Elizabeth #1: University, Interrupted
Okay, here it is- the beginning of the end of the Sweet Valley story, unless that gated community series ever comes to pass.
This is the story of Elizabeth running away to lead a new life- as a scullery maid! Everyone in England is either upper-crust or from the East End, so are rough drunks and cads! *gasp* English slang is used and token references are added! It's so authentic!!!
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/bimgdata/FC0553493531.JPG
The animation on the cover is fugly. So are Elizabeth's clothes. Plus, she has no nose. Only dots for nostrils. Ew.
Okay, it picks up where the SVU series left off. The twins are on some road trip with their boys and they are in a motel in Chicago. Apparently Elizabeth was going to have teh sex! GASP! With some guy called Sam who Jessica thinks is a real cad. Jessica didn't want Elizabeth to cash in her v-card with someone so sub-par, so she made a plan to make out with Sam where Liz could see. Liz saw, told Jess and Sam she hated them, and did the bolt in the Jeep. Sam went away somewhere too, and Jess's boy of the moment, Tyler(?) left her too. He actually calls her on what a control-freak sociopath she is. It's great! I quote:
Tyler: Oh, I get it now. I understand.
Jessica: You do?
Tyler: Yeah, sure. You think you're God.
Jessica: Whaaa?
So Jess got stranded in Chicago with the motel bill, which she can't afford coz she spent all her money on crap. Jess tries to flirt her way out, but fails. Hee. Next, she tries to run, but falls and hurts her ankle. The hotel owner thinks she's faking, but takes her to the hospital. Jess has no money to pay for treatment, and Elizabeth has their insurance card. So Jess rings the parental units and cries to them, and both decide to fly over to Chicago.
This makes no sense. Two last-minute tickets to Chicago? Because Jessica MAY have broken her ankle? Why do both parents need to go? Why do either of them have to? She's not dying.
In the meantime, Liz is crying into her coffee at some tacky diner. I love tacky diners. I wish we had them here, with neverending filter coffee and greasy bacon and waitresses in pink fifties uniforms on roller skates... um, anyway. Liz is super hurt at what Jess and Sam did. She has a letter from the University of London in her backpack. She has a scholarship to study creative writing there for a semester- the fall semester, according to her acceptance letter. 'Fall' is not a season in England. Autumn is, though! Anyhoo, she's skulling the coffee back, getting more and more jittery, trying to decide if she should go to London RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND. Luckily, she bumps into a girl who is also going to London, and this girl (Daphne) loves London so much, her oohing and aahing convinces Liz to go to the airport. Step one of plan achieved.
Liz arrives at the airport, and it's "like another world." LAX is in southern California, so its completely familiar, but O'Hare is totally new and scary for her. Why is an airport familiar just because it's in her home state? An airport's an airport. EVERYWHERE. Liz wanders over to the ticket desk to buy a one-way ticket to London, only to be told it's $1199. She's completely stunned. "What about all those great fares I always see advertised to Paris and London? You know, round-trip tickets for three hundred bucks?" Um, Liz? It's summer. It's last minute. She backs out. She's only got her credit card and she's spent all her cash somehow. Then she realises what she did with all her money. Liz actually spent over sixty dollars on scented candles, bubble bath, and condoms.
How do you even spend that much on that stuff??? She is such a tool sometimes. How many condoms did she need? Sex is going to be so average for her when she finally does it. She hypes it up so much, and first time is always crap no matter how many scented candles surround you.
Anyway, she hems and haws about whether or not to go for aaaages, before finally going for it. Apparently the university will pay her a 'stipend' and she's sure they'll fix her up with a work-study program. And her room and board is included in her scholarship. So flying over to London with $27 in her pocket will totally be fine. Yup. She uses her credit card to pay for the airfare, which made me laugh because she doesn't seem to think about how she'll pay her Visa bill later. That's a decent sized debt.
Ned rings her, rather angry at her for ditching Jessica. Basically, they have no idea what happened, but they take Jess's side coz Liz left her stranded with no money and no car. Liz gets really aggro about this and hangs up on old Dad. Ned is a total ass here. He sucks at life, not just law.
For someone that has been to England before (unless that never really happened), Elizabeth is pretty ignorant. "Did they have milk shakes in England? Or did everyone just drink tea?" She thinks burgers will be hard to find coz everyone eats fish and chips. She also thinks no one uses ketchup, they use vinegar. She meets a hot English guy who talks like a toff. His name is Nigel. Awesome. He uses crazy words like 'bloke' and he wears a blazer with a school insignia embroidered on it. WTF? Liz is also surprised to learn that English muffins are not called English muffins in England. They are called crumpets. Well done Elizabeth! Oh, and just so you know, Chinese food is just known as 'food' in China. Nigel tells her about exciting stuff like cucumber sandwiches. I wish I met someone like him while I lived in England. Instead I met this crazy African guy who literally chased me through the Camden tube station.
After ditching Nigel, Liz runs into her folks at O'Hare. They try to make her go back to Sweet Valley with them, but Liz, in a rare example of non-doormatism, walks away after she realises that they don't give a shit about her and just love Jessica. Liz does a pretty good speech here, and if she wasn't usually such a pretentious little snit I'd cheer for her. Ned says she's always taken herself too seriously, which made me lolz. Liz just tells them she's going to London, and walks away to board the plane.
So she gets on the plane with her little duffel bag of summer clothes she was wearing for her cross-country trip. That's it. She cries a lot, and Nigel reappears as her seatmate. Plus, her friend Daphne's in first class after getting bumped up. Sweet. Nigel is reading Vanity Fair, but they don't specifiy if its the magazine or the Thackeray novel. I hope its the magazine. That would complicate his sexuality nicely. He tells lies to Elizabeth though. He says her dorm room at Uni of London "will be in a building that looks like an old castle, with winding stone steps." Lies. Students will not be living in castles. Plus, Nigel is at first a English Lit student at Cambridge, then he's suddenly a student at Oxford. Note to ghostwriter: Not the same place. Plus, they act like the university is all in one campus. Just so you know, the University of London consists of 19 colleges, 115,000 students, and it's not all in one place. The colleges are very different, and are applied to separately. But oh well. According to this book, Elizabeth will be walking past Big Ben every day to get to uni.
Liz learns what a youth hostel is. The description is slightly outdated, because Daphne says it's only for students, when actually everyone can stay at them. I'm surprised Liz doesn't know, though. I mean, they do have hostels in America. Liz then continues her reign of stupidity. She believes that once her stipend from the uni kicks in, she'll be able to buy some cute outfits from Harrods. Hahahahaha. Dweeb. She couldn't afford a chocolate from their food court. She doesn't know what the tube is, and imagines "being shot through some kind of steel cylinder". I thought the London tube was totally famous? Neeeext, she tries to pay for her tube ticket with American moneys. Nope. She has to go change it and freaks when her US$27 becomes about 12 pounds. Then a quarter of her money is used on a tube ticket.*gasp*
One quite cool thing is, she gets off at Westminister Street station, and you get a great view of Parliament and Big Ben when you leave that station. Pretty awesome intro to London. She can see Big Ben over the "glistening expanse of water", which is weird because you can't actually see the Thames River from that particular station. But I digress again. After a wander and a bit of lostness, Liz finds the uni, after passing 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. It's raining and she's getting cold, but she still gives a pound coin to a beggar on the street. Liz, stop being charitable. You'll need that pound.
Liz arrives at uni, and gets promptly asked out by a guy, but he never actually gets around to asking for her number, he just 'hopes he'll run into her again'. Way to pick up chicks, mate. Anyway, things quickly turn sour for our fair Lizzie, as she discovers that she did not reply to the scholarship offer by the deadline, so she forfeits the scholarship. In other words, she has no money, no scholarship, and nowhere to live for... ever. She tries to get them to take her anyway, but alas! They don't want to pay for everything for her, so poor Lizzie is in thirty-seven different knids of trouble.
London is so bustling. Everyone is busy. This isn't the London of her dreams! (However, it is the London of reality.) She's never been anywhere so busy, even though she went to New York only a few books earlier. Elizabeth tries to use her cellphone to ring her friend Nina to wire her some money, but of course it doesn't work .She doesn't think to call collect on a pay phone.
She then tries to get a hotel room but is basically laughed out. She's too poor anyway. She tries a temp agency, but has no working papers. She tries to get a job at a posh hotel, but only butlers and servants who have been to accredited butler-and-servant-schools can work there. LOLZ. Two examples of butler schools are Madame Paulett's in Paris or Jeeves Academy in Dublin. That is so awesome. Jeeves is the best butler name ever. Anyway, Liz wants tea and sympathy, but the manager doesn't give a shit.
What annoys me about Elizabeth is she expects everyone to fall all over themselves trying to help her. Apparently everyone is supposed to have that famous English courtesy. Come on woman. Get your head out of the stereotypes. I guess that's hard when you actually ARE a stereotype.
In a panic Liz spends the last of her money on a tube ticket trying to find her friend Daphne at a hostel so she can bludge some money off her, but of course that doesn't work. So Liz is stranded in Hampstead on the outskirts of London. She heads towards what looks like a hotel, intending to ask if she can spend the night in a maid's room. Instead, she discovers by listening in on a conversation that sounds something like this:
Cook: Oh gosh. Patsy has eloped and we really need someone to take her place.
Maid: We definitely need a scullery maid.
Cook: Yes. We do. Immediately.
Spelled out much? Elizabeth steps forward and offers her services. During a quick interview with head maid Mary, Elizabeth gives her name as Elizabeth Bennet, and is then embarrassed when the others immediately recognise the name and tease her for it. "Are you sure you're not Catherine Earnshaw? Or maybe you're Becky Sharpe?" Gosh, how did they know it was a Jane Austen name? You mean, these English people have actually read Pride and Prejudice?
Jeez, Liz. Just say you're Elizabeth Smith. Or Elizabeth Jones.
Anyway, Liz claims her bag with her working papers was stolen at the airport. Luckily, Mary doesn't care, and hire her for a minimum six-month term. Sweet! Liz is not a beggar! However, the place is not a hotel, but the home of the Earl of Pennington and his son and daughter. In an impressive bit of research, the ghostwriter says the earl's son is a viscount. This is actually true. +10 points for ghostwriter. I have the weirdest feeling that's the only research actually done. Elizabeth thinks earls are royalty. I say she lies. I'm fairly certain that nobility is not actually royalty. But please, correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to see if the ghostwriter got something else right.
I cry at their knowledge of England. The ghostwriter has so obviously just looked up a couple things in a dictionary and then made the rest up. I so wish the twins would come to New Zealand. Once a bunch of skateboarders on a cartoon came here for a competition and it was ridiculous. They obviously didn't know squat. I loved it.
CRAP I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:
-All English people either have upper-crust accents or Cockney ones. There is nothing else in the entire city of London.
-All male university students in London are good-looking and like to argue in their free time whether Milton is a better writer than Shakespeare. Can anyone name more than one John Milton work here without resorting to Wikipedia? I bet you could list lots of Shakespeare.
-English people have never heard of using lemon in their tea.
-It constantly rains in London, even in summer. Elizabeth decides this after one rainy afternoon.
- Elizabeth's fancy brain is waaaay overrated.
More Elizabeth fun to come! I have books 2, 3 and 4 next in line! I can't wait to discover what stereotypes follow!! :D
This is the story of Elizabeth running away to lead a new life- as a scullery maid! Everyone in England is either upper-crust or from the East End, so are rough drunks and cads! *gasp* English slang is used and token references are added! It's so authentic!!!
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/bimgdata/FC0553493531.JPG
The animation on the cover is fugly. So are Elizabeth's clothes. Plus, she has no nose. Only dots for nostrils. Ew.
Okay, it picks up where the SVU series left off. The twins are on some road trip with their boys and they are in a motel in Chicago. Apparently Elizabeth was going to have teh sex! GASP! With some guy called Sam who Jessica thinks is a real cad. Jessica didn't want Elizabeth to cash in her v-card with someone so sub-par, so she made a plan to make out with Sam where Liz could see. Liz saw, told Jess and Sam she hated them, and did the bolt in the Jeep. Sam went away somewhere too, and Jess's boy of the moment, Tyler(?) left her too. He actually calls her on what a control-freak sociopath she is. It's great! I quote:
Tyler: Oh, I get it now. I understand.
Jessica: You do?
Tyler: Yeah, sure. You think you're God.
Jessica: Whaaa?
So Jess got stranded in Chicago with the motel bill, which she can't afford coz she spent all her money on crap. Jess tries to flirt her way out, but fails. Hee. Next, she tries to run, but falls and hurts her ankle. The hotel owner thinks she's faking, but takes her to the hospital. Jess has no money to pay for treatment, and Elizabeth has their insurance card. So Jess rings the parental units and cries to them, and both decide to fly over to Chicago.
This makes no sense. Two last-minute tickets to Chicago? Because Jessica MAY have broken her ankle? Why do both parents need to go? Why do either of them have to? She's not dying.
In the meantime, Liz is crying into her coffee at some tacky diner. I love tacky diners. I wish we had them here, with neverending filter coffee and greasy bacon and waitresses in pink fifties uniforms on roller skates... um, anyway. Liz is super hurt at what Jess and Sam did. She has a letter from the University of London in her backpack. She has a scholarship to study creative writing there for a semester- the fall semester, according to her acceptance letter. 'Fall' is not a season in England. Autumn is, though! Anyhoo, she's skulling the coffee back, getting more and more jittery, trying to decide if she should go to London RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND. Luckily, she bumps into a girl who is also going to London, and this girl (Daphne) loves London so much, her oohing and aahing convinces Liz to go to the airport. Step one of plan achieved.
Liz arrives at the airport, and it's "like another world." LAX is in southern California, so its completely familiar, but O'Hare is totally new and scary for her. Why is an airport familiar just because it's in her home state? An airport's an airport. EVERYWHERE. Liz wanders over to the ticket desk to buy a one-way ticket to London, only to be told it's $1199. She's completely stunned. "What about all those great fares I always see advertised to Paris and London? You know, round-trip tickets for three hundred bucks?" Um, Liz? It's summer. It's last minute. She backs out. She's only got her credit card and she's spent all her cash somehow. Then she realises what she did with all her money. Liz actually spent over sixty dollars on scented candles, bubble bath, and condoms.
How do you even spend that much on that stuff??? She is such a tool sometimes. How many condoms did she need? Sex is going to be so average for her when she finally does it. She hypes it up so much, and first time is always crap no matter how many scented candles surround you.
Anyway, she hems and haws about whether or not to go for aaaages, before finally going for it. Apparently the university will pay her a 'stipend' and she's sure they'll fix her up with a work-study program. And her room and board is included in her scholarship. So flying over to London with $27 in her pocket will totally be fine. Yup. She uses her credit card to pay for the airfare, which made me laugh because she doesn't seem to think about how she'll pay her Visa bill later. That's a decent sized debt.
Ned rings her, rather angry at her for ditching Jessica. Basically, they have no idea what happened, but they take Jess's side coz Liz left her stranded with no money and no car. Liz gets really aggro about this and hangs up on old Dad. Ned is a total ass here. He sucks at life, not just law.
For someone that has been to England before (unless that never really happened), Elizabeth is pretty ignorant. "Did they have milk shakes in England? Or did everyone just drink tea?" She thinks burgers will be hard to find coz everyone eats fish and chips. She also thinks no one uses ketchup, they use vinegar. She meets a hot English guy who talks like a toff. His name is Nigel. Awesome. He uses crazy words like 'bloke' and he wears a blazer with a school insignia embroidered on it. WTF? Liz is also surprised to learn that English muffins are not called English muffins in England. They are called crumpets. Well done Elizabeth! Oh, and just so you know, Chinese food is just known as 'food' in China. Nigel tells her about exciting stuff like cucumber sandwiches. I wish I met someone like him while I lived in England. Instead I met this crazy African guy who literally chased me through the Camden tube station.
After ditching Nigel, Liz runs into her folks at O'Hare. They try to make her go back to Sweet Valley with them, but Liz, in a rare example of non-doormatism, walks away after she realises that they don't give a shit about her and just love Jessica. Liz does a pretty good speech here, and if she wasn't usually such a pretentious little snit I'd cheer for her. Ned says she's always taken herself too seriously, which made me lolz. Liz just tells them she's going to London, and walks away to board the plane.
So she gets on the plane with her little duffel bag of summer clothes she was wearing for her cross-country trip. That's it. She cries a lot, and Nigel reappears as her seatmate. Plus, her friend Daphne's in first class after getting bumped up. Sweet. Nigel is reading Vanity Fair, but they don't specifiy if its the magazine or the Thackeray novel. I hope its the magazine. That would complicate his sexuality nicely. He tells lies to Elizabeth though. He says her dorm room at Uni of London "will be in a building that looks like an old castle, with winding stone steps." Lies. Students will not be living in castles. Plus, Nigel is at first a English Lit student at Cambridge, then he's suddenly a student at Oxford. Note to ghostwriter: Not the same place. Plus, they act like the university is all in one campus. Just so you know, the University of London consists of 19 colleges, 115,000 students, and it's not all in one place. The colleges are very different, and are applied to separately. But oh well. According to this book, Elizabeth will be walking past Big Ben every day to get to uni.
Liz learns what a youth hostel is. The description is slightly outdated, because Daphne says it's only for students, when actually everyone can stay at them. I'm surprised Liz doesn't know, though. I mean, they do have hostels in America. Liz then continues her reign of stupidity. She believes that once her stipend from the uni kicks in, she'll be able to buy some cute outfits from Harrods. Hahahahaha. Dweeb. She couldn't afford a chocolate from their food court. She doesn't know what the tube is, and imagines "being shot through some kind of steel cylinder". I thought the London tube was totally famous? Neeeext, she tries to pay for her tube ticket with American moneys. Nope. She has to go change it and freaks when her US$27 becomes about 12 pounds. Then a quarter of her money is used on a tube ticket.*gasp*
One quite cool thing is, she gets off at Westminister Street station, and you get a great view of Parliament and Big Ben when you leave that station. Pretty awesome intro to London. She can see Big Ben over the "glistening expanse of water", which is weird because you can't actually see the Thames River from that particular station. But I digress again. After a wander and a bit of lostness, Liz finds the uni, after passing 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. It's raining and she's getting cold, but she still gives a pound coin to a beggar on the street. Liz, stop being charitable. You'll need that pound.
Liz arrives at uni, and gets promptly asked out by a guy, but he never actually gets around to asking for her number, he just 'hopes he'll run into her again'. Way to pick up chicks, mate. Anyway, things quickly turn sour for our fair Lizzie, as she discovers that she did not reply to the scholarship offer by the deadline, so she forfeits the scholarship. In other words, she has no money, no scholarship, and nowhere to live for... ever. She tries to get them to take her anyway, but alas! They don't want to pay for everything for her, so poor Lizzie is in thirty-seven different knids of trouble.
London is so bustling. Everyone is busy. This isn't the London of her dreams! (However, it is the London of reality.) She's never been anywhere so busy, even though she went to New York only a few books earlier. Elizabeth tries to use her cellphone to ring her friend Nina to wire her some money, but of course it doesn't work .She doesn't think to call collect on a pay phone.
She then tries to get a hotel room but is basically laughed out. She's too poor anyway. She tries a temp agency, but has no working papers. She tries to get a job at a posh hotel, but only butlers and servants who have been to accredited butler-and-servant-schools can work there. LOLZ. Two examples of butler schools are Madame Paulett's in Paris or Jeeves Academy in Dublin. That is so awesome. Jeeves is the best butler name ever. Anyway, Liz wants tea and sympathy, but the manager doesn't give a shit.
What annoys me about Elizabeth is she expects everyone to fall all over themselves trying to help her. Apparently everyone is supposed to have that famous English courtesy. Come on woman. Get your head out of the stereotypes. I guess that's hard when you actually ARE a stereotype.
In a panic Liz spends the last of her money on a tube ticket trying to find her friend Daphne at a hostel so she can bludge some money off her, but of course that doesn't work. So Liz is stranded in Hampstead on the outskirts of London. She heads towards what looks like a hotel, intending to ask if she can spend the night in a maid's room. Instead, she discovers by listening in on a conversation that sounds something like this:
Cook: Oh gosh. Patsy has eloped and we really need someone to take her place.
Maid: We definitely need a scullery maid.
Cook: Yes. We do. Immediately.
Spelled out much? Elizabeth steps forward and offers her services. During a quick interview with head maid Mary, Elizabeth gives her name as Elizabeth Bennet, and is then embarrassed when the others immediately recognise the name and tease her for it. "Are you sure you're not Catherine Earnshaw? Or maybe you're Becky Sharpe?" Gosh, how did they know it was a Jane Austen name? You mean, these English people have actually read Pride and Prejudice?
Jeez, Liz. Just say you're Elizabeth Smith. Or Elizabeth Jones.
Anyway, Liz claims her bag with her working papers was stolen at the airport. Luckily, Mary doesn't care, and hire her for a minimum six-month term. Sweet! Liz is not a beggar! However, the place is not a hotel, but the home of the Earl of Pennington and his son and daughter. In an impressive bit of research, the ghostwriter says the earl's son is a viscount. This is actually true. +10 points for ghostwriter. I have the weirdest feeling that's the only research actually done. Elizabeth thinks earls are royalty. I say she lies. I'm fairly certain that nobility is not actually royalty. But please, correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to see if the ghostwriter got something else right.
I cry at their knowledge of England. The ghostwriter has so obviously just looked up a couple things in a dictionary and then made the rest up. I so wish the twins would come to New Zealand. Once a bunch of skateboarders on a cartoon came here for a competition and it was ridiculous. They obviously didn't know squat. I loved it.
CRAP I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:
-All English people either have upper-crust accents or Cockney ones. There is nothing else in the entire city of London.
-All male university students in London are good-looking and like to argue in their free time whether Milton is a better writer than Shakespeare. Can anyone name more than one John Milton work here without resorting to Wikipedia? I bet you could list lots of Shakespeare.
-English people have never heard of using lemon in their tea.
-It constantly rains in London, even in summer. Elizabeth decides this after one rainy afternoon.
- Elizabeth's fancy brain is waaaay overrated.
More Elizabeth fun to come! I have books 2, 3 and 4 next in line! I can't wait to discover what stereotypes follow!! :D