I have a penchant for piercings. Nah, not so much facial piercings. I stopped with my nose. But ear piercings. I like to collect them. I went for the biggie in September: a scaffold piercing. Some call it an industrial. For all you not riveted to your Big Book of Piercings it's basically two piercings at the top of your ear with a bar passing through both. FYI, the top of your ear is made of cartilage and requires considerable force to pierce through. So needless to say, this kind of piercing hurts like a bitch. I went with my sisters to get it done in their home city. Their piercer is hot. He tattooed my wrist last year - holding his hand for 45 minutes was like holding a little piece of heaven. So when the room started sliding away and I felt the cold grip of a faint around my throat as he forced that needle through my cartilage twice I said, "Nope, not today" and fucking pulled my self together. There was no way I was collapsing to the floor in the presence of this beautiful person. But I swear I came this close.

Similarly, you have no idea how close I came to giving up and laying on the floor whilst reading Matched by Ally Condie. This book is about as painful as a scaffold piercing but minus all the blood. I felt an almost overwhelming desire to shove more needles through my ear just to have something to do because this book is a major snooze-fest.

Hello? Hello plot?! Where did you go? Come back!! We need you!! Yeah, Matched has next to no actual plot going on. The basic story goes that Cassia lives in a Society (that's right. Society with a capital S) which has somehow reserved the right to dictate who she marries, where she works and when she dies. It's all very The Giver-ish, but without the menacing undercurrent. Cassia is paired with her bestie, Xander but finds herself falling instead for the dark and brooding guitar playing, poetry writing Ky (naturally), who she then begins a dangerous and illegal affair with. There's a bunch of hill-walking, angsting and sorting (whatever that is. Can anyone help me out here and explain exactly what sorting actually is?!) going on, all the while Cassia uncovers secrets and discovers the Society isn't as perfect as she's been led to believe.

This book reminds me of those peppermint chocolates in the green bag you can buy at the market for like 99p. You eat one and life is great, it's sweet and melty and smooth. Fine. So you keep trucking - you eat another. And the seed of doubt is planted. Do you really like these candies? Do you?! They're very sweet after all. But you bash on. And you eat one more. And no. You do not like them. They're sickly, they're samey, they're all the sugar in the entire universe compressed into a bite sized circle of tooth-achingly saccharine nastiness. And yet, you keep coming back for more. You can't stop putting these goddam sweets into your mouth until you literally have to go lie down in a darkened room until your stomach ache eases off. 

Similarly, Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare was just too much. I was so overloaded by the sheer volume of stuff shoehorned in there I had to go relax in a hot bubble bath to de-stress. The characters were so overpoweringly samey compared with every other character Cassandra Clare has ever written about. Ever. I felt the same way I felt while eating those goddam peppermint chocolates - stuffed full of the same, repetitive junk until I was queasy and shivering. But still I carry on. I keep eating and I keep reading. Why? There's something, like a masochistic moth to a white hot flame, that keeps drawing me to Cassandra Clare's writing. I don't even know what. Maybe Ms Clare hides some subliminal messaging in there somewhere. Like - "Keep reading, you know you want to. Buy my books. Give me all your money." There's really no other reason why I keep inflicting these fucking Shadowhunters on myself.

I have this friend who I can't stand. I'm using the term friend rather loosely here, I think recently we have spiralled downward into somewhat frosty acquaintances. She's violently pretentious. She has this thing about champagne. She knows all about the vintages and what vineyard the grapes were grown and the names of the crows that perched on the goddam vines while they were growing and all that other boring shit that she trots out at dinner parties, for some reason thinking people will be impressed. I'll tell you a secret - I "accidentally" stole one of these vomit inducingly expensive bottles of champagne recently. And I drank it. And it wasn't all that. Tasted exactly the same as every other bottle of champagne I've ever drank from. But oh no - this friend would insist she could detect notes of oak, or a hint of apple or whatever other bullshit she dreamt up. I mean she has a wine cellar for fucks sake. Not in her house. No. She has a rented wine cellar. Because let me tell you something. It's all a facade. It's all smoke and mirrors. Oh sure, at every dinner party, event and function we attend she's wearing her Louboutins, she's sipping her freaking champagne and she proclaiming loudly about her trip to Portugal or Greece or somewhere (yeah, I don't really listen that hard .....) to find a marriage location (her actual words. Whatevs girl .....) but I know it's all fake. I've been to her crummy apartment. I've sat on her frayed and faded red couch which reeks of cat pee. I've seen her so poor she's sitting on her bedroom floor crying, sorting through her clothes, picking out things to sell on eBay. I've seen her desperately trying to make something to eat out of a packet of mushrooms, a block of mouldy cheese and some questionable smelling chicken because she's spent all her money on fucking champagne.

This is my exact problem with her. She's so dishonest. I don't have a problem with someone having money and enjoying flashing it around a little, talking the talk at some party. But don't do this unless you actually have money. And don't forgo petrol that week to find the money, forcing you to get up at 4am to allow you the time for the two and half hour walk to work. This is a true story. There are a lot of people this crazy chick has fooled but I'm not one of them. I've known her for too long. I've shared an apartment with her. I've seen her sticky taping her bath taps back together because she can't afford to hire a plumber. That's a pretty dark time for anyone to live through. But instead of accepting that everyone goes through these things, and working hard to make life a bit more bearable, she's attempting to skip that and fake success instead, scrimping where no-one has any business scrimping (like tea bags. I'm really not happy reusing tea bags.) and splashing out on "props" for her trendy, lavish lifestyle. Yeah - her imaginary trendy, lavish lifestyle. I've tried an intervention with her. I was genuinely concerned about her spending habits and her sustainability. But she's not interested. So long as people flutter to her at social events, wowing over whatever bottle she brought for the evening I guess she feels like she's winning. But she bugs the crap outta me. I know it's petty to still care, it's not my problem. But I can't help but care when we were once close.

I'm digressing. What I'm trying to say is that reading Gone Girl was rather like spending an evening with this friend - boring, uncomfortable and with the knowledge that you just know you're being lied to constantly.

The basic plot is pretty straight forward: Amy disappears. Whodunit? I can't really say much more without spoiling the whole thing.

So you know when you're really looking forward to eating potato salad, and you saved it in the fridge for days and you can't stop thinking about it and you're imagining taking a bite and there's chives, and mayonnaise and creamy potato goodness and you just know that it's gonna make a really sucky day feel a whole lot better, like nothing else on earth will fill that void in your heart except potato salad right now, I mean it's the only thing that will cure this grey haze you've been wandering around in for the past few days and you have never been so sure of anything in your life than that potato salad is going to lift that pressure that's been heaped on your shoulders, there's literally no other fix than sitting down with a fork and that pot of potato salad and just letting it give you a big savoury, comforting hug. You know that feeling right?! Well sure maybe it's not potato salad, but just go ahead and substitute your favourite comfort food and you'll get an idea of the feeling I'm trying to remind you of here. Well now picture this: your darling hubby ate your goddam potato salad. He just ate it. With no ceremony I imagine. With no appreciation for what that potato salad means to you. Urgh - I bet he ate it standing over the damn sink or some other similar insult to potato salad/comfort foods everywhere. That potato salad deserved more. 

And so did I. 

I feel the same way about my stolen potato salad/happiness that I do about Legend by Marie Lu: bitterly disappointed and a little bit betrayed. 

The back cover promised me that Legend was "based on a retelling of Les Miserables". Uhm ..... Really?! Where?! When?! I tried to shoehorn Legend into the story of Les Miserables but I just can't make it fit. Aside from Day have a somewhat passing similarity to Valjean, I'm really not seeing it. Maybe I missed something along the way, but I know Les Miserables fairly well, it being the only musical I can tolerate relatively happily, and I'm just having a hard time drawing parallels here. 

So the actual story goes that the United States is divided and at war, the west being ruled most un-democratically by the Republic, a cruel and unjust government who have divided their society into a caste system run by an elite few, oppressing the majority by subjecting them to eternal poverty and hardship in order to maintain control. June, from the Republic's richest district is the military's 15 year old prodigy; Day from the slums is the country's most wanted 15 year old criminal. The two are thrown together when June's older brother is murdered, with Day as the prime suspect. Lots of leaping around, staring into each other's eyes, and staggering around clutching gunshot wounds ensues as the Republic tighten their grip on the citizens and Day and June uncover secrets that reveal the extent of their governments cruelty and control. 

The Twins by Saskia Sarginson reminded me why I switched from reading adult to YA literature. I don't have time in my day to be bored to tears.

Let's talk about something more interesting:

Today was an exciting day. We finally got the keys to our new apartment. Our very own apartment. This is my first time buying a property and I'm so excited. My eyes are alight with the interior design possibilities.

I am banning the TV from the living room! *gasp* instead I am filling the room with bookshelves. Now, don't get me wrong - I have nothing against television. I quite like television. However, I pretty much exclusively watch reality TV. I hate dramas, I despise plays, I loathe soap operas. They're just so fucking contrived. You know what really gets me? The lighting. Nobody's life is lit like that!! It removes any ounce of believability from these TV programmes, and makes it impossible for me to connect with any of the characters.

Throughout reading The Twins all I could imagine was the settings lit like these goddamn TV shows - You know what I mean? That spotlight on the face for a tense moment; soft, yellow lighting from below for an emotional scene. And don't anybody bring fucking candles into the equation - a single candle does not light up an entire room people!! The whole story felt clunky, forced and fake just like those shitty TV dramas that grate on me so painfully. The dialog was awkward and stilted. I imagined the characters glancing at each other uncomfortably as they spoke, and then clumsily bumping hips and elbow as they struggled to exit stage right. Urgh.