Book in Review: Everyday by David Levithan

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Every Day
Title: Every Day
Author: David Levithan
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: August 28, 2012
Hardcover: 322 pages
Rating: 4.5/5

 (We wrote this review together, so...)

 This is a story about a being named A. A doesn't have a permanent body. A doesn't have a gender (for convenience we will be calling A "Being" like a replacement for he/she/it). Being moves from body to body to body, never staying in one for more than a day. A doesn't try to change a person's life or do anything too different or significant when being does stay in that person's body. Being could be a girl today and a boy tomorrow. Being could be Asian, American, German, or anything else. Being can have blond hair, dark hair, brown hair, or dyed hair. Being can be athletic, nerdy, artsy, suicidal, an environmentalist and many more. Being can be rich, poor, or middle-class. A can be the total opposite of what being was yesterday and it's totally normally for being.

 On a certain day, A meets a girl named Rhiannon while inhabiting Rhiannon's boyfriend's body. A usually tries not to do anything too different while staying in anyone but this time, being just couldn't resist. A finds beingself liking Rhiannon and tries to find ways to meet her, even while in the body of someone else. They slowly build a relationship and get to know more about each other. Can their relationship survive under the circumstances?

 We actually read this book a long time ago but have put off making a review until now. We needed a bit of time to reflect on this book. Even now, we're not sure if we consider the ending happy or sad. There's something about this book that drew us in. Maybe it's the unique plot? Maybe it's the impossible romance?

 We loved how Every Day was able to show that though A likes Rhiannon, being is still capable of liking someone of the opposite gender. This highlights the fact that A really doesn't have any gender. Levithan was very clear on saying that A isn't a boy or a girl. A wasn't shown as a masculine character or a feminine one though others might think that A is more male than female.

 Every Day was an extremely unique book. The plot was new and fresh, totally not a cliche. We love the plot since it makes you realize how creative Levithan is. He manages to make many books with different topics. His characters don't sound the same like some author's characters do. A was the kind of character whose voice was different from the others. Being was a being (as in being-being not being-he/she/it) that had already figured out what being (back to being-he/she/it) needed to do in order to not mess up anyone's life. we loved how the book started and also loved how it ended. We loved how A, though he never really got education from the same teachers for more than a day, isn't stupid. Being makes use of being's common sense and the things being learned while inhabiting somebody's body to survive. As for Rhiannon, she wasn't stupid either. We don't like her very much but we don't hate her either. She was on our neutral side but even so, we can understand why A would like her, why A would risk so many things for her. Rhiannon didn't do stupid things or rush off into danger. She and A were good together.

 Normally, in books, we like happy endings but we realized that if this book ended happily, it wouldn't be perfect anymore and would seem forced just to please the readers. We also realized that if it ended sadly, we might hate the book, think of it as too depressing. What Levithan did was create an ending that wasn't sad but wasn't happy either. It was more hopeful than happy. Peaceful than sad.

 The writing was easy to read and would grab your attention from the very first page. It showed everything it had to show and made the events perfect. We don't know why we didn't give it a 5. There's just a tiny little thing that's missing but we can't figure out what it is. Other than that, we loved the book.

 Have you read Every Day? What did you think about it? Leave a comment!

The Gift Wrapping Curse

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DISCLAIMER: Not generalizing that all men and women are like this. Just what I observed from the men and women in my family.


Gift wrapping is a sexist activity (at least in my family).

It pretty much saddens me to realize how something as innocent as gift wrapping could be sexist.

I was doing what I normally do during Christmas break: lying in bed while watching a movie (Coraline was my movie of choice for that day) when my aunt called me and my other cousins to go out to help her with something.

When we got out of the room we were amazed and shocked to find heaps of toys everywhere yet to be giftwrapped, even with just 2 days left til Christmas. This was how the assignments went: Beryl was the human tape dispenser; and me and Audrey were the gift wrappers (as in people who wrap the gift not the gift wrapper as in the wrapper paper object). 

Anyway, we pretty much sucked at it as we never really had any formal gift wrapping training aside from those stupid Christmas projects in school which were one-time things. And we never really had the chance to wrap things at home because... Well mostly because our parents didn't want us to meddle with their stuff and destroy them 'cause we were rowdy kids who couldn't do anything right. 

So let's just say that that was pretty much the first time we had to really wrap a gift.



Our aunt found us laughable and ignorant and maybe even stupid for not knowing how to wrap. It felt like gift wrapping was this skill you HAD to know and be good at just because. It was like gift wrapping was supposed to be something natural or innate just... Because. But I guess we just weren't blessed enough by the gift wrapping gods.

5 minutes into our gift wrapping racket, we found out those gifts were my aunt's husband's gifts for his godchildren. I unconsciously commented:

"That's the wife's curse. You have to buy and wrap your husbands gifts."

I pondered over what I said and then I remembered. I remembered the countless times I accompanied my mom to buy gifts for people, not just her gifts but my FATHER'S gifts. I remembered helping her wrap each one of them (tho I was just the human tape dispenser back then) for my father. My aunt told us how she learned about gift wrapping because of the many times she had to help my grandmother wrap gifts back when they were younger. They weren't even just joint couple gifts; there were individual gifts too. Then I looked around me and realized - we were all women.

Why are we the ones cursed to wrap gifts? It's because the MEN can't be bothered to buy and wrap their OWN gifts. Why is it so difficult for men to stop letting women do their shit and actually step up and do their own gift wrapping shit? 

Why are they born in life believing that they are superior human beings just because they own a penis? Why can't they be bothered to do something as simple and easy (yes it's actually pretty easy) as gift wrapping? 

And then it dawned on me that gift wrapping wasn't something expected of everyone. My aunt's disappointment wasn't on how we didn't know how to giftwrap - and we all know everyone should know how to giftwrap. It was more because we were GIRLS who didn't know how to giftwrap - and what kind of women are we to not know how to giftwrap? How will our future husbands deal with christmas then, if we didn't know how to buy gifts for them and giftwrap the gifts for them?

My grandfather cannot be bothered to gift wrap. My father as well. And my brother, at this rate, won't probably ever have to wrap his own gifts too in the future.

So they will never, ever learn the art of giftwrapping. But it's okay, because they'll get married and have wives who'll do stuff for them, even wrap their gifts FOR THEM because that's what wives do right? Right?

After that incident, I had a headache and excused myself from giftwrapping duties, told my brother to freaking help, and vowed to myself that I will never buy or wrap gifts for my future spouse. 

It's a doggy dog world, man.

-K :)