Ever read A Boy's Own Story? Well, that's what I've been doing all day. Yes, I'm well aware that I should be doing something productive like starting up on that book required for class come this fall. Or study for Algebra since with two year's absence from the subject I'm more than a little bit rusty. I could also be calling up all the people who left their phone numbers in my yearbook if a) I could find my yearbook and b) think of something to strike up a conversation with. But no, I spent the majority of my waking hours in my room avoiding people under my heavy comforter (in the middle of summer, no less) and becoming completely engrossed in Edmund White's writing. By the time I was about 50 pages to the end, after starting to read at about 5:00pm, the clock was somewhere around 9:00-ish. I decided to give my eyes a "break"... and ended up falling asleep till the usual wake-up time at midnight.

Anyway, the book. To be honest, I know next to nothing about the 50's era besides that used in all the satire of these days (Grease comes to mind). So, a world where fathers fished on boats but are fearful of swimming, moms hold parties to climb the social ladder, boys go off to camp or prep school to learn about the world, and the nuclear family reigned supreme. All that is very foreign to me. Which is why I'm appreciative of the vivid descriptions given by the author to set the stage perfectly for the characters to interact. The main character and narrator describes life as a "sissy" boy who never lived up to the social expectations but sufficed at suiting his father (divorced to his mother). The narration itself resembles true nostalgia trips; it's as if the narrator opened a box full of old items and drew the memories from each. The story jumps constantly from different ages in the boy's life. Beginning with a friend's family visit to his father's house where their eldest gladly experimented with the host's son, to tales of his mother and the hotel room they lived in when he was 7. A bit hard to follow at first, but one gets used to it.

Hell, I still need to finish those last 50+ pages of the book. But first, needed to write something about it.

And I'm having lots of fun reading the very first entries of In The Closet Boy's blog.