Tuesday, July 21, 2009

On Hispsters and Lullabies

A couple weekends ago Katy and I were going to see the tall ships and decided to bring our books, she Trainspotting (cult movie starring Ewen McGreggor) and me Lullaby (if you read but not much, you read Chuck Palahniuk). Katy joked that if anyone looked in her purse (which because of her refusal to be like every other girl and buy a duffel bag for a purse has our books sticking out of it) they would think we were trendy/hipsters.

Now if you know me you know I hate trendy people and I hate hipsters, mostly because they stole my witty t-shirts, my skinniness, made listening to certain music and books that I might like or read "hip" and decided to like shitty beer that I also like to drink form time to time. (Katy says their mantra is "i take photos, drink shit beer, and read cool books").

So I might be called a hipster, because they share traits with me. Just like I used to get "you take emo pictures" because I hate posing for pictures. I'm perilously close to being a victim of "hipster" profiling and I'm not even a fucking hipster! Though apparently I'm only a stupid hat and a pant size away from being a spitting image of one.

Now you did not come here for a rant about hipsters and my apparent likeness to them, though I'm sure you enjoyed it. You came here because you wanted to get the skinny (always wanted to use that word) on Lullaby. Besides not being able to get the voice and image of Edward Norton out of my head, Lullaby is solidly enjoyable novel of very easy language and fairly predictable plot.

Upon reading Lullaby I now understand why so many people consider Chuck Palahniuk their favorite author and why Fight Club translated so easily from a book to a hit movie. Mr. Palahiuk writes with a distinct style and flow to his book which makes the digestion easy and therefore keep the book going at a fast pace. It reads like a movie. With a hint of anti-society mixed in.

But more than anything I like it because it makes you think about situations that are in a way possible but at the same time not thought about as much as they should be. I would go into the specific thought process I came away with but I would ruin the book. If you read it and the part about possible genocide via irregular means catches your interest then feel free to send me an email and we can talk about it.

Lullaby is a beautiful book to behold. The cover is a solid white with black curvy font, with a dead bird placed in the middle. The texture of the cover is not rough or slippery, but instead, for lack of a better term "grippy". The pages on the inside are filled to the edges, not wasting excess space on borders. My one grippe is that chapter endings and chapter beginnings never share a page back to back, I feel not doing so is a waste of paper. But that is far from a deal breaker, just excessive.

More books by Mr Palahniuk will be read in the future I am sure but for now I think I will stick to the classics and critically acclaimed in lieu of the confusion surrounding the question of my "hipster" qualities.

1 comment:

  1. I made a new blog label just to have an easily accessible archive of Kevin faces. Please, readers of The Grumbling, look at this link and try to tell me that Kevin Doyle doesn't still take "take emo pictures."

    http://kobzeff.blogspot.com/search/label/Kevin

    I would like to draw attention to the entries of June 18th (also his banner), February 23rd, and December 19th.

    Thank you.

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