Monday Minivan Media

Picture yourself in the front seat of my Venture minivan. (Oh yes. You're already green with envy over my life of obvious excess.) We both have a grande skinny vanilla latte, and we have a little time to kill. We could be waiting for our kids, or for our meth dealer to show up. No matter. We're here, in the van, together. Let's talk pop culture. I promise to give you a 1000 word review where less than 10% is actually about the topic. It's like having an actual conversation with me.



Today's book: "Room" by Emma Donoghue

It was a busy weekend in our house.  In my world, weekends should begin on Friday after work, when I take off my work clothes and put on flannel pj's and a t-shirt, and then I should be able to stay in said outfit until Monday morning, when I get ready to go to work.  So you like pina coladas and gettin' caught in the rain?  Well I like a nice malbec and sleeping in until 10.  I also like movies, ordering out, reading books, and morning coffee.  This weekend had a little more going on, and I still have a freelance article due tomorrow, but guess what I'm doing?  Blogging.  Because I haven't procrastinated my paid work long enough.  Plus, I have the hooker job tomorrow, so the paid writing won't get done until about midnight tomorrow night, when I'm panicking and past deadline.  Just like college.

I'm also sore.  My in-laws visited and we had Christmas, and my husband was the recipient of a shiatsu massage chair.  This idea came about when we visited them at Thanksgiving, and I sat in their shiatsu massage chair next to the wood stove and fell asleep in the middle of a conversation.  It was lovely.  And mildly humiliating.  So when they gave Current Husband the chair, I promptly sat in it and spent the next two hours there.  I'm all about too much of a good thing, and last night before I went to bed it felt like I had been worked over by sugared-up preschoolers with metal bats at a pinata party.

Dear God, make it stop. 

Today, I had to buy dog food and chips before the Packers/Bears game (chips for people, dog food and rawhide bone to keep massive pony/pet from blocking the tv screen) and it was all I could do to heft a 20 lb. bag of Purina in the car.  Thankfully, this was my weekend off from the IronMom competition.

The book for my book club this month is Room, by Emma Donoghue.  I first heard of this book earlier this year when NPR did a story on Independent booksellers and how they select books for their stores, and they were all raving about Room and how everyone was buying it to sell in their shops.  It's the story of a 5-year-old boy and his mother, who have been kept captive in a garden shed since the mom was abducted seven years earlier.  This book was at the publisher when Jaycee Dugard was found with her daughters in the shed in California, and the author has said she was completely freaked out by that and didn't think she would want Jaycee to read the book.

One would think this is a creepy read, but it isn't.  It's all told from the perspective of the little boy, so Room is the only place he has every known, and he spends all of his time with his mom.  He mind doesn't think about the creepiness of it, or understand their situation.  I couldn't read The Lovely Bones because I just didn't think I could go there, and I had some misgivings about Room for the same reasons, but I really love this book.  Then I read the book jacket, and saw that Emma and I were born in the same year, yet she has written numerous books and won awards, and then I had to eat 18 Oreos and read People magazine to quell the depression I always feel when people my age are doing things I want to do and I can't seem to get my ass in gear. 

So I guess that was the worst part about reading this book.  If you've accomplished all you've wanted to, and you don't want to be published, and you won't feel despair at her excellent writing and character development, then by all means, read Room. 

I give it five lattes.