Top Ten Books

So there's that rash spreading on Facebook wherein you tag some friends and force them to tag other friends...and it's all about your ten most "influential" books. I'm doing it in a blog so I can describe why I like the books without the overstimulation of Facebook churning in the background. My, that site can be distracting...

I choose to interpret "influential" as being the books that changed something about the way I think. They are in order of appearance into my life:

1) Drawing Blood // Poppy Z Brite -- This is probably my favorite book of all time and I cannot separate how much of this is because of the quality of the work itself versus the impression I made of it when I first read it. This is a book about wayward youth and the listless darkness of the goth soul. If that sounds laughable, perhaps you're not a real goth. Poseur! Poppy's prose is exquisite and I still reread this book at least once every couple of years. It's like a comfy cardigan that's never too frayed as far as you're concerned, thankyouverymuch.

Fun Fact: The copy my bff Kim and I first read still resides at the original library in which I checked it out for the first time. That very book has been read by all the tortured goth kids of Joplin over the last two decades.

2. The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching // Thich Nhat Hanh -- I spent a lot of my teenage years searching through spirituality and religion for something that "fit". I researched absolutely everything from Satanism to Astrology. This is the first book about Buddhism I ever read and I was hooked. The tenants of Buddhism are still important to me and if I ever need to refocus on a way of thinking that really centers me, I go back to Buddhist texts. This is the book that taught me drishta dharma sukha viharin, a phrase I've never forgotten and might get tattooed on my body someday which means "dwelling happily in the present moment".

3. Queen of the Damned // Anne Rice -- Rice is maligned pretty much everywhere these days, but I buy her version of vampires. I like 'em verbose, beautiful, and full of religious guilt. This book truly celebrates Akasha, the baddest villainess in all vampire popular mythology. The book outlines the birth of vampires in Rice's world, the most compelling vampire origin tale I've ever read (and I've read a LOT of vampire books). I have a very beat up paperback copy of this book. If that doesn't say, "Book, you are good enough, you are smart enough, and gosh darnit people LIKE you!" I don't know what does.

4. High Fidelity // Nick Hornby -- I like my fictional characters in three simple varieties: a) a music-obsessed weirdo, b) a gay or gender-confused weirdo, and c) a goth and/or supernatural in a dark way weirdo. This book fulfills category A. I'm not sure what else to say about it. You've seen the movie...the book is better, but the movie is my favorite movie of all time...so, it's pretty fucking good. Now I want to read it...

5. Hardcore Zen // Brad Warner -- This is my second favorite book about Buddhism told from the POV of a straight edge punk that loves Japanese monster movies and sitting zazen. If Warner hadn't pointed out how punk Buddhism is in this book, I might have had to do it...'cause Buddhism is soooo punk, yo. This book talks about Buddhism in plain language.

6. Love is a Mixtape // Rob Sheffield -- My favorite kind of nonfiction is a music memoir and this is the ULTIMATE music memoir.

7. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies // Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith -- Ultimately, what I love about this book is the Austen part of it, but I have to admit that before this book caught my attention, I hadn't read Jane Austen. I know! Despicable, but true. I've since read the real "Pride and Prejudice" several times and damn if that isn't a classic!

8. How Not to Write, by Someone Who Doesn't // Delilah Des Anges -- Del is a dear friend I met in a vampire chat room back in the '90s. This book is the most frank and to the point writing guide ever and I really appreciate it. Just shut up and write, bitch! My output has been slightly larger because of reading this book. Go buy it.

9. Hunger Games trilogy // Suzanne Collins -- These books are probably the most powerful fiction I've ever read. I read them during the winter of 2011 after the tornado and I cried SOOO much while reading them. I'm not a big fan of tragedy, usually ever, but Collins' dystopia seemed so real that I couldn't walk away. Katniss is the character I relate to most of any fiction character I've ever met...except the bow and arrow stuff.

10. Ready Player One // Ernest Cline -- This book is just the most fun dystopia of all time.

My "unreasonable" expectations.

I recently learned about this phenomenon called the Bechdel Test for movies. Essentially, it is thus: For a movie to pass the Bechdel Test, it has to a) have two or more NAMED female characters that b) talk to each OTHER c) about a topic other than MEN.

Sounds simple, yeah? NO. It is unfortunately not FUCKING SIMPLE at all. I am angry.

So, after finding out about this thing I decided that I would check on the status of my favorite movies and every potential movie in the theatre I wanted to see. I have, for now, refused to see any movie that doesn't pass. Guess what doesn't pass? "Star Trek" barely has two female characters and they sure as shit don't talk to each other. A movie about the future doesn't include women, apparently. Gene Roddenberry would NOT approve. "World's End" (wtf, Simon Pegg? What the ACTUAL fuck?) has two or more named female characters but all they do is talk about the men. This movie is ostensibly (and I don't know, because I prevented myself from seeing a film that I SHOULD really enjoy) about a bunch of friends drinking and hanging out waiting for the end of the world. God, that sounds like a riot. I want to watch this movie, but it's on the surface a film that doesn't care enough about half the population to have them talking about something other than their male counterparts.

This thing has RUINED TV and movies for me, but it needed to be done, so I hope it ruins it for you too.

After the "World's End" debacle I asked myself if I was being too strict. I decided I was not. In the year 2013 women (again, 50% of the population of Earth? You know, HALF?!?!?) should be respected enough to appear in movies for reasons other than support of men in the form of sexuality and pep talks. I happen to know a lot of women (being that we're HALF the population of Earth) and you know what? We barely ever talk about men, especially for the purposes of trying to figure them out and never, I repeat NEVER, to worship them. There's the occasional, "He's so dreamy" but then we shake the stars out of our eyes and talk about our creative projects and music and pop culture and politics and literature and....

*deep cleansing breath*

When you think about it, this Bechdel Test is a really low expectation. All a movie has to do is have named females talking to each other about something, ANYTHING, but boys. How hard is that? A lot of terrible movies can pass the test. The test was created in the '80s and we still need it. This pisses me off to such a ginormous degree that I can actually feel my heart slamming against my rib cage right now. We deserve better, Simon Pegg. How hard would it have been to include three or four females in your pack of boy BFFs in your damn blockbuster movie?

One ray of hope is Paul Feig, the creator of "Bridesmaids" and "The Heat". "The Heat" is the only movie I've been able (As in wanted to watch and then succeeded in going to watch, time and funds allowing. There are others I have yet to see that pass.) to watch this summer. It is hilarious. See it. Paul has stated he strives to make everything he creates pass the Bechdel Test. Thanks for being on our side, Feig. Thank you so much.

Another pet peeve that's so far in our hypothetical future that it's like four post-Bechdel Tests from now: men in graphic sex scenes are never shown with a hand to the vagina during coitus. Most women need clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm during sex. As in the majority. But the women in movies and TV are shown losing their fucking minds during sex while the dudes are just jackhammering away (I'm talking to you, Bill Compton) without any regard to the nerve-centric pleasure center on the female body. Cliteracy, people!

My favorite movie of all time (as stated in this blog after extensive hours of analysis) is "High Fidelity" and it doesn't pass. There are many named female characters, but the only conversation between two of them occurs at a lunch between the characters of Laura and Liz and they're just talking about Rob the whole time. I had to reorganize my brain to explain away this betrayal by telling myself that they probably talked about several other topics too but because this movie is told from the point of view of Rob, this conversation could have been entirely in his head anyway and he's a selfish character so why would he think they talked about anything BUT him? Check out bechdeltest.com to see if your favorite movies pass.

The Bechdel test can be modified for minorities as well. Are there two or more named (insert minority here) characters? Do they speak to each other? about something other than the main white male characters?

Why the fuck is our society so backwards? We're just now letting same sex people get married but we still act as if women and people of color are second class citizens decades/centuries after legally giving them "equal rights" so how long will gay people still have stigma-status after their rights have been equalized? We're backsliding. I hate us so much right now.

*drops mic*

High Fidelity (2000).

This is probably my favorite movie of all time (we'll see by the time I'm done rating these movies--the stack is dwindling). I love the book.

The only thing that could make the movie better would be if the music were more my taste, but the aura of High Fidelity is totally and completely perfect. I AM ROB GORDON. Well, I'm not as much of a pushover (and I hope I'm not as much of an asshole), but my music habits are very similar. The concept of "top five" leeches into my existence on a daily basis. I find it indispensable. It's so much more quintessential than a top 10. It forces you to commit to FIVE. Genius.

Perfect use of Jack Black, too.

Ok, this movie could also be better if a female was a main character and NOT just an object of Rob's affection. And if there were gay characters...I'll dock "atmosphere" a point for that. I dig that Rob puts on music before he even checks his messages when he gets home from work, a place wherein he listened to music throughout his entire workday.

I get goosebumps every time I watch the scene when Rob is reorganizing his record collection "autobiographically". That is so fucking ambitious and awe-inspiring. I'm boring and I do alphabetical then chronological within artist. Well I did do, before my CDs flew away. Now, iTunes organizes for me. The distinctly specific comfort Rob describes at reorganizing his record collection is no longer a comfort I get to enjoy. However, I am starting to collect vinyl, so perhaps someday I'll have a wall covered in floor-to-ceiling shelving full of vinyl. What I really want is mixtapes. I wonder if I could get friends and strangers to donate their mixtapes to me, since I only have like twenty of my originals. If you're reading this and you have old mixtapes gathering dust in your garage, email me (mixtressrae@yahoo.com). I will send you stamped self-addressed boxes for you to fill up and send me your beautiful old cassettes. Seriously.

Joan Cusack NEEDS to be in every one of John's movies. And vise versa. She is just a gem.

I want to live in Rob's apartment. It's so cozy and dark and full of personality. Like a little cave-like sanctuary. I will have that again one day.

This is one of the few movies that I still like the middle and end. I'm IN with this movie up until the end. Usually, plots blow their load in the first act, but not High Fidelity. And it doesn't end when you think it will...it doesn't end when they get back together. And I think that's awesome. And their relationship isn't this divine thing that fixes itself and ends up perfect. It's not crazy or terrible, just good. I love it. Real.

Rob doesn't even describe the "art of making a tape" until the end of the movie...love it. It truly feels like getting a glimpse of a real person's life instead of a neatly packaged plot which doesn't happen in life! I hate neatly packaged!

I love that Laura says no to Rob when he proposes to her. And I love that he explains the "other woman" as being a "fantasy". It's one of the only examples of a realistic relationship in film I have ever seen. I thought it was primarily the dialogue and Rob's relationship to music that drew me to this movie, but it's also Rob and Laura and all the genuineness between them. Y'all know I'm not a sappy girl; this is a love story I can get behind!


replayability: 10
character average: 9
atmosphere: 9
music: 8
dialogue: 10

TOTAL: 46

my top 16 movies...

are as follows (in chronological order):

Carrie
The Breakfast Club
Real Genius
The Crow
Clueless
Empire Records
Mallrats
Velvet Goldmine
The Matrix
High Fidelity
Best in Show
Moulin Rouge
Napoleon Dynamite
The Big Lebowski
Juno
Bridesmaids

That's wayy too many movies. I need to narrow it down to a top 10. To do this, I'm going to watch all 16 and rate them on a scale of one to ten on the following five parameters:

1. atmosphere/setting/cinematography
2. characters: this will be achieved by rating each of the main characters on the one to ten scale and then averaging their scores.
3. dialogue
4. music
5. replayability

Each movie has the potential of achieving 50 points. If there's a tie for 10th place, the two movies in question will have to be rewatched/rescored to break the tie. I will blog about each one as I watch it (or take notes and post the blog later, either way). Hopefully, hilarity will ensue and I will be reminded of why these are my favorite movies. If anyone would like to join me, I'll be watching them in the order above. I'm watching "Carrie" tonight, but text/msg/email me if you want to come over for popcorn and join in the movie analysis for any of the films below "Carrie" on the list.