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All right, people (not you people, those people, the mythical Them), it's only September. It's BARELY September. There is no call for you to be talking about Christmas! I still have the fans on in my apartment! I don't want to think about winter when we haven't even gotten to enjoy fall. I don't know about you, but I'm not in any hurry here, so the next person that talks about tinsel and mistletoe is getting smacked.

Booktalk

Steven Brust Book of Athyra

Two books in one - Athyra and Orca. I was a little disappointed in these two books, compared to the others in the series. It took me a while to figure out why Athyra felt so awkward, but I finally realized that it's the first book that doesn't have Vlad Taltos as a narrator, and even though I really liked the story (and the new point of view), I missed being in Vlad's head. One of my favourite things about the earlier books was Brust's style of writing as though Vlad was telling stories to the reader.

Orca I just didn't think really worked. It has two narrators, Vlad and Kiera, which I found somewhat jarring, and the story wasn't really keeping me involved. Not that I didn't enjoy the book, but it wasn't as good as I was hoping.

Augusten Burroughs Dry

Another book that was a bit of a letdown. Burroughs' earlier memoir of his bizarre childhood, Running with Scissors, was crazy and touching and exhausting all at once. Dry takes up his life as an advertising executive in New York, where his drinking becomes so overwhelming that he is sent to rehab by his employers. It was good (read: painful, comic, angering, sweet), just not great. I'm interested to read his fiction works, now, though, and see if his writing style is much different.

Pamela Ribon Why Girls Are Weird

I was waiting to get this from my library, but my library hasn't bought it! So I bought it instead. (I also wanted to buy one for the library, but they don't seem to accept donations of books, which I totally understand, having worked in libraries and seen some of the donations that come in). Anyway, book. I can't imagine that I really have to tell people to read this book - I 'm just assuming that everyone reads pamie.com - but in case you haven't heard of Pamela Ribon, let me say that the book is brilliantly funny. It's a semi-autobiographical story about a woman who starts an online journal, and what happens in her life because of that decision. The excerpts from Anna K's journal are entries that were written by Ribon for an earlier incarnation of her own journal, and it's wonderful to see them again. I couldn't move from laughing after reading the bit about the Barbies having sex, because that's all my Barbies ever did, too - spend hours getting dressed, and then spend hours getting naked.

Caveat Emptor

The truth is, I hate to shop. I know, I should turn in my membership in the Secret Sisterhood, at least according to the pundits who swear that all any woman wants to do is shop 'til she drops. In many other ways I'm a real girly girl, but I will never understand the concept of shopping as a mood lifter. And the worst kind of shopping is clothes shopping. I enjoy helping other people buy clothes - I have no lack of opinions about what Should Not be worn - but when it comes to buying clothes for myself I'm terrible. I'm the kind of person for whom personal shoppers were created; unfortunately, I don't have the kind of disposible cash for which personal shoppers were created. I walk into stores and am instantly overwhelmed. Half the time I walk through the entire store without even picking anything up to try on.

This wouldn't be much of a problem, but I seem to have an inate ability to tear, stain, or otherwise render my clothes unwearable in polite society. So: new clothes. This is why today after work found me standing in front of a mirror, wearing a pair of pants that were too tight in the thighs, too big in the waist, and long enough to cover my toes...and a bra. Because of course I happened to wear a dress to work today, and of course the only things I found to try on were skirts and pants. Still, it was better than the next store where I took only shirts into the dressing room. It's very hard to take clothing seriously when you're standing in your underwear.

I did manage to try on a few things, though, and came to the following conclusions:

Pants: Pants are evil, the Devil's minions here on Earth. Oh sure, they're useful, and I'd generally rather wear pants than nothing at all (although they were definitely optional around my house this summer), but why are they so hard to buy? I just want some pants that come down to my feet without trying to be socks as well, pants that aren't made of polyester which makes my leg hairs stand on end, pants that don't give me camel toe, that aren't wider at the ankles that the knees, that don't sag at the butt after one wearing. I want pants that sit at the right spot on my hips. Why do I always have to choose between grandma pants that come halfway up my torso, and pants that require alterations to my underwear just to leave the house? Where are the pants for 30-year-old women who want to be a little funky without showing buttcrack, and a little comfy without wearing pleats?

Shirts: I have shirt blindness. It's a recognized medical condition, it must be. I can walk into a store, and my eyes just pass right over the sweaters, the tees, the blouses, the button-downs, the peasant blouses. It's like they don't exist. The only thing I ever manage to buy are tank tops, which I love, but I'm trying to branch out. And yet. I walk into a store, I scan for tank tops, and if I don't see any, I walk right back out.

Dresses: I have a confession. I love dresses. If it were up to me, I'd wear dresses every day, in particular nice retro A-line shift dresses. They're one stop dressing! Just throw on the dress and run out the door, no colour co-ordination neccessary. Sadly, dresses don't love me. They gape at the armpits, they cling at the hips, and worst of all, they mock my lack of height by only fitting properly if I just hold the shoulders up a couple of inches. Sucks to be me, I tell you.

Shoes: Gah.

Bras: Since most women apparently have one breast larger than the other, why can't bras be made the same way? Life would be so much easier. Also, the pain of having to carry the stupid little La Senza bags is almost enough to make me forgo the cheap bras.

Maybe I could bring back the toga. Who's with me?