The Reading Habits Of One Miss Amy

I just reread The End of Alice and have to say I can't believe I made people read that for book club ages ago. Sure, it's bound to get a room talking, but holy cats is it disturbing. The thing most amazing to me is that A.M. Homes, the book's author, is a woman. I don't know why I find that surprising. Certainly women are as capable as men of thinking thoughts that make a granny blush, but this just seems so convincingly told by a male - a damaged, twisted, wicked one - that it seems impossible that she's a she. I suppose that's either a testament to her writing ability or my sexism, but to be frank, I don't think Steinem's main goal was to make women equal to male child molesters and murders. So, when you're ready to be thoroughly unnerved by a novel, seek that one out. I've never read one more eerie.

One side effect though is that it always calls to mind a little game we had going back in the day when the interweb drew me to people far flung and we all knew each other via ye olde Delphi forums. I think it was JOSH's that got us all making mixes based on some theme and mine (and newlywed Todd's) was murder. Something evil like that. I decided to make one based on The End of Alice and as it happened Tom Waits' "Alice" had just come out (go get it now. Honestly. It's the best CD ever recorded) and as we all can surmise the original Alice's life story wasn't all just tea and Tweedles. It just seemed like too many Alice stars aligned and I came up with a darn good, wickedly subversive CD. But I never burned it. Mostly because I didn't have a CD burner, but also because to make it real just seemed too creepy. To this day that playlist still haunts me. I've heard songs that tangentially fit that theme and immediately think about including on the fictional disk and re-creep myself out. I believe that someday I'll throw something together and send it to Todd and he and I can be creeped out together. Hopefully doing that would free me from hearing wicked things in otherwise innocent songs and preserve me from admitting to the 6 of you that when I hear certain types of songs I immediately think of child murderers.