BlogHer Book Club - The Beach Trees

Books to me are always the relaxation and escape, the time for me to step away from the world and instead focus on what isn't happening in my life. While I love reading all year round, the escapist books seem to be primarily focused on summer reading - the time most people take for their vacations and escapes. I had the opportunity earlier this summer to read The Beach Trees by Karen White. Again, this is an author I haven't read previously, and it isn't a super light book, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good fit to sneak into your beach bag along with that suntan lotion and towel. Want to know what I really thought? Check out my take on it with my BlogHer Book Club review of The Beach Trees.

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Well, At Least You Know I'm Always Honest....

In addition to writing this blog, I also have my review blog (with ahem, some pretty decent giveaways with relatively simple methods of entry - go!). One of the things that's really important to me as a person, let alone as a review blogger, is to write honest reviews about the products and services I see. I don't want to be someone's mouthpiece, and I want people to - and hope that they do - trust me when I say something.

To that end, I point out the flaws. I don't simply pitch the press release but instead talk about my experiences and reactions to the products. Granted, I tend to accept only reviews from products I anticipate liking. And when there are issues, I bring them up to the company first to give them a chance to correct them. I'm not out to bash anyone, and a reivew that would be that is instead simply provided to the original company, not that it's been an issue often.

Book reviews fall into the same category for me, and I'll be doing more of them - outside the posts inspired by From Left to Write books - in the future as part of the BlogHer Book Club. My first published post with them on BlogHer is for A Jane Austen Education written by William Deresiewicz.

Like I said, now you all know I'm honest. Go read my review here to see why I say that.

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I'm Done

We all have our various email accounts that we use for various purposes. I have a work email account (that bans personal email). I have an email that I share with friends that is strictly for personal and PTO correspondence. Then I have an email that's where I get a few subscriptions and some things from friends. Lastly, I have my email for all the junk and the subscriptions I don't trust -- yes, which is what I use for blogging, among other things.

Each of the emails has its own limitations. My second personal email I rarely use anymore at all for the pure idiocy of whoever programmed it (Netscape FYI) makes it such that if I try to click on an email before the page has fully loaded, Explorer freezes. I've learned to read that email in a background window and take. my. time. It's a complete pain though, and I'm transitioning away from it.

The worst though, is my Excite account. It used to work fine. Then some moron had the bright idea that it needed an upgrade. Let me tell you about the upgrade:

1) It has about a gazillion loading screens now so it's almost impossible to backtrack to a website you were at prior to checking your Excite email (granted, I've figured out the workaround that I go to another site then work my way backwards, and the gazillion loading screens are gone. Go fig).
2) It now gets stuck at 3% loaded a lot.
3) It takes forEVER to load the inbox. Or my sent mail. Or my junk mail.
4) Junk mail frequently isn't junk mail.
5) There's not a good way to delete spam without actually opening it. I've again discovered a workaround -- hit the control key while clicking on it, but how intuitive is that?
6) The mail delivery is delayed by hours. I get email to this account up to 14 hours after it's been sent. And it doesn't arrive in order, which drives me batty.
7) When you hit delete, it asks if you really want to delete it. When you click "yes" it takes forEVER to delete the email and sometimes deletes the wrong one, necessitating a 5 minute trip into the trash bin to restore the email.
8) If you press the up or down arrows - natural as you're reading an email to see more of the screen - it instead moves to the previous or next email.
9) Did I mention that it's slow as s^%#@?
10) Every time you send an email, it gives you a stupid message asking if you want to save the email address. Every. Time.
11) When you hit send, it doesn't take. You hit it again and it doesn't take. You hit it again and mayyyyyybe it sends.
12) It puts the thread of the email into an attachment which makes it difficult to reference a previous email.
13) When you click to read an email, it doesn't naturally open a new window or give you a full screen. You can only read about 6 lines of text at a time, which is incredibly irritating.

Needless to say, it annoys the cr#^& out of me. I finally hit the boiling point when trying to read six emails and responding to two of them. It took me 45 minutes, and I only got through three of the emails and could reply to one.

I hopped on over to Gmail and opened up a handy dandy account there. And now it's time to migrate everything there and abandon the morons who decided to "upgrade" Excite without asking anyone's opinion or providing an option of staying with the system that worked. They actually sent out an email describing HOW the email system that works about a month and a half after the upgrade. Because email isn't supposed to be intuitive or function in their minds, apparently.

I really hope no one got promoted over this boneheaded move. But I'm moving on and taking my email with me. SO if you ever send me email, let this be the formal notice that my email address has changed.

Oh, and please, please, PLEASE don't ever put yourselves through the torture of using an Excite email account. I feel so much better after getting this out.

I Must Be Old ...

Because when I watched 90210 last night (sue me, it got preempted by Cubs on Tuesday and I was too tired to stay up and watch it that night), I didn't get it.

Growing up, I loved Beverly Hills 90210. I didn't watch every episode, but I certainly watched many of them. It resonated with me for the most part. I really only remember one quibble I had with the show, and that was the town Brenda and Brandon had moved from. You all remember that they were from Minnesota. In one episode they mentioned the town. They called it WAY-zatta.

*sigh*

Really, you're writing for a huge tv show; can't you afford to do some research? I know it looks like that when you see it on a map -- Wayzata and all. However, it's actually pronounced Why-zhetta. And how do I know this? Well, that happens to be the town I lived in at the time. Sorta like how it drives me nuts now to see movies that take place in Chicago and watch roads that are nowhere near each other appear to be the same road.

But back to the new version.

A friend of mine was suppose to have a viewing party at her house. Unfortunately the preemption messed that up. And the reschedule didn't happen on Wednesday because she somehow Tivo'd only the first 23 minutes of it. Fortunately, she discovered this before we all showed up. Needless to say, I was on my own to watch it Thursday.

And I don't know if I'll watch it again.

I really feel like the show didn't know who it wanted to watch it. Were they going after today's teens or the adults who were teens when the original version was on?

It kept Brenda and Kelly (and may I just ask what happened to Shannen? I don't remember that huge gap between her front teeth before, and every time she opened her mouth to talk, that was all I could stare at). I'm not sure what Brenda's role is exactly. She sort of showed up near the end to visit with Kelly (or is it Kelli?). And Kelly has a child, which means that she's going to play a decent sized role in the show. I assume anyway. That or the kid will be the one to drive her off.

I think they also have Kelly's mom on next week. Because of course we all remember the sweet little Erin she had while on the show. Perfect mirroring, Erin is now in high school, and of course there's the triangle between the three ladies -- or so it appears.

It's odd the large role that adults play on the show altogether. The principal is the new Jim Walsh who moved from Kansas to take care of his mom who is quite the caricature, including being a drunk. His wife is a photographer, and both are playing a large role in the show. One of the high school girls' mom was apparently a high school girlfriend of the principal and is now hitting on him. Apparently because they had a son together that the principal never knew about. Yep, lots of adults in the stories, which seems like something the teens wouldn't care about. Just saying.

But my biggest issues were with the teens. My wee ones would not be watching this if they were of age -- unless it were with me to discuss the show and how very wrong it it.

Erin insists on being called Silver and has an incredibly mean-spirited blog where she attacks whoever she decides to. And since the whole campus at West Beverly is now wireless, everyone and their laptop sees the skewerings and buys into them, making that person the talked about outcast of the day.

The actresses also look so much older to me than even they did in the original version (Andrea and Dylan notwithstanding). And they're so skinny that they look unhealthy. In fact, pretty much all the representations of the teens (and adults for that matter) are ones that I can only pray my wee ones never emulate.

The houses are far, far larger than they were before. The cars the students drive are that much more expensive. Nat's Peach Pit is a way upscale charcuterie and coffeehouse. One boy flies the new girl to San Francisco on his private jet for dinner. To have anyone think that this is reasonable or attainable or even a good fantasy... it sets people up to be miserable later in life.

Interestingly, the "new" children on the show aren't twins. There's a girl and an adopted boy. I'm sure they're going to bring race into the show at some point, as the boy is black. He's also a rocking lacrosse player (anyone else see lacrosse's popularity becoming even more popular after this?) who gets kicked off the team because he is goaded into a fight with the previous star and someone on the team lies and says the new kid started it (is it sad that I have no idea what most of the names are on the show? I think that's probably a bad sign).

Lucky for him, the kid has a change of heart and the new boy is back on the team. But when they are pranked by the rival team, there's a huge show of "you have to be part of the team" which means the new kid devises a reciprocating prank even after being warned not to retaliate. Yep, being part of the team means never giving up your buddies, and this is celebrated by the dad/principal. Apparently my morals need adjusting since I'd fully expect my child to a) not retaliate after being told by the principal not to and b) to give up himself and others if he made the stupid choice to do so and got caught.

There's also the "not so sweet sixteen" party that one of the girls has which I wouldn't attend myself, let alone allow a child of mine to attend. Hugely over the top and lavish and insane. The new girl is grounded because she gave her term paper to the birthday girl and got caught, but she snuck out to the party anyway. Her parents found out, but no apparent punishment for that was doled out.

And don't forget the girls who go to the nightclub with a huge cover and drink. Oh and are on pills and steal purses to pay for said pills.

The disrespect they all show their teachers is also appalling, and I feel for my husband is people start to act this way in real life. I know the parents are already there with the excuses as to why Little Johnny should get a take home makeup exam or why a paper should be regraded or why an extension should be granted because I hear about it from my husband, but the mom on the show who wanted an extra week's extension for a paper because of the upcoming birthday party and the stress of that and the fittings needed, etc. If my wee ones started acting this way, there would be hell to pay.

And the girls are all so vicious towards each other. I remember the original having catty girls on it, but this was just horrible horrible behavior all around. I can only hope that people are a little more normal when the wee ones go to high school.

I don't watch a ton of tv, so maybe this is par for the course. You always have to top the one that came before you, right? I never watched most of the recent popular shows -- Dawson's Creek, The OC, Gossip Girl. To be honest, I had to think long and hard to come up with just those few.

So umm yeah, I'm a curmudgeon before my time. Did anyone else watch the new 90210?