Book Club: You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried

A couple weeks ago I was logging into my library account and I saw that County of Los Angeles Public Library has an app now! I downloaded it immediately and I'm completely in love with it. Basically it's a glorified shortcut to the COLA website, but the thing that makes it amazing is that it has a barcode scanner so you can scan the back of any book and put a hold on it. You can also manually search, and I could really get used to typing in a title as soon as I hear it and immediately putting a hold on it.

I tested it out when I was house sitting recently and The Breakfast Club was on. The movie was running with little facts at the bottom of the screen. When Bender tells Claire, "You couldn't ignore me if you tried" the fact that popped up said that the line was the title of a book about the brat pack and John Hughes. Using my handy dandy new library app I looked the book up and put a hold on You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and their Impact on a Generation.

I was expecting something more like film theory, but Susannah Gora's book reads a bit like an in depth version of an audio commentary that would run over the collected works of John Hughes. Gora tends to focus more on the drama; which actors bumped heads with Hughes, which films almost went unmade because of the tension on set, who dated who during filming. It was all really interesting, but there were times where Gora's own feelings definitely shone through. At several moments she implies that the actors she interviewed felt one way, even if they said something else to her.

Despite that, I still enjoyed it. Like a lot of American teenagers, John Hughes movies have a special place in my heart, so I liked hearing all the backstage gossip as well as hearing the actors comment on their iconic roles. But now I want to re-watch all the movies Gora mentions. Anyone up for a Hughes film festival?

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Book Club: Just Kids

Now that my reading schedule is no longer clogged with school-related required reading I'm slowly making my way through the ever-growing booklist I keep at the back of my slingshot. I had put Just Kids by Patti Smith on the list after hearing all the buzz about it and it did not disappoint.

It actually took me a while to get hold of a copy from the library, and once it finally came in it took me a while to pick it up because I had some things going on, but once I had a decent chunk of time to devote to it I was hooked.

I think what struck me most about the book, aside from Smith's descriptions of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, were her descriptions of the Chelsea Hotel and of her early years in New York. To someone with plans of relocating to New York in the relatively near future, maybe her tales of hunger and near homelessness as she struggled to 'make it' should have been more off-putting, but they aren't at all. I'm mesmerized by fleeting moments in time when tons of artists gathered together; Gertrude Stein's Parisian salon, the Beats in San Francisco, the Chelsea Hotel. If anything, Just Kids made me wish I was in New York right now, experiencing the magic for myself.

As for the relationship between Patti and Robert, I don't think I've ever read such a beautiful account of a friendship. 

If you have yet to read Just Kids, definitely get on that.

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