Recently I just

finished "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffery Eugenides, and watched "Bigga Than Ben' featuring Ben Barnes and Andrey Chadov. Well..Let's start.

I have this weird long relationship with 'The Virgin Suicides'. It came out when I was in middle school and I wanted to see it because I was intrigued by the title and because it starred Kirsten Dunst, who was my favorite actress at the time. I wasn't allowed to see it though and eventually forgot about it until I was in college and caught the ending of the movie on tv. I liked the way it was set up, kind of melodramatic but really poignant at the same time. I resolved to find it and watch it on dvd. I forgot about it. Then I saw the middle of the movie when it re-showed. Lather, rinse, repeat, etc. I kept seeing parts of it and kept resolving to see it all, then forgetting. Eventually I did see the whole thing, except for a couple of minutes in the beginning. So anyways, I liked the movie, but when I was told it was based on a book, I decided to go read the book. I never found that exact book but my roommate had another Jeffery Eugenides book, "Middlesex' and let me read it. I like his tone, his style of writing, its overly blown and full of attention to details, some of which is irrelevant to the story but helps to maintain a picture in the reader's head. When I look at his work critically, I think it comes across as him trying too hard to be relevant, to be thought-provoking, to be dramatic. But god, I wish I could spin a tale like him! I try not to look at his work as a critic, I enjoy his ideas and his way of getting them across. I finally found a copy of 'The Virgin Suicides' and read it. I think I like best of everything in the book, the fact that no one ever knows why they killed themselves. There's only conjectures and theories, but I find it more unsettling and more true to life to feel like the girls killed themselves for a mysterious unknowable reason. It leads the reader to think on why they did it. I think, maybe the girls killed themselves because their baby sister killed herself and they couldn't live without her, with the feeling that they could have done something, or should have done something. I don't know why Cecilia killed herself, but I felt for her the most out of the entire book. I liked her the most, and I wish she had lived longer in the book so we could get to know her better.But that was also another point of the book, was that it was written from these neighbor boys' points of views and not the girls', so we never get to know the girls at all, so we never get to understand why they did what they did. If we got to know Cecilia better, her suicide would probably make sense or its impact be lessened by our familiarity with her. I don't know. But I'm glad I got to read the book. It was one of those novels that I just couldn't put down and as soon as I finished, I just sat there thinking about what I'd just read. I sat there running the descriptions of the boys emotions in my head, and thinking about Cecilia and everything they'd said about her. What motivated her to take her life? Was it because of her that her sisters killed themselves too, or was Cecilia just the last straw? What kind of person had she been like when she was alive? Was she depressed? Was she just too dreamy for this world, like one of the characters suggested. I liked the book. It'll stay on my bookshelf for a long long time, along side the 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and that book has its own shelf.

Yeah, I love Douglas Adams's stuff that much.