Citizen Reader

Finally getting books read from last Christmas.

Last Christmas a very dear friend of mine sent us a gift package that consisted of books for my entire household--it was wonderful. Mr. CR read his book right away and CRjr had his book read to him, but for months I didn't get around to my gift, which was Rick Yancey's YA horror novel The Monstrumologist.

Then, at the end of this past summer, when I wasn't in much of a nonfiction mood, I decided it was time to read it. No particular reason, although I was embarrassed that I had waited so long (just like I'm also embarrassed that it took me so long to blog about it after reading it!).

The story is framed by two modern-day individuals discussing the diaries they have found, written by one Will Henry, who has died at the age of (according to what he told his fellow nursing home residents and doctors) 131. And what is in the diaries? Well, the tagline for the book is "there are monsters among us...and they must be found," and that pretty much sums it up. Evidently, as an orphaned lad, Will Henry stayed to live and work with his father's former employer, a monstrumologist (or, one who finds and deals with monsters). The monsters the two are following in this narrative are "Anthropophagi"--suitably ucky monsters with devouring teeth, superhuman strength and wiles, and eyes in their stomach.

It's a pretty creepy read (even for me, as a supposed adult), and it would be a very good atmospheric read around Halloween time. I enjoyed the book very much, although one part of it frightened me so much it actually gave me nightmares. (And it wasn't one of the parts with monsters--it was one of the parts where the main character visits a home for the mentally deranged--ick.)

I had only one minor complaint with the book, and that is that the monstrumologist calls Will Henry by his full name just a little too often. There's a lot of this type of exchange:

"'And find my boots, Will Henry.'

'Of course, sir.'

I hesitated, waiting for a fourth command. The old man called Erasmus was staring at me.

'Well, what are you waiting for?' the doctor said. 'Snap to, Will Henry!'" (p. 6.)

But overall, it's still just a good, spine-tingling read:

"With each step my heart beat faster, for in my mind's eye I saw it beneath the stairs, crouching on all fours upon the sweating stone floor, a headless beast with blank black eyes set deep in its shoulders and a mouth overflowing with row upon row of glistening teeth, the lion in the savanna brush, the shark in the reef shadows, and I the grazing gazelle, the juvenile seal frolicking in the surf. It would rise as I descended. It would reach through the open slats and seize my ankle with its three-inch barbs..." (p. 91.)

If you know any YA readers who enjoy being scared, this one might make a good Christmas gift. I know that it was a gift I very much appreciated and enjoyed.

A nice atmospheric read.

Although I didn't re-read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes for Halloween this year, I did read a YA novel that had kind of a nice autumn atmosphere. (Although it's atmosphere is decidedly not "nice"; it's both a bit scary and very sad, I just mean that the author did a nice job giving it an "autumnal" feel.)

I don't know where I heard about Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls, but I'm really glad I brought it home. It's a fascinating little book (which is actually based on an idea by YA author Siobhan Dowd, who died before she could write it into a story) and it's beautifully illustrated by Jim Kay. It's set in Great Britain, and it's about a boy named Conor who has more than a few problems. His mother is sick, he's getting picked on in school, his father's left him and his mother to start a new family in America, and the grandmother he dislikes is about to come stay with him and his mother to help out. If that weren't enough, a monster comes for him. This is how the book starts:

"The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do."

"A monster, Conor thought. A real, honest-to-goodness monster. In real, waking life. Not in a dream, but here, at his window. Come to get him.

But Conor didn't run.

In fact, he found he wasn't even frightened.

All he could feel, all he had felt since the monster revealed itself, was a growing disappointment.

Because this wasn't the monster he was expecting.

'So come and get me then,' he said." (p. 9.)

It's an interesting book, the illustrations are beautiful, and it can be read in about an hour or so. I'd recommend it.

Graphic Novels: The challenge, part 1.

If you'll remember, a while back Beth challenged me (in the comments) to read ten graphic novels this summer. Because I have a deep, deep antipathy to being told what to do (ask my parents, siblings, spouse, and former employers), I bristled at the "ten" part of the challenge, but I did compromise and say I would read ONE GN, of Beth's choice. She was a good sport and made some suggestions--and they were good suggestions. So good that I read TWO whole graphic novels, and am still trying to track down the third. So today, part one of the graphic novel challenge.

The first of Beth's picks that I read was a small YA graphic novel titled Mercury, by Hope Larson. It's very much YA material; the protagonist is a teen girl (two teen girls, actually, as the story pivots back and forth in time between a current-day story and an historical one) experiencing some family issues, first love, and even a bit of witchcraft (or, more accurately, cases of "second sight") thrown in.

The modern story centers on Tara, a girl staying with her aunt and uncle and cousin in a fictional town in Nova Scotia, after her and her mother's home has burned down (and her mother is working a job on the other side of Canada). The historical story follows events in the life of Tara's ancestor, a girl named Josey, whose life is turned upside down when a gold prospector arrives at her family's farm to look for gold on their property, and eventually enters into a mining partnership with her father. Different events are causing upheaval in each girl's world: Tara is about to go back to high school after being homeschooled for several years, and Josey finds herself falling in love with the mysterious gold prospector.

So what happens? Well, the copy on the back cover takes it from there: "As Josey's story plunges into tragedy, Tara's emerges with the promise of gold." Because it's a YA novel, and a graphic novel at that, if you're so inclined, you'll be able to read the whole thing in not much longer time than it will take you to read this review, so that's all I'm going to say about the story. But as for the experience of reading the graphic novel:

I liked it. I did. It was a fast read; one of my favorite things about graphic novels is that it usually takes me all of a half-hour to read all but the longest ones. And I liked certain conventions of the art--about halfway through the book I noticed the page background on the historical story was black and on the modern story it was white, which was a nice touch (and I was dense not to notice it sooner). But...I didn't love it. The art was basic cartoon, simple but nothing special. Ditto with the story--interesting but not fascinating, and when I finished it, I had too many questions to feel satisfied. (Mr. CR read it too, and we concurred in our opinion that the book and story ended too abruptly.)

Part of the problem, I thought maybe, was that I am unused to reading fiction. After Mr. CR finished the book and I asked him my several questions, he finally opined, "I think you're supposed to fill in some of the story yourself." Oh man, I thought. I have become such a slave to nonfiction that I need everything spelled out for me in fiction too. That's no good! So I worried about that until, a week later, I read Anita Brookner's novel The Debut, and I didn't have any questions about that at all. (I mean, I had questions, but not the "am I missing something here" type questions...) So, ironically, in this graphic novel, spelled out in both pictures and text, I felt unsatisfied.

But all in all, for a YA graphic novel? Not bad.

A tale of two fictions.

Over the past week I've been trying to match the nonfiction I'm reading, book for book, with fiction. It's not working--the current count is three nonfiction titles, two fiction titles.

The first novel I'm reading (well, listening to, as I do the dishes) is Elizabeth Kostova's title The Historian. It's a big old thick book which takes on the legend of Dracula, told from the multiple viewpoints (and during different time periods) of a historian's mentor, the historian, and his daughter. I wanted to like it, because it got a lot of good reviews, and the Lesbrarian* loved it. But I can't help it--I'm totally bored. I've been bored from the very first tape--and I'm only listening to the abridged version. (I do not believe in abridged books and would have preferred the unabridged version, but it wasn't available at my library.) It is so boring that I've actually started to make up my own dialogue for it. When the historian's love interest wakes up in the morning and discovers she has been attacked by Dracula, I supplied new dialogue: "Helen, you've been cheating on me with that mad fox Dracula, haven't you, you hussy?"**

In all fairness, I still have a tape to go; maybe that'll turn it all around. But the author simply takes too long to tell too little. Honestly, if I could tell modern fiction authors just one thing, it would be that you don't have to write a 600-page book to write a good book. Really.

The other fiction I've been reading is Suzanne Collins's YA novel The Hunger Games, which I loved. I had to summarize it for another project last week, and here's how I did so: "It’s set in a (maybe not too distant?) dystopian future, in which the ruling powers of Panem, ensconced carefully in their Capitol, keep the rest of the population under control by demanding 'tributes' from different regions of the country to compete to the death in the annual Hunger Games. The tributes are, of course, people’s children–every child between the age of 12 and 18 has their name entered in a drawing, and each region of Panem has to send a male and female tribute to the games. But when Katniss Everdeen’s younger sister is chosen, she does the unthinkable–and volunteers to enter the Games in her place."

I loved this book, and was happy to pass it along to Mr. CR, who blows through fantasy and science fiction at an alarming rate (and is thus difficult to keep fully supplied), and he also enjoyed it. In addition to liking the action part of the novel (which is rare enough for me; I usually prefer character-driven fiction to story-driven fiction), I loved the love triangle--both of Katniss's love interests are viable characters (unlike in Stephenie Meyers's Twilight books, which purport to feature a love triangle, but don't). And the best part? It's a very readable 374 YA pages. That's the way to do it!

*This post is dedicated to the Lesbrarian, who wanted me to read The Historian. Our tastes continue to be nearly exactly opposite! It's a wonder of nature, I tell you.

**Also, just once? I'd love to read a Dracula book where Dracula has a sense of humor. Really. I think you can be both evil and hilarious. In fact, I think a funny Dracula would be even more terrifying, in a weird sort of way.

Letting it all wash over.

My apologies for the continued quiet (cue crickets) here at Citizen Reader. This is a very novel situation for me; normally I am apologizing for things I've said, not for things I HAVEN'T said.

I have been back to reading, but I have not felt compelled to write about any of the reading I'm doing. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking about the blog, though. For instance, I am currently indexing a book titled In the Shadow of the Moon, by Francis French and Colin Burgess, about the space missions leading up to the moon landing. In one chapter, one of the astronauts muses about a spacewalk he took when his colleagues told him just to relax for a couple of minutes while they peformed experiments, and he used the time to observe the Earth and just let the entire experience wash over him. (How cool is that, by the way?) So, although I am not doing anything as cool as hanging out of a spacecraft in Earth orbit, I have been just letting a variety of readings and books wash over me.

This may not seem like a big distinction, but it is very different to read without formulating thoughts for "publication"*. I started this site in May 2008, and since then a lot of my reading has been enjoyed for itself, but has also been undertaken with an eye to what I thought about the reading, or how I would review it. That changes the reading experience, a little bit. I would like to ask some of the members of the dwindling field of book criticism if they feel writing about books for a living has significantly changed how they read.

So what's been washing over? Well, while still selfishly keeping most of my reactions to myself, I can nutshell the week in review:

I really enjoyed Chuck Klosterman's essay collection Eating the Dinosaur. I don't love him, love him, but I rarely find Klosterman dull, and I appreciate that. His concluding essay on Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) is a work of beauty, ruminating on technology, society, and how "not all crazy people are brilliant, but almost all brilliant people are crazy." See? You may not agree with it, but that's not a dull thought.

A wonderful friend sent me the gorgeous illustrated history book New York 400, which is a history of the greatest city in the world. (I think it just barely edges out, in my personal list of top cities, Montreal and London.) I have been starting each morning this week by plugging in the tree lights (yes, I am resisting taking down the tree), having my fiber cereal (still not as exciting as Pop Tarts, but what's an old lady to do?) and reading this gorgeous book and looking at the pictures. Thank you, my generous benefactress (you know who you are).

While reading for indexing is not really the same as reading for fun, I would highly recommend French and Burgess's history title In the Shadow of the Moon. If you wait for the new edition being published this year by the University of Nebraska Press, you can also use its new index, created by yours truly!

I also plowed through Louise Rennison's British YA chick lit novel Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me? It's the last title in her Georgia Nicolson series, and it was worth the wait. Not only do I want to be British, I want to be a hilarious British teen like Georgia Nicolson. (I have in fact adopted one of her phrases, which makes Mr. CR nuts: when it's cold outside, I say "Brrr! Nippy noodles."

I also had the good fortune to be assigned to review the collection The Best American Magazine Writing of 2009 for Library Journal, and not to ruin the suspense of my review, but it's fantastic. The profile of David Foster Wallace (by Sam Lipsky) made me cry, and Chris Jones's feature "The Things That Carried Him," about the preparation for burial of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2007, pissed me off. (My opinion is: it's very nice that the army treats the bodies of deceased soldiers with respect, and carefully polishes the buttons on the uniforms of even the soldiers who are being cremated. But wouldn't the soldiers be better served if the higher-ups took a little more care with their bodies BEFORE they got killed? I ask you.) Any book that can elicit both of my personalities (Mr. CR's famous assessment of me is: "you have two moods: angry and weepy.") is, I think, a book worth reading.

So there you have it. Carefully unformed thoughts from a careless but highly enjoyed reading schedule. I think 2010 is going to be even more disorganized for me than last year, and I'm looking forward to it. Happy New Year to all of you!

*This is a blog, so we can't take it as seriously as things that are actually published. But I have to justify the time I spend here somehow, as it is not time when I am being an active salary-producing American citizen, so I call it a "publication" to kid myself.

I Capture the Castle fails to capture my heart.

For years people have been telling me I had to read the novel I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, immediately, if not sooner. And it's always been people I really respect, both as friends, and as readers.

So I finally did.

And I liked it. I read the whole thing, and pretty quickly, as I was interested in the story. (And you knew I'd be interested in a book set in Great Britain, ina falling-down castle.) But I've got to be honest: I didn't love it, love it. I didn't love it like I expected to love it.

The story is about seventeen-year-old Cassandra, and her rather unorthodox family life, living with her author father (who hasn't written a word in years), her beautiful sister Rose, her unconventional and artistic stepmother, her younger brother, and the hired hand (Stephen) who they don't actually pay. The story is good and is narrated by Cassandra in an appealing first-person voice; the family is on the brink of destruction from poverty, Rose is frustrated because she thinks she'll never meet a man to marry in their circumstances, Stephen is fruitlessly in love with Cassandra...and if that all weren't enough, two brothers who had been living in America suddenly show up as the heirs to a property next door. Hilarity doesn't really ensue, but Cassandra's love for and frustration with all of her family members makes for some nice comic touches.

God, that's a bloodless description, and as much as I liked the book, that's kind of how I feel about it. Just kind of average. What it HAS put me in the mood for is to re-read Dodie Smith's classic The 101 Dalmatians, which is largely set during Christmas and would therefore be a fun December read. So that's what I'm going to do.

A good graphic novel, but not one that I'm in love with.

I am a huge, huge Brian Fies fan.

His graphic novel Mom's Cancer is not only one of my favorite graphic novels, it is one of my favorite memoirs, and favorite books, full-stop. It was his take on his mother's battle with both lung and brain cancer, and a family story of how he and his siblings dealt with her illness. It was, of course, horribly sad, but it was also fantastic. The rare graphic novel that I loved without reservations, and in which the art and the text were easy to integrate, and which complemented each other.

So I was very, very excited to see that he had a new graphic novel out, titled Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? This one starts at the New York World's Fair of 1939, and charts the course of scientific and future discoveries and aspirations in different decades, including 1945, 1955, 1965, and 1975.

I did read the whole thing, but it turned out to be not for me.

This is no reflection on the quality of the work, which is once again very, very high. I love Fies's clean drawings, simple text, and how easy it is to integrate the two while reading. However, I have never been enthralled with science and progress* OR comics, which are two things that clearly had a big effect on Fies; in fact, this book is like an extended love letter to both. In fact, in between the chapters, Fies has inserted what appear to be classic comic books, titled "Space Age Adventures" and printed on what appears to be pulpy comic/newsprint pages. Unfortunately, the beauty of much of his work is lost on me, as I am not and never was a comic reader. (I am such a person of inaction that most action/adventure stories, which is what a lot of comics are, completely bore me.)

I was also a bit confused by the characters in the story, as Fies uses the same father/son pair in each decade, without the kid growing up for several of the first decades, which I found disconcerting. (He explains this in a foreword, commenting on the wonder of "comics time" which allows characters never to age or change.) Anyone else have this problem?

Still and all, though, Brian Fies is a super-talent. Immediately upon finishing this book I went and re-read my copy of Mom's Cancer, and appreciated him all over again. Give this one a try if you're interested in science or comics; I don't think you'll be disappointed.

*I am in fact usually quite cranky about both science and progress, although I am a fan of indoor plumbing.

Helene Hanff Appreciation Week: Queen of England

Before she became quite well-known for writing 84, Charing Cross Road, Hanff worked as a script reader and childrens' book author. Now, I can't say that her book for kids, Queen of England: The Story of Elizabeth I, was her favorite book of mine. For one thing, it was published in 1969, and it' was published by Doubleday, and all those educational kids books from the 50s and 60s share a quaintly dated feel.

But I still enjoyed it, and I read the whole thing. For one thing, the way she talked about her in other books, I think Hanff had a real love and appreciation for Elizabeth I, and I can respect that, because I do think Elizabeth I was a singular woman:

"On the morning of Palm Sunday--a chill, rainy March morning--Elizabeth was taken by boat across the river to the Tower of London. She stepped on shore, and saw stone steps leading up to an iron gate called Traitors' Gate. She stopped in her tracks.

She cried out that she would not go through Traitors' Gate. She was not a traitor. She was true and loyal to the queen...

The guards made her climb the stone steps. At the top step, she stopped again. She sat down on the wet stone step and said she would go no farther. She would not go into the Tower--too few left it alive.

A few friends had come this far with her. They now had to say good-by, and one man broke down and began to weep. At this, Elizabeth rose to her feet. She told the man to stop weeping.

'My truth is such,' she said, 'that I thank God my friends have no cause to weep for me.'"

New fiction crush.

Where has British author David Mitchell been all my life?

His novel Black Swan Green is one that went in and out a lot at the library where I worked, and I always thought it had an interesting cover, but I never felt like bringing it home. For one thing, I think I kept getting him mixed up with Mark Danielewski, and I was definitely never interested in him (as I perceived he was one of those authors who did too much playing with language and form to appeal to me, like Salman Rushdie and Michael Chabon).

So why I just lately requested and checked out Black Swan Green I can't tell you (ah, I'm already getting so old, I've forgotten why I've requested half the books on my library "hold" list). But I'm so glad I did. I loved it. It's a coming-of-age tale (don't groan--those can be painful but they can also be very, very good) of a young teenager, living in the British suburban town of Black Swan Green, striving to make it through school without being ostracized because of his stutter, and watching the slow breakdown of his parents' marriage--although he doesn't want to believe that's what he's seeing.

It's hard to give you a flavor of what I mean, as this is a book that shines as a whole but doesn't offer up too many short, quotable examples. But I really liked the 13-year-old protagonist, Jason Taylor. It's very funny, but often my favorite novels feature male adolescent characters, which is ironic because I think of teen boys as completely foreign to myself and somewhat closer to animals than human beings (I've never been overfond of most teen girls, either, snotty as they can be, which starts to explain why I'm SO glad not to be in high school anymore). When teen boys are icky, they're very, very icky. But when they're likable? They're SO likable. Think Holden Caulfield. Think John Green's male characters in Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns. Think Michael Cera's character on Arrested Development. See what I mean?

I'll leave you with one bit that I did find amusing, in which Jason is trying to figure out the related mysteries of girls and sex:

"Girls and girlfriends're worrying. Sex education's only about how to make babies and how not to make babies. What I need to know is what you do to turn ordinary girls like Sally from Blackburn into girlfriends you can snog and be seen snogging. I'm not sure if I really want to have sexual intercourse and I definitely don't want babies. Babies just poo and bawl. But not having a girlfriend means you're a homo or a total loser or both.

...I don't know whether or not I know the facts of life. You can't ask adults 'cause you can't ask adults. You can't ask kids 'cause it'd be all round school by first break. So either everybody knows everything but nobody's saying anything, or else nobody knows anything and girlfriends just sort of...happen." (p. 172.)

See what I mean? That's pretty good stuff for a coming-of-age novel. I hate to break it to this kid, but that's a lot what adulthood is like too. Everybody who knows nothing is talking a lot, and those who know something are keeping pretty quiet. Sigh. Have a good weekend, all.

It's that time, part two.

We're slated to get 9 to 12 inches of snow tonight; I can't say I'm looking forward to that. I AM looking forward to re-reading Susan Cooper's young adult/fantasy novel The Dark Is Rising, which I religiously do every December (as religiously as I read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes every October). My eventual goal is to have a perfect book for each month.

If yesterday was about enjoying this time of year, today is about its dark side. And I think a paragraph from early on in The Dark Is Rising gets it perfectly:

"It was then, without warning, that the fear came.

The first wave caught him as he was crossing the room to his bed. It halted him stock-still in the middle of the room, the howl of the wind outside filling his ears. The snow lashed against the window. Will was suddenly deadly cold, yet tingling all over. He was so frightened that he could not move a finger."

And this:

"The next day the snow fell, all day. And the next day, too.

'I do wish it would stop,' said Mary unhappily, gazing at the blind white windows. 'It's horrible the way it just goes on and on--I hate it.

'Don't be stupid,' said James. It's just a very long storm. No need to get hysterical.'

'This is different. It's creepy.'

'Rubbish. It's just a lot of snow.'

'Nobody's ever seen so much snow before. Look how high it is--you couldn't get out of the back door if we hadn't been clearing it since it started to fall. We're going to be buried, that's what. It's pushing at us--it's even broken a window in the kitchen, did you know that?....I don't care what you say, it's horrible. As if the snow was trying to get in.'"

I'm with you, Mary. That's exactly how it feels when it just keeps snowing.

Looking and listening.

This fall I read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and John Green's Paper Towns at nearly the same time, and I was struck by the similarity between two passages in the books. I thought it was interesting what these two quotes had to say about looking at and listening to the world.

From the Bradbury:

"He was marbled with dark, was Jim Nightshade, a boy who talked less and smiled less as the years increased...The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had saved up only six years of staring." (pp. 40-41.)

And, from John Green's Paper Towns:

"That was perfect, I thought: you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to." (p. 216.)

Hm. What do these passages say about too much looking at and listening to the world?

John Green does it again.

I have been waiting, waiting, waiting, for my copy of John Green's Paper Towns to come in at the library.

So when it came in last week I immediately started it, even though I've got about forty other books that are going to come due first that I should be looking at. It's not like I've been out partying, having a crazy good time lately, so I figured, what the hell? I've earned this.

For those of you who don't know him (and why don't you? Sure, he's the author of books for teens--"YA" or "Young Adult" books for those in the book and library biz--and may therefore be under your radar. That is no excuse), John Green is the author of the fabulous YA novels Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and now, Paper Towns.

What's important here is not really the story, which can be nutshelled as follows: Quentin Jacobsen, who's harbored a longtime crush on his next-door neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman (known far and wide for her adventurous exploits and hijinks), is shocked when she shows up late one night to take him along on a night of pranks aimed at those who have wronged her (including her unfaithful boyfriend). Immediately thereafter, she disappears, and Quentin and his friends spend the rest of the book trying to find her. Want a better synopsis? Visit Bookshelves of Doom.

What IS important is the world into which Green dumps his readers, and his writing skill. In my opinion, Green is hands-down, one of the best writers at creating quirky characters you wish you could be or know (except, well, maybe with just a few fewer neuroses) since J.D. Salinger. Interestingly enough, when I read his books, I never particularly want to be or know his female characters, who are all somewhat troubled, offbeat, and brilliant but complicated young girls. I want to be his male characters, who always have an interesting group of friends and a thoughtful nature.

Case in point? Q is friends with Ben and Radar. Radar's parents just happen to have the world's largest ollection of black Santas:

"In total, Radar's parents owned more than twelve hundred black Santas of various sorts. As a plaque beside their front door proclaimed, Radar's house was an officially registered Santa Landmark according to the Society for Christmas.

'You just gotta tell her, man,' I said. 'You just gotta say, Angela, I really like you, but there's something you need to know: when we go to my house and hook up, we'll be watched by the twenty-four hundred eyes of twelve hundred black Santas.'" (pp. 22-23.)

That's right, black Santas. I love John Green.

Highbrow weekend reading.

So what highbrow reading did I do this weekend? Some literary criticism? A scholarly monograph on Jane Austen? A well-footnoted work of epic history or biography?

Oh, blimey hell, I might as well admit it: I spent the weekend reading a book titled Stop in the Name of Pants!, by Louise Rennison. Yes, it is a "young adult" book. Yes, other entries in this series including titles like Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, Knocked Out By My Nunga Nungas, and Startled by His Furry Shorts. And I have loved them all, do you hear me? I have waited for this ninth book in Louise Rennison's series featuring her teenage British character Georgia Nicolson for months, so you can bet I read it first thing when I got it home from the library.

It's a pretty basic series to sum up. Georgia Nicolson is a very silly British girl who spends most of her time trying to decide which boy to like, applying make-up with her friends in the bathroom at school (which they call the "tarts' wardrobe"), and being annoyed by her parents, little sister, and fuzzy and violent cat Angus. Think Bridget Jones, only for the middle school set.

And I loved it. I love Georgia, I love that she can't decide whether she likes the hunky guys or the one who makes her laugh, the appropriately named Dave the Laugh (who stands as one of my favorite male characters in literature ever). I love her crazy little sister Libby and I love the British slang. To use a phrase from the book, it is vair vair marvelous.* Come on, you've got to love the word "brillopads" (in place of another word I wish I was British enough to use: Brilliant!), as well as "nunga nungas." Don't let the titles scare you. These books are absolutely harmless. Actually, if you could steer your pre-teens away from Gossip Girl and toward these books, you'd be a lot better off.

All of that said, Ms. Rennison, please end this series. I can't keep waiting for your books this way. And for god's sake, let Georgia date Dave the Laugh. I can't take it anymore.

*I also owe Rennison for the phrase "nippy noodles," which I use whenever it starts to get cold outside.