click lit

Find Me I’m Yours – REVIEW SERIES – Part VI

Part I ; Part II ; Part III ; Part IV ; Part V

On a more serious note: what this book does very well is show how even someone super privileged, coming from a middle class background, can be totally broke and fearing for her well-being, her ability to keep her apartment, her actual physical inability to pay for food. Yes, okay, so she had money and spent it badly, or she used it on things that weren’t essential, but how many people do that in our culture? Many. Because we’re almost supposed to. But being a starving artist is no joke, when it comes down to that person’s reality, and you can come from all the privilege in the world, but when you’re broke, you’re broke.

And just when there is a moment of true downness, where I am so emotionally there for Mags, the author gives me a chance to alleviate my sadness and my secondhand anger at her roommate and her ex and just all of the #feels. Because she links to a website that includes this on its home page:

HamsterI’m not going to tell you what happens next (and it actually isn’t what you think) but there’s a WEDDING REGISTRY:

Wedding registry

 

 

 

 

 

AND a honeymoon registry:

Honeymoon registry

 

AND a donation registry:

Donation registry

 

…I think Carlip must have had a blast creating those. I know I would have. Oh, Mags too probably!

When I get to the picture of a missing dog sign, I can’t bring myself to call the number (which I can juuust make out) because I worry – what if this is a REAL missing dog poster? What if I’d call and they would just be really sad that I haven’t found their dog and don’t even live in LA? I wonder if I’m missing out on something, but it would just make me too sad and embarrassed to try.

Which, speaking of, I really hope that there’s a website out there like this one or that this one is turning legit because this is a brilliant idea: ISpottedYourDog.com. SO USEFUL.

And entirely NOT useful, but absolutely mesmerizing is http://www.paintbynumberinvasions.com/ – I really want this Al artist dude to be real and to get some killah sales off this book because I love his idea. I totally wrote to him, of course, asking if he’s real or if it’s Carlip’s artwork!

See, that’s the thing, she’s such a tease is Carlip! Like look, I really want to go to this bar:

Tanked Tiki

But what if she made it up?! I bet she did, and that makes me sad (and happy too, because how often do I get to at least visit the website of the places in books? There’s no Pemberly.com website – or… is there? – NOPE. There isn’t. Go buy it now if you want.)

Find Me I’m Yours – REVIEW SERIES

Find Me I’m Yours, by Hillary Carlip belongs to a new genre the author is calling “Click Lit.” In other words, Chick-Lit meets the World Wide Web – although I’d like to think that the genre will grow beyond the New Adult themes this book has, and be embraced by those with ambitious projects that have been going on for years, whether it’s click-through novels or webcomics with interactive elements like Homestuck.

This book is brilliant because it mimics and indeed creates the internet hole we perpetually fall down every day. I clicked on a pseudo spam comment on the very first link the book brought me to and ended up on a supremely glitzy pinup model’s site, the bottom banner of which assured me that I was still indeed in the realm of the book’s created websites. What really got to me is that when I tried to buy one of the pinup Shari’s images (specifically, Shari Banana, if you want to know the title), I was actually brought to a billing page. I was very tempted to go through with it but decided ultimately not to tempt the whatever from high atop the thing (West Wing reference, anyone?) Because I didn’t really want to end up having paid 16 dollars for a picture of a busty blonde woman (is it the author? I’m going to look this up) for the sake of the realistic experience. I did send Shari an email, though, which she responded to. Check it out:

Email from Shari

Left a comment on Post #4 in CollageAWeek. It went up. Wonder if it’ll be erased. Hmm. Reading through the entire website, I’m figuring out that Coco and Liza are Mags’ besties. Cooper is her brother? Also, found Kristina Horner’s comment on #9! Very very fun to see this, like a little Easter Egg.

NEXT PART, TOMORROW