Puppy. Sitting. The usual suspects. While my parents spend the weekend at the beach cottage up in Maine.

I've also got the proverbial shitload of stuff to do; besides working on applications, I need to watch Contact and Blade Runner, and I need to read The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin and Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham. One of those two novels is going to be the subject for my final project in the Science Fiction class. I'll decide which one after I read them both. *crosses fingers* If there's a Higher Power, and He is benevolent, then He will allow me to actually get through this nightmare.

During the calm before the storm and between the classwork and applications of today, I polished off this month's acquisition from Zooba:

Chester, Craig. Adam & Steve. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications, 2005.
Summary: The unlucky Adam meets go-go boy Steve, who introduces him to cocaine. They also hook up, and it's all going very well...until Steve has a case of the runs. Cut to many years later. Steve is a doctor, and Adam is a recovering addict. A freak injury to Adam's dog means that they meet again, not realizing that they have a shared past, and they fall in love. Conflict and agony, all of it self-induced, and then they're back together again and getting married to boot.
Comments: *urk* This thankfully-brief novel read like a scriptwriter trying to do novels--and I mean that in a very bad way. Besides an apparent inability to close quotations, it was filled with ridiculous, over the top humor. The two-step competition between Adam and Andy at the end took the cake for cinematic stupidity that should never be seen in print. Running a close second for worst scene ever put to prose was the Adams family dinner. I shouldn't have been surprised, really; Craig Chester was directed the film, acted in it (as Adam), and wrote the screenplay. This is his baby, and like most babies, it is indulged and coddled and thought to be oh so much more than it really is. I get the feeling Chester knows this intuitively, given his portrayal of the little girl Ling Ling. So, yes, that's him kissing on the left on the cover of the novel. Can we say narcissistic? All together now! Rhonda was the single high point of the novel; she was genuinely funny and genuinely real. Though I dislike who blase the author was about her troubles with obesity, at least she was sympathetic. Like recent read Spare Parts, this novel was formulaic right down to the last How to Write a Romance Novel guide line item. Unlike the Scott&Scott book, however, this novel failed to make me care about these characters. As usual, Alyson is good for (badly-edited) erotica but not for novels.
Notes: hardcover, exclusive BCE; trade paperback edition available
Rating: 3/10 - *sighs* Just stay away from this one, okay?