar Germany. It is many things: an artifact of fear and loathing, a symbol of unspeakable evil, an index of how far we really believe in free speech.

When sales of the book spiked in Turkey this summer, some saw it as an indication of a growing tendency towards fundamentalism.

It's hard to read Mein Kampf as just a book; the terrible history its author imposed on Europe and the ghosts of the Holocaust haunt every line of it.

But this depressing document, blending paranoia with appalling hostility and badly constructed arguments, must be read so that we don't forget the banality of evil.

Hitler wrote in vitriol: 'Was there any form of filth or profligacy without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light -- a kike!'

These statements, like Hitler's championing of an abhorrent nationalism, his obsession with the 'master race' and his advocating of mass propaganda, have been analysed all too often.

Re-reading Mein Kampf, what struck me was a passage where Hitler explained his philosophy of reading: 'For reading is no end in itself, but a means to an end... a man who possesses the art of correct reading will… instinctively and immediately perceive everything which in his opinion is worth permanently remembering, either because it is suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing. Once the knowledge he has achieved in this fashion is correctly coordinated within the somehow existing picture of this or that subject created by the imaginations it will function either as a corrective or a complement…"

For years, I've seen Mein Kampf as the work of a bad writer; now I see it as the work of a terrifyingly bad reader. Hitler looked for nothing in literature but confirmation of his own narrow, inhuman views, and because he blinkered his vision so well, he found only confirmation, not illumination, certainly not compassion.

Over the years, Mein Kampf has lost its readership -- only the bigoted, those with closed hearts and minds, find any kind of enlightenment in its pages.

For the rest of us, what those pages reveal is a thin, peevish voice, one that blends self-pity with hatred in repulsive fashion.

But the books Hitler's armies burned that day in May, those books are still read, still discussed, still enjoyed, still alive. The Fuehrer is dead; it's time to lay the ghost of his bad writing to rest as well.

Thickest Book
On Wednesday, 20 May 2009, Agatha Christie, the “Queen of Crime”, breaks a new world record for the thickest book. For the first time, all the Miss Marple stories – 12 novels and 20 short stories – are collected and published in one volume, for fans and collectors alike.

The Complete Miss Marple runs to a staggering 4,032 pages. Its spine, a work of inspired engineering by master craftsmen, is 322 mm (12.6 in) thick. Agatha Christie already holds two other world records – for the longest running play, The Mousetrap – and as the best-selling fiction author of all time.

In all, 43 murders are solved: 12 poisonings; six strangulations; two drownings; two stabbings; a burning; one blow to the head; one death by an arrow and two people pushed.

There are 68 crimes committed; 11 philandering lovers; 68 secrets and lies; 22 false accusations; 59 red-herrings and 21 romances. A total of 143 cups of tea are drunk in the massive volume, there are 66 maids and 47 garments are knitted.



It is a visually stunning book bound in dark-red leather with gold lettering and red-edged pages. Weighing 8.02 kg (17 lb 10 oz), it is presented in a suede-lined wooden box with brass fittings and a leather handle.



In his preface, Agatha Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard, writes: “The character continues to speak to readers some eighty years and more after her debut precisely because, in those quiet moments at the end of the day or when a difficult decision needs to be made, each of us wishes for our own Miss Marple to give clear and unequivocal advice.”




The book was unveiled at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London, UK, on 20 May 2009, where Guinness World Records™ Adjudicator John Pilley measured the book and officially announced the record. Agatha Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard was also present at the unveiling of the record-breaking book.