SEPT - Redefining Realness

September review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock, 2014. [book where a character of color goes on a spiritual journey category]

Remember when I mentioned sometimes I stretch the categories a little? This is another one of those times. Janet Mock never refers to her life as undergoing a "spiritual journey," but it seems to me that any journey of self-discovery may qualify as spiritual. I identify as a relatively spiritual person, believing in the universe and something Else out there that gives us meaning, and finding out how we as individuals fit in is highly spiritual to me. But I digress, slightly. 

Redefining Realness is Janet Mock's story, about growing up multiracial, poor, and trans in America. It follows her from her youth to the winter of her gender confirmation surgery. She calls on a number of black women role models such as characters from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and the poet Audre Lorde. Janet is raw and holds very little back as she embarks on telling her story, her journey to come to terms with her self and her changing world. Realness as a concept is very particular to humanity, it's just easier for cis people: being Real or being true to oneself makes no waves when you exist comfortably within the lines of the societal binary, but when you exist, as Janet does, in a differently-viewed space, being Real becomes a thousand times harder. 

Janet Mock learned early on that she could live her Truth with a capital T and fought hard for her right to get it. I loved reading her story, although I hate that some of the decisions she had to make were necessary. I have a few trans friends, and they have relayed to me the difficulty of simply existing as a transperson, and I have taken it upon myself as a good ally to learn and advocate and do better in my own life. Janet Mock is inspiring, and humans like her are working hard all over to make this country better: with this week's election, a huge number of trans*folks made history: Lisa Middleton, first transgender person elected to a non-judicial office in California; Andrea Jenkins, first transgender person of color elected to public office in US (Minneapolis City Council); and Danica Roem, first *openly* transgender person elected and seated to a state legislature (Virginia House)--beating out the incumbent who wrote the hurtful trans bathroom bill. People are out there, doing the work, and it is the very least we can do to learn and support them. 

MAY - Veronica Mars: Mr. Kiss and Tell

May review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: Veronica Mars: Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham, 2015. [PI crime category]

For PI crime, I decided to go with the quintessential badass PI of my heart, the unmatchable Veronica Mars. Mr. Kiss and Tell is the second foray of Ms. Mars into the world of literature, following Thomas's debut Mars Investigations novel The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, which served as a follow-up to the Kickstarter Veronica Mars movie last year. I listened to Tan Line as an audiobook narrated by Kristen Bell herself, and I really enjoyed losing myself in her familiar tones, almost as if the voiceover narration for which the show was so lauded had carried over into my own personal read-aloud. It was glorious, and I one hundred percent enjoyed this new chapter in Veronica's cultural saga, and it felt almost like candy to be able to write about it and think hard about it for this post. I *may* have thought a little too hard, as this post is significantly late, but behold it in its finished and unpolished glory now.

Over the past year, I've gotten into crime novels, some for this challenge, some just because. I read In The Woods by Tana French obsessively and Harvest was for last year's challenge, and it helped me to think how these books dealt with crime differently. The specificity of this genre choice, "PI crime," made me think about PI crime versus police procedural and how they're different. I considered reading The Poet by Michael Connelly, because the main character, Jack McEvoy, is technically a reporter and works on his own investigation similar to a PI, but I decided I should stick to bare bones and see how it worked for me before I departed. (Still going to read The Poet, of course, because it boasts Edgar Allan Poe inspirations in the murders and I'm obsessed with Poe and his tendrils into pop culture.) So the gist of Mr. Kiss and Tell is Veronica's investigation of a case brought to her by the Neptune Grand Hotel, the embodiment of the monied and manipulative in Neptune. A girl named Grace Manning has been found half-dead in a field miles away, a girl who was last seen at the Grand and has accused a Grand employee (conveniently no longer in the country) of rape and assault. The girl is someone from Veronica's past whom she helped before when Grace was a child but was unable to ultimately save, entrenched trust issues between Grace and Veronica. When Veronica clears the implicated employee of alleged criminal wrongdoing and she is released from the case, Veronica cannot help but feel that she must continue on. She hasn't found Grace's attacker, and although the Grand was only paying her to disprove Grace's story, Veronica feels compelled to continue on her own dime. "No, I'm not working for them. Not anymore," Veronica tells Grace. "As far as they're concerned I've done my job and I'm off the case. Which means right now they're probably on the phone with your lawyer, telling him your suit is falling apart. But I still want to figure this out, Grace. And if I'm going to help you, I need to know the truth" (page 111, emphasis added). One of the defining characteristics of Neptune--and a major subplot to the novel's story--is the fact that those with the money hold the power and subsequently the justice. The police department is providing Veronica with little to no help on this case, and it is this, seeing the clear line between police and PI and the rules that bind each party, that truly showcases how Veronica operates differently. However, shortly after Veronica tells Grace she wants to keep going, Grace gets angry, telling Veronica she's "just like those cops, aren't you?" This, more than anything, seems to be a catalyst for Veronica's quest to end the Manning case and find justice for the girl she couldn't save.

Veronica is a PI in every sense: she fights for Grace's case even when the Grand (who hired her originally) is done with it. Her priorities are clear from the beginning: even when she takes the case, her response to Mr. Hickman's proposal is '"I'll do my best to find out what happened to this girl"' (page 33). Not that she would work to disprove her story, as was her technical job description, but that she would find out what happened to this girl. Veronica has crystal-clear, razor-sharp memories of her own rape case being denied credibility because of her circumstances, and the way Grace's case is presented by this man gets her hackles up. She fights tooth and nail for what she believes in, sometimes compromising for outside-the-box methods in order to get justice. It's in her blood: her dad, Keith Mars, is the original PI, and Veronica grew up at the reception desk of Mars Investigations, taking the cheating-husband tails her dad didn't have time for as soon as she could focus a camera:

Veronica in the pilot of the TV show, staking out a seedy motel (2004).

The visceral pull Veronica feels back to the life of a PI is focused on in the 2014 film, and the tension between her father's pride in his daughter and his desire for her to have a better life, away from this danger, makes up a significant portion of Tan Line, all adding up to one single fact: Veronica is intoxicated by the search for the truth, the plight of the underdog, and the fight for a moral and just end to any story. Which brings me to my final point in my discussion. It is not until the Manning case hits almost a standstill that they find out Grace was (spoilers!!!) an escort, but to me this is an essential point in the story . Grace responds with vitriol when Veronica confronts her about the omission: '"So because I'm a whore that means I can't be raped?" She spat the words, her panic breaking suddenly into fury.' (page 200). When Veronica brings this particular addition to the Neptune PD, Sheriff Lamb sneers in her face, much like his brother did when Veronica brought her own complaint in, all those years ago: 'A slow, ugly smile spread over Lamb's face. "Yeah, but, I mean, if she's a prostitute, it's not rape so much as shoplifting, right?"' (page 241). Reading this line felt like a dozen punches to the gut, and writing about it again makes me want throw up and flip tables, but it is so important, important to discuss this with a level head and a passionate heart and basically just to discuss this at all. When Grace is confronted about this, she explains her choice, the crushing student loans a classical stage actress would never make enough to pay off, ticking the boxes methodically and apologizing for no action. She is a human being who is being written off because of her decision concerning the way she wanted to take care of herself and her finances for the rest of her life, and it is abhorrent. Rob Thomas has consistently dealt with complex relationships such as these and darker themes than your typical high school TV show, and he has continued this track into Veronica's maturity, for which I am eternally grateful.

If I talked about every thread in this book and the Veronica Mars universe that I wanted to, it's possible this review would be longer than the book itself. There are so many themes I wanted to touch on, like the corruption of the police in this text, the failure of the justice system to provide legitimate justice to those below a certain paygrade, the politics of money and power in Neptune, the way these themes seem to be ever more sickeningly echoed in current events, but I do not have the space or the heart at this particular moment. So I will add them to the forever-growing grocery basket of ideas that are crawling to get out of my head and end by saying that this text has allowed me to think deeply about a book that did not profess itself to be particularly deep or world-changing. But like Veronica Mars has for my entire life with her, she has continually inspired me and catalyzed my own personal growth.

NOV - How To Be a Woman

November review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, 2011. [Humor category]

How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran has been on my radar for a while, and not only because she spells her name like I do (but pronounces it differently. cuz she's british). I have been interested in her comparison to Tina Fey, her cavalier and funny choice of title, and just her general super-coolness that I really really want to find the secret recipe for. I mean, she's worked as a writer basically since she could legally collect her own paycheck, and that is something I have sort of always been afraid of--even though it's the thing I want most in this world. So when I had the idea to pick her first book for the humor category in my year-long romp through literature, I jumped at the chance.

This memoir-slash-manifesto was everything I thought it was going to be and more. Every self-deprecating chapter ("Chapter 3: I Don't Know What to Call My Breasts!" or "Chapter 7: I Encounter Some Sexism!") is a mixture of funny anecdotes from Moran's childhood which effortlessly transition into greater musings about the chapter's relation to feminism or the female place in the world at large. While her tone is pretty flippant at times, with LOTS OF CAPS LOCK, she manages to sound incredibly down-to-earth and friendly at the same time. She has this new idea about not a new way to think about feminism, not as another wave but rather as an incoming tide--because around the fifth wave of anything it doesn't appear to be individual anything anymore, and that's when things get interesting. She talks about sweating the small stuff, making a big deal about the minuscule things because one broken window going unfixed will lead to more and more vandals and squatters and all kinds of ill-mannered folk wreaking havoc on what was once just a nice building quietly minding its own business. A lot of things she says I agree with, a lot of the gray areas she points out. I read an article recently about women dealing with misogynist culture and being told to just lighten up' and smiling but inside feeling like "if you lighten up anymore you're going to float the fuck away." Caitlin Moran has a lot of the same feelings as the author of said article, Roxane Gay, does, and this sort of call to arms for women, this assurance that fighting against this shit doesn't make you a militant freak or a social outcast, is what really drew me home into this book.

At one point, Moran talks about strong female role models (Chapter 14), mostly recording artists--because that is where she got her start--and mentions a whole slew of them, including Lily Allen ("a gobby ingénue!"). Now, I was reading this book at about the time the whole "Hard Out Here"/Lily Allen-is-a-racist fiasco. 2013 was a really weird year for women, what with the vomit-inducing Robin Thicke and the parodies and the backlash, and the backlash on the backlash, women yelling at other women for speaking their mind even if they fuck up in the way that they do so, and so I was interested in reading a wonderfully belligerent feminist's attempt to make sense of it, and I continued to read Moran's writings after the book was over. I've always thought the idea of intent was a very tricky one, and we talked about it a lot in my lit classes, but I've never really tried to apply it to pop culture or artists making their waves in the present. I think one of the obsessions with authorial intent is that most of the time, the author can't be reached for comment and it allows for endless debate without actually reaching any meaningful conclusion. The thing about intent with living artists is that it gets messy, with revisions and anger and takesie-backsies and she-said-she-said. But that is the difference between the study of the past and the study of the present. And even though it hurts my head (and my OCD) a little bit to be a part of it, I love immersing myself in the mess. I read every article about Lily Allen and her anthem, trying to figure out how I felt versus how I should feel or am allowed to feel. The easiest way for me to line everything up, I felt, was to find something that took a few steps back and spend a moment reflecting upon the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

And that brings me to speak in terms of the category this month, humor. In all honesty, this book fits "memoir" much more than Olivia Munn's book did, and I think that is mostly because Moran bared more of her soul and allowed us to be more vulnerable with her. But I read it for "humor," why? No bookstore or website I saw ever put it under a "humor" banner, not technically, but she's so funny and these are my rules so whatever. It might be because she's not afraid to denigrate herself, to address her own flaws. She admits freely that humans are inherently imperfect and once you can look back on that without shame, you can see the humor in life.

I loved this book. I found a lot of things Caitlin Moran writes about resonate with me. As a writer, as a woman, as someone with a brain. I wasn't being preached at, I was a co-conspirator, almost. And that's all anyone really wants, I think. To be taught alongside someone else, rather than at the expense of someone else. If this year has taught me anything, it has taught me that.

Other reviews I enjoyed:

• Slate

OCT - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

October review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, 1988. [LGBTQ category]

One can never go wrong with a book suggestion from a fellow bibliophile.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was written by Michael Chabon for his MFA program after he finished undergrad in the 80s. Right off the bat I am intrigued because, as a woman recently deluged with wave after tidal wave of First Time, I am curious about his first; I want to feel those first feelings from another creature any time I can, to see how they translate theirs and put it out into the world. There is a familiar sense of "wait, I could do this. . ." as the novel progresses, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It keeps the reader grounded and aware of the raw, uncut beauty of this author's first try. Sure it could be better, more polished, more insightful, but these are once again the shortcomings of a newcomer, and they should be acknowledged but made to sit in the back of the room. But I digress.

The Mysteries of Pittsburg is a book of firsts, both in story and in circumstance. It story of a summer after, a new beginning, a reinvention. Art Bechstein, son of a mobster, returns to the library one last time after graduation and there his summer (and subsequently his life) is changed forever. Sounds like the log line of pretty much every summer blockbuster ever, huh? It is exactly this touchstone that situates the reader in comfort, letting them come to the discoveries that crop up alongside Art, gathering as he gathers, feeling as he feels. Chabon's prose is unparalleled, even this early in his career, and I have loved his handling of language ever since I read Summerland when I was 13. Phrases like "solace is in the fabric of sweatshirts" (219) and "I was watching the clock slowly fold up my last ten minutes like the pleats of a fan" (61) drew me in with their simplicity, and I felt at home in the words.

As for a general summary of the book, it is really the story of Art and a few other players, most of whom we don't get to know very well in the short space we're allowed between the covers of the book. There is Phlox, the Girl Behind Bars who entrances him then entraps him with every insistence and arrogance. She is introduced to Art by Arthur, a gay man Art runs into at the library that fateful day, the strong forearm behind the crank of the story. Arthur becomes Art's link to the rest of the major players, Jane and Cleveland, a couple the most defining of whose characteristics seems to be that they are in a relationship and it is dysfunctional. On the fringes are Cleveland's mobster father and other members of the Pittsburgh elite who intersect with either Art or Cleveland in the latter's dabblings with the seedy side toward the end of the book. I am going to say straight out that I hate Phlox. I do not understand her. I realize that it is 1988 and views on gays are radically different from my own in 2013, but I almost cannot reconcile her thinking gay men are disgusting or cowardly (95) with then her apparent embrace of her own sexuality--"But do you know what those Christians told me? They told me I would have to learn to live without sex. I can't live without sex, Art. It's ridiculous. If Jesus really loves me, then He wants me to sleep with boys" (101). On the other hand, Cleveland's outlook on all things gay seems much more in line with the humanistic view I've come to adopt--"So why don't you just let me do what I want, and I'll let you boys do what you want, and maybe that way we can all stay friends" (238). It was nods to these themes that made me pick this book for the LGBTQ genre.

In terms of LGBTQ, Michael Chabon is a singular entity. With the publishing of Mysteries, Chabon was almost rebranded as a gay writer by the critics due to his straightforward, almost playful treatment of gayness and bisexuality. In his P.S. section in a newer edition of the book, Chabon voiced some concerns about how he was labeled, also putting forward his marriage to a woman as a lens to interpret his writing through. I chose this book rather than any of the other popular (read: token) LGBTQ books floating around my environs (read: Middlesex. (No really, everyone I know on this campus has read Middlesex)) because it wasn't proclaiming to be anything, and that ambiguity, that process of discovery, makes this in my view a perfect introduction to a genre/topic that I myself am not particularly familiar with. A fact of which I am very glad because I was able to stumble across this beautiful beautiful line that encapsulates everything I've ever thought about sexuality ever: "you're just clowning around with your sexual chemistry set" (237). Not only does Chabon deal with a single boy developing his possible bisexuality, he almost nonchalantly calls into question the idea of what is feminine as Art observes Arthur's body one day at the pool (164). How do you describe a man's body? What words are charged and why? How can words be so "erotically feminine" without being gendered at any semantic level? I love books that make me ask questions, even if the questions are not themselves present in the text, and Chabon does a brilliant job of just setting something on the table for readers to engage or not, depending on their will.

And speaking of will (pardon my insufferably heavy-handed segue, please), one of the recurring ideas of this book that stuck out to me was the "will to bigness." Art wants it from the first 50 pages, Cleveland gets it in the end, the whole novel is peppered with the desire to be something more than what you are, and I think that it is a phrase that encapsulates the ideas behind this story; a boy's first summer in the real world, an author's first novel, the desire to be something MORE. As a grad almost a year out of school, I can appreciate the will-to-bigness that is so intoxicating: life is hard without the desire to be something bigger, the desire to move forward and toward some new thing. I've spent the past few months trying to figure out the bigness I am striving for, and this monthly book blog has definitely helped me along. So thank you, minuscule number of readers, for sharing this journey with me. Books like this make me feel like my time has been well spent. (p271)

{Like a nerd, one of my favorite things to do is read literary criticism by authors, both about their own works and others floating around in the aether, so here's a link to an article Chabon wrote about his book in The New York Review of Books. So check it out! Maybe we can be nerdfriends.}

JULY - Dracula the Undead

July review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Dracula the Undead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, 2009. [Action Adventure category]

I had bought Dracula the Undead when my beloved Borders was going out of business early last year (fun fact, that is also where/when I bought Drawing in the Dust, my March book!), but it has sat on my shelf ever since. Reading 'Salem's Lot jolted me back into my love of the vampire and I remembered I had this legitimate-looking sequel lying around, waiting for me to sink my fangs into once again. (To be clear, I don't really have fangs, I am not a vampire--though I have inherited some particularly pointy incisors from daddy dearest.) These are my thoughts!

The GIST. Dracula the Undead is the "true" sequel to the Bram Stoker's original Dracula, cowritten by Stoker's great-grandnephew and a Dracula documentarian/historian/screenwriter. According to the Author's note in the back, its intent was to reclaim the Dracula that Bram Stoker envisioned in his 1897 novel that has been co-opted, bastardized, and generally stolen by the popular media. The plotline fallows Quincey Harker, son of Mina and Jonathan Harker of Dracula fame, as he tries to follow his dreams of the theater--instead of his father's dreams for him of the Sorbonne--and how those dreams lead him back to the ancient evil his parents have been guarding from him his entire life. I liked the idea of a sort of next-generation attempt to reclaim the past, both in the fictional characters and the authors themselves, and it seemed to me a good, honest attempt at continuing Bram Stoker's legacy.

The CHARACTERS. Reprising their roles in Dracula the Undead are the brave band of heroes: Mina and Jonathan Harker, Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming), Abraham Van Helsing, and Jack Seward. (Get used to the phrase "brave band of heroes," because it comes up A LOT.) They are in various stages of denial and/or conflict about their involvement with Dracula in the past, and they have fallen away from each other--even Mina and Jonathan. Or should I say especially? New to the tale is our quasi-hero, next-gen Quincey Harker who is as-yet unaware of his dark parentage. He is the quintessential angry teen, hating his parents for forcing his life away from where he'd like it to go, and his relationships with said parents are very black-and-white: for a general but hugely plot-hole-y example, he quickly turns against his mother and judges her without the full story, all the while taking her word about his father and completely absolving said drunkard of any aforementioned misdeeds. Of course, the tale wouldn't come to fruition if Quincey was on his mother's side at the end. On the other side of the table is Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the new "absolute evil" come to London. She is our new Big Bad, but within the first 40 pages, we get her backstory of a loveless, abusive marriage and subsequent imprisonment. There is a feminine sympathy I found in the way she presents her tale, her own history in her own words--and this quality of allowing everyone their own voice is what pulls the characters in this novel up from the flatness of their ever-recycled prototypes. So often is Count Dracula portrayed as an infuriatingly black, evil character with no wiggle room. The original Dracula in Stoker's mind was an eloquent and complex antihero, and his apparent reincarnation here allows him his own voice again. This grey area the coauthors allow for the two vampires in order to examine the idea of "pure evil" is not extended to the human characters who, like Quincey as I mentioned before, are violently convinced one way or the other about what they think is right and wrong, which I think does a discredit to the characters Bram brought to life in his original.

One thing that has always intrigued me about the vampire was the incredibly sexualized nature these metaphysical beings seem to have taken on throughout the years, and this overt sexuality is very apparent here. Bathory is abused and then shunned for realizing her homosexuality and escaping her marriage, and that preference is continued on a wildly bloody scale to her actions as a vampire. Countess Elizabeth Bathory was said to have killed thousands and bathed in their blood orgiastically. True as that may be, its incorporation here offers a distinct dichotomy between her actions and the actions of the only other real female lead in the novel, Mina Harker. Their decisiveness and confidence is upsettingly linked to the vampire, the dark, which Mina eventually succumbs to under the guise of joining her one true lover. Ultimately the female characteristics of docile flirtatiousness are kept alive in the memory of pure Lucy Westenra while other, more self-actualized female traits are condemned with Bathory and Mina. Something that as a 21st century woman of higher education and relative broad-mindedness, I found hard to internalize.

In terms of ACTION ADVENTURE, the category I chose for this novel, I was not disappointed. It is most certainly an updated vampire tale, building off of the amalgamation of lore that has stacked up over the years while still trying to bring to light only the attributes Bram originally put forth in his novel. I didn't feel myself particularly tied to one character as my adventurer protagonist, though; granted Quincey is the newcomer whose understanding spurs on the climax, but all the characters seemed spread thin, and I didn't necessarily like any particular one of them (I hated Inspector Cotford though. So infuriatingly blind). In this respect, I think the "action adventure" trope falls short.

The RESEARCH. In retrospect, it could've also very well fit into historical mystery, mostly due to the real-life events and people the coauthors decided to lay their story over, like the Jack the Ripper murders and the Titanic maiden voyage. also in terms of the historical accuracy, the legacy being reclaimed, etc. (afterword by the coauthors). To get the full effect of this brilliant sequel, you need to read the afterword and the author's note. Something geeks like me love to do ;] I would love to be a historical fiction writer like this. The way these two men went about writing this book is so fascinating to me; it's one of the things that pushed me toward being a history major, an endeavor I ended up leaving due to the intensely factual nature of most history courses. Not that I don't like facts, but I learn better through stories, I've found. This story is an interesting confluence of research, fusing literature and the historical past to try to explain the unexplainable. It was more or less a fun read--except for wanting to skip over everything Cotford said ever--and I believe Dracula the Undead has deserved a place under the Stoker umbrella.

JUNE - Suck It, Wonder Woman

June review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek by Olivia Munn (with Mac Montandon), 2010. [Memoir category]

(Fuck you, Olivia Munn, you do NOT have thick thighs.)

Okay, now that I got that out of the way. I can attempt to talk about this book in a civilized manner. Sort of. Apologies if this review becomes somewhat more of a tangential examination than a straight book review. I have a lot of feelings. Also if it folds back and forth on itself--I'm really just trying to figure out said feelings about the book.Overall, I had middling feelings toward it, but the things that made me angry are pretty big eyesores in my opinion and I wanted to give them their due, push against the things that made me uncomfortable coming from a woman I so admired. Here we go.

The gist of Olivia Munn's 2010 memoir-slash-funny-stories-about-her-life-collection Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek seems to be a brash declaration of Munn's status as a Geek Sex Symbol, mostly stemming from her run as a host on G4's Attack Of The Show. When I first picked up the book at Motor City Comic Con a few months ago, drawn by the intriguing title and funny cover posing, I was excited. I like Olivia Munn, especially on HBO's summer blockbuster The Newsroom (returning for its second season in a few days!!!). I admire her disregard for stereotypes and her brazen ownership of a traditionally under-the-rug epithet. I was looking forward to loving every word of her sardonic take on the ridiculously sex-crazed society that has become our Mount Olympus of sorts, excited to take it almost as a gospel for a geek girl like myself, but I felt myself getting a little more angry, a little more annoyed, as the book went on. the sex-positive geek girl is a concept that seems to come under much contention lately. As another reviewer on GoodReads said, I decided at the end that I still like Olivia Munn, but I did not like this book.

It makes me unspeakably sad to not like a book by someone who seems to be trying in earnest to cast a positive image for women in comedy and film, and this was no exception. I didn't enjoy reading Suck It, Wonder Woman! as much as I thought I was going to: Munn contradicts herself (as I have been doing for days trying to write this review and figure out how I feel about it), she uses the same jokes over and over again, her candor is illuminating at times but abrasive most of of the time--the flickers of actual personality sprinkled throughout the book are what kept me holding on. I mentioned before that the book seems to be proclaiming Olivia's Geek status although there exist within the text few substantial examples of such. I really want to believe that she is the geek she says she is, and not trying to capitalize on the sexy geek girl facade, to which she is dangerously close. She seems to have some connection to geeky stuff and mentions a lot of videogames that she played as an army brat outcast growing up being bounced from school to school, but there doesn't seem to be anything substantive to the claim other than running Attack Of The Show! Now, I'm not saying that Geekdom is a club for which you need to have references and a resume and a look-what-I've-done-to-prove-myself compendium, but I was disheartened by her continual use of pejorative language and suggestions for guys to "Totally Help You Score!" (title of chapter 17), adding the qualifier that geeky girls are somehow special and take certain XP to get with, maybe? Her language is almost intentionally abrasive--the opening anecdote about her first boyfriend ends with a revelation that he had Tourette's, and her response was that it was some kind of shitty karma, an almost "why me?" feeling. Not cool. Plus, incorrect use of the concept of “karma,” as I was informed by my Buddhist coworker. Double not cool.

While some of those suggestions were good and thought-provoking (like WHAT), many of them still seemed to fall under the typical "pretend to listen to girls because thats how you get what you want" heading. And I was angry. It appeared to me like Olivia was trying to be funny and appealing to all, but in a sort of angry way. Almost condescending?. She tells countless grotesque stories about other people in the industry--only one of whom actually has a name, almost like she's hiding behind her hilarity to ignore the fact that she's still relatively small-time and maybe isn’t Hollywood enough to be saying these steamy tell-all tales she’s telling. The one nameless story I actually enjoyed was chapter 9, "My Dinner with Harvard's Finest" (p76). It is one of the only times Olivia comes out as actively almost-feminist (though at one point in the books she denies the title), staring down a Hollywood bigwig's date and asking her why she lets him talk to her like that, calling her a whore and asking the others if they thought she was a whore. Although, at the end of the chapter, Munn does jump to conclusions and judge the girl as she pulls away with a community college bumper sticker on her car. Less than stellar.

On that note, I'd like to examine the sexuality and body-image aspects of the text. In the bottom corner of the book there is a teensy flip-book of Olivia in a long shirt/short dress type outfit waving and doing sexy things. Inside the cover is a poster of her in a frilly bikini and sailor hat kissing up at the camera. A whole chapter is devoted to her in revealing costumes of "Great Women" who inspired her--without any such meditations as to why or how they can inspire other girls. (Granted, they are each famous for certain things and no doubt those famous things contribute to their inspiration, but still.) While talking about her Playboy cover shoot--which she specifically got contracted to do sans nudity, which is impressive--she perpetuates the image of obsessive dieting and nigh-on-unhealthy eating habits that girls are force-fed every day. EVEN THOUGH later she says "I think it's great for young women to see a real woman, with real breasts and thick thighs considered sexy. I hope that changes the insanely narrow definition of sexy we generally see in the press and on television. Young girls should be proud of their imperfections and curves" (216). These two parts of her image were the most upsetting to me as a less-fit-than-most-twenty-something-girl who has lived with those pressures. I found myself being sucked into the stories, being like “yeah okay I can see why she wouldn’t want to eat if she has to pose--wait WHAT AM I SAYING.”

I found myself pondering the difference between her and say, Felicia Day. Do I respect Felicia a lot more? Why? Felicia still has sexy poses and a healthy knowledge of her body, but most of her time on Twitter is spent geeking out about the new Borderlands 2 patches and who’s going to stay up for the Persona release. Is it because Olivia seems to be selling some sort of sexualized version of the geek girl and because I don't look like her I automatically become angry and distanced from her? That isn’t a feeling I want to internalize. Both of these ladies are funny in their own way, and while both are skinnier than me (which I’m totally ok with, most of the time) I admire their devotion to being real, even if sometimes one or the other falls short. I guess the question I most asked myself is if there’s a world where two such geek girl personalities can exist without completely erasing each other's merits? How do we get there?

Ok, I know i’ve spent a lot of time arguing, against myself and this book and society. But like I said in the first paragraph, I do still like Olivia Munn. Actual glimpses of her personality shone through, and those moments were the ones that tried to hook their not-quite fully-formed fingers into the Memoir category while the rest of the book goes off on a stream-of-consciousness jaunt of its own with little regard for intent, and those moments were the quietest for me, the ones where I really felt connected to this woman, rather than sort of appalled (masturbating with shrimp in one hand story, anyone?). All in all, I admire Olivia for her attempt. This book came out in 2010, before she did Newsroom or her stint on New Girl, two characters that I really felt helped cement her into someone I’d like to get to know. I wonder what she’d have to say now.

Things I actually really enjoyed:

Chapter 3: The sweetest moments in geek history! of all time!

the phrase "license to douchify" on page 164

story about her on Fallon--she actually names people and reveals her raw side. (notably, this is the last chapter in the book...redemption?)

pictures of her past and her family.