The Emperor's Children

Claire Messud is brilliant. Read her book. It does my heart good to see a writer making money who is talented and deserves it. Or maybe it just does my heart good to see a writer making money at all. She gets people, I think. And she genuinely likes them - even the spoiled, self-absorbed ones. I wish I hadn't finished it now. The Emperor's Children is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

On the opposite side of the coin, I'm stoked about the new show Gossip Girl. I read the first couple of books in that series on an airplane, and it was like eating blue cotton candy (which seems faker than the pink, somehow, you know?). It was syrupy sweet, and dissolved just as I thought I'd gotten a taste of something real. It looks like a modernized 90210, but the people are hotter, younger (that one won't be hard, though - Gabrielle looked like she should be picking up her own kids from school), and don't wear those gross tapestry vests over a big white pirate shirt and pleated black pants. And no one seems to have crunchy perms or visible black roots.
I didn't have a crunchy perm. My hair already kind of did one on its own, but frizzier. Those were the early 90's, before I discovered fast straightening methods, Aveda, and Bed Head Manipulator. We should all be granted a general amnesty and be forgiven for the things we wore / liked / thought looked good in the early 90's. Let's include the late 80's while we're at it. The "crimping" craze in 5th grade got really, really ugly. I had a pair of red Guess? jean shorts with a matching jacket that, looking back, were so hideously ugly that they should've been burned.
But let's not dwell on that ugliness. Let's all say a collective prayer to whatever deity we worship or entity we almost believe in that we live in the days of Proactiv Solution, ionic blow-dryers, shoulder pad-free jackets, open-toed flats, and wrap dresses that flatter almost everyone. Oh, and Free People. And Vincent Longo lip gloss. Amen.