Starcrossed: A very proper book review.

I woke up with newly painted nails and a whole lot of energy which was probably due to the fact that I spent the entire weekend in bed with the Kindle eating Clafoutis (which I know sounds like an STD, but is in fact a warm cake with lots of cream, cream cheese, and a little fruit), doing little else thus re-energizing. This energy push lasted till now, till I realized again that it seems any ideas I come up with these days are being blocked left, right, and centre, and I am asking myself – why bother? I don’t like to do just the minimum to get by, but if everything else is being shut down, I decided to do what I please and write a book review of one of these books you love to hate.
Let me start with a question: Is it okay to completely copy the content, setting, and characters of a book and use them to write a ‘new’ book? If you are lazy and can’t come with anything original, okay maybe. But wouldn’t you at least rip off a really old book or one from an obscure author that no one knows so no one will notice? Why on earth would you copy a bestseller? A bestseller series made into movies? Box office hit movies? Box office hit movies whose the main actresses is a slut and cheated on her real life and onscreen boyfriend with their director, which we all know will only increase the numbers once the latest movie comes out?
Even if you are not a teenage girl you should by now have gathered that I am talking about Twilight. In this case the copee. The book in question copying from Twilight is called Starcrossed* and should be from now on called the copier.

So, okay, I will admit, this is not really a book review, I’m just bitching a tiny bit…

Copee aka Twilight vs. Copier aka Starcrossed

Copee: Set in a small town with crap weather.
Copier: Set in a small town with crap weather.
What’s the appeal with the small town and crap weather? Are we so over New York City and sunshine?

Copee: Heroine is a shy, annoying, geeky teenage girl, who has felt out of place her whole life.   
Copier: Heroine is a shy, annoying, geeky teenage girl with superpowers, who has felt out of place her whole life.
Oh, what I would give for a story’s heroine to actually be a heroine i.e. not whiney, annoying, and boyfriend dependant. I’m sorry, but all girls (teenage or other) I know want to be like Bella because of Edward not because Bella herself is so awesome.

Copee: She lives alone with her Dad and always has transportation issues.                                         
Copier: She lives alone with her Dad and always has transportation issues.
That would be fair enough if it didn’t lead to her controlling boyfriend constantly insisting on driving her around. In both stories.

Copee: Family of vampires moves to town. Yawn. Old news.                                                   
Copier: Family of demigods moves to town. Somewhat more exciting. Greek mythology has been a little underrepresented in recent prose.

Copee: All family members are ridiculously good-looking and have some sort superpowers.
Copier: All are ridiculously good-looking and have some sort of superpowers.
I guess good looks just sell. So do superpowers, but that is nothing new either. 

Copee: The family is rich and lives in a beautiful house in the woods.                                                
Copier: The family is rich and lives in a beautiful house in the woods.
Again, that’s fine. Don’t we all want to be rich and live in a beautiful house in the woods? Which is also much less depressing than living on a beautiful house on the beach in town with constant crap weather. There is nothing sadder than a rainy beach. 

Copee: Boy meets girl and girl doesn’t like boy.                                                        
Copier: Boy meets girl and girl wants to kill boy.
The old story of pulling pigtails. To different degrees I will admit that.

Copee: Boy saves girls life and she falls in love with him.                                       
Copier: Boy saves girls life and she falls in love with him.        
Does that ever happen in real life? Are girl just a lot less clumsy in reality? Or is it the (apparent) lack of vampires and demigods that make for more safety and less opportunity for boys to save us these days?

Copee: Boy’s family is sceptical at first, but girl wins them all over.       
Copier: Boy’s family is sceptical at first, but girl wins them all over.
Argh, cute. I wish I could be a complete idiot and klutz and still win potential father-in-laws over with my non-existent charms.

Copee: Evil vampire starts hunting the girl.                                                
Copier: Evil demigod starts hunting the girl.
Finally some action.

Copee: No sex though boy and girl are crazy about each other, because he might smash her to bits because of his strength. I can only imagine the hormones sighing in frustration and the parents sighing in relief. This could have easily turned into a teenage 50 Shades of Grey. 
Copier: No sex though boy and girl are crazy about each other, because that would start a war. Ja, don’t ask me to explain that one, but again no sex, no fun. 

Copee: No sex, but girl really wants to badly and keeps tempting boy and boy has to put up all his strength to resist her.        
Copier: No sex, but girl really wants to badly and keeps tempting boy and boy has to put up all his strength to resist her.
Yes, yes, evil Evas all around…

Copee: Evil vampire family clan in Italy.                                                                       
Copier: Evil demigod family clan in Spain.
Are Americans really just mortally afraid of anything European?

Copee: Girl is constantly pouting and boy is constantly frowning.          
Copier: Girl is constantly pouting and boy is constantly frowning.
Not a pretty picture and very annoying to read about as well.

Copee: Girl keeps saying she doesn’t need rescuing, but then does something really stupid and thus boy needs to come to the rescue.
Copier: Girl keeps saying she doesn’t need rescuing, but then does something really stupid and thus boy needs to come to the rescue.
Jeez, are women really that stupid or do we really need to feel rescued for our egos? 

I will stop here. Are you bored yet? Yup, so was I and the similarities don’t even stop there. Surely substituting vampires with demigods is not enough to call it a-story-never-told?! I think the only thing worse than a story with bad prose, boring characters, and lots of clichés is a 1:1 copy of such a story. Are the teenage girls of the world at least with me on that?!

*In case you still want to read Starcrossed after my smashing review, make sure you get the one by Josephine Angelini. Apparently there is another book out there also called Starcrossed, but that's about Aliens & Co and not Demigods. Wouldn't want you to be disappointed!

10 Signs that you like a boy.

Back in the day the signs that you liked a boy were easy to spot: you were doodling his initials all over your notebook, calculated multiple times by counting the letters of your and his name till the outcome clearly spelled HE LOVES YOU, and realized that any love song ever written was clearly about the two of you.

Of course once somewhat grown up you don’t do stupid things like that. Therefore it gets a bit harder to realize if you truly like a guy. To make it easier for everyone I therefore compiled a list. The 10 signs that you like a boy grown up list:

1. You almost fall down the steps to get to your phone which just biped because it might be an SMS from him.
2. You get edgy when in the bathroom, taking out the trash or in a yoga class - you may miss a call from him.
3. You hijack your boss’ dog, because it will bark alarm when he may arrive on his motorcycle.
4. You shower and put on new make up before you go to bed in case he comes for a surprise sleep over.
5. You don’t eat. If you are alone you don’t have an appetite, if you are with him you don’t have an appetite.
6. If you do eat, you agree to eat delivery pizza every time you meet, because spending time in the kitchen would imply spending time apart from him.
7. You look like a sleep-deprived mother of a newborn. Sleeping is wasting time better spend laughing, talking and making love.
8. You spend a month’s salary on beauty products and then leave them in the box after he tells you how beautiful you are first thing in the morning.
9. You can’t bring yourself to be grumpy in the morning even though all roommates you ever had used to be scared of your morning moods.
10. You doodle your and his initials with a little heart in the middle.

Some things never change, but mainly it’s nice to know that you are a grown-up and won’t make a fool of yourself anymore.

Sure sign he doesn't like you - you know. You just know even before he tells you that he is breaking up with you. You will live on liquid diet for a weekend and behave like a menace to the public. Then you realize food is great, you will hold your chin up high and smile, knowing there is someone who will do the exact, well, 10 stupid things when he gets the privilege of meeting you.

Confessions of a Pastaholic IV*

Chapter 3: Pasta in the making. - * For Oliver, who really believes he is a bigger pastaholic than me. Yah, right.

Sorry, only back on the pasta now. I have been having a sneaky affair with some pizzas...

Thanks to my Dad and his ravioli with morels, I realized early that home-made pasta is the perfect food for special occasions and is great to impress potential boyfriends (that I figured out by myself though). It is also quite easy; that is, if you have the proper tools...

I remember one pasta making event when I lived in Hamburg. I had the tiniest furnished flat ever with a fancy pull out couch, a less fancy fold out table and no kitchen space whatsoever. I had invited a guy from my office for dinner and it had to be good – I had a major crush on him. In hindsight he should have taken me out for dinner first and proven worthy of my homemade pasta, which of course it turned out shortly after that he wasn’t. But I was 20, crazy about him and already knew that the love to a man’s heart goes through his stomach. Therefore fresh pasta was on the menu. I went to the store spending my entire internship money on fresh zucchini, pine nuts whose price tag still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it now, and a bottle of white wine I had decided on after discussing options on my cell for ten minutes with my brother.

I wish I had a picture of what was to follow – imagine a 20-year old version of me, balancing on the side of the fancy pull out couch (folded together), rolling dough frantically with the bottle of wine (to be drunk at a later stage) on half of the fold out table (as there was no space to fold it out all the way). Fifteen minutes later I was sweating. Believe me pasta dough can be a tricky little bugger to roll especially in above described scenario.

Was it worth it? The pasta was, the boy wasn’t. Happy there is no picture of that. I learned my lesson and over the years I chose more carefully who to make pasta for. Only the crème de la crème of my friends got so lucky. For them I would roll up my sleeve and work up a sweat, using many different wine bottles, sitting on many different more or less comfortable seating arrangements.

The wine bottles went back to their original purpose when one year my NY friends gave me my first (!) pasta maker. You can see what a happy day it was:

For Marie as well:

I titled this picture “Marie Air Pasta”. I think she is singing in anticipation of the treats to follow.

This beloved machine actually made it back with me to Germany, but when I moved to Cape Town with only 1.5 suitcases it wouldn’t fit. Fancy that, because it seems my Cape Town friends appreciate my pasta just as much and gave me my second (!) pasta maker for my birthday last year.

If you are hungry now and feel the need to cook and eat yourself into home-made pasta food coma, this is how it’s done:

http://domesticgoddesses-sa.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-life-to-short-to-make-home-made.html

Pasta history was made that day.