Tag: trash

fiction

Book Review: After by Anna Todd

Stephanie1 Comment

Arright, friends. Buckle up, because this one is…something.

For the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge, I had to read a book that started out as fan fiction. And that was fine with me. I love the idea of fan fiction; I love the idea of people loving a set of characters so much that they want to continue on with them, take them on their own adventures that they, the fans, created. That’s amazing to me, and I’ve heard of some published authors anonymously writing fan fiction as a way to further hone their skills. I’ve read some in the past, some really well-written stuff, but nothing recently. 

Anyway, the choices I found weren’t much up my alley (most of them, the original just wasn’t my thing), so after squinting at the list for a bit, I finally settled on After by Anna Todd (Gallery Books, 2014). I knew going into it that it was originally Harry Styles fan fiction that came from Wattpad, and the reviews for it I read were…not great. Which only made me more curious. I’m not opposed to a good hate read.

But.

Y’all.

This was just…

BAD.

Like, BAD.

Like, insulting to all the other well-written books on the shelf kind of bad. Embarrassingly bad. 

Here we go, friends. Hang on tight.

She’s a prissy, over-the-top naive Pick Me with a stick up her ass the size of a giant redwood. He’s a tatted-up bad boy with anger issues and a likely cornucopia of undiagnosed mental health problems. Together, they’re that toxic couple from your high school that everyone wished would finally break up so they’d stop fighting in public and making everyone else listen to their complaints about each other.

Tessa is dropped off at college by her controlling mother and cardigan-and-loafer-sporting younger boyfriend while wearing a zip-up dress, so that should tell you everything you need to know about her right there. She and her mother are horrified at the first site of her roommate Steph and her gutter-trash friends; they’re all tatted up, dyed hair, piercings, and ripped clothing (they’re not ‘Gothic,’ however, as Tessa will later insist. Yes, really). She’s both repulsed by and drawn to Hardin (IS THAT NAME OBVIOUS ENOUGH FOR YOU???), the super-hot, tattoo-covered British bad boy with a lip ring and eyebrow piercing, and they get off to a rocky start that never actually ends.

Despite having a boyfriend with whom she has an elderly-married-couple-straight-out-of-the-50’s vibe, Tessa can’t seem to stay away from Hardin, and the two of them end up making out and groping each other every time they find themselves in the same room together, which is like every scene. They argue at parties, they scream at each other in public, they start shouting matches in class and storm out to continue the argument outside. SO HOT, AMIRITE??? Tessa makes out with Hardin, goes skinny-dipping with him, and is barely conflicted about letting him go down on her, all the while not breaking up with her boyfriend and still calling other girls sluts. It’s different with her, y’all. She’s not like OTHER girls. *eyeroll* Seriously, if ever that gross attitude were a character, it’s Tessa. Get bent, Tessa. Other girls are awesome. You, however, suck balls.

Hardin is verbally abusive and violent, constantly getting into bloody fights and doing scary shit like busting up computers and throwing stuff all around his room in a way that we’re supposed to think is super hot and mysterious but that is really just a series of increasingly flappy red flags. But don’t worry; Tessa and her magic man-healing female bits are here to save the day, no therapy needed! Because of her, Hardin of course begins to heal the trauma of his past and repair the damaged relationship with his family. Because of course he does. Why wouldn’t he? Magic vagina heals all, y’all.

Hardin’s super, super into Tessa’s innocence (which is just so many kinds of gross; get back to me about that in thirty years, Hardin, you weird creep), and in scene after unsexy scene, he of course manages to get her off expertly, even though – and OF COURSE – she’s never even touched herself before. YAWN. Can we cut this shit out for good, please? The scenes where Tessa and Hardin are getting busy aren’t the least bit sexy; they honestly read like they’re written by someone who has either never had sex before, or they’re those of someone who has a lot of work to do in the writing department. Sorry, not sorry. I had to go back multiple times, squint at the pages, and go, “Wait, are they done? Did anyone finish here?” Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes. 

The whole book is full of riveting dialogue such as this:

“I’m just wondering, you said you had plans anyway so I was just wondering.” 

Scintillating. 50 Shades of Grey-esque, except – and I hate to say this – I think that book was better-written. So much of the dialogue in this book sounds like it comes from robots. I had to wonder if the editor was asleep at the wheel for a lot of this, or if they just flat-out gave up. Understandable, really, because where do you even start when this mess hits your desk.

Anyway. 

The whole book wraps up with a scene where it turns out that getting into Tessa’s pants was, in a move that surprises no one who grew up watching 90’s teen movies, just a bet to Hardin and his gross friends (Hardin, you’re no Freddie Prinze, Jr), but of course he fell in love with her on the way. It ends on an entirely unnecessary cliffhanger, because of course this is a series; who wouldn’t want another *checks Goodreads, then weeps* three books plus a prequel of all of…this? 

Look, I get why this stuff gets published. It makes money (*sob*), and that money goes to fund the other stuff in the industry, and it’s unfortunately necessary. But UGH. It’s not good. It’s not well-written, it’s not well-plotted, and the relationship between the main characters is toxic and abusive and shouldn’t be touted as super-hot and dreamy but instead as a stunning example of what to run from at Usain Bolt-like speeds. That teen girls and young women are reading this and thinking it’s hot and sexy is, frankly, terrifying to me, and depressing, both from a literary standpoint and from a life standpoint. Giving anyone the idea that you should stick around for escalating verbal abuse from a guy you’re attracted to because you think you can fix him is the most HORRIFIC message out there, and I’m frankly appalled that the industry keeps fucking pushing this message. You won’t fix him, ladies, and he’s not the end-all, be-all, no matter how hot he is. Find someone who’s got his shit together and leave the Hardins of the world to either find their way to therapy or wallow in a pool of self-destruction. We all deserve better in relationships and in literary content than this.

And the fact that they made a movie out of this? Excuse me, I’m going to go throw myself directly into traffic. 

To sum it all up: I don’t often drag books this hard, but After deserves it. Terrible writing, terrible message, just all-around terrible, and an insult to women and readers. Don’t waste your time with this.

nonfiction

Book Review: Outsmart Waste: The Modern Idea of Garbage and How to Think Our Way Out of It by Tom Szaky

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Part of the reason I’ve been reading about trash and sustainability lately has been because of some of the material I’ve been covering with my daughter now that we’re homeschooling. I’m doing my best to raise a responsible kid who cares about the planet and who isn’t going to junk it up, to the best of her abilities. And it’s on me to provide a good example of what that looks like. I recently signed up for TerraCycle and became aware of some of their local drop-off points for certain items (link is for the US, but you can switch it to match your country, they’re everywhere!), and I learned that their founder has written several books. Why yes, I DID want to read them! Luckily, my library had a copy of Outsmart Waste: The Modern Idea of Garbage and How to Think Our Way Out of It by Tom Szaky (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014). At 168 pages, it’s a quick read and one that will inspire you, however much you’re already doing, to do more.

Tom Szaky started out creating worm tea fertilizer in recycled soda bottles, but his business soon expanded into recycling those items that you usually just throw away because your local recycling company won’t take them: toothpaste tubes, juice pouches, toothbrushes, potato chip bags. Dirty diapers. Cigarette butts. There’s a use for everything out there, if only we look hard enough to find it. We don’t have to be messing up our planet the way we are; the fact that we are is a choice, mostly driven by economics. Tom Szaky wants you to understand this, and he wants you to work with him to change this.

Changing the way we think about garbage is the first step, and Outsmart Waste will set you on that path. If we can shake up our mindset in order to mimic nature just a little bit more, we could see some real change. Things could improve. That may mean a shifting of priorities, possibly retraining for some of us, but in order to assure a healthy, sustainable future, it’s eventually going to be necessary. Why not make this shift when we’re doing it by choice, rather than be forced by a ticking clock?

This is a quick read, and a brilliant book that’s capable of shifting mindsets. I’m not sure if it’s possible to read this without drastically reconsidering everything about how you live. We can all do better, and Tom Szaky is here to cheer us on.

Follow Tom Szaky on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes

Stephanie1 Comment

I realize I read about a lot of niche subjects, but garbage might just be the nichiest (what? It’s a word if I want it to be a word). Reading about the trash we create, the mess we’ve made of the world, and the people devoting their lives to cleaning it all up serves as a reminder to me of the work I need to be doing in order to make things better. If you’re beginning to realize that ‘there’s no such thing as away,’ that things don’t just disappear when you toss them in the trash, that everything you buy has consequences for the planet, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes (Avery, 2012) might need to go from your TBR to your brain.

What happens when we throw things away? What exactly goes on in a landfill? (Sometimes it’s not much. People have unearthed 50-year-old hot dogs and heads of lettuce, looking pretty much fresh.) What exactly is all of this doing to the planet, and how much longer can this continue? Edward Humes has thrown the switch on the floodlights that illuminate the mess we’ve made, the dangerous situations we’ve created, and the people working to both take care of them and to make them better.

Because there are better ways, and Mr. Humes shows not only people who have chosen careers dedicated to improving how we deal with trash, but showcases people who have restructured their lives so that they create much, much less of it. While the book occasionally wanders into the technical, Garbology is a wake-up call and an inspirational manifesto for all.

This was a bit of a slow read for me, simply because I was trying to take it all in. We’ve really made a mess of things, when the ocean can be described as ‘plastic chowder’ by scientists who study this sort of thing. It’s all super depressing, but…it could be better. We could do better, and this book points that out over and over again. Garbology isn’t Pollyanna-ish in nature, but knowledge really is power, and it provides the reader with the important knowledge we need about the what, how, and why of our garbage, and how we can clean things up.

There’s a lot to think about here, and I guarantee that, if you read this, you’ll be thinking about and looking at your trash differently. I refused a plastic bag this week after finishing this book, and I’m going to try to keep that habit up (I got distracted in another line and didn’t think about saying I didn’t need bags until it was too late). I’m thinking more about how I can reuse other parts of my trash (recycling is good, but it really should be more of a last resort; there’s a reason why reduce and reuse come first!), and I’ve located some TerraCycle drop-off locations in my area so I can collect the harder-to-recycle items, like toothpaste tubes, for them.

Garbology might change you – and that’s a good thing. Our planet desperately needs that.

Visit Edward Humes’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.