I don't see the point

Seriously, what's the point of Rob Sheffield's nonfiction work, Talking to Girls about Duran Duran? It's not a memoir. It's not even exclusively about Duran Duran. The quest for true love is basically nonexistent. And the cooler haircut mentioned in the subtitle? So forgettable.

Very uncool, this book is. Each chapter focuses on a specific year in the 80s and a relevant song by an 80s band or artist. Normally, you would expect that the writer to relate the chapter's theme to the music being mentioned. But the connection is flimsy that it becomes so irrelevant to the text. You might be better off listening to the song itself.

Why did Rob Sheffield wrote Talking to Girls about Duran Duran? Because he can, that's why. The book just comes off as being overindulgent, even when he tackles specific points of his life that are less than flattering. The funny parts aren't even funny; they're just annoying.

We do get to see that Sheffield knows his music, but it's a passion that he shares unsuccessfully in the books. With his uninteresting description of 80s music in the book, you feel that you just wanna listen to Milli Vanilli or Vanilla Ice or just have a vanilla cupcake. If you love 80s music, you'd just end up disappointed.

Sheffield teases us with a few lines about his being a widow or how he was unemployed for a short time or when he became an editor/writer of Rolling Stone. I felt that it would have been better if he used more paper real estate to write about these personal stuff. When I started this novel, I didn't know a single thing about Sheffield. When I finished it, I didn't know any better.

Argh! I better stop before this entry becomes a full-on rant. Talking to Girls about Duran Duran, well, it just sucks big time. It sucks vacuum cleaners.

Read this book if:

1. You love books with orange covers.
2. You have spare time.
3. Just don't.

This felt very detached

I seldom write about books that I don't like or about those which leave no impression at all after reading them. What's the use of talking about these books, no? Besides, negativity is so wrinkle inducing.

But I feel that I need to say my piece about Cyan Abad-Jugo's book, Salingkit: A 1986 Diary. It's one of two books for discussion this month for the book club; I wouldn't want to railroad the discussion with my thoughts, if I want to get out of it alive.

For one, the main character, a girl in senior high school named Kitty Eugenio, is just ordinary, probably too ordinary for my taste. If I wanted ordinary, I wouldn't look for it in a book. I'll just talk to my nieces. They probably have more interesting things going on in their lives right now.

So this ordinary girl has ordinary friends, who seem to speak in one voice. Kit's friends are your cookie cutter lovesick and hormone-pumped teenagers. And the dialogue is very unnatural that I actually cringed in some parts. It's like a badly written episode from the Disney Channel.

It's too unfortunate that Kitty comes off as being ordinary as she is living in an extraordinary time. It's 1986, the year when the Philippines went through a peaceful revolution, forcing the dictatorial President Marcos into exile. But the book did include a story line about Kit finding herself smack in the middle of a coup d'état, while hoping to speak to a general who can probably help find her father. (You see, Kit's father, a political activist, has been missing for several years and is probably one of the thousands killed during the repressive regime of the Marcoses.) Unfortunately, that story line felt flat and went nowhere.

I think that another reason that I didn't take to the book is the music references. All the mentions of 80s music by bands such as Duran Duran and Depeche Mode are lost on me. I never liked DD and DM. I didn't care too much about their trippy music and how their many songs feel and sound the same. But the 80s gave us U2 and R.E.M., and for that I will be forever grateful to this decade. (Michael Stipe is a god.)

I'll probably just keep mum during the book discussion. I was told that there would be cake. And my copy of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way is begging for my attention.

Read this book if:

1. 80s music is your thing. Big hair! Shoulder pads! Metallic accessories!
2. Fictional memoirs are your thing.
3. Cassette tapes were your thing.