Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (Review)

You probably know Libba Bray from A Great and Terrible Beauty or Going Bovine.
When her latest offering, Beauty Queens, came out, I was more than a little  hesitant. The last book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy wasn't very good, and was a little bit too into it's message. However, the audio book was in the library, and I figured I had nothing to lose.
While the first few chapters are hilarious and a little heartbreaking, and the audio (Read by Libba Bray herself) was entertaining, it went a bit off after that.
For instance, Beauty Queens became less of a satirical play on the exaggerated behavior of the Miss Teen Dreamers, as a perky, gun-toting, Texan, named Taylor calls them and more of a sermon on why it's ok to be everything you want to be, unless it's a Christian. Or a Republican.
For instance, Petra, Miss Rhode Island, is actually J.T. Woodland from Boyz Will B Boyz, Bray's fictional take on everyone's childhood boy band. He/She has decided to get a sex change and is in the middle of taking hormones and was going to use the pageant money to get the surgery done.
Look, I don't care if you're character is LGBTQ  (Example: I loved John Green's/David Leviathan's Will Grayson, Will Grayson). I don't agree but if it's a good book, I'm not going to put it down.  But it's when the characters get preachy that it starts to make me uncomfortable. Libba Bray isn't so much writing a satire on brainless beauty queens as pushing her political agenda. And again, you've got your own political views, that's your view, not mine. But it's when you start shoving it down my throat that I'm not going to deal with it. And while I do agree with some of the points Libba makes in the book (Girl shouldn't be sorry about having an opinion, beauty pageants are demeaning in a lot ways, pageants parents are even more demeaning), but it felt so hypocritical and  in your face that I couldn't deal with it.
Also, even the feminist-to-a-fault Adeena throws that to the wind when TV show pirates show up on the Island. Then everyone starts having explosive sex or whatever. Honestly, I didn't finish the book and looked up reviews to gather what happens.
Altogether, this one is a mess in a pageant dress.

-Randi

7 Things That Irk Me In The Twilight Saga.

As I was looking through my local events paper this morning (no good bands coming here, no good movies coming out this weekend) there was a cut out poster for the new Premiere of Breaking Dawn part 1 featuring Edward and Bella pretty much naked and wrapped around each other as per usual. My mum and I both flinched.
"Part 1. How original." I snickered.
In honor of the new Twilight movie (honor isn't the right word, but craptastic didn't fit my flow of words), I have to admit something very shameful I did around a year ago.
I read every single last page of the Twilight Saga. No joke. And almost barfed when I finished, 'cause that stuff is ridiculous, disturbing, wrong, and poorly written.
So Here's 8 reasons why it's disturbing in no particular order.
NOTE: This isn't hating on Twilight fans (only the crazy ones who throw things at you if you don't like them. I've met some of those). Just the horridness that is Twilight.
Some of these are for the books, some of these are based from the movies.

1. The Vampire mythology is all wrong. Vampires don't sparkle, they aren't fairy princesses. They also by nature don't want to spend their life in high school over and over as Edward does. That's wasting your stupid immortal life. And boring. All the time in the world and you picked to go to school? That's just messed up.
2. The acting in the films is some of the worst I've seen. The first movie was on FX the other day (I was going to see if Wilfred was on) and I burst out laughing a couple times at the stupidity of the screenplay, the acting, and reminding myself I read this piece of work. Kristen Stewart has no emotion what so ever, and couldn't convince me of anything she was saying. Robert Pattinson is particularly wooden and there's really nobody else in the film to alleviate any of this. That one Taylor kid shows up twice, and he's here just to show off his six pack (which I will admit is kind of hot, but no me gusta).
3. Edward and Bella's relationship is....disturbing. He watches her while she sleeps. He stalks her everywhere because he "just knows" that she's going to get in trouble. I just can't stand to think of anyone I ever date watching me sleep. It's completely wrong. And yet, girls are all "EDWARD IS THE HOTTEST AND SWEETEST AND KINDEST AND MOST CONSIDERATE VAMP EVA OMGZ". Not really.
4. Bella has issues. She can't do anything without Edward, tries to kill herself when he leaves her "for her own good" or something like that doesn't make sense, and she literally only cares about her precious fairy boy friend. The only person who exceeds Bella's level of obsession with Edward is Edward's obsession over Bella. She was not fun to read about, she annoyed the living life out of me, and was depressing in all ways possible.
5. When Bella has her demon baby, it grows up really fast because Stephanie Meyer is a cop out and Jacob starts to be in love with it or something. It's disturbing. I constantly wish I'd never read these stupid books, but I really really really wish I'd never thought to pick up Breaking Dawn. Ugh.
6. If there's one thing that was only mildly bothersome while reading the books, it's that Bella's dad isn't in the picture. At all. She has no parental guidance and it shows. That's unrealistic to me. Parents are never not involved when their kids fall in love with sketchy vampires. It was like Stephanie Meyer just said "I hate parental guidance, but I don't want to kill them, so let's just have all the parents be super spaced out." Not particularly sure why this bothers me so much, but it does.
7.Every single time I walk into a bookstore, there is some girl wearing a "Bite Me" shirt browsing in the young adult section for RPatz posters. She'll see me and smile ravenously, bounce up to where I'm picking my latest escapes and ask with much enthusiasm "Don't you just love Twilight?" and smile in anticipation of the imaginary fangirling we're about to do.
"No, I found them disgusting." I mumble and wonder where they put the Neil Gaiman books.
She will then promptly insult me and bounce away, off to pay for her hundreds of dollars in merchandise.
I can't do into a book store without this happening. No joke. It sucks. Yes, I know, not completely related, but close enough.

So what I'm really trying to say is.........
1. These books are disgusting.
2. These movies are horrid.
3.....


HARRY POTTA FO'EVA!

-Randi