Mode A La Pie

Jessica McClintock is So 1998

2011-01-03T10:00:00.027-05:00

Forget the limo, corsage, mediocre chicken dinner ... every girl knows that when it comes to prom, only two things matter: the dress and the date. Quigley and Ann have a plan for their formal wear: working as many odd jobs as they can get to save up for the most gorgeous gowns frozen-pizza-factory money can buy. As for boys? Ann always has a few names on her dance card, but Quigley is a little less sure of who she might want to slow dance with. That is, until Ann's mom hires the girls to work as fit models for her fashion design class at RISD. Art student Xander is cute, sweet, and (supposedly) straight—a potential prom date and dress designer all in one. But is he the one for Quigley?

Will Work for Prom Dress is funny and cute, if a bit sold short by its title. There are other things going on, like Quigley's struggle to get into her dream college and Ann's less-than-perfect relationships with her famous parents. It does all start to come a bit unraveled toward the end, but overall this is a fun read and one that I would recommend if you're looking for something more than the usual cookie-cutter characters.

Reviewed from an ARC sent by the publisher.

Happy New Year

2010-12-31T13:44:00.000-05:00

Merry 2011 to you all! And bonus well wishes to anyone who can name the book that contains one of my most favorite NYE scenes:

We cleaned the house, finished making the snacks and dessert, and decorated the living room. Mom pulled out a box filled with corny New Year's stuff—funny hats, horns, even a cardboard baby wearing a diaper, and a banner. The banner read, "1979." I hung it on the wall anyway, since I thought it was cool.

My night (according to the text message invite I received yesterday) will be filled with "hangouts, wine, and a whole roast chicken." Until then, I will be doing laundry and reading Mary Anne's Revenge from the BSC Friends Forever spin-off series, which I just received via Paperback Swap. Buona sera!

Crooked Spin Can't Come to Rest

2010-10-20T18:31:00.000-04:00

OK, so kind of a break from our regularly scheduled YA books / girlytime programming.

I got an email from Amazon.com announcing the release of an Elliott Smith "greatest hits" collection of sorts being put out by Kill Rock Stars. From about age 19 to 22, I was pretty much obsessed with Elliott Smith. Then he died. I guess I'd still consider him my favorite musician of all time if you forced me to pick one.

So here's their track list:
01 Ballad of a Big Nothing
02 Waltz #2
03 Pictures of Me
04 The Biggest Lie
05 Alameda
06 Between The Bars
07 Needle In The Hay
08 Last Call
09 Angeles
10 Twilight
11 Pretty (Ugly Before)
12 Angel In The Snow
13 Miss Misery
14 Happiness

And here are my picks:
01 Last Call (from Roman Candle)
02 Needle in the Hay (from self-titled)
03 The Biggest Lie (from self-titled)
04 Between the Bars (from Either/Or)
05 Angeles (from Either/Or)
06 Say Yes (from Either/Or)
07 Miss Misery (BIG HIT from Good Will Hunting)
08 Waltz #2 (from XO)
09 Son of Sam (from Figure 8)
10 Everything Means Nothing to Me (from Figure 8)
11 Happiness (From Figure 8)
12 Pretty -Ugly Before- (from Basement on the Hill)
13 A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free (from Basement on the Hill)

They didn't do bad. But not including Say Yes—my all-time favorite of ever? Big mistake. Huge. And also, I never realized how '90s he looked. Love you, Elliott, seven years later.

Nothing's Better than Friends

2010-10-03T15:07:00.000-04:00

New in my Etsy shop: Say Hello to Your Friends, a Baby-sitters Club fanzine! This one has been in the works for a long time, but I just now finally got around to folding and stapling. For more information or to order, click here and visit the Welsh Rabbit shop.

From the introduction: "One of the last courses I took for my Master’s program in Library & Information Science was called Resources for Children … For one of our final assignments, we were to select a 'resource' (book, series, movie, song, etc.) that we loved as a child and reflect on the experience of revisiting it as an adult. Of course I had to write about the Baby-sitters Club. What follows is the actual text of the paper I turned in to my professor."

Here Comes the Bride

2010-09-17T10:00:00.014-04:00

Brownwen Oliver was switched at birth. At least, that's what she likes to tell herself. How else to explain the perfect, Jesus-like brother, the mom who dyed Bronwen's hair blond at 13, and all the disgusting ketchup-eating that goes on in their house? Back when her dad was alive, Bronwen felt like part of a real family. Now that he's gone and her mother has remarried, she's sure she must belong somewhere else.

Enter Jared Sondervan. The summer after 11th grade, Bronwen falls in love with the cute, romantic college student, who happens to have a completely nice and normal family. He proposes to Bronwen on her 18th birthday, and she says yes! There's no rush for them to get married ... until suddenly there is. Now Bronwen has to decide between college life and married life, her life and her-life-with-Jared.

Somewhere around chapter 4, I Now Pronounce You Someone Else really grabbed ahold of me. The progression of Bronwen and Jared's relationship is so natural that it almost makes sense for her to accept a marriage proposal before starting her senior year of high school. Even when in real life I would advise anyone against doing so. Thankfully, both Bronwen and Jared's parents provide the "You're So Young" argument, lest the reader worry that no one in this book realizes They're So Young.

What none of the characters mention is what I think of as the whole "Getting Married ASAP So We Can Have Sex" phenomenon. Early in the book, Bronwen is dumped by another boyfriend because she won't do it with him, and later on she makes it clear to Jared that she doesn't want to have sex outside of marriage. I don't feel right accusing Jared (a fictional character, I realize) of proposing to Bronwen just so he can sleep with her, but I can't help but wonder if that plays a part in his rush to get married.

So yeah, in spite of the super chick-lit cover, I Now Pronounce You Someone Else is not all bouquets and bows. Bronwen is dealing with identity issues, relationship issues, even daddy/stepfather issues, and author Erin McCahan doesn't shy away from exploring these in depth. You can read the book as a simple romance if you want, but if you're looking for more, it's there too.

P.S. To celebrate the book's blog tour, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is giving away a copy of I Now Pronounce You Someone Else!

Reviewed from an advance copy provided by BookSparks PR.

Virgins and Brains

2010-08-21T17:00:00.000-04:00

Scene: My living room
Boyfriend: [Pointing at ARC of Zombies Vs. Unicorns.] So what's the deal with that book, anyway? Is it out yet?
Me: No. It's an advance copy.
Boyfriend: Huh. I feel like there's been a lot of buzz about it.
Me: There HAS been a lot of buzz about it. In our apartment! [Laughs maniacally.]

Or something like that. Apparently I have a talent for (very small) niche marketing, which includes strategically placing books around 1BR apartments in order to project hype to their 30-year-old male inhabitants. But anyway, Zombies Vs. Unicorns is an anthology of 12 short stories edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier in an attempt to answer the "age-old" question: Which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? When Holly Black signed my copy at ALA, she asked which team I was on. Not knowing that she was captain of Team Unicorn, I replied, "Unicorns, but maybe after reading the book I'll be on Team Zombie." Oops.

Now, after careful consideration, I'm kind of torn on the issue. I enjoyed an equal number of unicorn and zombie stories, but it was a unicorn tale—Diana Peterfreund's "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn"—that I loved best. Maybe it's because I was never allowed to have a dog and always fantasized about having a secret pet that I could hide in my closet or sock drawer. Other unicorn faves: "Purity Test" by Naomi Novik (drunken non-virgin saves a litter of baby unicorns) and "Princess Prettypants" by Meg Cabot (girl hoping to get a car for her 16th b-day is gifted a unicorn instead).

Then again, Team Zombie has a lot to offer. Hilarity and an Angelina Jolie-like celebrity from Maureen Johnson ("Children of the Revolution"). Pirates and romance-novel intrigue from Carrie Ryan ("Bougainvillea"). Pop culture and high school crushes from Alaya Dawn Johnson ("Love Will Tear Us Apart").

That's not even mentioning the stories by Scott Westerfeld, Libba Bray, and Cassandra Clare. I'd say it's a win-win situation overall.

--
On a personal note, I have a new job (yes, as a librarian!) and a new fiance (who was my boyfriend for a long while before that...including during the time when I originally wrote this post!). Both are going to require a lot of my attention over the upcoming months. I'll be blogging as much as is humanly possible, but that may not be as much as I'd like. Check Twitter for updates!

Cup O Noodles

2010-07-31T10:00:00.001-04:00

Ramen Girl: A story in pictures, starring Brittany Murphy.

Shhh! SVH!

2010-07-25T20:33:00.002-04:00

You probably knew that the Sweet Valley High series was re-released a couple years ago and that Diablo Cody is working on bringing it to the big screen. (I'm personally looking forward to seeing Enid all geek chic.) But did you know about Sweet Valley Confidential? It's Jessica and Elizabeth, 10 years later! I think it's only one book, not a new series. It comes out in March, and I previewed the first chapter—not cause I'm a member of Pi Beta Alpha or on the Oracle staff or anything like that; anyone can sign up on the website to read it. However, in case you don't want to, I am happy to share the following tidbits of Elizabeth Wakefield's thoroughly depressing 27-year-old life:

She has to have THREE locks on the door of her shitty apartment because she lives in New York, where it's like sooo dangerous;
She orders a PORK CHOP out at a restaurant and brings the leftovers home in a doggie bag;
Her purse is a Prada knockoff;
She works for a "throwaway" weekly covering the Off-Broadway scene (not even regular Broadway!) that's so cheap and unknown she has to buy show tickets at the TKTS booth or sneak in during intermission;
She considers sleeping with her boss, a nice guy with a great body (in the narrator's words). "Right from the start, Elizabeth could tell he was attracted to her. It had probably helped in the hiring, though she had decent credentials, but a little gratitude wouldn't hurt." Well, nothing says "thanks for hiring me for my looks" like a roll in the hay, right, Liz?
She recently had a "three-week mini affair spread out over two months" (huh?) during which she "cried after every orgasm." For real, that's what it says.
She listens to Beyonce and Justin Timberlake;
She sleeps in an oversized Sweet Valley T-shirt but lets people assume she's from LA;
And Bruce Patman is her best friend!

Also, she's out of ice cubes, and Jessica has done something to hurt her so deeply that she's turned into a sobbing basket-case. Oh, how the mighty fall. I can't decide if I'm dying to read the rest of this or glad I only had to suffer through 15 pages of a sneak peek.

Gimme S'more

2010-07-22T17:16:00.000-04:00

Back in April and May, ALL the sixth grade girls were checking out Huge from the school library. I thought there must have been some kind of sexy scene they were passing around. (Cause the only book ALL the girls in my class checked out of the library back-to-back was Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.) But then the ABC Family series based on the book came out this summer, and I figured maybe they were just more in the loop about these things than I was and wanted to get a jump start on the story before the show started? Having just finished the book myself, I still don't know. There is one paragraph about kissing that involves lips and tongues and a boy who tastes like popcorn. However, I'm not sure if that's scandalous enough for middle schoolers these days. I kind of hope so.

I've watched all four episodes of the TV show so far (on Hulu), and I love it. Nikki Blonsky plays Wil, the girl who didn't want to go to fat camp and claims to be happy with her body just the way it is. At Camp Victory, she makes friends with shy, imaginative Becca and enemies with barely-overweight blond Amber (portrayed by the daughter of David Hasselhoff!). One of the great things about the show—in addition to the fact that it was co-developed by My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman—is that the characters are more than just cardboard cutouts. You don't totally hate Amber, and you don't totally love Wil. In fact, I think I may like Amber more than I like Wil. She's extremely pretty, and most of the guys at camp have crushes on her. But she's also the kind of girl people would call "big-boned," and because of it she has a lot of insecurities about herself. Sure, she's the Queen Bee at Camp Victory, but what about at home? I'm looking forward to seeing where they take her character in future episodes.

On to the book. The only things it has in common with the TV show are (a) a fat girl named Wil and (b) a fat camp that she was sent to against her wishes. Book Wil is rich and spoiled and almost completely unlikable. She shares a room with April, the perky poor girl who saved up thousands of dollars on her own to go to Wellness Canyon. April is determined to lose weight in spite of the cookies her mom sends her at camp, and Wil is determined to put on some pounds as an eff-you to her fitness-obsessed parents. When the girls realize they both like the same guy (jock-y Colin, perhaps the basis for the Trent character on the TV show), they make a bet to see who can get him to like them back first. If April wins, she gets to keep Wil's iPod for the rest of the summer. If Wil wins, April has to eat all the junk food in 7-11.

My recommendation? Stick with the TV show. The best thing about the book is the cover featuring some mighty delicious looking s'mores. Which are apparently a no-no at fat camp.

Namedropper

2010-06-30T11:43:00.002-04:00

Last weekend was the annual ALA (American Library Association) conference in Washington, DC. It was my first time, and partially since I don't have a library to call my own just yet, I took the opportunity to mostly get excited over all the famous author readings/meetings/book-signings and free books.

My favorite part was the YA Author Coffee Klatch on Sunday morning, which was basically like speed-dating with authors. There were six to eight librarians at a table, and every five minutes a new author would sit down to chat with us. I was a little nervous at the beginning, not knowing what to expect ... when all of a sudden who comes over to sit at my table but John Green and David Levithan! Like, two of the biggest superstars there. They were really funny and friendly, and I got this great photo of John Green smiling right at me. (David Levithan was talking, so I cropped him out.) Simone Elkeles, Holly Black, and Rick Yancey also stopped by, along with new-to-me-yet-seemingly-awesome authors Carrie Jones, Jessica Day George, and James Kennedy.

At the end of the event, all the authors got together for a big picture and were very nice about posing for photos with the librarians/fans. I got a shot with Libba Bray (this year's Printz winner, who was super sweet and even waved to me in the ladies room later on) and another with the Green/Levithan team, and I went total fangirl on poor Stephanie Kuehnert, although I was too shy to say anything intelligent or introduce myself as the writer of this blog who interviewed her via email a couple years back. (Seriously, I don't think I've ever spoken the words "my blog" out in public.)

Later in the day I stood in line to get Holly Black's autograph—and snagged an advance copy of her new anthology Zombies Vs. Unicorns—and listened to Laurie Halse Anderson read from her upcoming historical fiction Forge (before waiting in line to get a signed copy of that). I don't think I'm leaving anything out, except the fact that my suitcase weighed an extra ton on the way home due to all the extra books. At least I was smart enough to only bring my Kindle for the trip down.

Le Freak C'est Chic

2010-06-22T21:36:00.002-04:00

Le Freak - Chic

Happy Birthday - Stevie Wonder

S.O.S. - ABBA

Untouchable Face - Ani DiFranco

Oops, I Did it Again - Britney Spears

The Jean Genie - David Bowie

U Can't Touch This - MC Hammer

Wannabe - Spice Girls

What's Going On - Marvin Gaye

Jenifa (Taught Me) - De La Soul

I'm Your Boogie Man - KC and the Sunshine Band

Psycho Killer - Talking Heads

Rehab - Amy Winehouse

"She didn't classify herself as 'eclectic,' knowing that the mere self-classification of 'eclectic' musical tastes meant one's tastes were, in fact, anything but."

I made a playlist for Very LeFreak, Rachel Cohn's latest book, about a redheaded college girl who's wired 24/7 and ends up in rehab for her so-called "technology addiction." All these songs or artists are directly mentioned in the book as part of Very's constant need to bond with her iPod.

This one got a lot of disappointing reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, and I think part of it is that Rachel Cohn's—and in this case, Very's—hyper-verbal-pop-culture style weirds people out. I, however, dig it. Especially because it fits perfectly with this character who's all about MORE, NOW, AGAIN, just like that Elizabeth Wurtzel book (which I haven't read). I didn't always feel that the story was so realistic, and Very is certainly not a lovable character, but I think that's part of the beauty of it. Also, the book made me think about how many dang times I check Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader like every hour when I'm home. At least for now I am sans smartphone. Going online on my cell is possible but not so super-easy that it's become a problem.

Also also: Very is not just an over-sharer slash online-shopper. She's a computer programmer who created her own social network. And a party-planner, and a flash mob-organizer...

Come on, Give us a Smile

2010-05-24T10:47:00.004-04:00

So not only am I a librarian, but it turns out I'm also a rare book collector (!). Check out what I found yesterday in this awesome used book store on Maryland's Eastern Shore: a copy from the second American printing of The Bell Jar. From the front jacket flap:

At last Sylvia Plath's only published novel is available in her own country, eight years after it was published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. This extraordinary work chronicles the crackup of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, enormously talented, successful—but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time...

I have never seen it in hardcover, let alone with this super/creepy cover. If you've read the book, you know that scene where Esther has to have her picture taken for the magazine and they make her pose with a rose and she totally freaks out? Well, the back cover of the copy I just got shows the photo of Sylvia Plath with a rose that appeared in Mademoiselle's August 1953 issue.

I am (Almost) a Librarian

2010-05-22T11:25:00.007-04:00

The countdown is on! Three weeks from today, I will graduate with my Master's degree in Library and Information Science (MLIS, to those of us in the business) and officially become a librarian. So what I am thinking about? All the cool stuff I can get to show off my new title. That way, even though I'm unemployed, everyone will know.

Clockwise from top left: Librarian Necklace from Brookadelphia ($35), Librarian Pin from Fred Flare ($10), for the dudes: Sarah Utter Guybrarian Shirt from Buyolympia.com ($14.95), Library & Media Center Guard Pin from Award Emblem ($3.75), Lucha Librarian Tote Bag from Ophelia's Art ($21.99).

Death of Venus

2010-05-05T22:23:00.001-04:00

Eight years ago, back when I was a wannabe college journalist, Venus published my first ever music review. So it's always had a special place in my little writer heart, and as a reader, I've loved watching Venus grow. To go from a zine conceived in a freshman dorm to a mag sold in Barnes & Noble is something completely amazing, especially when that mag/zine manages to retain its sense of independence. Even when Venus was sold to new publishers and handed over to a new editor in chief, it still featured inspiring not-so-household-name cover stars like Cat Power, M.I.A., Dita von Teese, and Feist.

Last fall, Venus went on a bit of a hiatus. The website at venuszine.com didn't publish any new articles for a few months, and the future of the magazine was uncertain. I don't have any of the deets about what happened during that time, but at the other end of the tunnel was the Spring 2010 issue with Melissa Auf der Maur on the cover.

I've been trying to collect my thoughts on this issue for a few weeks now. MAdM and the Baby-sitters Club, two of my faves, both got space on the cover, so I was psyched when my copy came in the mail. And after flipping a few pages in, I got my answer to how Venus had re-emerged from its hibernation in the form of a publisher's letter, in which the new head honcho writes, "I've always been a passionate advocate for other women." It's hard for me to put into words why this (and the general tone of the letter) rubs me the wrong way. Obviously women advocating for other women is a positive thing—but I guess it feels as if she's trying too hard to buddy up to us, the readers of this traditionally feminist publication. Like, why do you need to point out that you've "always been an advocate" for women? It sounds like something a politician would say.

Not to whine, but I'm gonna: There were a few other things about the issue that bothered me. Example #1: a blurb on five "girl-friendly apps" for the iPhone. The old Venus might have covered this same thing but questioned why these apps are targeted at women in the first place. Picks include something called Seafood Watch (health risks for women aged 18-45!) and NikeWomen Training Club. Really? Then there's a style section in which musician Kaki King fills out a questionnaire that asks her to name her favorite cosmetic products. Change K.K. to Katy Perry, and this could have been a piece in Allure or Lucky.

Venus used to be about women in music. It expanded, and got better, when it started featuring women in art and fashion and books and film. But I'm afraid it's starting to be about women as consumers instead of creators. And today the magazine's staff sent out an email dropping the biggest bombshell of all: Venus is not going to be Venus for much longer. They're taking votes on the following possible new names: Cake, Pepper, Spark, and Ditto. Honestly, Venus has never been my favorite mag name (except when they called the men's pages "Penus"), and I know that there's actually another publication called Venus, which is why a couple of years ago the Venus of our discussion started officially calling itself Venus Zine.

I cast my ballot for Pepper. But I'm sad about the demise of my once-favorite mag. When a magazine changes publishers and names, it's pretty much a new magazine, right?

The Kids are All Right

2010-04-17T15:29:00.003-04:00

Some books you're supposed to read in ninth grade English but maybe you don't because they're so effing boring. (The Grapes of Wrath.) Some books you do read, and you tolerate them. Others totally take you by surprise—sure they're literary or whatever, but they're also good. You can't really relate to the characters' situations but you can relate to the way they feel. And 15 years later, you read them again, and they're still good. Maybe better.

Like Homecoming, by Cynthia Voigt. When I checked this out from the library to read for the Shelf Discovery Challenge, I was intimidated by its length and seemingly tiny font size. For real, compared to the YA books I've been reading, it looked hard. Sometimes I can't believe the stuff I used to read for fun back in high school and college. (Like, The Picture of Dorian Gray. I remember it as an awesome book, but these days I'd rather pick up the next installment of The A-List.) Still, right from the first page, Homecoming is riveting. Dicey, James, Maybeth and Sammy Tillerman are the most scrappy and resilient kids I know. After their mom abandons them in a mall parking lot, they basically walk across the whole state of Connecticut to get to their Great Aunt Cilla's house. AND THEN SHE'S NOT EVEN THERE. (Don't worry, that's not the end of the book, so if you haven't read it yet I didn't just spoil everything for you.)

Julie Just's recent New York Times article decries the absence of parents, or "good" parents, in YA lit. Yes, I think the general lack of parenting in the genre is unrealistic. But one of the best things about YA lit is kids doing it on their own. Dicey realizes almost immediately that their mom isn't coming back and that it's up to her take care of her siblings. She doesn't go to the police, because she doesn't want them to be split up into different foster homes. Instead, she budgets what little money they have for food, studies maps for the best routes, lets people think she's a boy if it'll make the situation better. And she's only 13!

There's one part in the book when Dicey reads the epitaph on a gravestone that implies no one is ever really home until they're dead. Surviving as a nomad, she returns to this idea from time to time. Maybe she and her siblings could just keep on the move, taking in odd jobs and living off the land, until they turn 18. Maybe they don't really need a "home." Maybe all they need is each other.

This marks my last post for the Shelf Discovery Challenge, for which I read six books in six months. The final list:

My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

The Glue Holding Us Together, and Other Cheesiness

2010-03-30T10:00:00.003-04:00

Here's a double-whammy for ya: This is my 100th post AND I'm writing about the Baby-sitters Club prequel. Life in blog-land can't get much better than that.

The Summer Before is Ann M. Martin's (and Scholastic's, and probably David Levithan's) gift to us, the old-school fans. It's written in a reflective style, as if the girls are much older and looking back on that summer before seventh grade, before forming the Baby-sitters Club—which, according to Kristy, was "something we would belong to, in one sense or another, for the rest of our lives."

In the spirit of a Super Special, the chapters alternate between Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey's point of views, and each girl has her own sub-plot. Kristy misses her dad and is not so into her mom dating Watson. Mary Anne starts baby-sitting, but of course her super-strict father has a bunch of rules about that. Claudia has her first sort-of boyfriend and feels herself drifting away from Kristy and Mary Anne. And Stacey moves to Stoneybrook, away from NYC and all her bad memories of the last year (including "Her Royal Meanness" Laine).

The book is not exactly action-packed, so I don't want to give away too much of the plot. But if you haven't read it yet, you can look forward to a fun pool party scene, flashes of Mary Anne's bitchy side, and even a little bit of pre-stroke Mimi. I also enjoyed a lot of the character continuity; Mary Anne is into sewing outfits for dolls, Claudia tears her room apart putting together the perfect outfit, and sophisticated Stacey luvs pigs. (Plus, Kristy gets to say, "I love being in charge.") Questions left unanswered: Did Mary Anne invent the Pike smorgasbord? If Jenny Prezzioso was a new client in book #4, what's she doing in the prequel? And just how does the Kristy/Mary Anne flashlight code work, anyway?

Conclusion: Eight- and nine-year-old girls of today would probably be better introduced to the series with the graphic novels or the re-releases. Children of the '80s and early '90s may not feel that all of their hopes and dreams for a BSC prequel have been fulfilled by The Summer Before. I don't think our hopes and dreams for the BSC ever can be. But the book does serve as a nice bookend to the series, with Graduation Day on the other side. You should read it.

Reviewed from my personal copy, purchased at the elementary school book fair!

With My Little Eye

2010-03-24T10:00:00.013-04:00

I did the whole notebook thing. When I was 9 or 10, inspired by Harriet the Spy, I spent maybe two or three afternoons eavesdropping on my neighbors' conversations and jotting down dialogue. I wasn't hanging out in any dumbwaiters, just sitting in a lounge chair in my backyard, which happened to be within hearing distance of next door. It wasn't that exciting, so I went back to making up stories—and occasionally writing commentary about my fifth grade classmates—instead of "spying."

I know I'm not the only one. Mallory got her spy on during the trip to Disney World in Baby-sitters Super Special #1. And you all did, too, right?

Anyway, as an aspiring-writer geek child, I wanted to be like Harriet. Not just like Harriet, because I thought she was kind of loud and bossy. Re-reading the book now, I would add "bratty." But I still like her! I like how particular she is about certain things, like having her cake and milk at the same time every day. (Jealous!) I like how she is so thoughtful, although mostly introspective, and makes an effort to do the things she believes to be worthwhile. I like her super-rad spying outfit, which consists of "an ancient pair of blue jeans ... an old dark-blue sweatshirt with a hood ... an old pair of blue sneakers with holes over each of her little toes ... [and] a pair of black-rimmed spectacles with no glass in them"—not to mention her tool belt, which carries a flashlight, notebook, pens, canteen, and boy scout knife.

Things I took special notice of as an adult:

Harriet is a rich kid. When I was younger, I kind of thought that everyone in the olden days had a nanny and a cook. Now I know better.
Harriet's parents send her to a shrink after the whole notebook incident at school. She plays Monopoly with him, even though she thinks it's the most boring game ever invented.
Harriet's mom talks about someone being "stoned out of his mind" at a party!
"Ole Golly just had indoor things and outdoor things. She never wore anything recognizable as a skirt, a jacket, or a sweater. She just had yards and yards of tweed which enveloped her like a lot of discarded blankets, which ballooned out when she walked, and which she referred to as her Things."
Harriet's best friend Sport cooks and cleans for his dad, and he either wants to be a baseball player or a certified public accountant when he grows up. I love this.
I never knew that Louise Fitzhugh drew the illustrations in addition to writing the book. My favorites are Ole Golly, Harriet spying, and Harriet doing interpretive dance as an onion.

Fifth book for the Shelf Discovery Challenge! I just started reading #6.

Team Jacob

2010-03-14T16:41:00.001-04:00

I've been on a Katherine Paterson kick for the past few months. I watched the movie version of Bridge to Terabithia, and found out that the story was based on the death of her son's best friend. I read The Great Gilly Hopkins for my children's lit class and la-la-loved it. And most recently, I picked up Jacob Have I Loved.

This is another one that I was really uninterested in as a child. I know I do this a lot, but I'm going to blame the title. It's part of a quote from the Bible (there's no actual Jacob character in the book), and even though I didn't know that before, it always sounded terribly old-fashioned to me. (If it had been Jacob I Have Loved, that might have been a different story.)

Well, the story isn't set in B.C. times, but it does take place well before I was born—in the 1940s. Not a problem. The protag, Sara Louise (or "Wheeze," as she is unfortunately nicknamed), lives on an island in the Chesapeake Bay and alternately spends her time crabbing with her dorky male sidekick and making herself sick with envy over her beautiful, talented twin sister, Caroline. The book spans several years in Wheeze's life and doesn't center on any one event, but there were two scenes in the book that stood out to me as the most exciting. The first is when Caroline has a brilliant idea for getting people on the island to adopt a bunch of homeless kitties. And second ... second is when Wheeze starts to get a tingly feeling about the 70-year-old captain who has recently returned to the island!

So there are some juicy parts, and overall it's a satisfying read. But Jacob Have I Loved is not my new favorite. K Paterson is a masterful writer without a doubt; I just found the tale of Wheeze a bit too sprawling for my tastes. C'est la vie.

This is my fourth book for the Shelf Discovery Challenge. Just two more to go!

Coffee & Cupcakes

2010-03-09T16:30:00.001-05:00

Just a few books that are appealing to my sweet tooth today. The only one I've read so far is Devilish by Maureen Johnson. I do own Cupcake by Rachel Cohn, but a little compulsion of mine has delayed my reading it. (Long story short, it's the third book about wild child Cyd Charisse. I own the first one, Gingerbread, but I cannot find a copy of the second, Shrimp, with a matching cover. I refuse to own a mixed set. Maybe I should just borrow Shrimp from the library and get it over with?)

Minor Details

2010-02-27T17:30:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been mailing out so many zines that the lady at the post office has started to recognize me. Mostly trades, so I have gotten a lot of interesting things in return. But the zine I want to tell you about today is one I ordered and paid for with real money—and honestly, I could never in good conscience swap something I made for a work of art like this.

Minutiae #1 and 2 are printed on nice thick paper with colored cardstock covers. They feature gorgeous illustrations and my favorite kind of handwriting, half print/half cursive. #1 is all about the first month Aijung spent in Portland, from July to August 2008. The next issue, made in summer 2009, finds her in Richmond, Virginia. I shared these with my mom the last time she was visiting, and she read them very intently. We talked about how Aijung only stayed in Portland for a little while and pointed out all the awesome drawings, including my favorite of what must be the cutest salt-n-pepper shaker in the world.

You can get these in Aijung's etsy shop. Definitely worth it.

I Like It, I Love It

2010-02-13T20:44:00.002-05:00

In which I tell you straight out my likes and dislikes. (In case you were wondering.)

I PRETTY MUCH LOVE
YA about girls, in general.
Sassy chicks. (Gingerbread; Alice, I Think)
Chicks with self-esteem issues. (The Princess Diaries; The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things)
Graphic novels about girls in realistic settings. (Plain Janes, Ghost World)
Music stuff. (I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone; Audrey, Wait!; Beige)
Dorky/nerdy/smart kids. (Empress of the World, Paper Towns; Millicent Min, Girl Genius)
Boarding school. (Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks; Prep)
"Multicultural" protags trying to figure out their identity. (Born Confused; Skunk Girl; The Fold)
Girls who are out of control. (Girl; Namedropper)
Funny chick lit. (Diary of a Chav; My Big Nose & Other Natural Disasters)
Light-hearted mysteries. (Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls)

I SOMETIMES LIKE
Boy protagonists. (Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; Abundance of Katherines)
Dark-ish and/or depressing YA. (As Simple as Snow)
Vapid series books. (A-List; Pretty Little Liars)
Vampires -- serious and in love. (Twilight; The Silver Kiss)
Vampires -- silly. (Vamped)
Zombies. (Forest of Hands and Teeth)
Historical fiction. (What I Saw and How I Lied; Fever 1793)
Magical realism. (Elsewhere; Almost anything by Francesca Lia Block)
Science fiction featuring GIRLS. (Uglies)
Dystopias. (Little Brother)

I GENERALLY DISLIKE / DON'T READ
Characters with ridiculously unpronounceable names.
Fairies, angels, and most "paranormal."
500-page beasts.
Superhero graphic novels and/or comics.

Pssst

2010-02-07T13:31:00.000-05:00

I'm not making this known anywhere else yet, but for you—my five (?) loyal readers—I will say: Guess what? I kinda started what I tend to think of as an "outfits pictures" style blog. Go see, and let me know what you think.

Pinnochio Complex

2010-02-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

It’s the summer before senior year, and Jory has some goals: Find a boyfriend. Figure out what she’s passionate about. And save up for a nose job.Well, she figures the nose job will have to come before the boyfriend, but that doesn’t mean she can’t crush on a few guys (including picture-perfect Tyler Briggs) while she’s saving up cash as a delivery girl and dabbling in foreign cinema.

Not that this is a book with OMG-crazy plot twists, but I feel as if saying more about what happens in My Big Nose and Other Disasters would kind of ruin it. It’s a couple of months in a girl’s life, stuff happens, and you can bet she has new-found self-esteem and a little romance by the end of things.

As a girl whose nose is far from button-like, I was interested to see how the author (Sydney Salter) would approach the whole aspiring-to-rhinoplasty thing. Does Jory really have a remarkably big nose, or is it just insecurity? The only indication we have that it might actually be a legitimate honker is that Jory’s mom helps her apply some makeup to minimize its size. (I think I’d heard of this before, but I just had to Google “nose minimizing makeup”—here is an example of what I found.)

Though the idea of a teen scheming to get plastic surgery isn’t exactly hilarious, My Big Nose is full-on funny. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jory’s story, even if I did kind of hate her name at the beginning. The best thing about it is the way the boy encounters are treated—very realistically, I thought. Lots of YA books with “boy crazy” characters are pretty G-rated, which is okay for a certain audience, but sometimes you want a little more. This one strikes a nice balance between those and the skank-fest Gossip Girls. My single, minor, beef with the book was all the "I'm going to die a virgin" talk from Jory. Girl, you're 17. Lots of people don't have sex until after high school ... just give it a year or two.

Night at the Museum

2010-01-27T10:00:00.002-05:00

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is forever in my mind linked with Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Both have a mysterious Mrs. in the title, and both were first introduced to me at the elementary school library. I can't remember if mean old Mrs. C (yes, there is such a thing as a "mean" librarian) read them out loud to us or just showed the movies—the point is that I am fairly certain I had never read The Mixed-Up Files on my own, until now.

It's about 11-year-old Claudia Kincaid, who decides to run away from home in Connecticut and bring one of her younger brothers with her. She picks 9-year-old Jamie, mostly for his stinginess—the kid hardly spends a dime of his allowance and has plenty saved up. The two head to Manhattan by train and hole up at the Met, where they hide in bathroom stalls at closing time each night and blend in with school groups during the day.

Of course, there is a mystery to solve. The museum has acquired a sculpture of an angel that may or may not be the work of Michelangelo. Can Claudia and Jaime figure it out before it's time to go home? Maybe, with the help of one Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

From the suburban ennui that drives Claudia's adventure to her need to be "different" as a result of it, Claudia is as much adolescent as she is wandering 20-something. Not only does she want to be different from how she used to be, but she wants to be different from everyone else. Claudia thinks:

When she was grown, she could stay the way she was and move to some place like India where no one dressed as she did, or she could dress like someone else ... and still live in an ordinary place like Greenwich.

Of course, New York City is the kind of place where you can do both.

This is my third post for the Shelf Discovery Challenge. Halfway there!

Summer of Suck & My Sketchy Valentine

2010-01-21T21:23:00.003-05:00

After going through all 23 episodes of The City, I needed a new half-hour show to watch while eating my Cream of Wheat in the morning and/or winding down before bed. Enter My Life as Liz. It's a brand-new show, and lucky for me, full episodes are online at MTV.com.

So it's about this girl in Texas who, if she had been in high school while I was in high school, would have fancied herself "alternative." I'm not sure what they call it these days. ("Wannabe hipster" comes to mind?) She thinks everyone in her town is the same, but she's different somehow because she has red hair and bangs instead of blond hair and big boobs.

Seriously, I like the idea of a nonconformist doing her thing, but not if she's doing it just for the sake of not conforming. Take Clarissa Darling. Did she ever say "Everyone at my school sucks and I'm awesome because I dress funky and have a skater best friend who comes into my room through the window?" No, she didn't, because she didn't have to put anyone down to prove how cool she was and she didn't dress the way she did just to be cool.

In the first episode, Liz is bummed because she has to profile her blond cheerleader stereotype classmate, Taylor Terry, for a video production project instead of dressing up her three dorky male sidekicks as Jesus, Buddha, and Vishnu. She's thoroughly unimpressed by Taylor until they have a mini heart-to-heart and Taylor reveals that she only acts the way she does because that's what people expect of her. At this point in the show, I actually had hope that Liz might be able to see someone like Taylor as an individual rather than taking her at face value. Liz takes Taylor thrifting, and it seems as if they might even become friends. But not so fast! On the first day of school (which confuses me, because why was she working on a video project before school started?), Liz tries to wave to Taylor, and Taylor totally ignores her, thus reinforcing all of Liz's original beliefs about the general suckitude that surrounds her.

It's suddenly Valentine's Day for episode two, and Liz is disgusted by the student council carnation sale. Until she's presented with, like, 10 carnations herself. They're from a "secret admirer" who instructs her to go to the school dance to find out his identity. After hanging the carnations from her ceiling fan with little tiny nooses, she decides to go to Cupid's Bash. Surprise, surprise, it's a total bust. Liz leaves feeling like a total loser but stops for a milkshake and fries on her way home. Whilst hanging out on the hood of her car consuming the aforementioned milkshake and fries, she's approached by Bryson, this supposedly dreamy dude from her English class. They hang out under the stars for a bit, but there's no making out or anything. The next day in school, Taylor reveals that it was queen bitch Cori (one of Liz's former friends) who sent the carnations as a prank. Liz is about to go ape on Cori when she runs into Bryson. And that's pretty much how it ends.

My Life as Liz is shot to look like a reality show, but I'm pretty sure it's totally scripted. Apparently the Valentine's Day episode was actually filmed in May. Whatever, though—obviously I'm tuning in next week.

Music + Fashion: Raspberry Beret

2010-01-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

I can't wear berets. I don't know how to make them sit right on my head. Maybe my hair is too short? But I always love the way they look.

This isn't the kind you'd find at a second-hand store, but rather one handmade by an ex-librarian (!) named Rachael who sells her good-lookin' wares in an Etsy shop called Softspoken.

Raspberry Beret - Prince & The...

You Know It Makes Me Smile

2010-01-14T16:55:00.000-05:00

Yay! Sadako from Dibbly Fresh gave me the Happy 101 blog award. So in the spirit of happiness, contentment, felicity, and glee—10 things that make me happy (and lots of exclamation points):

1. Zines in my mailbox! I've been doing lots of trades lately and hope to write about some of the cool titles I've gotten soon.

2. Dreams about cute boys! Duh.

3. Helping people! Especially when they say "thank you." But seriously, I'm going to be volunteering as part of a MLK "day of service" on Monday, and I think it's gonna be fun.

4. Arrested Development! Boyfriend got the 2nd and 3rd seasons for Christmas. It's my second time watching the series, but I feel like I could see it 100 times and never stop laughing.

5. Days off with nothing to do! A rare occurrence. I try to enjoy it when I can.

6. Bookstores! I swear I find myself at B&N once a week.

7. Pizza! I would never ever say no to a slice.

8. Cardigan sweaters! Especially long ones. Layering is my friend.

9. Checking things off a list! Sometimes I make lists just so I can draw those little check marks. Crossing things out is fun, too.

10. Puppies! Next apartment I get HAS to be "pet-friendly" so I can fulfill my lifelong dream. Of adopting a puppy. First my parents wouldn't let me get one and now my landlord? So lame. (Sorry, this one turned into a frown!)

Book Trailer: Weetzie Bat

2010-01-10T21:19:00.002-05:00

Book trailers are a big thing with librarians, it seems. I went with a classic for my first try.

Go Lightly

2010-01-07T10:00:00.001-05:00

"A girl just can't go to Sing-Sing with a green face."

Because everyone can use a little Audrey Hepburn in their lives, Tutti from Tel Aviv pays homage to this icon (among other things we love—like SHOES, nerds, and tea parties) in her Etsy shop, Tutti Studio. Don't you love the backdrop? I want to wallpaper my apartment with it.

Holly is #3 in the Imaginary Art Gallery series. This one goes in the kitchen, so you can have breakfast with her.

Starring Judy Blume as Sally Freedman

2010-01-02T10:00:00.002-05:00

I memorized the spines on the spinning paperback display at my local library probably by the time I was 12. This was where they had all the Paula Danziger books, like The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and There's a Bat in Bunk Five, and Ann M. Martin's older titles like Just a Summer Romance. I must have spent hours twirling that rack, checking to make sure all my favorites were there and keeping my eye out for new additions.

Less often, I wandered over to the middle grade/YA hardcover section. These books were heavy and dull-looking, with less flashy covers. But there were a couple of Judy Blumes that I liked to visit: Just as Long as We're Together, and Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. They were thick but completely accessible, and reading them gave me a sense of accomplishment that was missing upon finishing a Sweet Valley High (unless it was a Super Magna Edition, but that's a different story).

Starring Sally J. is the book that reveals Judy Blume’s true age. She was born in 1938, and Sally's story—set in 1947—might be viewed as a nostalgic look at the author’s own childhood. Reading this as a kid, I mostly liked all of the "new girl at school” parts. Choice phrases like "love and other indoor sports," old-fashioned details about talking on a party line phone, and the tiddly winks scene in the pool were also memorable. I think my brain kind of skipped over the Hitler stuff back then. Now it seems kind of cute (thinking her scary neighbor was actually Hitler), but in a sad way. Judy Blume writes on her website:

When I was nine and ten I was a lot like Sally—curious, imaginative, a worrier. I was always making up stories inside my head. In my stories, which I never wrote down or shared, I was brave and strong. I led a life of drama, adventure and fame. I think the character of Sally explains how and even why I became a writer.

On behalf of story-making and book-reading girls everywhere, thank you.

This is my second post for the Shelf Discovery Challenge. I'll have four more over the first four months of 2010.

Top Nine of '09

2009-12-31T21:00:00.000-05:00

I'm giving myself 20 minutes to write this. My personal nine best things that happened to me in 2009, in kinda random order:

1) I started my own Etsy shop to sell my zines at welshrabbit.etsy.com. It's been a lot of fun, and it's probably the closest I'll ever come to my dream of owning a boutique. I continued my library school zine Scatter Gram and started a new perzine called Winsome & Wise.

2) I took Resources for Young Adults, the most fun class of my grad school career. Ten weeks, 20 YA books. I got to read Sloppy Firsts; The Earth, My Butt & Other Big, Round Things; TTYL; The Princess Diaries and more—for homework!

3) I taught 10 workshops to university students, faculty and staff at my library internship, proving I am not completely incapable of speaking in front of a group of people.

4) I traveled north to Providence and Boston and south to Charleston, SC.

5) I became an album cover star when my friend Matt used a picture of me for his new CD, Spiteful Creatures.

6) I got a super-cute pink bike helmet and started riding in the city.

7) I dressed up as Lisa Simpson for Halloween. (Red dress and shoes, yellow tights, pearl choker, and yellow headpiece made from cardstock.)

8) I spent a lot of time working with little kiddies as a school library observer, summer camp helper, and kindergarten classroom volunteer.

9) I am going to ring in the new year with the cutest boy I know. (OK, that's cheating since it didn't happen yet.)

Happy Happy

2009-12-23T10:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas, y'all! The mister and I are headed up north to spend the holiday with my family. Love you! xoxo

Rollin' with the Homies

2009-12-20T14:44:00.004-05:00

Brittany Murphy died this morning at the age of 32. In addition to starring in two of my favorite movies—Clueless and Girl, Interrupted—she was super-sweet in Uptown Girls and hilarious as the voice of Luanne on King of the Hill. And does anyone else remember her way back when on that show The Torkelsons? I loved this girl. RIP, Tai.

Important Things, Like Denim

2009-12-17T23:16:00.004-05:00

This month's letters to NYLON (in the issue with Hilary Duff on the cover) cracked me up.

Exhibit A:
When I'm in my car jamming to classic jams or grooving to the latest grooves on the way to buy NYLON, I feel assured that I'm very anti-mainstream. —Meghan M.

Exhibit B:
I'm eternally grateful that you have created a magazine that bows down to important things like denim. —Miranda V.

Music + Fashion: Orange Corduroy Dress

2009-12-11T13:42:00.006-05:00

4 April 2009, originally uploaded by academichic.

I had my iTunes on shuffle whilst writing Christmas cards this morning, and what should play but "Orange Corduroy Dress" from Le Jardin de Heavenly. It's such a sunshine-y song—it reminds me of summer in Seattle and of course makes me wish I had such a dress. Like this one photographed by academichic, so adorable.

Orange Corduroy Dress - Heaven...

I'd Like Fries with That

2009-12-02T22:35:00.005-05:00

I avoided My Darling, My Hamburger forever because of its title.* Don't get me wrong, I love my Big Macs; however, there is nothing romantic about the word hamburger, and I admit to certain feelings of repulsion upon hearing it. I would never write a book with "hamburger" in the title, and I wasn't so sure if I wanted to read one. Coupled with the fact that Paul Zindel's first book is called The Pigman, this did not do much for me in the way of girly appeal. Truthfully, even though My Darling, My Hamburger is the story of two high school couples, it's not really a chick book. It's more of a general teen angst fest, which is just fine by me.

Sean & Liz are the cool couple, and Maggie & Dennis are the dorkier friends that they set up. Sean has a history of suicidal thoughts and wants to do it with Liz, but she's afraid of disappointing her mom (who pushes statues of the Madonna like dope) and of getting knocked up.

Maggie and Dennis pretty much go along with whatever Liz and Sean say (which ultimately screws up their relationship). Maggie may seem kind of boring, but she's the one girls are supposed to relate to, the "nice" girl. Liz, on the other hand, gives in to Sean, ends up pregnant, and makes her BFF miss the prom to accompany her to the creepy back-alley abortion doctor. Super interesting that this was published in 1969, aka before Roe v. Wade. If characters who get abortions are controversial these days—when it's legal—imagine what this must have stirred up back then.

This book is super realistic, and therefore I found it quite depressing. There is no razzle-dazzle in Liz and Maggie's world. A skeezy older guy drives them to the abortion place, and everyone's parents are kind of jerky. The ending isn't happy or sad, just "real." I think this might be a classic because it was groundbreaking? Kind of like a precursor to Forever. But I don't see how anyone could LOVE it.

This is my first post for the Shelf Discovery Challenge! One down, five to go.

*The "hamburger" part comes from a teacher's answer to the age-old question "How do you stop a boy who wants to go all the way?" Her response: suggest going for hamburgers.

Xmas List #1: Novelty Cameras

2009-11-22T14:49:00.004-05:00

All I want for Christmas—and yes, I've already started shopping—is stuff, stuff, stuff! First on my list is any cute little camera from Fred Flare or Urban Outfitters. I already have one LOMO (the Action Sampler), but who wouldn't love a whole shelf full of 'em? The Mr. Pink Diana F+ is super cool-looking and the flash can be set to use colored lights instead of just plain old white. I saw the Fuji Instax on the back of the UO catalog while I was waiting to get my hair cut the other day, and it was "instant" love. Credit card-size pics might just make me forget all that mini-sticker-picture camera I never got back in the day.

I Can Totally Do This

2009-11-14T22:18:00.005-05:00

I have been a big fan of Lizzie Skurnick's Fine Lines column on Jezebel, and I was ultra-excited when her book Shelf Discovery came out. Just this week I finally ordered it from BN.com. (Yeah, I'm an Amazon girl, but I won a $20 Barnes & Noble gift card, so...)

Anyhow, the point of this is to announce that I will be participating in Booking Mama's Shelf Discovery Challenge. The deal is you have to read six books from Shelf Discovery over the next six months (well, less than six months because I'm joining a little late—but it's from now until the end of April) and of course, blog about them! It's going to be super fun. I mean, I already read this stuff anyway, but checking out everyone else's posts will be even better.

I'm not sure exactly which six books I'm going to do, but these are on my short list:

My Darling, My Hamburger*
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Harriet the Spy
Blubber
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
The Westing Game
Jacob Have I Loved*
Homecoming
My Sweet Audrina*

Most will be re-reads. If it's starred, that means I will be reading it for the first time. I haven't cracked open any of them in at least 10 years, but I'm hoping maybe over Thanksgiving I can dig out some of the old Judy Blumes and Paula Danzigers. Here's to you, Rachel Robinson! (Oops, that's not on the list ...)

Healthy as a Horse

2009-11-05T18:05:00.004-05:00

Dear reader(s), I am sick. Again. All I can do is read girly graphic novels and watch TV. And it's time for me to comment on this fall's ANTM. If this girl—the half-nekkid one next to the large equine—is not America's Next Top Model, I will be sorely disappointed. Disappointed in Tyra Banks and all of humanity. Well, I guess I wouldn't cry if Laura won, either. She is sweet, and the queen of the frozen-food aisle, after all.

Scandalous Lives?

2009-10-11T13:37:00.004-04:00

Last Monday night, I was sitting here watching Gossip Girl when this commercial came on telling me to text "IN" to 8905 to get "in" on all the same gossipy texts that my favorite characters receive. I did what the nice commercial told me, and here's what happened next—

MONDAY, 8:36 pm: GG here, sit tight 4 all the gossip on ur fav Upper East Siders! No ones safe in Manhattans elite crowd.

Awesome. I've got my seat belt fastened.

MONDAY, 8:44 pm: From Blair - To Celeste: Be right there. It might b time 4 Little J 2 abdicate the throne.

How does Gossip Girl get her hands on a text that Blair sent to one of the new Constance groupies? No matter. This was the best GG alert of the week since it came in the middle of the episode and sort of made sense with the plot. (Blair had just heard that Chuck was spotted at Hilary Duff's movie premiere with Jenny. But I thought she was with Celeste at the time, so I don't know why she texted her. Huh.)

MONDAY, 9:22 pm: From Gossip Girl: S chooses the real world over Brown? Huh?!

First of all, this isn't news. Second, there would be no show if Serena went to college in Rhode Island. Doesn't anyone remember what happened when Summer went to Brown on The OC?

TUESDAY, 5:54 pm: Gossip Girl Here! Still dying that Olivia Burke goes 2 NYU. I don't get starstruck but hello, it's Olivia Burke!!!

Sounds kinda starstruck to me. Who's Olivia Burke's real-life equivalent? Hayden Panettiere?

WEDNESDAY, 5:52 pm: GG Here! S has a job in publicity? She prob could've used some1 like her in the past 2 clean up her messes.

Yes, she prob could've.

THURSDAY, 5:52 pm: Gossip Girl Here! Who needs Constance? If u put ur mind 2 it, B, u could rule the world.

Perhaps a little foreshadowing of episodes to come? Also, noticing that GG likes to text at 5:52 on weeknights.

FRIDAY, 5:50 pm: Gossip Girl Here! G is still in Boston? What the ...? I'm beginning to get worried.

Don't worry, GG. We all know Georgina will be back in NY by tomorrow, just in time to threaten the lovefest that will be Rufus and Lily's wedding.

From the Archives: "A Fairy Touched You With Her Wand"

2009-09-20T17:31:00.002-04:00

Today was a sick day for me, which meant watching a couple episodes of my favorite online TV shows, catching a few extra Zs, and picking a mindless book to read while I rested on the couch incapacitated. The winner: Sharing Susan by Eve Bunting (1991).

Susan Moretti's parents have a secret, and whatever it is, it's not good news. Are they getting a divorce? Did someone lose their job? Oh, no—Susan was switched at birth. The other girl (Marlene, or the real Susan, however you want to think about it) has died, and suddenly Susan's bio-mom and dad, the Stobbels, want her as a replacement. The parents meet with their lawyers and decide that after finishing out sixth grade in her current school, Susan will spend most of the summer with her new family, go back to her non-bio parents for the month of August, and then start living full-time with the Stobbels and their four-year-old son Jeremy after that. With visits to Mr. and Mrs. Moretti on holidays and weekends.

Understandably unhappy camper Susan writes desperate letters to her grandparents (the ones she always thought were her grandparents), acts like a brat, and even shaves off her eyebrows in an attempt to eliminate her resemblance to Mr. Stobbel. But she's pretty quickly won over by Jeremy, and in the end we all learn a lesson: Love is not a candy bar. Um, something about not running out of pieces to give away?

So yeah, this book has a totally unrealistic storyline. Said Kirkus Reviews back in the day:

Surely the wise, kind parents ... would consult a 12-year-old concerning her own fate; surely taking her from the only parents she knows for a majority of the time, without her consent, is not in her best interests; and surely any transition would be more painful, and take longer, than is suggested here.

But it clearly tapped into the 10-12 year old mindset. Reading this inspired one of my aborted early novels, which was coincidentally about a girl who was switched at birth! Except that I think the other switch-ee was still alive, cause that seems to make things more interesting. I must have also been influenced by the 1991 TV movie Switched at Birth, based on the true story of Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg. I remember feeling sorry for Arlena, who got sent home with the wrong parents and saddled with such a country hick name and then died. In conclusion, being switched at birth became a minor fascination for me around the age of 10. Thank you, Eve Bunting.

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart

2009-09-12T14:20:00.004-04:00

Rosemary Goode weighs 190 pounds—make that 200 pounds, after a Christmas-cookie-humiliation-related holiday binge. She's sick of being bullied at school, sick of being scrutinized by the ladies at her mom's salon, and sick of feeling like crap most of the time. But she loves waffles and chocolate cake and Chunky Monkey ice cream, and the treadmill her mom bought her works best as a clothes rack.

Enter motivation in the form of a 6'4", 260-pound football player: Kyle Cox. He's handsome and sweet, and he calls her "Rosie."

Artichoke's Heart is the story of how Rosie takes control over her life, learns to love herself, and gets the guy. Yeah, it's corny, but it's also uplifting. Rosie's friendship with perfect blond cheerleader Kay-Kay Reese is surprisingly three-dimensional. The only thing that really bugged me about this book was Rosie and Kyle's coincidental mutual love for old-timey music. (Suzanne Supplee may dig Van Morrison, James Taylor, and Ray Charles, but I just can't imagine it being the makeout music of choice for real teenagers.)

Incidentally, did you know that teen lit is "alive with positive characters of size?"

Good Gracious Rhymes with Bodacious

2009-08-28T18:57:00.003-04:00

For some reason, it's rained every single Friday afternoon this summer. But today was the first day in a long time I actually got to wear long pants and a sweater! In celebration of weather confusion, please enjoy Jenny Owen Youngs' "Hot in Herre" video.

My Favorite Mix Tape

2009-08-22T14:54:00.001-04:00

This tape used to live in my mom's Honda Accord, back when I used to drive to the mall or music lessons or wherever.

It was given to me by a girl named Ryan, one of my few "online friends" from the late '90s/early '00s.

I never knew I liked Sonic Youth or Prince or the Pixies until I listened to the songs on this mix.

I have since lost the tape, but I still have the case. Ryan, where are you now?

The B-side:
Prince - Raspberry Beret
James - Laid
Velocity Girl - Can't Stop Smiling
Archers of Loaf - Wrong
Adorable - Homeboy
Hole - Whose Porno You Burn
Nirvana - Happy Song*
REM - Radio Free Europe
Luscious Jackson - Naked Eye

* = Also known as Verse Chorus Verse. ("And if you save yourself, you will make him happy.")

Hello Amber

2009-08-09T10:00:00.002-04:00

One of the best things about the best zines, I think, is learning about other people and where they're coming from. Last week I got to know Amber, through a "superpack" of five issues of her zine Culture Slut.

If Amber and I met in real life, we might not think we had that much in common just by looking at each other. She has tattoos and pink dreadlocks and likes to drink wine and have dance parties. I'm a close-to-teetotaling wallflower with boring old straight brown hair and no "ink" to speak of. Then again, we both have kind of rad glasses, and we're both feminists. In Culture Slut, Amber writes about stuff like wishing she had a tight girl gang and dealing with looking young for her age—which I can totally relate to. She also gets personal, relating how she found out about her half sister and telling the story of why she changed her name.

Culture Slut #17 is actually a split with Telegram Ma'am #17, made by Amber's twin sister Maranda. Culture Slut #18 is the latest edition, and it's the Polaroid Issue, printed in color! It's full of photos of Amber's friends and places she's seen in her journeys. You can order just that one, but I recommend the superpack for a better appreciation of the person behind the pictures.

Depeches-toi, Depeches-toi et Attends

2009-08-03T22:29:00.004-04:00

When we first meet Johnny, he's 12, a budding Goth with a cool spider-girl babysitter. Then his dad dies, and his mom, crippled with grief, can't afford to pay Tessa to come over after school anymore. Johnny has to be the one to make sure the bills get paid and the fridge stays stocked. Drinking helps him deal.

Fast-forward four years, and someone slips him E at a club. That's how Johnny finally ends up in rehab, and that's where he first hears Debbie Harry, singing "Sunday Girl" in French.

Now Blondie is his drug of choice, and he can't get enough of Debbie. She's cool, tough, and beautiful—and more than he wants her, Johnny kinda sorta wants to be her.

In her debut novel, Meagan Brothers tenderly explores what all this means for Johnny. He doesn't want to be a girl, but he wants to be like a certain girl. Is he gay? Well, he has a new girlfriend who he's pretty crazy about. But when that girlfriend buys him a Debbie Harry dress at the thrift store, he's not completely opposed to trying it on.

Teen transvestite lit is definitely a new one for me. But the question of how we relate to our rock stars based on gender has long held a certain fascination. I've always been more drawn to female singers because of the idea that I could be them instead of just being the one that they're singing to.

In some ways Johnny's character reads like a girl, and I don't know if that's because the book was written by a woman or because he's such a sensitive, "artistic" guy. Either way, he's a sweetheart. I'd be his girlfriend.

And That's a Promise

2009-07-30T22:00:00.002-04:00

Inspirational art doesn't have to be lame. Case in point: the work of Shelli Dorfe, proprietress of Studio Mela. The Minnesota artist's text-heavy prints are simple, sweet and just the right amount of funny. (I mean, have you seen a bird with a french fry?)

So Very Happy is #2 in my Imaginary Art Gallery series. If I had it, I'd hang it up just inside the front door so I could look at it every day as I grab my keys on the way out.

My Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Education

2009-07-21T21:38:00.002-04:00

With 179 books (including The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It; My Invented Life; and Hex Education) on my to-read list, I am finally gearing up for some new book reviews!

This spring I was busy reading two books a week for my YA lit class and writing them up for a different, more "professional" blog. And then I had to take some time to breathe and read some grownup books and some books that I didn't write about at all.

But now I'm ready to get unprofessional again (though I'm attempting to keep up the other blog, too), and I've already put some books on hold at the library. Not these three, not yet—but I just couldn't resist showing off their gorgeous covers. For some reason the close-up of a girl with writing upon her face is really selling me. Plus bubblegum and freckles and black nail polish. And green eyes.

Babe Ruthless

2009-07-16T15:34:00.003-04:00

So, let's review who's in this movie: Ellen Page, Drew Barrymore, Alia Shawkat, Kristen Wiig, Eve, Juliette Lewis... and Drew directed. Yeah, I wanna see it! I wish I was tough enough for roller derby, but since I'm more of a Betty Bookworm than a Smashlee Simpson, watching is just fine for me. Maybe I'll make it to a Philly Roller Girls match one of these days.

City of Love

2009-07-04T10:00:00.011-04:00

I moved to Philadelphia, City of (Brotherly) Love, in September 2008, and I've barely seen it outside the little neighborhood where I live, work, and go to school. So here's my ongoing list of Places to Check Out, to be moved to a list of Places I Have Checked Out as I do so. Suggestions? Let me know!

Philadelphia Places to Check Out:

AKA Music
Most commonly recommended record store.

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Great name. Cool-looking store.

Art Star
Like, the coolest boutique or something.

Franklin Fountain
Old-fashioned ice cream parlor recommended by friends.

Jones Restaurant
Looks "kitschy."

Long in the Tooth
Record store. For some reason, I first typed this as "Long in the Tootle."

Mama's Vegetarian
Falafels!

Omoi
A mecca for cuteness?

Random Tea Room & Curiosity Shop
Reminds me of my favorite tea place in Seattle.

South Street
Occasionally hung out there as a college student; haven't been back since.

Philadelphia Places I Have Checked Out:

Copabanana
Went for lunch on a Sunday afternoon. Good burger, but nothing to write home about. Maybe come back for margaritas one night? (If only I actually drank margaritas.) 7/11/09

Fairmount Park and Schuylkill Banks
Walked along the river, checked out the Waterworks and read the inscriptions on all the statues of old dudes. A lovely Sunday activity! 9/13/09

Last Word Bookshop
Most important to me: a truly decent children's/YA selection. Secondly important: like all good used bookstores, it includes a cat.

Milk & Honey Market
I anticipated their opening for months and finally got there only to be kinda disappointed by the small selection and the fact that they sold us moldy sour cream. But thumbs up on the cheese and nut free sample! 1/7/10

PHAG (Philadelphia Home Art Garden)
Cute little shop on Walnut Street filled with some really slick larger pieces as well as a good selection of kitschy accessories. It's like visiting your kooky gay uncle. 8/15/09

Philadephia Museum of Art
Dude, now I know why it was such a great workout for Rocky to run up those steps—there's so many of them! Didn't explore the whole museum but got to see some Marcel Duchamps and other cool stuff. 9/13/09

Reading Terminal Market
I feel like kind of a traitor to Seattle, but as far as the food goes anyway, I have to say RTM beats Pike Place Market. Where else can you get Italian, Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, AND Amish cuisine all under one roof? Plus the bathroom here is way nicer. 7/25/09

Tampopo
We went there for Valentine's Day!
What I wrote before: Sushi and noodle-type restaurant, newish to the neighborhood. Looks cute. Also, if you bring your own bowl, you can "save the mother earth and fifty cents all in one place."
What I say now: Small menu, which I like because it probably means that they're good at what they do. You order at the counter and get a little beeper that lets you know when your food is ready. Loved my tofu yakisoba, and there was enough for leftovers. 2/14/10

Sweet (Cotton-Pickin') Darlin'

2009-06-30T18:54:00.008-04:00

Check it out: Zooey Deschanel's cotton commercial! She actually recorded a whole three-minute song that you can listen to and download. And you can learn all about her cotton-y look, too. Zooey says, "While I enjoy vintage styles, it's important that a fabric keep its shape. Form is essential to me, even in casual wear."

What do you think? Is this weird? I guess cotton is just about the least offensive product to endorse, and at least they let her wear cute clothes, right?

Harper Perennial Modern Classic!

2009-06-27T10:38:00.003-04:00

Thanks to a generous birthday gift, I have finally begun my Bell Jar collection. It wasn't a collection when I just had one copy, but now that I have two, I'd say it qualifies. My new copy contains that same "biographical note" in the back by Lois Ames, as well as my favorite villanelle Mad Girl's Love Song and SP's little sketches. It also adds a foreword by Frances McCullough.

Of course, my trip to the bookstore wouldn't be a success if I didn't deplete my entire gift card. I also got yesterday a paperback copy of Special Topics in Calamity Physics and two new-to-me young adult novels: Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger (about the friendship between two zinesters!) and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Let the summer reading begin.

Heal the World, Make it a Better Place

2009-06-25T19:42:00.004-04:00

Seriously sad about Michael Jackson.

The Twins

2009-06-17T10:00:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow is my birthday! I'm a Gemini dating a Gemini (his day is in May), so there are really four of us in this relationship. Therefore, we need this print from Etsy artist Elsita, aka Elsa Mora, a thirtysomething Cuban/ American mother of three. I love the colors, the crazy hair, the two sets of legs! Elsa makes all kinds of art and also blogs at http://elsita.typepad.com.

Gemini is #1 in my new series tentatively titled Imaginary Art Gallery. This is everything I would hang in my bathroom next to the Mona Lisa if I were Daddy Warbucks.

I Know We're Cool

2009-06-05T21:49:00.000-04:00

Call me Jenny Come Lately, but I can't let No Doubt's appearance on last month's flashback episode of Gossip Girl pass by without some sort of comment. Dude, it brought me back to 1997, when I saw them (but not Weezer, because I was too busy being sick in the restroom during my so-excited-I-can-and-will-puke phase—TMI?) for the first and only time at the Jones Beach theater. Gwen and Gavin always tied Kurt and Courtney for the title of My Favorite Couple of the '90s. But G&G could never have happened if Gwen hadn't fallen in love—and broken up—with Tony first. And now they're c-cool! Check out these vids chronicling their relationship, from heartbreak to regret to okay-ness.

Don't Speak | my 10th grade after-school snack

No Doubt |MTV Music

Simple Kind of Life | hearts♥ for pink hair Gwen

No Doubt |MTV Music

Cool | solo Gwen embraces her Italian heritage

Gwen Stefani |MTV Music

Why I Love Summer

2009-05-21T23:56:00.003-04:00

So back a couple of weeks ago, when I posted about Jenny Han's haiku contest celebrating the release of The Summer I Turned Pretty, I had no idea that I would win it!

The theme of the contest was "your favorite things about summer." This is what I wrote:

long bike rides with friends
bugs a-glow in clear glass jars
slurping otter pops

But if I were you, I'd be more interested in the prizes! Miss Jenny sent me a signed copy of the book (which I plan to read and booktalk for my YA lit class), plus this really cool USB mixtape thingy with songs by Beck, Band of Horses, Jenny Lewis, The Smiths, and many others including my favorites, Camera Obscura. Thank you, Jenny!

7 Things That Make This Blog Rock

2009-05-12T17:15:00.005-04:00

Sadako tagged me in this meme (name seven things that make your blog awesome, and then pass it on to seven other awesome people), and I have to say that the number SEVEN is somewhat daunting! But I'ma go for it.

1. I only post about once each week, so you don't have to wade through any filler. Just 100% Stuff I Consider Important Enough to Spend at Least 10 Minutes Writing About.

2. No real focus! That means you can read about Peaches Geldof one day, and Frida Kahlo's eyebrows the next.

3. Flashbacks: I got Taffy Sinclair, I got Jem, I got Slam Book Fever.

4. I work in a library. I like to borrow lots of books from the library. Especially YA fiction. And then I write about those books here. Except not right now, because I'm taking this really cool class in which I have to read 20 YA books in 10 weeks and write about them on a different blog. But the books will be back.

5. Check out For Reels. I'm rating every single movie I watch (for the first time) in 2009. The best so far has been Quinceanera. The worst? St. Elmo's Fire.

6. I know I'll never be as funny as FourFour or as smart as Feministing, and I don't try to be. I'm just doing my thing.

7. When you hear Mode a la Pie, you think about ice cream.

Who else is awesome in my opinion? Well, Crush Crazy Cute Down and Good Egg, to name a couple. And you know what, let's just leave it at that—I love being tagged, but I'm kind of shy about doing it myself. If Gidget or Kate sees this and feels compelled to do the meme, that will be awesome, too.

Blackest Coffee You Will Ever See

2009-05-03T11:46:00.003-04:00

My Camera Obscura station (aka The Bee's Knees) on Pandora has come up with some real gems. Here's one of them! I was introduced to Emiliana Torrini years ago by an online friend I have since lost touch with, and hearing her on my "radio" was a really nice surprise. "Heartstopper" is from her album Fisherman's Woman. It's a strange video for a beautiful song. Enjoy it.

Tweetie Sweet Pea

2009-04-21T20:07:00.006-04:00

Between my six-times-a-day Jezebel habit and my lifetime subscription to NYLON, I've been hearing a lot about this Peaches Geldof chick lately. She's kind of the British version of Nicole Richie. But more like Paris Hilton, she has a sister who you might get her confused with.

That sister is named Pixie. Which brings me to my point. Peaches and Pixie are the two famous sisters (cause they do fashion/modely/socialite stuff), but they aren't the only ones. There's Fifi, the big sis, and Tiger Lily, the little sis, too! And why is this of such extreme interest to me? (Which it is.) Because I can only conclude that my favorite author, Francesca Lia Block, has been stealing their names for her characters!

There are Peachy Pie and Pixie, both in the Girl Goddess #9 short story collection, published in 1996. (Peachy Pie has a sister named Tweetie, and Pixie has a BFF named Pony.) And Fifi is Dirk's grandma from Weetzie Bat, published in 1989. There's no Tiger Lily in the FLB canon that I can think of, but she does give us a Witch Baby and a Cherokee Bat. Tell me, am I on to something?

Summer I Turned Pretty Contest

2009-04-11T09:44:00.004-04:00

Super special prize alert: Jenny Han, author of Shug, has just announced a contest to win a signed copy of her new book, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and a USB mix tape of the music that inspired it! All you have to do is write a haiku about your favorite summery things and mention the contest on your own blog/journal/what-have-you.

I'm mentioning it on my blog. Right now. All that's left to do is write three lines of poetry. The deadline is April 20. More details are on Jenny Han's livejournal. Go!

Smile with Allison's Doll Eyes

2009-04-08T22:42:00.005-04:00

Top Model pulled a double feature tonight—besides the regular episode, they also aired the usual mid-cycle hour of recap and outtakes. Now that it's down to seven girls, I reveal ... MY FAVORITES (in alphabetical order):

Allison
I love her eyes, her obsession with nose bleeds, and that pink dress she wore that one time. (Previous ANTM contestant point of reference: Heather. Or Marjorie. The weird girls.)

Celia
It's obvious she loves fashun, and she's pretty competent all around. Plus, that tattletale act was pure entertainment. I see top three in her future. (Previous ANTM contestant point of reference: Melrose.)

Fo
She is so cute with those freckles and the haircut that made her cry. (Previous ANTM contestant point of reference: Saleisha.)

I also like Aminat, and I wouldn't be surprised if Teyona won what with Tyra's love for her wind-tunnel face. But Natalie's a snob-and-a-half, and you know London is outta there soon.

From the Archives: "Don't Feed the Rabbit Lettuce!"

2009-04-01T10:00:00.004-04:00

A cute little story for and about bookworms, Eve Bunting's Sixth Grade Sleepover (1986) answers the age-old question "How can you go to a school lock-in if you're afraid of the dark?"

Janie and her friend Claudia are RABBITS (members of Read a Book, Bring it to School) who love taking care of the class bunny Pebbles, worshiping the school reading specialist Mrs. Golden, and crushing on boy RABBITS Blake and Malcolm. When the sixth grade RABBITS-only sleepover is announced, Claudia's psyched. But Janie has a problem—stemming from the fact that her babysitter used to lock her in a dark hall closet! For real.

I love how this book makes reading seem like the coolest thing ever. We never had a reading club at my school, but I always participated in the library's summer reading program and remember being really psyched the one year I tied another girl for most books read.

Where the Hipsters Are & Other Stories

2009-03-25T20:52:00.007-04:00

I'm on semi-vacation this week, but I do have a few odds and ends to share.

Movies I'm excited about

Spike Jonze's version of Where the Wild Things Are looks ah-mazing. I'm skeptical of picture books being stretched into feature-length films, but I think they may be able to pull this one off.

I'm sold on 500 Days of Summer for the following reasons: The Smiths, Regina Spektor, Zooey Deschanel, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who was so cute in 10 Things I Hate About You and has aged quite well over the past decade). Also, I think the geeky chic guy from Criminal Minds is in it, and I'm pretty sure that's a scene of them frolicking in IKEA. Just like my boyfriend and I always do when we go there.

Other flicks on the ol' radar: Away We Go and Coco Avant Chanel.

Miss Porter's School

This NY Times article is a few days old but worth checking out if you are interested in or mildly obsessed with boarding school drama and secret societies. Bonus: the girl in the article is named Tatum T. Bass. Any relation to Chuck?

It's That Time Again

2009-03-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Pi(e) Day! Take a look at these beauties from the RIVET Fair back in '07.

From the Archives: "A Duplicate of Michael Jackson's Sequined Glove"

2009-03-08T20:19:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I rescued a box of old books from the depths of my parents' attic. Alongside almost half of my Baby-sitters Club collection and classics like the Ramona books, I found a few odd single-titles. Of course, I couldn't wait to revisit these. The first one I picked up to re-read was Channel 10 from Nowhere (1985).

I remembered this as being a cool, kinda creepy book. I did not recall how super-short it is (62 pages) or that it was published as a Weekly Reader Book. The author, Lewis K. Parker, seems to have written mostly non-fiction for kids. However, this story definitely had me hooked back in the day.

Rachel is a normal 12-year-old girl who exhibits an interest in basketball and is lucky enough to have her own TV in her bedroom. One day her pesky little bro breaks off the knob—how quaint. So she calls a TV repair service from the phonebook and is promptly visited by two weird, maybe alien repair dudes. As they leave, they assure her that Channel 10 will come in nice and clearly. But Rachel's never gotten Channel 10 on her TV set. And it's not even listed in the TV guide.

So what's on Channel 10? SCENES FROM THE FUTURE! Rachel tunes in to some pretty innocuous stuff, like the dedication of a time capsule at her town's new post office. But it's not all Norman Rockwell hunky-dory information that's broadcast. And if she uses her knowledge of what she sees to change the course of history, Rachel could be in big trouble.

I think that I liked this little book because of how much fun it was to imagine what I would do if I were tuning in to Channel 10.

I also used to wish I could freeze time like the girl on Out of this World.

Top YA Books Meme

2009-03-03T21:51:00.004-05:00

Taking this from Librarilly Blonde.

The following list of books teens love, books teens should read, and books adults who serve teens should know about was compiled IN ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC MANNER and should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

Instructions:
Put an "X" next to the books you've read
Put a "+" next to the books you LOVE
Put a "#" next to the books you plan on reading
Tally your "X"s at the bottom
Share with your friends!

1. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams
2. Kit's Wilderness / David Almond
3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie #
4. Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson X+
5. Feed / M.T. Anderson
6. Flowers in the Attic / V.C. Andrews X+
7. 13 Reasons Why / Jay Asher
8. Am I Blue? / Marion Dane Bauer (editor) #
9. Audrey Wait! / Robin Benway X
10. Weetzie Bat / Francesca Lia Block X+
11. Tangerine / Edward Bloor
12. Forever / Judy Blume #
13. What I Saw and How I Lied / Judy Blundell #
14. Tyrell / Coe Booth #
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Ann Brashares X
16. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray #
17. The Princess Diaries / Meg Cabot #
18. The Stranger / Albert Camus #
19. Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card X
20. Postcards from No Man's Land / Aidan Chambers
21. Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky X+
22. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
23. Gingerbread / Rachel Cohn X+
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist / Rachel Cohn and David Levithan X
25. Artemis Fowl (series) / Eoin Colfer
26. The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins
27. The Midwife's Apprentice / Karen Cushman
28. The Truth About Forever / Sarah Dessen
29. Little Brother / Cory Doctorow
30. A Northern Light / Jennifer Donnelly
31. Tears of a Tiger / Sharon Draper
32. The House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer
33. Breathing Underwater / Alex Flinn
34. Stardust / Neil Gaiman
35. Annie on My Mind / Nancy Garden #
36. What Happened to Cass McBride / Gail Giles
37. Fat Kid Rules the World / K.L. Going
38. Lord of the Flies / William Golding X
39. Looking for Alaska / John Green #
40. Bronx Masquerade / Nikki Grimes
41. Out of the Dust / Karen Hesse
42. Hoot / Carl Hiaasen #
43. The Outsiders / S.E. Hinton #
44. Crank / Ellen Hopkins
45 The First Part Last / Angela Johnson #
46. Blood and Chocolate / Annette Curtis Klause
47. Arrow's Flight / Mercedes Lackey
48. Hattie Big Sky / Kirby Larson
49. To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee X+
50. Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan #
51. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / E. Lockhart #
52. The Giver / Lois Lowry #
53. Number the Stars / Lois Lowry X+
54. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie / David Lubar
55. Inexcusable / Chris Lynch
56. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things / Carolyn Mackler #
57. Dragonsong / Anne McCaffrey
58. White Darkness / Geraldine McCaughrean
59. Sold / Patricia McCormick
60. Jellicoe Road / Melina Marchetta #
61. Wicked Lovely / Melissa Marr
62. Twilight / Stephenie Meyer X
63. Dairy Queen / Catherine Murdock X
64. Fallen Angels / Walter Dean Myers
65. Monster / Walter Dean Myers #
66. Step From Heaven / An Na #
67. Mama Day / Gloria Naylor
68. The Keys to the Kingdom (series) / Garth Nix
69. Sabriel / Garth Nix
70. Airborn / Kenneth Oppel
71. Eragon / Christopher Paolini
72. Hatchet / Gary Paulsen
73. Life As We Knew It / Susan Beth Pfeffer
74. The Golden Compass / Phillip Pullman #
75. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging / Louise Rennison #
76. The Lightning Thief / Rick Riordan
77. Always Running: La Vida Loca / Luis Rodriguez
78. how i live now / Meg Rosoff
79. Harry Potter (series) / J.K. Rowling
80. Holes / Louis Sachar #
81. Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger X+
82. Push / Sapphire
83. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi X+
84. Unwind / Neil Shusterman
85. Coldest Winter Ever / Sister Souljah #
86. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli X
87. Chanda's Secrets / Allan Stratton
88. Tale of One Bad Rat / Brian Talbot
89. Rats Saw God / Rob Thomas
90. Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
91. Stuck in Neutral / Terry Trueman
92. Gossip Girl / Cecily Von Ziegesar X
93. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld X+
94. Every Time a Rainbow Dies / Rita Williams-Garcia
95. Pedro and Me / Judd Winick
96. Hard Love / Ellen Wittlinger
97. American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang #
98. Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin X+
99. I am the Messenger / Markus Zusak
100. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak

My tally: 20 Xs, 25 #s. I got a lot of reading to do.

Are You There God? I'm Italian

2009-02-20T18:45:00.001-05:00

Those of you who don't know me in real life (probably) don't know that I am an Italian American. Three of my four grandparents were born in "the old country," and I grew up in a family where Sunday mass was usually followed by a pasta-and-meatballs dinner cooked by my mom or one of my grandmas.

Antonia Lucia Labella, heroine of The Possibilities of Sainthood, is an Italian Catholic to the max, and author Donna Freitas passes up no opportunity to remind the reader. Antonia's family runs an Italian market that sells her mom's homemade pasta and other delicacies. Antonia's cousins are named Francesca, Concetta and Veronica. And oh yes, Antonia wants to be a saint.

The first living saint in history, actually. She regularly writes letters to the Vatican nominating herself as the Patron Saint of Figs, the Patron Saint of Pasta-Makers, et cetera. Despite this ambition, Antonia does not want to end up like the saint she shares a name with—who just happened to die a virgin.

Antonia has her eye on Andy Rotellini, the hottest senior at Bishop Francis boys' school. (She's a sophomore at the Holy Angels girls' school.) But mini-playboy Michael McGinnis—nope, he's not Italian!—has his eye on Antonia. While innocent enough for younger readers, the ensuing story manages to be quite saucy. And even though she's kind of obsessed with saints, Antonia is totally believable as a non-fanatic, very relatable teenage girl. A sequel is in the works, and I definitely plan to read it.

I Still Love You

2009-02-15T17:12:00.004-05:00

Happy St. Valentine's Day one day late. My boyfriend surprised me with this pretty lil cheesecake last night. (And up there in the corner is the chocolate and peanut butter cupcake I got for him!)

Survivor Story

2009-02-02T12:49:00.001-05:00

I've had my eye on this one for a while. Daphne Grab is one of the Longstockings, a group of YA writers whose blog I read faithfully in order to live vicariously through them. Alive and Well in Prague, New York has a title to die for and a pretty cover. That package is what drew me into the book, and I'm so glad it did.

Matisse Osgood is one of those kids who grows up in Manhattan and can't imagine life outside the city. But when her father's Parkinson's Disease gets to be too much, the family moves away from all that hustle and bustle (and the site of dad's now-stagnant art career) to the upstate town of Prague. It's the kind of place where people wear overalls and go on hayrides. Not so cool to Matisse.

In "What Girls Want" (incidentally cited by Librarilly Blonde as "the dumbest article ever written about YA literature"), Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan notes the significance of The Big Move in teen fiction:

The only thing as difficult for a girl as a divorce—if we are to judge from stories aimed at the teen market—is a move. Relocating is what led to the drug addiction, prostitution, and death that freaked out a generation of readers in Go Ask Alice, and to the teenybopper dipsomania of Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic. In the most perfectly constructed young-adult novel of the past few decades, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume heightened the anxiety in her tale of a girl awaiting her first period by beginning the story with Margaret’s move to the suburbs.

I would add Tiger Eyes to that list, too; I had the story of Davey Wexler—who moves from Atlantic City to New Mexico after her father's death—in the back of my mind all through Alive and Well. They're both about girls who need to figure things out in their own way, in their own time. Both have the help of a wise boy on their way through that journey. (Anyone else remember Wolf? He was only one of the hottest YA love interests ever.)

Alive and Well in Prague, New York conveys complicated feelings through simple words. It's a little book with a lot of heart, and I really like the way the "country" kids are portrayed as human beings, too.

Happy Birthday to Me

2009-01-20T11:20:00.001-05:00

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this little blog. Thanks so much to the two or three of you who actually read it! And in case you haven't been following from the beginning, here's a look back at the very first post. xoxo

Boo!

2009-01-15T10:29:00.003-05:00

Charlotte has spent the entire summer working on a new image for herself: She wants to be a popular, made-up cheerleader instead of the girl who no one notices. Oh, and she wants to go to the Fall Ball with Damen, the jock on whom she's been obsessively crushing for God knows how long. Lucky girl, she winds up with Damen for a lab partner on the first day of school. But before she can even make it to her next class, she chokes on a gummy bear and dies. Oops.

Now she's in Dead Ed, where all the students are teens who died in various gruesome and ridiculous ways. (Piccolo Pam swallowed her piccolo; Call Me Kim got too much cell phone radiation.) But Charlotte would rather hang around Damen and plot how to get with him even though she's dead—and invisible to everyone except Scarlet, the local goth and sister of Damen's bitchy plastic girlfriend, Petula.

The best thing about Tonya Hurley's ghostgirl is its spectacular design. The images on the web don't do it justice. It's a really, really cool-looking book, from its unique size to the pretty endpapers. Unfortunately, the writing and characterization are not much more than cute. Charlotte has no personality and is therefore difficult to root for. All we know about her is that she wants to be popular, she wants Damen, and she's pretty good at physics. Scarlet is a bit more sympathetic, but she, too, is underdeveloped. I did like some other macabre little details, like the school marching band that plays "The Beautiful People" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart." But overall, this story seems better suited for a graphic novel or movie. They should have subtitled it "an unfortunate series of events."

Good Trash

2009-01-12T22:39:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to share this VC Andrews reader challenge from Reviewer X (a pretty neat blog I just discovered) and The Chick Manifesto. I don't think I'll have the time to participate—it involves reading 11 VC Andrews books in '09, which is a lot to add to my already busy reading schedule—but I fully support the promotion of these guilty pleasures. Go join the club! Just be wary of anyone who offers powdered sugar donuts.

I ♥ This Girl

2009-01-09T16:35:00.004-05:00

I swear I spent a good few hours reading for school today. But I was also surfing the web and came across the above-above video re: Gossip Girl. Then I looked at more of this girl's "vlogs." She is so cute, and I like what she has to say. (Except that Aaron is attractive. Um, he is so icky.)

She calls herself Jane WC and she has this bunch of other friends who are Janes, but I doubt any of them are better than her. This stuff about the bike elitists? So true. There's also a really great video about the polaroid wall she and her roomies have in their house. Hella funny.

For Reels 2009

2009-01-01T12:00:00.042-05:00

Based on a five-heart rating system, the best movies I watched (for the first time) in 2009 were:

Bridge to Terabithia
Hard Candy
Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity
The Orphanage
Precious*
Quinceanera*
Rachel Getting Married*
Slumdog Millionaire
Volver
Walk the Line
The Wrestler*

Absolute favorites of the year are starred.

WORST movie of the year? Shrooms.

And all movies watched, in alphabetical order:

2LDK (2003) ♥♥1/2
Roommates fight to the death after one uses the other's shampoo without asking. In a nutshell.

Baby Mama (2008) ♥♥♥
Pretty much what you'd expect, plus one cheesy ending.

Boiler Room (2000) ♥♥♥
What's the catchy phrase for a dudes' movie? Like, instead of "chick flick"?

Bride Wars (2009) ♥♥1/2
I think they cast a blond and a brunette because the characters were otherwise so unmemorable.

Bridge to Terabithia (2007) ♥♥♥♥
Lovely retelling of the book, in spite of Leslie's portrayal as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Dan in Real Life (2007) ♥♥♥1/2
Kind of odd pacing, but surprisingly thoughtful.

Dirty Deeds (2005) ♥♥
Extremely silly teen comedy, with Milo Ventimiglia and Lacey Chabert.

Fatal Attraction (1987) ♥♥♥1/2
Whoa. So much OMG.

The Hangover (2009) ♥♥♥
More entertaining than I would have expected.

Hard Candy (2005) ♥♥♥♥
Super provocative. Also, the dude behind the counter said, "it's hard to watch if you're a guy."

Hideous Kinky (1998) ♥♥♥
Wandering and melancholy. Kate Winslet's first movie after Titanic.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007) ♥♥
Really not good, yet somehow entertaining.

In the Land of Women (2007) ♥♥1/2
Just for Adam Brody and/or Meg Ryan fans. (Kinda doubt the overlap there...)

Les Poupees Russes / Russian Dolls (2005) ♥♥♥
Sequel to L'Auberge Espanole, aka The Spanish Apartment.

Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity (2002) ♥♥♥♥
The power of little girls and love potions. Excellent.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) ♥♥
Saw it with summer camp kids. Best part was realizing one of the voices belonged to Sacha Baron Cohen.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) ♥♥♥1/2
Cute and funny. My favorite part, though, was Delysia's glam apartment.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) ♥♥♥1/2
I already knew I loved Mr. Cera—thumbs up for Ms. K Dennings, too!

Okie Noodling (2001) ♥♥♥
Documentary about fishermen who do it without a rod and reel. Dudes are crazy.

The Orphanage (2007) ♥♥♥♥
Imaginary friends have never been this creepy.

Paris, Je T'aime (2006) ♥♥♥1/2
Short films leave so much unsaid, but this has some goodies.

Penelope (2008) ♥♥♥1/2
Christina Ricci was adorable with that pig nose.

Precious (2009) ♥♥♥♥
Forced myself to the theater for this one. Heartbreaking/heartwarming.

The Princess Diaries (2001) ♥♥♥
Liked the book a whole lot better.

Quinceanera (2006) ♥♥♥♥
LOVED this one! Great cast & great script.

Rachel Getting Married (2008) ♥♥♥♥
Some tedious parts, but Anne Hathaway is amazing.

Ratatouille (2007) ♥♥♥
Who knew rodents could be likable? Cute, even.

The Road to Wellville (1994) ♥♥♥
Generally weird. Good cast, great costumes.

Rumble Fish (1983) ♥♥♥1/2
Rusty James + Motorcycle Boy = LUV.

Running With Scissors (2006) ♥♥♥
Depressing, with some funny moments mixed in.

St. Elmo's Fire (1985) ♥♥
Kind of a yawn, but I like Ally Sheedy.

Shrooms (2007) ♥1/2
A horror movie with unnecessary hallucinogens.

Single White Female (1992) ♥♥♥
Awesomely 90s, but overall, it could have been better.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008) ♥♥♥
Made me kind of teary-eyed, just like the first one.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) ♥♥♥♥
Surprised me by living up to the hype!

So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) ♥♥1/2
So I spent an hour and a half watching this silly movie.

Southland Tales (2006) ♥♥♥
To be filed under "so bad it's kind of good."

Super Size Me (2004) ♥♥♥
Spurlock annoys me, but man did this make me want a Big Mac.

Teeth (2007) ♥♥♥1/2
If you don't know what this is about, look it up.

Twilight (2008) ♥♥♥
Pretty much what I was expecting. Excited for the next one!

Valley Girl (1983) ♥♥1/2
Totally. Tublar.

Volver (2006) ♥♥♥♥
Penelope Cruz is A1 in this surprising story about mothers and daughters.

Walk the Line (2005) ♥♥♥♥
Please, Joaquin, don't quit acting. I like you.

Wilby Wonderful (2004) ♥♥♥1/2
Sandra Oh + Ellen Page + Canada + "Quirkiness" = liked it.

The Wrestler (2008) ♥♥♥♥
Gory and a bummer, but I loved it.

Ratings out of 5 hearts
♥ = did not like it
♥♥ = it was okay
♥♥♥ = liked it
♥♥♥♥ = really liked it
♥♥♥♥♥ = it was AWESOME

Valley of the Dolls

2008-12-31T11:26:00.008-05:00

Playing with dolls always struck me as nothing but childhood squared, a child doing a childish thing with a simulacrum of a child. It was like some hideous vortex.
—Meghan Daum, "Toy Children"

Daum was a teddy bear kind of girl, and in the essay from her book My Misspent Youth, she celebrates stuffed animals for being "more closely connected with the imaginative world than dolls are."

I was a serial monogamist when it came to childhood sleeping partners, first cuddling up with a Puffalump panda I called Leopold, then the big white bear that was a present from my third grade teacher, and later a succession of Macy's holiday plush toys.

I loved all those guys, but in the light of day it was no secret that I preferred my dolls. A recent purging of my parents' attic reintroduced me to a My Child with dark pigtails and soft skin, Rainbow Brite in her shiny spacegirl dress, and a small crop of Cabbage Patch Kids. Yes, I used to have fun pretending the Preemie was my little baby. However, it was the more grown-up dolls that held my interest the longest. Molly McIntyre and her imaginary 1940s world provided hours of play, especially as my collection of her clothes and accessories grew (and grew and grew). And anyone who has read chapter one of this book knows what can go on with Barbies.

Maybe I will become a crazy doll lady if adopting a puppy doesn't work out.

Dandy Andies

2008-12-10T19:26:00.002-05:00

For a while my secret wish was to have a nickname—Andie, specifically. It never quite took off. But get out the popcorn, cause tonight I'm celebrating my favorite Andies and Andys of the silver screen.

Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) in The Devil Wears Prada
Yeah, she should have stayed away from that sleazy journalist dude and made it work with Adrian Grenier. But her makeover could only have been more exciting if it had been orchestrated by Cher Horowitz herself.

Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) in Pretty in Pink
All she wants to do is date the cute rich guy, but she's so embarassed about how poor she is (she literally lives on the wrong side of the tracks) and his rich friends are all super jerks. Once again, thank goodness for the clothes.

And my favorite: Andy Carmichael (Kerri Green) in The Goonies
This pretty and popular cheerleader accidentally made out with Sean Astin, was BFF with supercool Martha Plimpton, and gave me the Andie-as-a-nickname idea in the first place.

P.S. Dishonorable mention goes to magazine editor Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. She gets minus points for a stupid last name, a ridiculous plot and an obnoxious leading man. Then there's Andrea Zuckerman of 9021-old fame, who could have been an Andie if she wasn't so snobby about the pronunciation of her name.

Broke My Camera Just by Posing

2008-11-21T19:09:00.002-05:00

Ann M. Martin knows life isn't all pizza toasts and baby parades, and back in '87 she proved it by writing Slam Book. I'm guessing and hoping that this is her darkest novel ever. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say there's this slam book. And all the kids in ninth grade write nasty secret things about each other in it. And someone ends up dead.

Oh my lord!

In Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, the slam book scene ends in a model airplane fight after comments like "Hair: needs washing" and "Face: weird eyebrows."

My one and only real-life slam book experience was at an eighth-grade sleepover back when "Loser" was the song of the moment. I think we got bored with it before it was my turn to leave the room. Thank goodness.

And She Was SENT HOME

2008-11-16T19:18:00.014-05:00

Wednesday is the finale of ANTM Cycle 11—we've said goodbye to transgendered Isis, Hannah Alaska, control freak Elina, and sassy, sassy Sheena. But last week marked the elimination of one of my favorites. Marjorie the shy French girl, the photogenic bundle of nerves, the self-proclaimed Hunchback of Notre Dame. She gives a nice exit interview here.

Analeigh for the win. Yo.

A Heart that Works

2008-11-09T22:00:00.003-05:00

Juliana Hatfield is in treatment for an eating disorder, and today she blogged about it. ("This is me being modern," she says.)

Juliana is 41. We often hear about teenage girls suffering through anorexia but not grown women. It's really brave of her to be open about her experience, and I hope she's back to her healthy, singing self before too long.

Yes He Can

2008-11-05T01:23:00.004-05:00

Photo: Vibe

Now that the election is over, can I just say that we have a new president who I find quite attractive?

People in my neighborhood came outside to bang pots and pans, sing and dance in the street tonight.

Mythbusters

2008-10-27T17:33:00.003-04:00

Via Feministing: This provocative Scottish ad campaign is causing quite a stir. Personally, I think it's great.

Mini Cooper Meets Lil J!

2008-10-25T10:24:00.005-04:00

Guess who's coming to Gossip Girl? This Monday, Willa Holland—aka The OC's Kaitlin Cooper—begins a three-episode arc as some kind of model/frenemy of Jenny Humphrey. It's a match I've been dreaming of since I first saw Taylor Momsen as Little Jenny. But her character is so much more than a second-rate Mini Coop. (And on a slightly more personal note, I totally had an imaginary friend named Little Jenny when I was four.) Go little sisters!

Art Saves

2008-10-14T17:45:00.012-04:00

Happy Teen Read Week! I finally got a chance to visit the public library in my new city, and the first book I borrowed was—of course—a teen read.

The Plain Janes was Cecil Castelluci's first graphic novel (with drawings by Jim Rugg), published by the now-axed teen girls' imprint Minx. I love it! It's all about Jane, a girl who saves herself from her traumatic past with guerrilla art projects and a new group of girlfriends, all named Jane. They call themselves People Loving Art In Neighborhoods (P.L.A.I.N.). Besides our heroine main Jane, there's drama Jane, brain Jane and butch-unibrow-jock Jane. Now you can read about their continued adventures in Janes in Love.

And with The Guerrilla Art Kit, you can love art in your own neighborhood.

Guerrilla Girls, anyone?

Tofutti Cuties

2008-10-09T09:57:00.001-04:00

Etsy and tofu, I love both. And there's lots of chances to get them together. What's more lovable than anthropomorphic and/or plush soybean curd? Here are a few of my favorites. (Above: Toddler Tofu T from The T-Shirt Project, $18.)

L to R: Grilled Tofu from Go Buggy, $15. Tofu for Obama from ChrisCreatures, $10.

L to R: Happy Tofu Family Kawaii Pendant from auryndesign, $12. Little Tofu Studs from Komodokat, $7.

Philly Zine Fest '08

2008-10-05T15:49:00.010-04:00

I went to the Philly Zine Fest today and came home with Andrea's Real-Life Animal Adventures #2. Yeah, I picked it for the name, but it also has a cute design and appealingly simple concept. Andrea writes about (and draws) all the animals she's encountered, from a sparrow to a seal to a swallowtail butterfly. I like how she presents the animals that I usually think of as gross or pesky—squirrels, pigeons, rats—from a sympathetic viewpoint. Them varmints may be annoying, but I guess all creatures have their place in the world.

And for the budding librarian in me, I got one of Lollipoop Designs' library card journals. These are made from real cards like the ones I used to fill out at my elementary school library, back in the days when we had to thumb through the card catalog to look for books by title, author or subject.

Both Andrea's Real-Life Animal Adventures and the library card journal came from My My. I regret not fighting the crowd to get a good look at the PB&J table, too. That's Publishing by Brianna & Jessica, who are two very cool 12-year-old girls.

I did manage to score a vegan donut, though! The lady behind the table encouraged me to get one with icing that was made pink by cranberries, not food coloring.

It Boy: Michael Cera

2008-09-30T11:11:00.000-04:00

How can a boy who's so cute inspire a love that's so wrong? He and Rupert Grint are my favorite 20-year-old crushes. So I have a few years on Mikey. No biggie. At least I'm not in love with my cousin, like someone I know. (Ahem! Georgemichaelbluth!)

He was adorably awkward in Arrested Development and Juno, and now I am so excited for Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist! I think it will give him the chance to play someone a little bit cooler. Cause I bet he is cool, in real life. I mean, he had his own Internet TV show. If that's not hip, I don't know what is.

By the way, in case you were not aware, Nick and Norah is based on a book of the same name written by two YA powerhouses, Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I am so glad this movie was made. They even got Devendra Banhart to make a cameo. You know, Natalie Portman's boyfriend.

Feed the Weiner Dog

2008-09-26T17:20:00.000-04:00

With the very last issue of RIVET in the works and the recent demise of so many other great publications (like Punk Planet, for one), I was so sad to see this video about the possible end of Bitch. They had one month to raise $40K for the next issue. AND THEY DID IT.

I don't think many people realize just how expensive it is to publish a magazine with a pretty color cover and lots of shiny pages. Most of these independent magazines are just making enough money to scrape by. Bitch surpassed its fund-raising goal for the time being, but the struggle isn't over. If "feminist response to pop culture" floats your boat, you should think about subscribing. I know, personally, that it's hard to make donations if you don't make a ton of money. Subscribing is a nice compromise because you get something tangible out of it, too. Bitch is a smart, thought-provoking read. But if you do have the cash to donate a cause, think about what's really important to you and what would make you proud to support. It feels good to give!

And while we're on the subject of giving, RIVET can use your help in making the next-and-last issue happen. Click here to donate, and if you happen to be in Seattle, you can show your support at the party/art auction Oct. 4. It's the "right" thing to do.

Version 2.0

2008-09-23T19:50:00.000-04:00

Photo: TV Guide

So I'm a couple of weeks behind on this, but news flash! Shirley Manson, my favorite Garbage lady and yours, is putting her wicked acting skills to work Monday nights on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She's totally hot as an evil Scottish terminator. Way to go, casting dudes—and set dressers, too. That's an awesome desk.

All Girls in Autumn

2008-09-21T12:09:00.000-04:00

“Everyone wants something new / What’s familiar just won’t do.” So sings All Girl Summer Fun Band on their new album, Looking Into It. True enough; if a band doesn’t change over the course of 10 years, they’re one-trick My Little Ponies in many people’s eyes. But AGSFB has grown with every recording since their four song debut EP, and this one – five long years after the release of 2 – marks the biggest progression of all. It’s the first album without bassist Ari D., and despite the number of welcome hand claps and cute little “uh ohs,” introduces some surprisingly dark, sad songs to the band’s repertoire. Like ones with lyrics about breaking plastic toys and turning tears to snow. So where’s the summer fun in that? In Kim and Jen’s sweet girly voices. Best among the rough tracks I’ve heard: the pretty ballad “The Only Ones.” I’d like to imagine it’s a sequel to “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Troublemaker,” or maybe what happens after that girl “borrows” Becky’s boyfriend.

Lollypops in Hell

2008-08-22T19:38:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned my favorite naughty-pop band from Clermont-Ferrand, France? The Wendy Darlings came to my attention on MySpace by a random stroke of good fortune, and earlier this year I interviewed them for my zine Treacle. They've since recorded a demo—and I'm now the proud owner of a lovingly personalized copy! The songs are fun and catchy as all heck, plus singer/guitarist Saddam Suzy has real star quality in her voice. Keep your eye on these guys, and check out the band's MySpace page for a video Vaselines cover. The sun shines in your bedroom when they play!

Queen of Rock n Roll

2008-08-18T12:47:00.002-04:00

Some girls just wanna have fun like Cyndi Lauper. I, personally, want to be the girl with the most cake. And Stephanie Kuehnert wrote the new book I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. It's about Emily Black, who starts her punk rock career as (what some might call) a groupie but discovers her true power when she forms her own band—called She Laughs—with BFF Regan. It's also the story of Emily's mom, Louisa, who left the family when Emily was just a baby and has been running ever since. After a few weeks on the road herself, Stephanie kindly took the time to answer some of my questions about this epic rock tale.

Did you write I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone with a YA audience in mind? I found it much more mature than many of the teen novels I read and think lots of "grownups" in their 20s and 30s would like it.

I didn't necessarily write it with a YA audience in mind. I wrote it hoping that it would be enjoyed by anyone age 16 and up. I knew it would have appealed to me as a teenager, but I wrote it originally as an adult novel. The adult publishing houses passed it up and my agent eventually started shopping it to YA publishing houses, but MTV Books who ultimately took it on is actually an adult publisher. They do both YA books and books that may have a teen audience, but that are sold in the adult section of the bookstore, which is what is happening with my book. It's really more of a "crossover" book than a YA book.

In the book, Emily gets into the underground music scene at River's Edge; was there a cool all-ages venue near your hometown when you were that age?

Yes! It wasn't quite as underground and run as a collective like River's Edge, but River's Edge is like the rural version of Chicago's Fireside Bowl, which is a functioning bowling alley that started hosting punk shows in the mid-nineties. The Fireside actually makes an appearance in IWBYJR. I was at that place every weekend and sometimes more often than that depending on what bands were playing. It was cheap, it was intimate, it was totally punk rock. And people even bowled during shows sometimes. Now, sadly, it is back to being a regular old bowling alley. It's a real loss to the Chicago punk scene.

Can you envision a She Laughs music video?

Wow, the one thing I didn't write about was a She Laughs music video. Huh. They watch a show on MTV, like a made-up punk version of TRL, but I never did do a shooting-a-music-video scene. I think this might be because I never wrote full lyrics for any She Laughs songs and I would need to know what the song is about to get a video idea. Those are the kind of videos I love, like Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing," or REM's "End of the World as We Know (and I Feel Fine)." I imagine they would intersperse some live footage from River's Edge in with the video though. And their videos would have a sense of humor to them because Emily is so sarcastic and funny. I can see her doing something like Nirvana's "In Bloom" video for example. Yeah, I'm dating myself referencing all these early nineties videos, but maybe if MTV played more videos, I'd have a better idea of what they were like now. Hint, hint, MTV!

Emily and Regan are best friends and bandmates. Who's your favorite real-life girl rock duo?

Well, technically Sleater-Kinney is a trio and I don't mean to leave their drummer out at all, but I would have to say Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein. The way their voices and instruments work together and feed off each other. Ah gorgeous! Those ladies write the best songs together (including the song that the book is named for, "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" from their second album Call the Doctor). Please come back from hiatus, Sleater-Kinney, we miss you!

Have you ever been in a band? If you started a band now, what would it be called?

I haven't been in a band, not really. I tried to form a band called the Morning After on two occasions in high school. I wanted it to be an all-girl band, but none of us really knew how to play and were too busy with other adolescent antics to seriously learn to play. I still would love to have that band. If I miraculously woke up talented one day… And if someone else isn't already using the name.

What can you tell us about your next book?

It's called Ballads of Suburbia and will be out next summer, probably in July. The brief one line summary (which I am so bad at, I really won't be able to describe it until they write the back cover copy for it) is "After years of feeling like an outcast in her suburban town, sixteen year-old Kara finds her place among a group of punks, skaters, and other misfits who hang out at a local park, but as the teens try to cope with bad relationships and broken homes, life spirals out of control." You can read more about it, including the first chapter at stephaniekuehnert.com/backstage.

Thanks, Stephanie! This was a real treat after my long hiatus. I can't recommend the book enough to all the girls out there with rock n roll dreams.

Owww!

2008-07-24T21:13:00.000-04:00

While I prepare to move Mode a la Pie headquarters across the country, please accept this Gossip Girl promo as a gift from me to you. Since the last time I wrote about the show, I've watched every episode and become a true blue fan. Chuck, Serena and Jenny are among my faves, but overall I think I'm on Team Blair. Love her in this little teaser—doesn't she look kind of like a Heather? Something about the whole production, with the character names in yellow type, feels super '80s in a way that makes me very excited for Labor Day.

Some Girls are Bigger than Others

2008-07-10T00:26:00.000-04:00

They say "fat is a feminist issue," and I believe it. Maybe especially for younger women—but I don't remember any teen novels about it from the old days, except Blubber (which is good but not told from the fat girl's POV) and apparently The Cat Ate My Gymsuit. Right now, however, there are at least two newish fat-girl YA books on the market, and I just read both of them. Big Fat Manifesto, by Susan Vaught, is the more serious of the two, while Nico Medina's Fat Hoochie Prom Queen takes a lighter, fluffier perspective of the issue (as perhaps indicated by its title).

Both stories are told from the perspective of overweight yet popular girls with gay BFF sidekicks. Hoochie's Margarita "Madge" Diaz is a proud Latina; Jamie Carcaterra of Manifesto is white (at least I think so ... maybe Italian?) with a black boyfriend. Margarita's sister sews her up some sweet big-girl outfits, but Jamie's stuck shopping in the Dress Barn Woman-type shops for old ladies who love dressing up as blueberries. Overall, it seems Madge is more okay with her weight, and it's more incidental to her character. Jamie, on the other hand, has fatness at the front of her mind: she writes a column for the school newspaper all about it, and her aforementioned boyfriend, a big guy himself, is considering bariatric surgery. For all her outward confidence, she harbors a secret shame and won't even eat lunch in front of her friends at school. Whoa.

Even though it doesn't offer any easy answers, I'd say Manifesto is a must-read for any teenage girl dealing with (over)weight issues. As kind of an aside, one of the best things I took away from it—from Jamie's column, actually—is the knowledge that Karl Lagerfeld is un grand morceau de merde. It seems he was not amused when H&M sold his designs in sizes larger than, like, 2 and 4. "What I designed is fashion for slim and slender people," he is quoted as saying. Too-tan jerk.

On the more fun side of things, you have Hoochie, a book about two girls' competition to be elected prom queen, in a Bring It On kind-of way. Two thumbs up! But put one down if you're not cool with gratuitous teen drinking, even if the aforementioned teens weigh enough to hold their liquor.

Flora and Fauna

2008-06-22T01:56:00.000-04:00

From The Pie and the Patty Pan

Last night I watched Miss Potter, starring Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter and a mustachioed Ewan McGregor as the publisher she almost married. What a delight—as a romance and as the story of the woman behind Peter Rabbit and all the other tales. Not only did she love cuddly animals, but she was passionate about science and nature. She earned enough money from her books to own several properties in England's Lake District and left more than 4,000 acres of land, including Hill Top farm, to the National Trust.

Here in the U.S., the Philadelphia Free Library and Princeton University both have extensive collections of Beatrix Potter artwork, letters, manuscripts and the like. What I'd really like to see is her diary. She wrote in a secret code; how clever is that?

Even When I Was 12

2008-06-08T12:05:00.000-04:00

Fifteen years ago, I didn't have a CD collection. I had a CD: Amy Grant's Heart in Motion. Hardly Liz Phair. So I can't say I've been a fan of Exile in Guyville from the beginning. At age 12, I wasn't quite ready for it. (You know Thirteen, one of my favorite movies? I was like the dorky neighbor friend Evan Rachel Wood dropped the second those cool queen bees acknowledged her. And speaking of that movie, Liz's "Explain it to Me" very nicely plays over the end credits.)

Anyway, when I finally was prepared for its awesomeness, Exile in Guyville was there waiting for me at Tower Records. One of the catchier tunes, "Never Said," was on the best mix tape I'd ever received and prompted me to finally buy the CD. "Flower" is the main source of Liz's lyrical notoriety, and "Divorce Song" seems to be quite beloved by fans—but "Fuck and Run" is my flat-out favorite from the first strums of the guitar.

Now, in honor of its 15th anniversary, the album is being re-released on vinyl and Liz is playing it live in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Given the unpopularity of the glossy recent records Liz Phair and Somebody's Miracle, this celebration of her roots is a smart move. She knows everyone loves Exile in Guyville, she's acknowledging it, and hopefully that's enough for the old-school fans to allow her to move on for good. Not ready? Download the Girly-Sound tapes! Seriously, now. Get inspired by these home recordings and start a revolution in your room.

AKA Vanilla

2008-06-01T13:08:00.001-04:00

Katy is the child of two previously drug-addicted punks living in Montreal with her reformed archaeologist mom. When Mom goes on a two-week excavation to Peru, Katy has no choice but to spend the time with her deadbeat drummer dad, The Rat, in LA.

A fish out of water, yes: Katy isn't a total square; punk is just not her scene. Of course, some people—like Lake, the Rat's bandmate's daughter—think that means she's totally boring, i.e. Beige.

I found Katy a really relate-able heroine, maybe because she is kind of plain. We can't all be rebels! It's all about discovering what gives you your color, just like in Pleasantville. My other favorite character was Garth Vader, who's a skater, funny, adorable and sweet.

Also, I thought it was neat that the book got a back-cover blurb from Melissa Auf der Maur, my favorite Montreal/LA music chick. Then I realized Cecil Castellucci name-checks her as one of Lake's lady rocker idols. Maybe they are friends? CC also pays tribute to Elliott Smith (and all the bands on Garth's punk rock primer mix via the chapter titles). Can't complain about that.

Eye of the Beholder

2008-05-29T21:25:00.000-04:00

The first two pages of The Fold describe the popping of a zit in pretty gruesome detail. But even if you're squeamish, force yourself through them; what follows is a lovely story of family, friendship and beauty.

Joyce's rich aunt Gomo (who's called "Michael" by Joyce and her siblings because of her affinity for cosmetic surgery) wants to treat her to san-gah-pu-rhee surgery to make her Asian eyes look more Western. It might help her catch John Ford Kang, the half-Korean/half-German big man on campus. Then again, Joyce wonders if she should just be happy with what God gave her.

What would you do? An Na proves that the answer may not be so obvious. The story and language are tame compared with a lot of current YA, but Na does delicately touch on a certain "mature theme" in addition to plastic surgery for teens. She won the prestigious Printz Award for A Step from Heaven, and her writing definitely has a literary feel. Totally school-appropriate.

Smiling in the Bright Lights

2008-05-15T23:21:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm a geek. When I was in high school, I wrote short stories about girls making out with rock stars backstage and other girls whose own bands became super famous and wound up on the cover of Spin.

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway is like my teenage fantasy, only way cooler. It's about a girl who becomes the hot tabloid honey when her ex-boyfriend's band gets famous with a song he wrote about her. Only Audrey didn't ask to be stalked in the halls of her school or chased down by the paparazzi while on a date with her new guy. Fame is a scary ride, but with a BFF like Queen Victoria and her beloved music to keep her sane, Audrey might be able to make it.

Each chapter is introduced with a snippet of lyrics apropos of the story's action, a nice touch (like the chapters in Beige, which I'll talk about sometime in the near future) that furthers the message of how important music can be, especially to high school girls. Audrey is a cool chick who goes to shows, but she still spends hours cutting out magazine pictures of her favorite bands and collaging her bedroom wall. That is real life right there.

Giddy Up

2008-05-11T12:41:00.001-04:00

If you've read Susan Juby's Alice McLeod trilogy (which I realize makes it sound vaguely sci-fi, but it's so totally not), you know the lady writes hilarious books. Alice is one of my favorite YA characters in recent years, if not Of All Time. The wacky outfits and ridiculous situations: love them. So I was kind of scared to read Another Kind of Cowboy. The vaguely dark masculine cover, the very serious subject of a closeted gay teenager. Would there be any LOL moments to savor?

Alex, the aforementioned gay teen, and Cleo, a spoiled richie from LA, meet in the world of dressage. (It's a very disciplined yet artful school of horse training, pronounced so the second syllable sounds like corsage—although throughout the book my head kept hearing the "age" part like you would say it in footage.) Cleo's movie producer parents have banished her to a fancy riding school on Vancouver Island, and Alex is a poor local cowboy who really wants to dance with his horse. Though their stories (Alex's, especially) are touching, SJ manages to sprinkle her magical humor throughout, thus preventing the book's permanent residence in Sapfest, CANADA. The only thing missing is the near-perfect character development of the Alice books; we don't get to know Cleo all that well, and Alex's chapters are told in the third person, so the reader never gets totally inside his head. Still, two hooves up! It's like Brokeback Mountain for kids, but with a happy ending.

Edge of Seventeen

2008-05-06T00:27:00.000-04:00

I just reread How Sassy Changed My Life by Marisa Meltzer and Kara Jesella, on whom I have a total writer crush. (Whenever I see her byline, I have to check out the article, since she almost always writes about things I'm into—like sexy clavicles and A Hipper Crowd of Shushers.) I turned 13 the year Sassy was sold to the publisher of Teen, so I was never a reader during its heyday. But all '90s pop culture holds a special place in my heart, and I'm a fan of the book as well as the magazine.

That said, I have to give props to Seventeen ...even if it was lame before Sassy came along and any coolness it ever developed was because of Sassy, as Kara and Marisa claim. The first issue I ever owned was, I think, April 1994. Brandy was the cover girl, and there was a guide to "alternahunks" featuring Beck, Pavement, Thurston Moore and Green Day. (It said, "If we were Chelsea Clinton, we'd invite them to dinner at the White House and start a food fight!")

I was a subscriber all through high school, although I outgrew it by the end. I loved the trend watch, where a reader once wrote in that girls in my hometown were using Happy Meal boxes as purses, and where I later got the idea to make a bangle bracelet out of an old sparkly toothbrush.

Some other things I remember: I always wished my friends and I could be in "School Zone." Seventeen was the first place I ever read about Sleater-Kinney. It helped me understand girls I knew who were cutting or otherwise hurting themselves. I thought it was really funny when an essay about meeting new people in college used the phrase "as alternative as Mariah Carey."

There's a box of old Seventeen issues in my parents' attic; my mom has been threatening to throw them away for years, but I won't let her.

6/22/08: Edited to say my first Seventeen issue was April 1994, not 2004!