RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media What Are You Reading?

Finished The Snow Fox. If you're a chick that likes samurai movies, this one is for you. And kudos for the writer for not making a generic happy ending. Just don't try to compare it to Memoirs of a Geisha. If this was made into a five-hour anime, I'd be pleased.

Also finished Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons. Seeing as how I'm most familiar with his novel The Right Stuff (and the movie with Dennis Quaid), this book was a bit of a surprise. Still, the University of Florida was part of his 'campus tour' to understand college in the 00s.

The book was sort of scary with how many details he got right. Pretty blonde girls messing up their makeup throwing up at a frat party. Left-wing newspaper nerds against jocks and the administration. People with 1500 SATs (I think I scored higher than just about eveyone in my class and I didn't have that score) getting wasted on Friday nights.

Some people complain about Charlotte Simmins being too innocent for the novel. I disagree. Yes, she is a more extreme version of myself when I entered college, but that's not the point. Wolfe needed an extreme character to compare everyone else's extravagance too.

In addition, the other characters were just as interesting. There's a jock, a frat boy, and a nerd...but they're not limited to their titles. The jock wants to learn about Socrates, but he's afraid to because the basketball players are suppose to like studying. The frat boy is like the cricket in an old fable -- he's graduting, but even his 'brothers' can't get him a 90,000 job. He's also a modern-day Lovelace, for those of you familiar with Clarissa. The nerd swings from being likable (shows Charlotte the 'smarter' side of the school) and being creepy (looks up her name online so he can 'bump' into her for a second meeting).