Oh, books. Why have you forsaken me?

[impy]

I'm currently reading Late Night Talking which I'm not entirely sure how I found. Probably when I was flipping through various sites and it just screamed, "read me!" and I'm a bit of a book whore, so I said sure. The first time I brought this home, I promptly lost the library bag it was in. The other book in the bag, Being Committed, turned out to be very good the second time I checked the pair out, so naturally I had high hopes for LNT. So far it's a bit annoying. The author rambles a bit too much, which I know is ironic coming from me. Pot, kettle, have you been properly introduced? But then again, I didn't get a book deal for a book filled with rambling, so there you go.

  The thing is, I don't think I'd mind the rambling if it wasn't so blasted confusing in places and if I weren't fairly certain that sentences were actually fragmented. It's like there's too much backstory thrown in on the oddest things, which would normally fascinate me, but not for three pages worth of description for a bar stool. (Yes. Exaggeration. It was half a page for a bar stool.)

This I figure will either continue to jar me terribly, or I'll chalk it up to character is slightly insane due to parental issues. What won't go away or be chalked up to anything good is the repeated slamming of the night-shift.

*rubs temples* People. People. PEOPLE. If you don't like the night shift, don't do the night shift. And if you do have to do the night shift without wanting to, please don't assume that everyone else who does the night shift is a freak. Just. Don't. It's not cute, it's not endearing you to anyone, and I'm really getting tired of the books I've been reading mocking me lately. It hurts.

Our main character, Jeannie, is a late night AM radio talk show host who prattles on about how rude people are in NYC, and the rest of the known world, I suppose. It should come as no surprise that she's fantastically rude at times about other people being rude, but that's okay because she's setting them straight. Or something. This hook could work you know. But for Jeannie, it doesn't, because she comes across as a little unhinged. Which is obviously due to her lack of a sex life, as we are told on maybe page three. If we wait that long.

But the night shift. It's filled with weirdos and she doesn't like having two dinners and being on an opposite schedule of everyone else in the known universe and blah, blah, blah.

I would buy this so much more easily if her friends didn't keep the same schedule and if she didn't live in NYC. For fuck's sake, if there's a city anywhere built for insomniacs and third-shifters the world over, I'd imagine it's that one.

I really don't see me finishing this book if I have any choice because I can already see how the love triangle is going to play out and if I wanted to listen to people complain about what weirdos work the vampire shift, I'd listen to my co-workers.

It still boggles my mind that after how many years, I can't convince people that in order for you to not be a complete and utter zombie overnight, you do actually have to sleep sometime during the day. Yet every one of them is all, "I didn't sleep." Really. There's a complete and utter shock. Once in awhile is one thing. When something big happens, again, understandable. But all the freakin' time?

It makes me sad that such logic is beyond so many. Then again, I still think quite a few of the people who wander in during the overnight shift are freaks and should really reconsider things if they're hitting a drugstore every freakin' night.

Also: T.S. and my other book people! When the hell was it designated that Steampunk was just for young adults/young readers?

Comments

re: steampunk

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hallow_/]

It's not just young readers. There are a lot of good steampunk adult stuff (coming and out already). I think it's just that the big steampunk movement that has started a'comin' has just hit YA recently. Also YA is THE MOST successful area in books right now, so smart (or opportunistic) adult authors are starting to look at YA as a lucrative option (esp in SF/F publishing). A lot of adult authors/editors look down their nose at YA and kidlit, but since it's the most commercially successful right now, people are flocking to it like pigeons.

Check out China Mieville if you haven't already. He wrote steampunk before this big movement hit. There also must be a site or a blog comm that will tell you what the big adult steampunk books are that are newly out or coming soon.

Re: steampunk

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I get it, sort of. I was just confused because I picked up on steampunk with comic books awhile ago and the next thing I know, I'm trying to decide if I should start the other Jim Butcher series because B&N's weekly crack delivery keeps pointing it out. And at the bottom of that email is a little thing about the new Scott Westerfeld book and how it's steampunk and Steampunk, the popular Fantasy books for teens, features stunning techno-retro stories for today's imaginative young readers.

Hence the momentary, "wait, what?"

And I giggle gleefully that YA is all kinds of successful, though it's weird. They used to get shoved into corners of the bookstore where you kind of needed a map to find them, and now they tend to have an actual spot. That you still need a map to find.

[myfavouritescar.livejournal.com]

I really don't understand why people don't realise if you work nights you have to sleep during the day at some point. Everytime after I do a night shift my Dad wakes me up to ask why I am asleep!!

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

It's like the thought is beyond them. Beyond them! For the first couple of years of my nightshift of DOOM, I had friends that would call, particularly when I had a cellphone. And they'd call at 4 in the afternoon. A perfectly respectable time, right?

Except it was like me calling them at 4am or 7am for the friend who is still up at 4am. So... I returned the favor once or twice.

But your Dad wins. That's just fantastic. Almost as good as people waking you up to ask if you were asleep.

[ghosty4.livejournal.com]

No, seriously? The book is about a girl named JEANNIE, she's on the radio, and she has no sex life? Are we sure it's fiction? That is just too odd!