7 Things I Learned from the last book I read
I listened to the audiobook "Nate Expectations," a YA book by Tim Federle. Not the typical self-help book to learn things from, but perhaps I learned a few things
1. If a Broadway show gets no Tony nominations, it is likely to shut down.
I guess...? It sounds right and it happened in the book, though the book is fiction, so I don't know. It probably depends.
2. I thought "hoagie" was an Eastern PA/Philadelphia way to say sub sandwich, but apparently they call it that in Western PA/Pittsburgh too.
I live in Pittsburgh so "hoagie" didn't sound right to me, and it reminded me of Philly - where I used to live - but I guess it's right. I looked it up.
3. "The only thing that is ultimately interesting about you is your truest story so go write it down."
This is a direct quote from the end of the book
4. One can react to someone knocking on their bedroom window in ways other than screaming in terror and making your dad go out to make sure whoever it was has left.
That poor guy who tried to be suave by knocking on my window when I was in high school...
5. I'm not the cool mom and my house isn't the welcoming house where all the kids like to gather.
Maybe because our house is tiny and my daughter goes to private school with rich kids, maybe because we don't have regular mealtimes and I don't supervise kids and offer them snacks, I don't know, but my house is not the happy house, full of the laughter, planning, and mischief of high school kids.
6. Books can be enjoyable, but also not really fleshed out and still get published and good reviews.
There is so much more I wanted from this book...we didn't learn anything about Ben and his mother, the main character didn't open up and change at all, he just kind of continued his life forward as it was, we didn't see him treat Ben well or have any kind of chemistry, including it being unclear why Ben liked him so much when he barely gave Ben a second glance or a kind word....and yet the book is ok and doing well in the world. Plus there were a bunch of inconsistencies like him ignoring Jordan's texts and then later saying, "the first time I didn't answer his text within 15 seconds" (when we saw him switch his phone off and not answer a bunch of texts and calls before), and it being described as Jordan ghosting him, when actually Jordan seemed to text a lot, his texts just weren't very personal after a while. Jordan tried to repeatedly call, text, apologize, etc, and the main character was the one who ghosted him. So that was odd, especially because it was repeated more than once, and was in the description of the plot.
7. I love the imagery of a ghost "with an unnamed grudge" wandering up and down the hall at night
I grew up in a house with a lot of ghosts. The "ghost with an unnamed grudge" is another quote from the book.
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