(M68'12) Four in the Morning, Christi Goddard

I actually was reading this book at the same time that I went to a play called the Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart. And I have to say the similarities were awesome at the end. But I'm not going to give away any plots by explaining more on that, because they're only similar if you've experience both, I think. :)

My eyebrows lifted without my permission
I liked this. Books with young characters as the main characters often have more witty remarks than books that use adults for the main characters. Some people can get those remarks down perfectly, others stumble through. This was a book of the first variety.

So this guy is asking the girl to write letters for him so that he can give them to some girl he says he likes. The deal is the main character pretends to be him, writes the letters, then gives them over to him and he passes them on. The girl asked to write them says it's not a good idea, because people fall for the letter writers instead.
"Well, yeah. But that's because the guy writing the letters steals her away. That won't happen with us because you're a girl.I mean, unless you're a lezbo."

My frown was so deep, my brows nearly touched. "How politically correct of you."

"Oh ... you mean you are? He stepped away as if he'd just realized I was Typhoid Mary.

I was offended on behalf of sexual libertines everywhere. "Yes, and we're highly contagious. You better leave before you start wanting love letters for Ryan instead of whichever girl gets your mangina tingling."
She states in the next paragraph that she's not a lesbian really, but she didn't care if he knew or not. She's simply against the letter writing. I liked the way this was written, I liked the casual concept of "Who cares if I'm a lesbian or not, who care if anyone thinks it?" I think this is a great way forward because... who cares? I know it probably wasn't supposed to be all revolutionary and whatnot, but people reading get exposed to someone going "eh, whatever" and maybe it brings down the upset a notch somewhere in the subconscious. *shrug* I just made a big deal out of it again, didn't I? Still didn't mean to.

Talking about college turning girls into lesbians...
"Those girls were lesbians before they got there," Mom said. "A higher education had nothing to do with it."
You go, mom. Good to see this again. But I'm not making a big deal out of it. I do have to say though, that after seeing one lesbian reference back to back with another, I was worried that's all this book would be about. It stopped. Don't worry.

"Shoo?" it said. "I expected something more lucid such as 'hello' or 'good evening' from you, to be honest."
This is an albino skunk now talking to the main character, who is reminding me of Peter trying to get the badger in Narnia to come to his open hand and the badger says "I ain't gonna sniff it" (that's from the movie Narnia, not sure it happens just that way in the book, I'd have to look it up, sadly). Still made me chuckle though.

Dylan would lose a spelling bee contest against a drunken platypus. She would get a better grade if she just set her homework on fire and handed in the smoldering ruins.
More of that smart writing there.

Rigel was supposed to be imaginary, a transgression of my sugar-deprived psyche. It was unacceptable for him to be real. But, imagination or not, it was definitely more unacceptable for him to be stalking me.
More again. Rigel is the skunk, FYI.

"You are writing love letters to someone you hate to be bartered for food you know is not good for you. You are in no position to judge the intelligence of anything right now."
Again with the good lines.

"It is not stalking. It is knowing. Knowledge is powerful."

"So is a cattle prod."
And again.

I hate Bible-thumpers. I don't wander around trying to save them from their religion. They should have the common decency to do the same. It's insulting to be perfectly content with your own faith and have someone come up and tell you it's wrong. If I want to pray to the Great and Noble Bunny of Necrosis, I should be able to without people trying to 'save' me.
I'm going to have to save this one and post it again, because it's well done.

"Belief isn't guessing. Faith is knowing in your heart."
This was the Bible-thumper's reaction to being told by someone that they guess something about her religion was okay with them. Goes well with what's written above.

I sat with the lights off. The sun invaded through the energy conservation-challenged panes, which was more than enough light for my gloomy mood. Sometimes I wanted to hide away from everything and pretend I was the only living thing in the vicinity. No, that wasn't quite it. I wanted to sit there and not care about the things in my life that were wrong. IT got harder every time.
Been there, done all of that.

"There's no cupcake in the world that justifies this sort of aggravation," I mumbled to myself.
Back to good lines again... if "back to" is really the way to describe it.

This is a long one, but you need the whole thing...
Words are how we communicate after all. How can we know what someone is thinking without having an exchange of words? but the absence of words is just as powerful as too many of them. Plus there's deception, omission, avoidance, and hesitation. These all hinder communication - hinder the power of words.

I don't think words have power. The true power lies in our ability to believe them. I may say I like someone's hat, but it's meaningless if they think I'm lying. Someone may say they're my friend, but then their actions - that I interpret through the inaccurate resource that it is - may make me think they lied to me.

So, as important as I always thought words to be, I think it boils down to three simple concepts: belief, trust, and faith. Do I believe the other person? do I trust the other person? Do I have faith in them? Words are meaningless without these conditions.
Aside from that sounding like it came from a lecture or report, this was an awesome thing to read. Going through this with someone right now, I have to agree the whole thing is true. You hear someone say something, but if you can't believe the meaning of it, the hearing of it is worthless.

So around 808 the girl confesses that her mother was insulted in front of their minister at one point when she was little and had refused to eat what was in front of her. The minister made her get in a shallow, cold bath with the food dumped in it. The girl had to sit in the food and the bath and everyone was paraded in to look at her naked, shivering body, squishing the food. She tells this story to the skunk and it says "That's it?" and blows it off. I was seriously offended. The girl was little and adults are being paraded in front of her naked body... That's not exactly respecting her privacy and can certainly be considered abuse. I actually put WTF on this one. I wasn't at all comfortable with a character, no matter who it was, discarding that so easily. The girl says it was humiliating, which I'm sure it would have been, but I'm also sure people could get charges brought on them for such things.

By around 864 I was so sick and tired of hearing about this "stupid letter." I realized it was probably a major plot point or something, but this girl is whining about it so much.. write it and move on or don't write it and forget it. It's that simple.

"What are you afraid of? he said without preamble.

"Fire. And sharks." I wasn't in the mood for another quiz round with Rigel. I would have preferred to have a few minutes alone to dwell on my own shortcomings and question my worth. "Being on fire in a pool of sharks."

"Unlikely. and irrational. You are miles from the ocean. Do you even like to swim?"
More great stuff.

She wasn't raising me; she was enduring me between opportunities to torture me. We cohabitated a house, with the occasional pop in of Dad. Other than that, little could be said that was not negative about our interactions, aside from being as rare as humanly possible.
Sounds very familiar to me.

It was one of the stupidest idioms in the English language. What is a gift horse? Why look in its mouth? Is it a hygiene thing? is it because the Trojans would not have been fooled by the Greeks if they had looked in the Trojan Horse's mouth and seen soldiers? If so, wouldn't it be wise to look a gift horse in the mouth? Yet it's an implication of stupidity if you do. It's illogical.
A little Vulcan there, but I can handle it for the smile it made me have. I usually think similar things about all the stupid phrases we humans have that mean absolutely nothing at all, but are treated as if they contain the weight of the world in them.

"Seriously? I'm too ugly for sexual assault? That's fantastic. I guess it didn't happen then. I guess I dreamed it all because I've secretly wanted him so bad all this time, and I beat the shit out of myself in a violent rant of despair."
This says it all really.

"We're not the Na'vi, Aka," I said. "We're not part of the Rebel Alliance, members of Starfleet, or trying to save Middle Earth. The real world; give it a try."
You had to know this would get a nod from me.

Finally..
People who cared about each other should not make each other miserable.

And that's it. There was a lot here that touched too close to home emotionally for me, so I'll do my best to write an honest review next.