This might be one of the worst book covers ever, but the title follows one of the most common word patterns used in book titles.
Even though I’m a visual person (meaning I like pretty pictures and read comic books), I’ve never looked closely at book covers. Unless the cover illustration is of a hot chick with cleavage, my eyes seem to naturally search for the title and author. To me, a book cover is not a factor when I choose a book. The cover is almost always designed by an illustrator who is not the author. In fact, I’d bet there is no relationship between the quality of a book cover and the quality of the writing inside the book.
But the title is different. The author almost always comes up with his (or her) own title. If the title is stupid or pretentious, chances are that the book will be stupid or pretentious. If the book title is clever or intriguing, maybe the book itself will be clever or intriguing. It doesn’t always work out that way. But I’d rather judge a book by its title than by its cover.
This year I’m making an effort to read more books as they come out so that I can form my own opinions before reviewers can spoil the books for me. I find that since I can’t see the book covers very well on my phone (my new phone is great, but covers are small), the biggest determining outside factor for me is the title.
All of the books below have come out in the last few weeks, and almost every title follows one of six commonly used title patterns:
1. NOUN-PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Secret of Magic by Deborah Johnson
The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely
Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah
Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin
The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani
2. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE ONLY (maybe with lots of adjectives)
On Such a Full Sea by Chang Rae Lee
Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan
In the Blood by Lisa Unger
3. THE or A plus NOUN (with maybe an adjective in the middle)
The Visionist by Rachel Urquhart
The Kept by James Scott
The Bird Skinner by Alice Greenway
A Well-Tempered Heart by Jan Philipp Sendker
The Ascendant by Drew Chapman
The Execution by Dick Wolf
Bad Wolf by Nele Neuhaus- The “the/a” is implied.
4. PROPER NOUN
Bella Cora by Phillip Margulies
Worthy Brown’s Daughter by Phillip Margolin
Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker- Yes, Mercy Snow is a character’s name. I checked.
Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty
Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
5. ONE WORD
Perfect by Rachel Joyce
Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates- This title also fits the PROPER NOUN category
Red-1, 2, 3 by John Katzenbach- Do numbers count as words?
6. NOUN-VERB (with something before or after)
The Wind Is Not a River by Brian Payton- I don’t trust a book with a title that’s a complete sentence.
Before I Burn by Gaute Heivoll
Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse
You Disappear by Christian Jungerson
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The only 2014 book I’ve found that doesn’t seem to fit any of the six categories is Andrew’s Brain by E.L. Doctorow. I almost said that the “the” or “a” is implied and put it in either Category #3 or #4. but I need to think about that. Maybe it’s the rare title exception.
++
Three books from 2014 that I’ve started reading are The Kept, The Ascendant, and Foreign Gods, Inc. I guess I like short titles. The category that I’m least likely to read is the NOUN-PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE. To me, it seems overdone and overdramatic (but maybe the books are also overdramatic). I guess I don’t like titles with long prepositional phrases either. There’s no way I’ll read Under the Wide and Starry Sky or On Such a Full Sea, but I’ve started reading In the Blood. The short prepositional phrase is just fine with me.
I know I’m not supposed to judge a book by its title, but what else are we readers supposed to do? Reviews are rigged. Covers aren’t illustrated by the author and aren’t an indication of the quality of a book. Popular authors get stale after a few books. There are too many books out there to give each one a fair chance, so if I have to choose one way to decide which books to sample/read and which ones to ignore, I’ll choose to judge a book by its title.
When Daniella told me that she wanted to get married, I almost crashed the car into a parked bus.
I was driving slowly through the mall parking lot when she said it. My mouth probably hung open. After all, it had been the last thing I expected. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had wanted to break up or if she had just wanted to curse at me some more. But get married? I stared at Daniella for a moment while the car was moving, and a mom pushing a baby carriage stepped in front of our car, and I swerved and almost sideswiped a charter bus of elderly shoppers.
The mom glared at me. My window was already down so I shouted a quick apology and kept my eyes on the lot in front of me as I cautiously moved on.
“You want me to drive?” Daniella said with her cheese-eating grin.
“You… want… but…” I stammered as I drove out of the parking lot onto a main thoroughfare. The Sunday afternoon traffic was starting to pick up, so I really needed to be careful.
“I didn’t mean get married… to you,” Daniella said. “I meant that I want to get married… sometime…. to somebody.”
“You did that on purpose,” I said.
“Maybe.” Daniella shrugged. “We couldn’t be married to each other. I want a rich guy, and you deserve a woman who luuuuvvvvs you.”
“And you don’t luuuuvvvv me.” I already knew that, but it was still tough for me to admit it aloud.
“No,” she stated. “I like you a lot because you luuuuvvvvv me. It’s a nice feeling. Everybody should have somebody who luuuuuuvvvvs them. You deserve that too.”
Even though I appreciated her sentiment, I still was annoyed about how she had set me up on the marriage idea.
“Wait! Why are we going home?” Daniella snapped. “I wasn’t done shopping!”
“You were the one who wanted to leave,” I said.
“I was pissed,” she said. “I’m not pissed anymore.”
Exasperated, I veered the car to the left lane. The street was two lanes on both sides with a thin island in between, but I’d made u-turns like this all the time. I could usually make it in my sleep. But as I started the U, another car pulled out of a parking lot ahead of us on the opposite side, making me nervous, so I accelerated on the turn, which I knew not to do, and I misjudged the space I had, and the car’s rear passenger tire hit the curb. Daniella’s head rocked a little bit.
“Now I’m pissed again,” she said, shaking her head and blinking her eyes at me.
The car that had made me nervous blasted past us. I almost flipped him off, but it was my fault for getting intimidated. I was the one in a fancy sports car with a hot girlfriend who wanted to get married (even though it was to an anonymous somebody else).
“Sorry about that,” I said.
A moment later I saw flashing lights behind me. A cop was pulling us over.
“I don’t think it’s illegal to hit a curb,” I muttered.
“And I’m not paying for your traffic ticket,” Daniella said, mimicking me from a couple months ago.
Normally, I would have laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood. I pulled into a fast food parking lot, turned off the engine, and put my hands on the steering wheel.
“You do this often?” Daniella said.
“I don’t want to get shot over this.” Back then, our police department (though most police officers did a great job and I respected them a lot) had a trigger-happy reputation.
“Cops don’t shoot guys like you,” Daniella said, but my hands remained on the steering wheel anyway.
The police officer seemed to be taking his time in his squad car.
“So… you want to elaborate about getting married?” I asked, hands still on the steering wheel.
Daniella made a fart sound with her lips. “Your friends buy it when I wear my glasses and talk about books. Can you believe that?”
I nodded. Daniella was a great conversationalist, even when she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I’ve been thinking … you showed me that I CAN set my standards higher. I don’t have to settle for guys that I meet at Nero’s. With the right look and the right talk, I can get a man with real money.”
I knew where she was going with this.
“I’m going to find a really rich guy! I’m going to rock his world! And then… I’m going to take everything he has!” She nodded with pride at her aspirations.
I should have been mortified at her idea, but I was intrigued and relieved. The last few months started to make sense. Daniella wasn’t living in sin with me just for my money (that I no longer had); she was trying to move up in the world.
I wondered when she had come up with this idea. “So when you showed up on our first date with the glasses and hair pulled back,” I said, “you were… practicing.”
“Kind of.”
“So, I’m… your practice husband.”
“You don’t mind?” Daniella said.
From the side view mirror, I noticed that the police officer had begun his slow stroll to our car. He was tall, broad, and not the type to eat a bunch of doughnuts. This guy looked like a cop who could bust heads without a stick or a gun. He had cool sunglasses too. I made a mental note to compliment him on the glasses. Then I wondered if I’d look like an asskisser if I tried to compliment him. I wasn’t good at schmoozing. I’d be better off taking the polite, respectful approach. Maybe Daniella could schmooze him. She reached into her glove compartment and pulled out some papers.
“License and registration, please,” the officer said, seemingly without emotion.
“I’m… removing… my hands… from… the steering wheel… to get…. the… required documents…,” I said to the police officer. I really didn’t want to get shot. I had the feeling he rolled his eyes behind those sunglasses. Daniella handed me the papers, and I relayed them to the officer.
“Jimmy,” he said. Then he leaned into my window and peered in. “This is your new boyfriend, huh.”
What? It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to Daniella.
“Randy?” Daniella said. “Shit!” It wasn’t the good “Shit!” reaction.
The cop seemed to inspect me through his shades. “He doesn’t look like your type.”
“You weren’t my type,” Daniella said. She wasn’t even trying to mask her contempt. “Jimmy’s my type now.”
Officer Randy chuckled. “You make a lot of money, Jimmy?”
“I…”
“Don’t talk to him,” Daniella said to me. Then she leaned on my shoulder and stuck her finger at Officer Randy. “And don’t cross-examine my boyfriend!”
“That smart mouth of yours always causes problems,” Officer Randy said.
“Fuck you!”
“Daniella,” I said to her. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Why do you always…?” Then she stopped herself and rubbed her temple. “Okay. I’ll be po-lite to the po-leese.” She leaned against the passenger door and crossed her arms.
“Danielle-a,” Officer Randy said slowly.
“Yeah, that’s… her real name,” I said with resignation.
Officer Randy nodded. “Nice car,” he said. I could tell he was talking to Daniella, not me. “Why’d you switch?”
Daniella stared out the passenger side and breathed heavily, her lips in a pout.
“If you’re going to be like that…” He kept writing on his clip board.
I mentally pleaded with Daniella to say something nice to Officer Randy, but silence probably was the best I could hope for. The quiet was awkward. Whatever conflict that existed between Officer Randy and Daniella, I couldn’t use my diplomatic strategies to smooth things over. I couldn’t do anything about it except eat the ticket.
A few minutes later, Officer Randy gave me the clip board and pointed out where to sign the form. “She’s a handful.”
“You’re not making it any easier.”
“Maybe, but I’m the least of your problems.” Then he ripped out a ticket and handed it to me along with the other papers and cards. “Have a nice day.”
I sat and watched through the side-view mirror as Officer Randy returned to his squad car.
“He never figured out my real name,” Daniella said. “He’ll make a great detective.”
“Have you ever had a friendly break up?” I asked.
Daniella snatched the ticket from me and frowned. “Speeding?” she said. “Reckless driving? He’s just making shit up. Why didn’t you argue this?”
I thought about the money this ticket would cost me, and it hurt that it was my fault. I shouldn’t have smacked into the curb. I was a better driver than that.
“He wouldn’t have given you this if I wasn’t in the car,” Daniella said. “We’ll take this to court. I’ll put on my glasses and go to the judge with you and speak softly and hold up a Jane Austen book and say Randy has been stalking me, and I’ll cry. Randy hasn’t seen me as library girl. He doesn’t know what I can do now. I’ll get his ass fired.”
Despite everything, I laughed. In the last hour Daniella had assaulted a photographer, cursed me out in the mall, almost gotten me beat up in a parking lot, and her ex-boyfriend had just written me a traffic ticket. When we got home, I was going to hide that badass leather jacket of hers someplace where she’d never find it. But we had a common enemy. And maybe a common goal.
“It’s not funny,” Daniella said.
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“Are you serious about wanting to marry a really rich guy?” I asked.
“Yes!” she proclaimed with no hesitation.
I drove on past the mall, a sense of calm taking hold over me. For the first time in months, I understood my role in everything. My life, my relationship with Daniella, all made sense, and my mind was clear. I knew what I wanted to do.
“You really want to marry a rich guy,” I said with an enthusiasm that surprised me. “Then I think I’m going to help.”
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Revenge of the Public Library .
If you want to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning (it’s getting kind of long), start here.
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(image via Wikimedia)
Last year was a financial disaster if you look only at what I made from my writing. I think my ebooks pulled in about $10.00 last year. That’s okay because I hadn’t expected to make much, and evidently, I’m not alone. An article in/at The Guardian shows that most writers (depending on how you define “most”) earned less than $1,000 from their writing last year, and you can’t really do much with that over the course of a year. I don’t know what percentage earned $10.00 or less. Maybe I don’t want to know.
Last year, famous rich author Elizabeth Gilbert said writing was “f*cking great.” That was easy for her to say because she’s “f*cking rich” (I quoted myself there). I make next to nothing from writing, and I still think writing is “f*cking great.” I think I have more credibility on this issue than she does. But even though writing is great, I know that I probably won’t make much money (I hope I’m wrong) for four basic reasons.
And if you include “I suck,” there would be five reasons.
TOO MANY WRITERS
It’s supply and demand. With ebooks and blogs/websites, millions of regular people who otherwise wouldn’t write are writing. I’m one of them. I gave up my dreams of becoming an author in 1997 when I had been told several times that I was talented but my niche had limited appeal, so publishers would be reluctant to sign me a deal. I put writing out of my mind for almost 15 years.
Yeah, there are a lot of other writers out there, but since I don’t like blaming myself (and other writers) for my low pay, I present…
NOT ENOUGH READERS
Technology has created millions of new writers, but that leaves fewer readers. All those people writing used to be people reading, and they might still read, but they probably read less, and if people are reading less and writing more, than the writer-reader ratio (or reader-writer ratio) goes down (or up). That means there are fewer readers to buy the books that that new writers are writing. And my mom will only buy one copy of my ebooks.
WRITERS PUBLISH FREE STUFF
Not only are there a bunch of writers out there, most of their material is now free. Blogs and websites (and even videos) are free. Some ebooks are free, and the others are really cheap. If so much reading material is free (and some of it is actually good), then readers will be attracted by that and avoid paying for anything. As a reader, that’s great. I love free stuff. But as a writer? I know that creating a reliable income from writing (at least the way I’m going about it now) is a long shot.
Despite the lack of income, writers probably shouldn’t start charging for the stuff that’s free. If they do that, readers would stop reading, and most writers would rather get read for nothing than charge and not get read at all. Feedback is a payment in its own way, so I figure any authors who get feedback from their writing are doing a good job.
FAMOUS AUTHORS WRITE TOO MANY BOOKS
Authors on The New York Times Bestsellers List from ten years ago looks a lot like the authors on the lists today. And a bunch of those authors write more than one book a year. I’ve scanned through these books. A lot of them suck, but readers buy them anyway.
For example, rich famous writer James Patterson published 13 novels last year, most of which had a co-author. 13? I’m not even gasping about the number “13.” I get annoyed at authors who publish more than one book a year, but 13? No, there shouldn’t be a law limiting the number of books that an author writes, but we readers should shame authors who do this.
Unfortunately, authors and publishers know this is a great way to make lots of money quickly. I don’t blame them. If I were in James Patterson’s position, I’d probably do the same thing. If James Patterson contacted me and said he wanted to co-author and publish a hardcover version of The Literary Girlfriend (my blog serial) and give me a huge contract for it, I’d probably…. I’d… I’d…
I’d tell him to stick it (in a polite way). The Literary Girlfriend is mine, and I’m not sharing, no matter what.
I know that if famous authors stopped writing multiple books a year, it wouldn’t change the writer-reader ratio enough to increase my chances of being successful. I know that. But every controversial issue needs a scapegoat. And I have no problem scapegoating a rich, famous guy who is completely unaffected by my scapegoating. Therefore, if I’m going to blame any one person for the lack of money being paid to writers, it’s James Patterson!!!
++
Even though my prospects of making money from writing are dim, I’m not filled with gloom and doom. Ten years ago, I could have pounded the keyboards indefinitely and still nobody would have read my stories, except maybe for Mom. Now, between blogs and ebooks and unlimited opportunities for shameless self-promotion, anybody can build an audience. And that’s “f*cking… uh… that’s pretty great.”
*****
For even more advice and insight, read…
Now only 99 cents on Amazon!
Maybe… maybe… maybe… To Kill a Mockingbird is overrated, but I’m not ready to commit yet.
“The Fault in Our Stars (by John Green) was really overrated,” a co-worker of mine said a couple days ago. She reads and knows that I read, and we both have kids who read, so all of us have read some of the same books.
“It wasn’t meant for us,” I said to my co-worker. I’m in my late 40s, and she’s in her mid-30s, and the book was written for high school kids. Most YA literature is unreadable, so I consider The Fault in Our Stars a decent book just because I finished it, and it has a pretty good ending.
“But it got a bunch of 5 star reviews on Amazon!” she said. “Maybe it was 3 and 1/2 stars, maaaaybe 4, but 5? No!”
“Everything gets 5 star reviews on Amazon,” I said. “If a book hasn’t received a 5 star review, it means it hasn’t been reviewed.”
“Then everything on Amazon is overrated,” she said.
My co-worker is probably right. Most books on Amazon get a lot of 5 star reviews. I don’t think any book deserves 5 stars. I haven’t read a 5 star book in… uh… I don’t think there is a 5 star book. A 5 star book should be like a 10 in gymnastics; maybe it’s possible, but it should be rare. The good thing about gymnastics is that at least they can use decimals. If Amazon could use decimals, a bunch of 5 stars would be 4.7 stars, which might not change the average, but there wouldn’t be so many underserving 5s. Instead, they’d be undeserving 4.7s.
But there are other ways books can be overrated.
If a book is a best-seller, it’s probably overrated. A book that sells millions of copies usually isn’t that much better than a book that sells thousands. I’m just as likely to quit reading a best-seller as I am a book that’s obscure. I’ve finished a few best-sellers recently. I enjoyed Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It’s a good book. But it’s not much better than other books I’ve finished that weren’t best-sellers. It’s good, but it’s probably overrated.
At least Gone Girl was kind of original. Most bestsellers are written by authors who have written a bunch of other bestsellers, and their latest bestsellers are a lot like their previous bestsellers. If you’ve read one John Sandford or Janet Evanovich (a bunch of other names could be included on the list) book, you’ve read a bunch of books by John Sandford or Janet Evanovich. The authors deserve credit for building a loyal audience, but those individual bestselling books are overrated.
Books that win awards are automatically overrated too. I haven’t finished many books that win awards, so maybe I’m not the best judge of whether award-winning books are overrated. I’m not the award-winning author’s target audience either. I finished the Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction from a few years ago, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I enjoyed it, which means that it probably shouldn’t have won a Pulitzer. I appreciated it a lot more than other readers who routinely finish Pulitzer Prize books (winners and runners-ups and books that they claim should have been nominated but weren’t). A Visit from the Goon Squad is overrated. It’s good, but the Pulitzer Prize automatically makes it overrated.
Even classics are overrated. Some critics may disagree, claiming that any piece of literature that survives generation after generation of readers cannot be overrated. I have a tough time believing that Moby Dick was that much better than other literature of its time period that has been long forgotten. At least, I hope it’s not that much better. Otherwise, I feel really sorry for book readers back in 1850. Moby Dick is a classic because somewhere along the way, it was overrated and the powers that be who choose what others should read decided that it would be a classic. Without literature professors and super-aggressive high school English teachers, Moby Dick and a bunch of other classics would have been long forgotten because they’re all overrated.
It’s easy to pick on Moby Dick because Moby Dick is Moby Dick. It’s not controversial to say that classics like Moby Dick are overrated. I was going to say something a little more recent and a lot more beloved like To Kill a Mockingbird was overrated, but I might not be ready for that yet. I don’t know if I want to be that controversial. People look at you crazy if you say To Kill a Mockingbird is overrated, and I don’t like it when people look at me crazy.
There are a lot of books out there that people haven’t heard of. If nobody knows about something, then it can’t be overrated. But it has the potential to be overrated. The books that people have heard of aren’t that much better than the books that nobody has heard of. But as soon as an unknown book or author becomes well-known, then that book and author have become overrated.
Maybe one day I’ll be overrated too.
As a quiet guy, I’ve always tried to deal with conflict in a subtle, diplomatic way. Daniella was a little more volatile. She didn’t mind using loud profanity in public to make her point. I think she enjoyed doing that, especially when she was in badass mode with her hair down and leather jacket on. This difference in personality (and arguing style) could make moments of disagreement in public awkward. A few minutes earlier, I had said something stupid in front of Daniella, telling a photographer that all I did for her was pay her bills. Daniella had already been pissed enough, but that comment sent her over the edge. Now all I could do was watch as she stormed away from me down the mall, her middle finger jutting into the air.
Calling after her would be counterproductive, I thought. Using her car keys to leave without her would also be a monumentally bad idea. I decided to follow her silently from a distance and give her a chance to cool off. After a few minutes, I realized she was going towards her car in the parking lot. It looked like she intended to leave without me. Despite my state of anxiety, I appreciated Daniella as she walked. Even with her badass leather jacket, I could see the sway in her hips as she took long, purposeful strides through a side section of stores. Other mall walkers turned their heads as she strode past them. Men admired her. Women glanced enviously at her and then nagged at their boyfriends for checking her out.
When Daniella got to the car, she reached inside her giant purse/bag and paused. Her shoulders sagged. Her head turned up toward the overcast sky, and I saw her mutter an obscenity. It was her moment of realization; I had her car keys. Then she saw me standing a dozen parking spots behind her. I kept my face serious. I had a lot of apologizing and explaining to do, and a smirk over the car keys would set everything back.
“Give me the keys,” Daniella demanded.
“No,” I said. “You can’t just drive off without me.”
“It’s my car.”
I’ve been making all the payments, I thought, but I knew it wasn’t the right thing to say.
“It’s my apartment,” I said, since that was probably where she was going to drive.
“You can take a cab,” she said.
“That takes money.” Money that I didn’t have.
“GIVE ME MY KEYS!” she demanded in her hard voice, and she took a couple steps forward.
“You need some help?” I heard a deep male voice shout behind me.
I turned and saw three big guys marching up the parking lot toward us.
Great, I thought. Daniella could always attract aggressively muscular guys eager to assist her. Two of them were in short sleeves. The only reason guys would go short sleeved in this weather would be to show off their arms or to pretend they were so tough they didn’t care about the weather.
“I think she wants you to leave her alone,” one guy said, and they started to spread out. Bastards, they already were bigger than me, and now they were going to surround me and gang up. It was moments like this that I wished I’d had a carry permit. Still, I had time to run if I needed to. But running would make it look like I was doing something wrong. It was too bad there were three of them. I could usually reason with one guy, but with two or more, there wouldn’t be time to talk and they were already trying to surround me. I chose a big pick-up truck and leaned my back up against it. At least none of them would get behind me.
“You want us to kick his ass?” the one to my left said to Daniella as they closed in. I looked at Daniella. I was already committed. I’d seen guys like this, and they weren’t going to get talked out of clobbering me if Daniella didn’t say anything. She thought about it. Our eyes met, and I could tell there was a part of her that wanted to see what would happen. My stomach tightened. My legs tensed. I could feel my heart rate going crazy. I was prepared to start swinging and not stop until I was down. There were three of them, but one of them was going to have to take the first punch. I’d make them work for it, even if I hit like a girl.
“It’s okay,” she said to the three assailants. “He’s with me.”
The guys kept coming at me like they hadn’t heard.
“I said leave him alone.”
The first guy was with one car length of me, and all three were locked in on me. This would be more for their pleasure than any sense of chivalry.
“LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”
That got their attention. Daniella’s hard voice could carry. The three guys stopped and looked at each other, wondering who the piece of shit was.
“You touch him, and I’ll…” and Daniella strung together a bunch of verbs and adverbs that were very profane and impossible in a literal sense, but her words got the job done. All three guys stopped. One guy thought it was funny. One guy looked pissed and balled his fists as if he wanted to fight her. The guy in the middle of the pack actually flinched. When she was done, the three guys turned around and slowly headed back up to the mall.
The guy who thought it was funny pointed at Daniella and said, “Now THAT’S a bombshell.”
After they were out of hearing distance, Daniella turned to me and said, “That was a compliment, right?”
“Pretty much.” My heart rate was decreasing now, and but my hands shook as I gave her the car keys.
I should have been humiliated that my girlfriend (or maybe ex-girlfriend) had protected me from three potential assailants. Instead, I was angry she had put me in that position in the first place. If she wanted me to take a cab, so be it.
“What’s wrong?” Daniella asked.
“Are you serious?” I said. “You almost… they almost… “
“They weren’t going to do anything.” She seemed so confident that I knew she was lying.
Before I could argue any more, Danielle moved up toe-to-toe me with me, her hands on her hips. “You shouldn’t have said that about me in front of the photographer,” she said. “Or anybody else.”
“When we were at the Halloween party, you told everybody that I masturbated all the time,” I said (this argument makes more sense if you’ve read this.). “That was worse than what I said.”
Daniella shut her mouth tight.
I continued. “Then you called me an asshole when I was drunk when it was your fault that I was drunk in the first place.”
Daniella looked down, and her arms dropped to her sides.
“And you stole that blonde’s furniture and put it in our apartment and never told me it was stolen.”
“You always bring up the furniture,” Daniella said.
“I’ve never brought up the furniture until now,” I said. “I’ve been saving it.” My hands had finally stopped shaking.
Daniella muttered something that was most likely unpleasant.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” I admitted. “But what you just did here was a bad over-reaction. And you almost got me beat up.”
Daniella gave me the keys back and pressed herself against me. “You hurt my feelings,” she said, then walked to the passenger side of her car.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, as I got into the driver’s side. “I… just didn’t like the idea of breaking up.” Now, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“You want to break up?” she said. She rolled down the window. Even in the cold, or Texas’s version of cold, she liked the window down.
“I thought that’s what you were leading up to,” I said. Between my lack of money, the scene in the mall, and the parking lot incident, I was surprised this was even up for debate.
“We don’t… have to break up,” she said. “I’m trying to do things different now.”
I had an idea of what Daniella meant. She always had a boyfriend (currently me) to pay her bills. Her previous boyfriends had been rough guys; they paid for her stuff, but they’d not quite been law-abiding citizens like me. I knew of two previous boyfriends who had hit her (and she later put one of those guys in the hospital by smashing a bottle over his head and… it got kind of messy after that). I figured I was her way of doing things differently now. She’d never had a quiet, professional guy as a boyfriend (and I’d never had a girlfriend like her before either).
“So… what do you mean by ‘different’?” I asked. “Are you going to pay some of your bills?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Daniella said looking out the window. “I think I want to get married.”
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Marriage Material .
If you want to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning (it’s getting kind of long), start here.
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Hell might be a bad place, but why is “hell” a bad word? (image via Wikimedia)
When it comes to profanity, the word “hell” isn’t that bad. It’s not as profane as “s***” or “f***” or “c***.” In fact, it might be the least offensive of the bad words, but when I was a kid, I still got my mouth washed out with soap if I said it in front of my parents.
A lot of words led to my mouth getting washed out with soap. I got my mouth washed out with soap for saying “Hoover Dam.” I probably shouldn’t have whispered “Hoover” and then shouted “DAM!!!!” I got my mouth washed out with soap for saying “shitzhu.” I probably shouldn’t have shouted “Sh*t” and whispered the “zhu.” Now that I think about it, I probably deserved getting my mouth washed out with soap.
“Hell” is similar to a lot of vulgar words in that it has four letters. Four seems to be the magic number when it comes to vulgarity. Yeah, a lot of profanity has way more than four letters, but most root words in profanity have four letters. In “mother****er,” the root word is four letters long. In “pieceof****,” the root word is four letters. The root word in “****sucker” is four letters. Those are all pretty bad words. The exceptions seem to be “ass” and “b*****,” and neither are THAT bad (though I’d be careful who I’d say “b*****” around because it can cause more of a reaction than the other words, depending on whom you say it to).
But Hell is unique for a four-letter bad word. It’s the only word that references a place. Yeah, a few vulgar words refer to places on the body, but a body part is different than a place. “Hell” is a place (if you believe in it), and it’s considered to be bad (if you believe in it). But should it be profane? The Gulag is a bad place, but if I ever shouted “Holy Gulag!” I wouldn’t have gotten my mouth washed out with soap.
It comes down to context. When I asked my mom if “Hell” was a real place, she said I’d find out if I kept saying the word “hell.” Then she washed my mouth out with soap. When I told my older brother to “Go to Hell!!” after he gave me a wedgie, I got the soap washing with no explanation. I guess saying “hell” is worse than giving somebody a wedgie. When I used the word “hellacious” as an adjective, nobody batted an eye.
That’s how I knew “hell” shouldn’t be a bad word. If I had said “crapola” or “f***tastic,” my breath would have smelled like Irish Spring for a month. But “hellacious,” I could get away with.
Out of all vulgar words, I think hell is the most fun to say. Something about the extension of the “L” sound gives it a humorous effect. I always laughed when my dad angrily said “Hell’s bells!” in front of us (but I made sure he didn’t see me laugh). The idea of Hell having bells was ludicrous, and the contrast with my dad’s anger made it tough not to laugh. In school, we students would yell at each other in the hallway “Go to health!” when we were on our way to health class. The teachers couldn’t punish us because we were simply telling our friends to go where they were supposed to go.
I don’t think “hell” should be considered a bad word. It’s a place, and it’s too easy to say for it to be forbidden. But I don’t want my kids to get in trouble at school, so I’ll teach them not to say “hell” in public or in front of adults. You can have a lot of fun with the word “hell,” but you probably don’t want to end up there.
The quiz below is proof that my wife and daughters have brought way too many women’s and girl’s magazines into our house.
Reading habits can explain a lot about your personality. Take the quiz below, keep track of the points as you go, and see what kind of reader (and human being) you really are!
A. A friend declares that a book he/she has just read is “THE BEST BOOK EVER!!!!!” What do you do?
- Trust your friend’s judgment and try reading the book.
- Tell your friend that you’ll read the book but then never get around to it.
- Calmly tell your friend that you know he/she has not read every book ever written so he/she is in no position to judge whether or not a book is the best ever.
- Tell your friend about another book that you think is “THE BEST BOOK EVER!!!!” just so he or she knows how it feels.
*****
B. When you see a copy of Moby Dick, your first reaction is
- To feel a smug satisfaction, knowing that you’ve already read it and understand all the symbolism and themes of the novel.
- To feel that your life is a little empty since you haven’t read it, but you’ll get to it.
- Turn away in disgust, knowing that you’ll never read it and you’re proud that you’ll never read it.
- Moby Dick. Ha ha ha ha! Dick. Ha ha ha!
*****
C. You find out that a book that you truly love is about to be made into a movie. What is your reaction?
- Obsessively watch for news about the casting and release dates of the movie.
- Make a mental note to be on the look-out for it, but you don’t put much thought into it.
- Watch the movie and intentionally catalogue every flaw in it.
- You know it’ll suck because every movie based on a book sucks.
*****
D. A famous author is having a book signing while you’re there. What do you do?
- Grab a copy of the new book, stand in line, and gush when the author signs it.
- Find a beat up copy of an old book and hope that the author doesn’t call you a cheap skate.
- Stand in line without a book so you can at least brag that you’ve met the author.
- Who cares? All authors do is write books. Anybody can write books.
*****
E. An acquaintance recommends a book from a genre you don’t care for (maybe sci-fi/fantasy, a trashy romance, or literary fiction). You automatically think…
- I’ll have to give that book a try.
- Maybe it’s a good book, but it’s probably not for me.
- Oh, it’s one of “those” books.
- There’s a good reason why this person is only an acquaintance.
*****
F. How long does it take you to decide whether or not you’ll finish reading a book?
- You’ll finish reading a book no matter what.
- You’ll read at least half of it and give it an honest chance.
- If it doesn’t grab you within the first few pages, you’re done with it.
- If it doesn’t have a cool cover, forget it.
*****
G. When a teacher at school assigns (or assigned) a novel, what is your initial response?
- If this book is in the school curriculum, it must be very interesting.
- I’m already reading a good book, but I guess I’ll juggle both.
- If this book is in the school curriculum, it must really suck.
- Flippin’ school! You’re not gonna tell me what to read!
*****
H. A book that you really want to read comes out in hardback and is very expensive. What will you do?
- You shell out the $30.00+ because you’ll read this no matter what.
- Check the book’s availability at the library and then maybe buy it for $12.99 on your Kindle.
- Wait for the paperback and hope that it’s not one of those $15.00 paperbacks. $15.00 for a paperback? That’s ridiculous!
- No book is worth putting that much effort into. You’ll read whatever you want whenever you feel like it.
*****
I. You’re reading an intensely sad scene from a book while in a public place and are about to cry. How do you respond?
- You openly weep because you’re completely wrapped up in the book and don’t care what anybody thinks.
- You read the book in short increments so that you don’t cry in public.
- You stop reading the sad book and do something else.
- You never read in public because you’re afraid you’ll get conked on the head.
*****
J. You’re reading a really good book in a public place when you notice a person who needs assistance in an emergency situation. What do you do?
- Put the book down immediately and help out.
- See if somebody else is around to help before you stop reading.
- Finish the page/chapter/book that you’re on before you help.
- Stop reading immediately and record the emergency situation with your phone.
*****
SCORE
10-15 Points- You are an open-minded reader and are sensitive about others’ feelings.
16-25 Points- You are independent-minded but willing to try new experiences occasionally.
26-35 Points- You are fiercely loyal to the books you love but are sometimes called inflexible and stubborn by people who just don’t understand you.
36-40 Points- You don’t read (or play) well with others.
*****
BONUS QUESTION- This one doesn’t count!
After finishing a reading style quiz, what do you immediately do?
- Leave a comment that announces your score and gives feedback.
- Add up your score but keep it to yourself.
- Ignore the score and move on to another article.
- Click the “Like” button without having even read the quiz.
*****
Here’s the true story of my one moment of high school glory!
Only 99 cents on the Amazon Kindle!
It’s never easy for a guy to break bad financial news to a girlfriend, especially when the girlfriend expects the guy to pay all her bills. A few weeks ago I had lent most of my savings account to my brother to pay some debts and maybe save his marriage. Even though it was called a loan, I knew I’d never see that money again. I wasn’t sure how Daniella would take the news. She knew something was going on because she caught me using a credit card to buy a few novels at the bookstore in the mall.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Daniella asked as we strolled through the food court. All she held was her giant bag/purse. I carried the books we’d bought and her lingerie (even though she hadn’t let me go into the lingerie shop with her). She was wearing her badass leather jacket, and I had my trench coat, which made me look not quite so skinny and intellectual as usual.
“Okay,” I said as we kept walking. I looked straight ahead and tried to avoid eye contact.
“I lent my brother a lot of money.” I explained my brother’s situation with the antique store and how I was the only person left who could help him out. I told her how much money I lent him and that it was all I had. Daniella’s face tightened up. Her eyes got a little red. She blew her lips out and rubbed her forehead, but she didn’t yell.
“You lent him that much? When will he pay you back?”
I hesitated. “I probably won’t ever get it back.”
Daniella rolled her eyes. “You just gave him the money, and his wife is probably going to split anyway, you know.”
“Maybe, but I wanted to give him a chance.”
“But that was my… our… that was a lot of money.”
“It would have only lasted a few months,” I said.
“I wanted that few months.” Then she paused. “Were you really going to use credit cards for me?”
“For a while, yeah.”
“That’s sweet, but… you can’t do that,” she said. She looked up. “This really fu… this messes everything up.”
“So what if I use credit cards?” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t want to be with somebody who needs to figure it out,” she said.
Ouch. That was blunt, I thought.
“I know how credit cards can screw with you,” Daniella said.
“What do you care as long as I pay your bills?” My question came out worse than it had sounded in my head when I was forming the words.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “I’m not a… Do you think I’m…?”
“No, no, no!” I really didn’t want her to finish that sentence. “We’ve just never had this conversation. We’ve kind of maneuvered around it, moved around…”
“I know what ‘maneuvered’ means!”
Egad, she was pissed, I thought, and I didn’t blame her.
“I just don’t know… why you’re with me,” I said. “Is it only because I pay for everything for you?”
Daniella stopped walking. “Why are YOU with me?” she asked, hands on her hips and her chest out.
She had me trapped. When we had first started living in sin, it had been about the sin, but now it was… my mind was cloudy. I wasn’t a quick thinker, and we were in public, and shoppers were looking at us funny, a gawky guy getting chewed out by a badass hot chick who was way out of his league, but it was selfish of me to worry about that. I had just hurt Daniella’s feelings, had handled this in the worst way possible. I knew I should have written a script for this conversation.
“Because you’re… incredible,” I said. It wasn’t far from the truth.
She rolled her eyes and said, “You are full of…” and then she stopped and looked past me. The pervert photographer we had seen earlier was approaching Daniella and stood a few feet beside me.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he said, with a warm expressive voice that I could never mimic. With his gelled up hair and green polo shirt, he kind of looked like me, but way more slick and polished. This guy could schmooze, I was sure, but he might have been oblivious. He seemed unaware that we were in the middle of a semi-argument, or it could have been that he didn’t care. Either way, maybe, just maybe, I was being bailed out.
“Have you ever modeled before?” the photographer asked.
I stepped back. Daniella was pissed, she was dressed as a badass, and she hated photographers, especially perverts who tried to take advantage of young, naïve girls. I still almost felt sorry for him. Even though I thought she would explode at him, she widened her eyes, glanced at me, and then gave a wide-open smile to the photographer.
“Do you really think I could?” Daniella asked in a fake squeaky voice. She clasped her hands in front of her and shook her hips a little as she talked.
“You have a perfect face,” he said.
“I’m not too short?” Daniella said, voice still artificially high.
“You?” the photographer said. “The camera doesn’t care how tall you are.”
“Really?” Daniella said, even more bubbly. “My butt’s not too big?” The jacket hung over her rear, but her tight jeans gave everybody an idea about her proportions.
“Not an issue,” the photographer said.
“How come you don’t have a camera?” Daniella asked.
“I have a studio a couple blocks away,” the photographer said. “I’m a professional.”
“Are you going to ask me to take my clothes off?” she asked sweetly. She drawled out the question so hard, even the photographer seemed to wonder if she was putting him on. Her voice didn’t match her appearance.
“No!” he said. “My portfolio has…”
“What if I want to take my clothes off?” she said, and moved closer to him.
“We… sometimes… will if the model…” The photographer stepped away and looked at me.
“How come you don’t have a camera with you?” Daniella asked again.
“I don’t take pictures here,” he said. “I just… sometimes, I’ll see somebody…”
“Do you have a card?” Daniella said.
“Uh, sure,” the photographer said, reaching into a pocket. He handed a card to her, and Daniella inspected it. Then in a quick motion, she crumpled the card and flicked it into the guy’s face, bouncing it off his nose.
He flinched and rubbed his face with the side of his hand. “What… why?”
“If you talk to me again,” Daniella said in her fake bubbly voice, “my boyfriend will kick your ass.”
The photographer looked at me and tensed up.
“Not me,” I said. “I’m just here to pay her bills.”
Daniella turned toward me, her mouth hanging open. “Fuck you!”
I laughed, and then realized she hadn’t used her fake bubbly voice and that she had said it to me.
“Wait,” I said panicking. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” Daniella said, her voice shaky but no longer squeaky high.
“I… I… I can’t believe you just said ‘Fuck you’ to me.”
“FUCK YOU!”
Dozens of people were watching us now.
“So, how did you like that?” Daniella said. “You want me to say it again? I will!”
The pervert photographer shook his head and stepped away. My stupidity had just bailed him out. He was backing away, and now he was enjoying the show.
“This isn’t the…” I was stammering badly.
“It’s never the time, is it?” she said. And she turned and stormed away from me.
“Where are you going?” I said in a near-shout.
Daniella kept walking and stuck a middle finger in the air without even looking at me. She just hung that middle finger for the whole mall to see and kept it there. It seemed like everybody at the mall was staring at one of us. If there had been an official world record for keeping an extended middle finger up in the air, she might have broken it. I cursed for putting myself in this situation. Daniella never would have acted like this if she’d been dressed like a librarian. She was pissed about the money. She was pissed about what I’d said. I was certain she was pissed about other stuff I couldn’t think of. The only good news… was that I had the car keys.
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: The Bombshell .
If you want to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning (it’s getting kind of long), start here.
My girlfriend Daniella had three looks: the badass, the librarian, and the hot chick. When I had first met Daniella in the laundry room, she was “the braless hot chick in the clingy t-shirt.” When she wore tight jeans, her black leather jacket, and put on too much eyeliner and make up, she was a badass. And when she wore her thick glasses, pulled her hair back, and wore drab blouses and jeans, she looked like a really cute librarian.
Sometimes in our apartment she would pull her hair back and wear her glasses with a tight t-shirt and shorts for a hot-librarian fusion look, or she might wear her leather jacket with glasses and little make up as a badass librarian, but she rarely mixed badass with hot chick except for a couple times when she was coming home from work. And she rarely mixed looks in public.
On a cold January day, Daniella went to the mall with me wearing her badass leather jacket with a sweater and her hair down. She had intended to go to the mall as a badass librarian, but she couldn’t find her glasses, so she had just said forget it (she said something like “forget,” but it was four letters and one syllable). We weren’t too much of a mismatch because I had a cool trench coat (it was obvious I was wearing clothes underneath it), and I had on nice shoes, and I always looked bigger in winter because of the extra layers. We were still a physical mismatch, but it wasn’t as obvious as usual.
Between regular expenses and Daniella’s New Year’s Eve bar-hopping, I was down to my credit card. I hadn’t told Daniella about how I’d lent (or given) most of my savings account to my brother to help save his antique store (and maybe his marriage). I didn’t know how to tell her. Things were going so well. Even the bar-hopping had been uneventful (but expensive.).
That afternoon at the mall, I spent about a half hour in the book store (this was back in the 1990s when malls still had book stores) while Daniella was in the lingerie shop a few stores down. For some reason, Daniella wouldn’t let me go into the lingerie shop with her, even though I offered. She didn’t mind making me wait for hours in other women’s clothing stores, but she wouldn’t let me set foot in the lingerie shop. She even glared at me as we walked past to make sure I wasn’t ogling any of the mannequins. To her credit, she used her own money in the lingerie shop. But when she came back to the book store to get me, she seemed perturbed.
“There’s a pervert photographer out there,” she said.
“Where?” I looked around the visible mall area outside the store but didn’t see any sleazy looking guys.
“Just standing by the lingerie store.”
I gave Daniella my books (a couple trashy romance novels were for her), and she stayed in line while I nonchalantly stepped out of the bookstore and into the mall. I saw a man in his mid-20s with gelled up hair and a polo shirt talking to a group of young women. They might have been high school girls, but even back then, it was sometimes tough to tell.
“The guy in the green shirt?” I said when I returned to the line. “He looks normal.”
“He’s talking to teenage girls,” Daniella said.
“That’s not good, but pervert?” I said.
“Watch. He’s going to give them his card,” she said. “That’s what they do, talk to girls, get them to take pictures, get them to show a little…”
“And the pictures end up in skin magazines,” I said, finishing for her. “I don’t know. Do you trust your pervertometer?”
She paused. “My pervert… o…meter… is never wrong.”
“What about me? Did you think I was a pervert when we met? I kept your panties for a month.”
“You were close, but you luuuuvved me, so I forgave you.”
“Loved you?” I had used the word “love” once around her, and it was accidental. We didn’t use the word “love” around each other.
“No, luuuuvved,” she said, extending the sound. “You had a crush on me. You blushed, and your ears turned purple. It was cute. I like guys who luuuuuuvvv me.”
I bet, I thought, because it’s easy to get us to pay your bills, but I kept it to myself.
“If I looked like that, would you still luuuuvvv me?” Daniella nodded toward a young lady on the other side of the store. She was not exactly a head-turner, and she had bad posture. To be fair, I wasn’t a head-turner either, and I had bad posture as well.
“Well, my ears probably wouldn’t turn purple anymore.”
Daniella narrowed her eyes and frowned. “Hmmmm.”
“She probably has a good sense of humor,” I said.
I was tempted to ask Daniella if she’d still be my girlfriend if I couldn’t pay her bills anymore, but by then, we had reached the front of the line. I didn’t have any cash on me, so I pulled out my credit card. I didn’t think anything of it.
“Why are you using your credit card?” Daniella asked.
“Huh?” I said, surprised. “Uh, the cashier last week miscounted my money.”
“So? That was only ten dollars.”
“It ticked me off,” I said without conviction, and I could feel my ears burning.
“You hate credit cards,” she said.
“I use them sometimes,” I said. I had used a credit card a couple months ago to pay for the repairs to Daniella’s sports car. Of course, I had made a big deal when I paid the whole balance at once to avoid interest charges.
“For books?” Daniella said. She looked at me funny, and then she was quiet about it and let me finish paying.
As we walked down the mall, she said quietly, “You’re not telling me something.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said. But it was. I was sure Daniella was only with me because I paid her bills, but a part of me hoped there was more to it. There had to be. On the other hand, she seemed certain that I was with her only because of the way she looked and her willingness to live in sin with me. Maybe at first those had been the reasons, but now I was wondering if there was something more. We were too comfortable, too at ease, around each other for these superficial reasons to be the foundation of our relationship (whatever it was).
The uncertainty gnawed at me. As long as I kept the truth about my money situation from her, I’d never really know what we meant to each other. I had to tell Daniella about the money sometime. While we were at the mall probably wasn’t the best time, but I knew there would never be an ideal moment. I wished she’d had on her glasses, but the librarian look wasn’t a guarantee of good behavior either. Daniella was in a good mood, even as a badass. The credit card was on her mind, and if I waited to spring the money situation on her later, that would piss her off even more.
I took a deep breath. This was it. I decided to do it then. I was going to tell Daniella about the money.
*****
To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Identity Crisis, Part 2 .
If you want to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning (it’s getting kind of long), start here.
When selecting a “Best Book of the Year,” some critics would argue that the nominated books should actually be released first. (photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s not easy choosing the “Best Book” of any year. Before a “Best Book” of the year can be chosen, a list of “Best Books” must be compiled. The annual “Best Books” lists usually don’t come out until the end of the year, and that makes sense because by then all of the books that year have been published.
The problem is that by the time the end of the year rolls around, there are too many books to decide which one is the best of the year. No individual can read every book published in one year, so if you’re going to judge a best book, it should be done when there are few books to choose from. As of this writing, the first wave of highly publicized books will start being released in a couple days, so these books have been the ones nominated.
The advantage of selecting “The Best Book of 2014” before the books have been released is that since the books haven’t been released yet, I can’t read them before I select them. I probably wouldn’t have read them anyway, but now nobody can blame me. I WOULD have read them if they’d been released on January 1st, but publishers waited until the 7th or beyond. If book companies want one of their products to be Dysfunctional Literacy’s “The Best Book of the Year,” they need to pick up the pace. Maybe next year they’ll learn.
“THE BEST BOOK OF 2014” NOMINATIONS
Andrew’s Brain by EL Doctorow- It sounds like an overuse of stream-of-consciousness. I usually don’t like overuse of stream-of-consciousness, unless I’m the one writing it.
Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah- The title is poetic and suggests hope in a book with a bleak setting and plot. It sounds kind of… literary. It will probably be somebody else’s “Best Book of 2014.”
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs- This is Book 2 in a YA series. I really don’t want to read another YA series.
The Kept by James Scott- Violence in late 1800s New York. Short title with an author who has two first names. I’m partial to authors with two first names.
Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty- An affair and a murder. It sounds standard but reliable. I’ve been called a reliable guy, so I like reliable.
Before I Burn by Gaute Heivoll- An arsonist in a book with “Burn” in the title. I have mixed feelings about that.
The Wind Is Not a River by Brian Payton- I don’t like book titles that state the obvious (even my kids know that wind and rivers aren’t the same thing), but the author kind of has two first names, so the book has potential.
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee- The premise (future America, possibly dystopian) might make a good book, but the title is just one long prepositional phrase.
“THE BEST BOOK OF 2014” is….
The Kept by James Scott!
Between a short title and an author with two first names, the competition didn’t stand a chance.
*****
The great thing about announcing “The Best Book of 2014” before the books have come out is that nobody can say I’m wrong. They might disagree with me, but any arguments they have are mere speculation. Some other worthy contenders might come out over the next 52 weeks or so, but they’re too late, and I think it’s going to be tough to beat The Kept anyway.
I’m confident that The Kept WILL KEEP its top spot.
Ugh. I can’t believe I wrote that. Now I think I’ll go punch myself in the face.
Dysfunctional Literacy 