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| I don't have time to read all my books because I'm addicted to playing the fashion game Stardoll. |
Hi, welcome to my book party! Please feel free to comment and discuss about this book in the comment area below if you are currently reading this book. Right now, I'm stuck at page 47 where the virgin heroine of the story senselessly gave her first-ever blow job to a co-worker whom she had a crush on. She did it hoping to rope him in to be her boyfriend. I'm feeling traumatized when the book said the heroine was coughing and sputtering after gulping the semen that tasted like hot, salted Clorox. Ewk! This is the first romance novel I read, and is just the saddest thing I have to read. This is so ruining all the notions about love and romance that I'd learnt from Disney! How low a self-esteem does a woman have in order to make herself suffer like this? I spent $6.50 (price + sales tax) to buy this book and I'm not entertained as of now... It's just quite disturbing. I need to take a break to shake off the heroine's disturbing act in my brain before I can continue.... Is tortuous blow job a must-have plot in all romance novels? I'm curious since this is the first romance novel I'm reading...
What others think about this book:
Career options I've learnt from reading this book:
ReplyDelete"A line producer handled all the details related to the business side of shooting a show." pg. 52
What I learnt about Los Angeles by reading this book:
ReplyDelete"Here in Los Angeles, though, beauty was as common as the oranges that grew on the trees everyone had in their backyards." pg. 53
I'd just finished reading Chapter 4 where the heroine remembered her bad experience when she first had sex with her first boyfriend and lover Gary; during his proposal of a breakup with her. This was another unpleasant sex scene that I had to read about. At this point, it's really sad because I can't relate to why the heroine just kept having unpleasant sex with men, particularly when she did it not for love, or money. I'm beginning to feel that may be I just don't like reading romance novel. I just don't get the appeal. Why do women read romance novel?
ReplyDeleteI'm currently at page 84, and found out that the heroine Ruth's best friend Sarah had been using her mother's vibrator since her eleventh birthday. OMG! I hope this book isn't in Oprah's book club or this world's really too scary to live in...
ReplyDeleteI'm still in Chapter 6...reading the all too familiar high school drama...And I had just re-watched the movie "Mean Girls" on Netflix for the 10th times and this time I didn't laugh like I used to. I'm done with America's public high school drama..For the few years Americans spend in high school, it sure takes forever to escape the drama because it's in every TV series, movie, and now novel..... This high school drama with the dance thing is getting stale to me. May be I'm just getting old. I think writers should write more scenes about college.
ReplyDelete"You can have the best bait in the world, and sometimes the fish just aren't biting." pg. 102. That so explains why someone can sell any crappy products, or just merely fart and become rich and successful, while others with the best talents or the prettiest face can still be struggling to make a buck.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading Ch.7... I guess by now you can tell whether this book is a page turner or not? This chapter is about the heroine's interview at a production company. I can't relate to this kind of job interview because I just never experienced one where I'm interviewed by two men who constantly make sex jokes and where I feel obliged to play along in order to get the job. I'm not the kind who screams "sexual harassment" easily but the job interview in this chapter definitely qualifies for one. The heroine Ruth was very happy to play along with the dirty jokes to impress her two future male bosses. I bet if only she didn't get the job, she would have called the complaint hotline on Youtube with an civil right attorney by her side. Or may be the author is going to save the complaint for the book sequel, "The next Worst Thing" when Ruth hits a mid life crisis and she suddenly discovers from her shrink that the sex jokes in her job interview 10 years ago was the root of her rut in her mid life....
ReplyDeleteAre you a writer who's currently experiencing a writer's block? May be you can look back at what your've written so far and see if you can add a chapter that talks about your crush on your boss, and your tour of his fancy house in Bel Air. You can just flip through one of the issues of Architectural Digest magazines and describe the photos you see there; and you will have enough words for a whole chapter. This is exactly what Chapter 8 of this book is made of...
ReplyDeleteAs much as I dread to attend job interviews, I'm glad I never had to attend an audition to get a role on TV or Film. After reading Chapter 9 of this chapter where the heroine Ruth was auditioning with various actresses to play the role in her screenplay, I learnt that the audition process can be boring and intimidating. It reads more boring than my actual real life job interviews. The chapter's ending however struck a chord with me by playing the "Loneliness" card. Loneliness can be such a bad universal feeling. It can be more scary than "illness" & "death". This is why humans need to reproduce. Between the death of a parent and the death of a friend, which would you fear more? Which would sadden you more? Also ask yourself, between you and your best friend's kids, whose well being will concern your best friend more? Getting married, having kids and creating our own families therefore make a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI'm still reading this book at snail speed. What diagnosis would a shrink give me when I can't quit reading a book no matter how its boredom torments me. Why do I feel so compelled to read every page of a book that I don't like? What's wrong with me? This is why I've always been afraid of reading...This is why this is the first novel I read since the last time my school forced me to read "Pride & Prejudice", which I realize now was actually quite interesting and entertaining, compared to this boring novel I'm reading. After 178 pages, I've found no joy or fun in reading this book, yet I feel compelled to read till the last page to confirm that this book is a bore... I need a shrink.
ReplyDeleteI used to think there was no funner business than show biz, but this novel actually shows me how the job of a writer/producer can actually be more boring than my paper-pushing job. I had just read Chapter 12 that is dedicated to the shooting of a sitcom pilot. The script recited by the actors dominated much of the dialog of this chapter, and it's not comical to me. It's not funny, or may be I'm just lacking a sense of humor. At this point, I will be very surprised if this fictional pilot gets picked up in the subsequent chapters of this novel. But if it doesn't, I bet the heroine Ruth is just going to blame it on the fact that she is a woman....I don't relate to Ruth because she seems to blame her frustration as a producer on her being a woman in the business. In reality, there are female show runners who run award winning shows. It's all about money in Hollywood, if your show is good, the big boys aren't going to turn away $$, just because you are a woman, I doubt it... So, there it goes, this novel has no inspiring strong female character thus far, and there has been not much romance either....
ReplyDeleteJust finished Chapter 13 where the heroine Ruth realized how lucky she was that her script was picked up by the studio. As she was hiring writers to fill the writers room for her show, she found many good scripts written by other writers that were dumped or ignored by networks and studios. Ruth suddenly learnt that success in show biz, wasn't really determined by how talented a writer was or how good a screenplay was, it was mostly luck that determined whose script got picked up. Yes, I can totally relate to this because whatever career path one takes, luck is very much needed to meet that inspiring mentor, to work on that breakthrough project, to be partnering with a team that is on the rise, to meet that soul mate in a business pursuit. Regardless of the field of career, frankly, luck is more important than talent. There are of course people who have both talents and luck. But there are more people who got where they are mostly because of luck and not talent. This I can relate to very much. The school of positive thinking always advocates, "one can create luck". But in reality, making luck can be harder than making rain. The age old adages, "Being in the right place at the right time." and "It's who you know and not what you know that matters." are the dominating rules of the game in any career field, in any country in the world.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm not done reading this book yet. And no, there is nothing interesting in Chapter 14. This is a chapter where the heroine Ruth's grandma was hosting a viewing party to watch Ruth's pilot. What a boring viewing party (in my opinion). Why couldn't Ruth just order some exotic takeouts for the party? Why did Ruth's Jewish Grandma have to spend an afternoon cooking up a Mexican feast of the same old usual dishes commonly found in most suburban American potluck parties, like drumsticks, grilled lamb chop...salsa...guacamole and tortilla chips? What's the point of living in Los Angeles surrounded by good food from good restaurants from all around the world if one has to slave in the kitchen to make tortilla? Grandma of course didn't enjoy the party, not because of the hard work of cooking, but because she didn't like how the grandma character was portrayed in Ruth's pilot. I wouldn't be upset if I were the grandma because this wasn't a Biography documentary, it was a fictional sitcom... I don't see how I will be bothered if a character supposedly inspired by me is being made fun of in a sitcom. May be if Ruth's grandma hadn't spent all that time cooking for the party, she would be less grouchy?
ReplyDeleteI've put aside this book for so long I almost forgot I had it. The book emerged today when I was looking for the user manual for my computer.... So I picked up where I last stopped reading and read some more. I finally finished Chapter 15 and completed Part 2 of the book. Chapter 15 was about how Ruthie found out everything didn't go her way regarding the sitcom she created. Getting frustrated, she called her former boss and mentor Dave whom she had a crush on big time despite the fact that he was waist-down paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. There was the explicit sex scene between Ruth and Dave in the pool at Dave's supposedly fancy Hollywood Hills Home. Since this is the first romance fiction I ever read besides Pride and Prejudice, I want to know if every contemporary romance fiction has explicit sex scene? I don't care for the sex scene that I just read in this book, may be because I'm lacking of imagination. I just don't see how a character like Ruth, and her wheelchair-bound boss having sex in a swimming pool can be a turn on, or in any way romantic. None of these two people are really in love at this point. There wasn't a relationship between the two other than the superficial work relation. Dave was actually having a very beautiful Persian attorney girl friend. The lack of investment in a romantic relationship that solidifies love made the sex scene kind of stupid and a little repulsive to me. I'm not sure if I will read a second romance novel after this book....It seems that I'm not getting much escape or entertainment out of a story like this... I much prefer watching Netflix's original series: "Erased". It's just a lot more entertaining.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only person who takes this long to read a fiction? I feel that reading fiction is such a luxury that I can barely afford these days, particularly one that I don't find quite as entertaining, until after I completed 16 chapters. On page 279 in Chapter 16, I finally came across a joke that cracked me up. It was about Ruth's (the screenwriter) feelings towards viewers' reaction and the kind of viewers that her show needed to get to be a success. Her joke about the Nielson's boxes in prisons was totally hilarious! It made me think of may be that's why "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" is still on E! even though my friends and I have stopped watching for many years now. I'm glad I hanged on to this book even though I hadn't been all that interested in initially I got a great laugh out of this page, to my surprise.
ReplyDeleteI've finally finished reading this book! OMG! It took a long time but I've finally read the last chapter and the final page. No, the book didn't get any better. I don't care for the main character or any of the main characters in the book. The plot was boring, the writing wasn't impressive. It just didn't have any pull on me. I finished nevertheless. I'm too scared to start another fiction. I have this OCD that once I start a book, I got to finish reading every page no matter how uninteresting the book is. I don't know why and I can't help it. If I don't read every page of any book that I started, I always feel there is a burden and weight on me which I can't explain. I'm actually afraid of reading because of this feeling. I feel relieved now that I'm done with this bad novel.
ReplyDelete