A Bookmark a Day - Ha!

Personal Library Kit on Plasticland.

More like a bookmark a month!

I love the idea of this little Personal  Library Book Lending Kit. I've seen it on a number of sites over the years but this time it is on Plasticland.

I can imagine that if I had this kit when I was a kid I would have filled out the cards and stamped the date even when it was just myself reading the book. When I was young I thought I wanted to be a librarian when I grew up and was even a library 'monitor' in primary school for a while.

Wintergirls

Wintergirls

Laurie Halse Anderson

I recently went on a bit of a splurge and bought myself one of those fancy new-fangled iPads. Mostly I've been downloading books and using it as an e-reader, which makes me think I probably should have just bought a kindle, but I'm sure I'll get into the full functionality of it soon enough. I'm pretty slow when it comes to technology, I admit it. It's just so amazing that I can download a sample of a book, read it, and then if I like it, download the rest of the book. All at the tap of a button. Frankly, it's a bit dangerous for my bank account and I probably need to start exercising a little more discretion in my purchases.

That however, is not a comment on Wintergirls. I've been on a bit of a hunt recently for YA authors that I haven't previously heard of, and Laurie Halse Anderson's name cropped up quite a few times in my internet browsing. I don't generally gravitate towards EATING DISORDER novels. It's a bit like novels that are about DRUGS, or DIVORCE, or teenage girls who are in INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIPS. Reading them is a bit like continuously being hit over the head by the author a baseball bat, with whatever the key message of the novel is painted on the side, just in case you're not getting it. It's annoying and painful. And let's face it, there are plenty of sophisticated teen readers out there, so odds are, they are annoyed too and there goes your target audience.

The first thing I will say about Wintergirls is that it's incredibly confronting. Anderson does an amazing job of getting inside the head of eighteen year old Lia, who suffers from anorexia nervosa. Anderson clearly did her research, and did it well. I consider myself a fairly empathetic person, and I still had to work pretty hard at times to remind myself that Lia was being controlled by a disease - she was not sound of mind and making choices simply to be difficult and make life hell for her family. 

The novel opens with Lia finding out about the death of her friend Cassie - who died alone - in a motel room. RIght away, you know what the tone is going to be. Lia lives with her present-but-absent father, stepmother and stepsister and has an extremely dysfunctional  relationship with her mother, whom she refers to as Dr Madigan, rather than Mum (or Mom - the book is American). Wintergirls is dark, there is no getting around this. Lia's fractured family life and fractured self-image, result in her walking through life in a haze of denial and obsession.  

Not all readers will like Anderson's way of writing. There are a lot of, as the author puts it, "stylistic quirks." I think the author made some great choices in this regard and those quirks really helped me, as a reader, feel what it was like to be Lia, and inside Lia's body. It's a very sensory novel, Lia's emotional and physical pain is pretty visceral.

While this a YA novel about a SERIOUS ISSUE, Anderson manages to avoid a lot of the cliches found in this kind of novel. There is one huge cliche, that I was absolutely sure would appear at the end of the novel, and I was absolutely delighted to be wrong. And thank god, because that particular cliche is not the answer to every teenage girl's problems. I can't tell you what it was without spoiling it for you, but should you read it you'll know what I'm talking about. Hopefully, you might just breathe a sigh of relief too...

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson is published by Penguin Group US, and is $10.99 on iTunes. 

Mister Bill Murray

Caroline! Thrill Murray (coloring book)! Although, sadly out of stock.

Um, I don't think you understand. I need to read ALL the John Green novels.

Falling in love with a new author always brings out two different desires in me. The first, is the wish that I'd discovered them years ago, because now they have suddenly brought so much to my reading life  that I have been missing out on. If only I had known about them sooner, who knows how different my life would be! (Okay, that might be a little over the top, but you get the picture). The second is the overwhelming need to read every single thing the author has written, ever. That feeling of excitement and joy when you realise they have a whole back catalogue of books that are yet to be read - the anticipation is delicious. Unsurprisingly - given the title of this post - this is exactly how I feel about John Green. I've raced through two more of his novels since devouring Looking for Alaska, so I thought I'd mini-review them both for you this week, just because I like them (and you!) so much.

Before I get into the book-y stuff, let's just find out a bit about the author first. I'll summarise his wikipedia page briefly for you - he's a 34 year old guy who is a New York Times best seller, married with one kid, lives in Indiana and is one half of the Vlogbrothers. "What?" I hear you ask. So, in 2007  John and his brother Hank decided they would communicate with each other only via video blogs and would stop all text based communication. I know, right? It turned out to be pretty popular, and at the end of 2007 they announced that the vlogging would continue and you can find out all sorts of interesting things and watch some videos over at their website, Nerdfighters. 

I feel the need here to make a point here about the internet. Huh...I've just realised I do that a lot. Oh well - it is something I think about pretty often and how generally, I'm grateful that it wasn't as pervasive or accessible when I was a teenager as it is now. Basically, the internet and email were cool, but they weren't such a big deal, you know? Social networking still happened in the playground, via telephones attached to landlines and on weekends at each others houses. Internet based conversations still happened via ICQ. So it makes me happy to find out that sites like Nerdfighters exist, because it is a cool place, and seems to be very much about letting teens (and everyone) be who they are and not telling them who they should be. 

The second John Green book I got my hands on was the intriguingly titled Will Grayson, Will Grayson, co-written with David Levithan. It sounds like it could be a poem about or a love song written to some guy called Will Grayson. Which it kind of is, in a metaphorical sense, except that the novel is about two guys who both happen to be called Will Grayson. It's an incredible cliche to describe books (and movies, songs, paintings, interpretive dance) as moving, but in this case it's true. It's also incredible funny - both straight up hilarious, and also in that "ha ha - ouch" way that is bittersweet and ironic. The Will Graysons meet under unlikely circumstances and from that night, their lives suddenly start moving in unexpected directions. This novel also features a musical, written by the most fabulous supporting character in a novel ever. The first Will Grayson we meet has a best friend named Tiny - and so obviously he is huge. Larger than life and huge of heart, he is the writer of said musical, which is autobiographical and features a character named "Gil Wrayson" - which was the biggest laugh out loud moment of the novel for me. Seriously, I'm giggling right now as I write this. WORDPLAY. 

I read a really interesting article today, questioning the need to categorise young adult novels as "YA" given that so many of them have "crossover appeal" and are read by a far more wide ranging audience than 13 - 18 year old readers. After all, it's not like the YA categorisation is like a PG or M rating on a movie, and nor should it be. One of the things I like so much about reading John Green is that things get pretty frank at times, without being deliberately titillating simply for attention and shock value. It's just real. 

The third John Green novel was the delightful, beautiful and sad The Fault in Our Stars. I'm going to warn you straight up here - it's about teenagers who have cancer, so maybe don't read it on the train on the way to work if you are the sort of person who tears up easily. Just a suggestion. I don't know if I'm making too much of this - so please, I would value your opinion - but I was really impressed at how well Green writes from the perspective of a teenage girl. Now, I'm not a huge fan of making a big deal about differences between the genders, but there was not one moment reading The Fault in Our Stars where I questioned Hazel's voice. The greatest thing about this novel though, is how honest it is about the struggles of its characters without remotely becoming an episode of 7th Heaven. Like all his novels, it's just real. Kind of messy and difficult, with occasional moments of light. And no sermonising or proselytising from Reverend Camden. Phew.

Looking for Alaska

John Green


I think what we all realise now as adults, that we have no idea of when we're teenagers, is that being a teenager is hard for pretty much everyone. As in all things, hindsight is 20/20 and now we can look back on those days and know that the kids who were better looking, or funnier, or cooler or richer were struggling just as much as we were. But when you're in the belly of the beast, it feels like you're the only one. It's part of what draws adult readers to this kind of fiction - being able to experience and analyse those emotions again as a reader, with the benefit of a bit more like experience and knowledge - hopefully.


John Green is a name that I have been hearing (or reading) again and again. Until recently I had never read any of his novels, just read plenty about what a great writer he is, so I thought that I would stick with the YA theme for this week's read and review "Looking for Alaska."  Of course, now I'm asking myself why I didn't start reading his novels earlier... There were moments when I wanted to dive inside the pages and tell some of the characters that, no really, it IS actually all going to be okay. It takes a really talented writer (in any genre or format) to create characters who cover well-trodden ground without being cliched or one-dimensional and Green achieves this while using some familiar situations and plot devices.

The most familiar plot device and frankly, one that I always enjoy, is setting the story inside a boarding school. I know the reality of boarding schools is most likely completely different from how fiction and our imaginations tell us it is, but seriously, it seems like so much fun. No parents! Pranks galore! Hanging out with your friends ALL the time! The main character Pudge - obsessed with last words - goes to Culver Creek to "seek a great perhaps," as he tells his parents. And that's pretty much what he finds - that everything is a perhaps, and even those who think they have all the answers, really are just making it up. He also finds friendship with his room mate, "The Colonel" and the alluring, clever, self-destructive and more than a little pain-in-the-ass Alaska.


Looking for Alaska is a short novel, but it packs a pretty good punch, dealing with some heavy issues. Life, death and the existence of an afterlife are mixed in amongst the more everyday love, sex, rules, friendship and family. It's all explored in a way that's real and funny, sad and sweet. The book was first published in 2005, years after I left high school behind. Not that I have the slightest desire to return to my teenage years, but I do wonder what it would have been like to read it as a seventeen year old - would I have seen things in the novel that I miss now?

Spoiled

Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan


If you have a vague interest in fashion or celebrity news, and you know how to use the Internet, chances are you've stumbled across Go Fug Yourself by now. This blog is a bit like kryptonite for me. I can spend hours falling down the rabbit hole of hilarious celebrity fashion crimes - check out the Britney Spears' "Letters of Truth" for a hearty chuckle - and also, nodding along in agreement when they wax lyrical over those celebrities who get it right (Emma Stone, I'm looking at you). So when it was revealed that the writers of the blog, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, had written a Young Adult novel,  suffice it to say I was keen to have a read.

Like any literary genre, sometimes you have to wade through some pretty average YA novels to get to the good stuff. For every Sarah Dessen out there, there are plenty more writers without the insight or the talent to create a genuinely readable book, that doesn't fall into the morass of high school cliches. These days I do most of my reading on the 35 minute train rides to and from work, so any book that keeps me looking at the page and not gazing out the window is ahead of the game. It's funny how a view that I have seen literally thousands of times can still be so mesmerising. Although let's face it, that has far more to do with my tiny attention span, than it does to do with the beauty of the backyards, rundown fences and factories along the railway line. 

I digress. "Spoiled" is a delight. It takes us on the journey of sixteen year old Molly Dix, who finds out her father is movie star Brick Berlin, just before her mother passes away from cancer. After her mother passes away, Molly ups and moves from her life in Indiana to start a new one in the Hollywood Hills with Brick, and his other 16 year old daughter, Brooke. (Brick and Brooke...I know, right?)

It's not unusual for YA novels to be co-authored (for more examples see "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" and "Will Grayson Will Grayson" - in fact if you're interested in YA, these two are great books to start with anyway), and while it isn't explained anywhere, I'm going to run with the assumption that the point of view of each of the girls is split between the two authors. As readers, we aren't just privy to Molly's inner monologue as she navigates the changes in her life, but also how Brooke deals having a new sister that she had never heard about until weeks before Molly's arrival. It doesn't take a huge amount of imagination to predict the various conflicts and obstacles that both Molly and Brooke encounter, however Cocks and Morgan bring their wit, sarcasm and knowledge of Hollywood's ridiculous machine to the table, giving the reader something we haven't seen before in a YA novel. And really, part of the attraction of YA novels is finding out how successfully different authors approach the tropes of the genre. Upon further thought, I guess this could be true with any sort of genre fiction.

The novel has some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, including a reference early on that those who are aficionados of the early years of Friends will appreciate. It had me chuckling all the way to my desk. Also, the character of Brick Berlin, the girls' movie star father, is the creator of some truly inspirational catch phrases such as "Tears are full of toxins. If you hold them in, they'll flood your brain." Wise words indeed.   If you are a reader who likes to imagine exactly what the characters look like, to me Brick Berlin was a younger version of this guy. Although, if you're familiar with Harry Hamlin's character in Veronica Mars, switch the creepiness to vapid good heartedness. If you're not familiar with Veronica Mars, what are you waiting for? One of the greatest shows of all time. 

Excitingly, "Spoiled" has a sequel. I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail (who doesn't love Internet shopping? I mean, seriously...) so stay tuned for the next review. 

 If you're into YA novels, or interested in finding out more, there are some great blogs out there. YA Books Central is a good place to start, or for something with an Australian flavour try Persnickety Snark.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall but how do we know he was an egg?

Humpty Dumpty cake, 1985, by our mum. Photo probably by our dad. Birthday, Caroline's.

Did you ever really think very long about nursery rhymes? I don't think I ever did until I became a parent. Well maybe I did but now that I am a mum I find myself looking at some of the rhymes and riddles from a slightly different angle compared to when I was a child.

In the late '70s and early '80s our dad would set up a cassette recorder to tape us reading, singing or talking, often with the intention of mailing the tape to interstate grandparents. He did own a Super 8 camera but that didn't have sound recording capabilites and it limited any recording to a couple of minutes only. A cassette recorder could give us a healthy 30 or 45 minutes recording time... and then you could turn the tape over and get that amount again! These recordings are still around and I can be heard with my siblings cracking ourselves up singing our own versions of 'Old King Cole', 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and more. 'Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he. He called for his... (wait for it) ... plate! ... (I know, hilarious right!?)... and he called for his... cup! ... (comedy gold!)... and he... ' you get the idea. Once we got a little bit older, the good ol' toilet talk would have taken over I'm certain. Fart jokes never fail to amuse my siblings and me... well, at least me... and frustrate my father to no end. I don't have evidence that we altered any nursery rhymes with farts but there are plenty of fart noises randomly made on at least one of these tapes. Hilarious. You had to be there?

So anyway, now I am supposedly a grown-up I rack my brain trying to remember the nursery rhymes for my son and as I recite them to him I wonder things. I wonder what I am teaching him with these rhymes. What did I learn from these riddles when I was a kid? What is a 'cock horse'?

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
She shall have music wherever she goes.

I was a bit hesitant to do an internet search for 'cock horse', worried about what I might find but of course wikipedia provides some sort of answer. I should have known... at least part of it. Wikipedia suggests that ' "cock horse" can mean a high-spirited horse, and the additional horse to assist pulling a cart or carriage up a hill. From the mid-sixteenth century it also meant a pretend hobby horse or an adult's knee.'  But you all knew that already didn't you?

Now that the 'cock horse' mystery was solved, at least to my satisfaction, I wondered, how do we know Humpty Dumpty was an egg?

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Again, wikipedia suggests some answers. Basically, it seems that we can't be sure he was an egg but, amongst other theories, it is thought that rather than just being a nursery rhyme, the rhyme was more of a riddle with the answer being, as we all now assume,  'Humpty Dumpty was an egg'. Other thoughts are more military in flavour with the idea of Humpty Dumpty being a tank or cannon sitting on a wall protecting a castle. I think I'll stick with the egg theory myself.

Whether or not everyone agrees that wikipedia is a completely valid source for answers and information, I now feel less puzzled about these extremely pressing issues (ha!). Without the internet and wikipedia, how am I going to be able to answer all the questions my offspring will throw at me out of left field?