Don’t forget apparently there’s a sale at the Bad Books, Good Times Store! You know, the one with the mugs and all. You can get 20% off your order with the code MONEY20 until January 14th.
Also, I completely forgot to tell you a story from when I went home for Christmas. I met up with a friend of mine from home at our bar and I overheard this conversation from the two women sitting next to us:
“No, I haven’t read it yet.”
“WHAT? BUT YOU HAVE TO!”
“I can’t let people see me reading Fifty Shades of Grey!”
I write this blog and I forget that real people read those books. [Ariel says: I forget that there are people out there that don’t read these books for a laugh. Sometimes that makes conversations awkward when I mention I co-run a blog which read each book chapter by chapter. Like, I have to clarify that it was to make fun of it? What kind of world do we live in!]
Chapter 14
Promisingly, Zoey begins the chapter with one of her most “no shit” discoveries yet.
Fencing was totally cool, which was a surprise.
FUCKING SERIOUSLY? You are surprised that fencing is cool?! IT IS FUCKING SWORDFIGHTING. That’s it!
It is fighting with swords. It’s right there in the name. Where is the surprise here?! [Ariel says: Next, Zoey discovers that ice cream is cold, that Fifty Shades is a really terrible series and that politicians do awful things for their own gain at the expense of the community they’re supposed to be bettering.]
Zoey talks with her teacher (whose name is Dragon because okay) about fencing, and he talks about how fencing is one of the few very few sports where women and men can compete on entirely equal terms [Ariel says: Even vamypre men and women? I thought they were all supposed to be super strong and tough?], except then the Casts totally fumble explaining why, so House of Night continues to be about as sexist as usual. It is very strange to consider how there’s a “usual” degree of sexism from this mother-daughter writing team, but this is just the world we live in here at Bad Books, Good Times.
After fencing, Zoey goes to lunch with her friends, who ask her to spill the beans on what this Erik Night sitch is. But first, Zoey has to talk to us about baby corn.
Lunch was a huge build-your-own salad buffet, which included […] those weird mini-corns that are so confusing, and don’t even taste like corn. (What exactly are they? Baby corn? Midget corn? Mutant corn?)
What’s even stranger than this quote is that so many people have highlighted it, my Kindle highlighted it. [Ariel says: The people want answers.]
No, seriously, what the fuck? I get that Zoey’s “thing” is that she has “quirky” narration and “sounds” like a “teen”, but this just sounds like P.C. and Kristin Cast were too lazy to Google the name of what they wanted to talk about. “What exactly are they? Baby corn? Midget corn?” I believe the preferred term is “little person corn”. [Ariel says: This is now the most compelling mystery the book has.]
Ok. Moving on from corn. Zoey tells her friends the scintillating tale that is “He kept looking at me”. For some reason, her friends don’t respond with “So?”, but think this is fantastic news. And, of course, this wouldn’t be a Mary Sue Young Adult fiction novel if our male love interest was just really good-looking. He has to be the most perfect specimen of man to ever walk the planet. [Ariel says: Just kidding, the most compelling mystery is how big is his penis. Oh, who am I kidding, if we didn’t find out when the blow job was happening, we may never know.]
“Erik Night is the hottest damn thing at this entire school,” Shaunee said.
“Forget that – he’s the hottest damn thing on this planet,” Erin said.
“He’s not hotter than Kenny Chesney,” Stevie Rae said quickly.
Unless you’re from the South.
Zoey goes to Spanish and she’s pretty lost, but she’ll be okay because she’s going to study the vocab. And now you know about Spanish class.
She goes to Equestrian Studies next and, okay, you know how we keep making jokes about how Zoey makes way too many jokes about poop and/or poopie? Well… guys… Zoey makes way too many jokes about poopie.
The whole place had that sawdusty, horsey smell […] that was pleasant, even though you know that part of the “pleasant” scent was poopie – horse poopie.
But class begins (we also learn that students were put in this class for demonstrating an “aptitude for riding” even though nobody in the school administration has ever seen any of them ride a horse, but I guess this is a step up from equestrian studies being part of the core curriculum), and… and Zoey just keeps talking about poopie.
I know it’s going to sound weird, but I didn’t mind cleaning out my stall. I mean, horse poopie just isn’t that gross.
What do Jonathan Swift, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Kristin and P.C. Cast all have in common? They’re all totally obsessed with shit. [Ariel says: Don’t forget my favorite author Dav Pilkey! But he made Poopy awesome. You are no Pilkey, Cast family.]
Sure. I’m exaggerating a little bit. This isn’t really at the level of Swift’s scatological poem “Strephon and Chloe” or Mozart writing a canon about getting a rim job (no, seriously look it up). But why does Zoey say “poopie” in almost every chapter? [Ariel says: So we can make a drinking game out of this book?] This is one of those aspects of the novel where I just cannot figure out who the target demographic is. They discuss oral sex. They frequently use the word “poopie”. The middle of that Venn Diagram cannot be a very big one. And that’s, of course, ignoring the childish quality of the writing. Sorry, Kristin and P.C. Cast. “Poopie for brains” just isn’t quite on the same level as “Cry’d out, ye Gods, what Sound is this? / Can Chloe, heav’nly Chloe piss?”
Zoey sees Elliott, whom you may recall is the kid who is failing Lit and failing life from the last chapter. Zoey considers the personality flaws he has demonstrated, focusing on the important issues like his homophobia and spoiled attitude. Nah, just kidding. Zoey continues to be superficial and judgmental.
why couldn’t he use some product (or perhaps a comb) on that nappy hair?
Stevie Rae shows up to find Zoey’s late for the Full Moon Ritual and Dark Daughters ritual because she’s been talking to a hose about how losers shouldn’t procreate. And, uh, that’s what happened in Marked, I guess.
I thought I was used to Zoey’s constant stream of offensive comments. And then I read the words, “why couldn’t he use some product (or perhaps a comb) on that nappy hair?” And my fucking head exploded. I can’t with this book anymore, seriously.
Sure, he’s a spoiled, privileged homophobe who never had to work for anything in his life, but it really bugs me how he doesn’t use any product.
Your story about the women reading 50 Shades reminded me of the time I was getting a filling, and the two dentists working on my teeth while I was high on laughing gas were having a LONG discussion about the series, as if I wasn’t even there. They never actually said the name of it, but it was pretty obvious what they were talking about. “What happened in it?” “They got married and had a baby. It became a lot less scandalous as the series went on.”
I actually have a gym teacher at my school named Dragon.
Oh, and a shout-out to my FANTASTIC governor! Woo…
Okay. The authors are just throwing a bunch of stereotypes and Mary Sue characters into a book in a failed attempt to be funny. I don’t know where the Cast family hails from, but speaking as a Southerner, NO ONE has Kenny Chesney as the epitome of sexy. If they have a British person show up in these books, I’m betting on the character saying things like “jolly good Zoey, jolly good” I’m calling it.
A British person shows up in House of Night:
“Bollocks! He’s not as attractive as THE QUEEN.”
“Oi, mate, do vamypres eat fish ‘n’ chips?”
“I wonder if I’ll still ride the tube when I’m a vampyre.”
“The whole cast of Downton Abbey are vampyres!”
Not the WHOLE cast. Vampyres would never be someone’s staff.
Maybe they feel “da youth” really dig poo. It’s conversational gold.
Zoey’s thoughts on mini corn might be a super dated/”young-P.C Cast” reference to a Seinfeld like musing on mundane things. Also,I was shocked by the racist and offensive hair comment by Zoey. I read this book when it came out at the urging of my middle school students, who loved it. They also adored Twilight. I should have learned my lesson :). (I was their librarian)
What’s the DEAL with vampyres having long hair?
I would reread and enjoy Captain Underpants books by Dav Pilkey any day over any of these books we are reading on BBGT !
Baby corn is one of my favorite foods as weird as that is. I didn’t appreciate the dissing of my baby corn.
Somebodymay have asked this already and I missed the question, but are there any YA books you’ve read and enjoyed? I read a lot of it but the good books are few and far.
Plenty! Most recently I read John Green’s Looking For Alaska and it was beautiful, and I actually do think the first Hunger Games novel was pretty good. I read The Bone Season and didn’t think it was anything special, although in perspective with THIS book, it *does* actually tell a story with carefully crafted world-building. It’s slightly more coming-of-age than strictly YA, but off the top of my head my favorite YA-ish novel is probably Rob Thomas’s Rats Saw God, which I’d recommend if you’re looking for some good YA and you haven’t read it yet.
I devoured YA when I was actually a young adult, so I’m not sure if books I loved then would hold up now. That being said I do love the whole Hunger Games series, My Heartbeat and basically anything by Garret Freymann-Weyr, and there’s this book I remember loving the shit out of Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta and now I wanna read it again to see if it’s still as good as I think it was.
Thank you! I find John Green to be excellent and may have cried a bit if it made an appearance on Bad Books Good Times. I haven’t heard of Rats Saw God, but I’ll be sure to check it out. Thanks for the recommendations.
Two things.
1. I have a strange fear of baby corn. I’m sorry, but it is just not right to eat the cob. Its just not.
2. Again I have learned something from this blog. I looked it up. Seriously. I did. Amazing. Thanks again for the education.
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