Hoo, Boy - Girls!

Thanks to recommendation of a dear friend, I'm holding a copy of the book I've needed for some time now: Girls will be Girls by JoAnn Deak.

Published in 2002, it offers a broad-based, in-depth understanding girls' development in social context and from a parent's perspective.

I'm not at all prepared to review it other than to say, it's much more positive and helpful than Queen Bees and Wannabees and Reviving Ophelia. More later. I've got to read!

Immediately at Home

Dana Reinhardt's How to Build a House offers a great example of "sense of place," that mystical mix of sensual clues that gives a book an almost tangible setting. Unfortunately, the story isn't as good as the setting, or the set-up.

Of course, it's a YA. (Sometimes I actually read books for grownups. Honest.)

The story picks up in the middle of the action, when main character Harper, age 17, is embarking on a summer's work project in Tennessee. She leaves behind (runs away from, really) a family in a mess - dad, who lost wife #1 (Harper's mom) to tragic accident, is in the midst of a divorce from Harper's much-loved stepmom. Torn apart are Harper and her step-sister, Tess, and her younger brother, Cole.

(When I read the phrase "part time brother" my throat tightened up. To her credit, Reinhardt doesn't reach for many trite but heart-tugging phrases like that.)

In Tennessee, Harper finds Teddy and his seemingly perfect family. The book follows a rather familiar storyline from there: Harper and Teddy fall in love. (The teenage version, anyway.) Harper realizes she's really, really mad at her dad. (His cheating led to the end of the marriage, which blasted apart Harper's family.) She spends most of the summer missing and hating her sister, Tess, who, in a surprisingly low-key turn of events, arrives at the Tennessee motel where Harper and the other home-builders are staying for the summer. The house gets finished, the summer ends, Teddy and Harper go their separate ways, and the sisters hit the road back to CA.

It would be a run-of-the-mill YA except for two things. One is Reinhardt's carefully-chosen language. About every third page or so there's a turn of phrase I had to read two or three times. They're almost cheesy, but pleasing too. Like:

"The only thing left was the sound of glass not breaking."

"Diana has a pot of chili on the stove with a smell so big it crosses state lines."

Well, I told you they were cheesy.

The second thing that puts it out of the run-of-the-mill zone (I HOPE) is that the characters - all high school kids, mostly 17-year-olds - have sex, like, as often as they brush their teeth.

Do I sound appalled? Prudish? Well...do all high school kids have sex? Gosh, I didn't. Yes, it was a hundred years ago. OK, OK, I'll try to get over it. But it's hard - especially since there wasn't a single reference to condoms, pills, or any form of birth control or disease prevention. That bothers me even more than the super-sexed high school kids. (See? I'm not a prude, just appalled.)

Anyway, I would pick up another book by Reinhardt, probably A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life. I just hope nobody gets pregnant.

Reading Somebody Else's Mail

Or grocery list, maybe. Found Magazine is a funky website featuring short but surprisingly addictive reading material - most are items found in recycling bins or the trash.

Love letters and the odd poem, phone numbers and scrawled propositions on cocktail napkins, and loads of little ditties on sticky notes, that's what's found on the pages of Found Magazine. Only online, of course. (Man, sometimes I really miss getting engrossed in an actual page.)

So She's a Journalism Major

The Huffington Post reports that VP candidate Sarah Palin got a journalism degree from the University of Idaho...after attending six colleges in five years. Huh. She must be one quick study.

Whether or not she advocates banning books is a subject the McCain consultant wouldn't touch on the Diane Rehm show on Friday - I wasn't surprised - and frankly, I don't want to know what she's reading. Palin, that is. I'm pretty sure Rehm would shame us all.

A Sweet Hippo and the Nose that Didn't Smell So Good

Based on title alone, I thought that Tony Payne's picture book Hipponotumus would be funnier than it was. Ah, but picture books are not written for 40-something moms so much as for 4-year-olds. And mine loved it.

So I'll admit I'm not a picture book expert, and frankly, I'm not reading many books from the grown-up shelves lately either. Maybe I'm going soft, maybe I'm just making bad picks.

The last book I didn't finish was What the Nose Knows, about the science of smell. Yes, I know it sounds geeky, but I like to think I'm as geeky as the next guy/girl; the subject fascinates me and the book was very well researched. It just didn't tell a story.

Folks, non-fiction does NOT have to be dry. I actually enjoyed a rather long historical nonfiction work about the history of the color red. It sounds drier than burnt toast, but the author told a great story throughout the book. Alas, the nose didn't know enough about creative nonfiction to pull off a similar feat.

Oughta Be A Rule

Cynthia Lord's first novel, Rules, is one of the best YAs I've ever read, and I suspect that will remain true for many years.

It's on the summer reading list for local 7th graders, and my daughter, who read the book at my urging last year, not only selected it, she actually re-read it to fulfill her summer report requirement.

In other words, it's good.

The book offers a glimpse at family life when one of the family - in this case, the main character's younger brother - is autistic. While Catherine has always seen her brother David as a bit of a burden, she copes by making up rules for him in hopes that will make everyone's life easier. (No toys in the fish tank. If the bathroom door is closed, knock!).

When Catherine forges a friendship with Jason, a wheelchair-bound boy who cannot speak, she discovers that autism is a relatively minor challenge compared to those others face. She manages quite admirably.

I won't give away any more details; it's a fairly short book and one truly worth reading.

Noting my daughter's interest in the book prompted a local librarian to recommend another novel approach to autism. The Curious Incident of the Dog that Barks in the Night focuses on an autistic boy who investigates and solves a crime. This one is aimed at adults, I think...anyone read it?

Stumbling Over Smart Guys and Trendsetters

Charles Murray's Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, For Most People, College is a Waste of Time, is worth a read. Somebody, get this guy on a committee to reform education...and quick.

And I stumbled on this blog entry today - yeah, it's almost eight months old - and thought, yep, he's right: the iPhone and iTouch could replace a lot of retail sales people. (Sorry, guys.)

Then I thought, wait a minute. The technology I use isn't working quite so well. I subscribe to a couple of "trendspotting" newsletters, one RSS feed, and have three different Google Alert settings, yet I literally stumbled across these articles.

Sigh. See, this is why I like to keep track of my favorite reading material. Nobody else is really doing it for me...