I'm delighted to say that I've just finished reading a book so new and fresh that there aren't any Amazon reviews for it yet. This is really nothing to be proud of, but I am proud of it. Ha, you horrible reviewers! You clowns who never agree with me on anything! Ha! I've beaten you! You will not mar my fresh approach, my mind clear of preconceptions! I win!

Except, of course, that I don't win. Not this time. The first I heard of this book was a few weeks ago when I stumbled across a promotional website. Never before have I ever had the experience of liking a book's website more than the actual book. But such is the case for Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You, which you can take or leave, and its website, which I hope you will look at and find as funny as I did.

That being said, one of the stranger things about my particular reading experience was that I kept seeing Lyon, a character in the last story, as Dakota Fanning (this actually makes some sense, since the story did have elements similar to a couple of her movies, but whatever), who I saw in a Marc Jacobs ad yesterday looking like death in fancy glasses and a lop-sided kimono. She looked as healthy and original as an Olsen twin. I finally found the photo here. Who would do that?

That weird little problem didn't arise until the last story, so it's wasn't really a factor in my opinion of the book as a whole. And actually, I'm not really sure what to think of the book as a whole. It was interesting and quirky, but crass unexpectedly and, I think, a little gratuitously.

Labels: books.

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