Thursday, April 30, 2009

Clearly a cranky day

Anything with quirky Southern characters does not appeal to me, but there must have been something intriguing about Mitchell's Shadowed Summer that made me request in through OhioLink. From the publisher: "In the small town of Ondine, Louisiana, Iris uncovers family secrets when she conjures up the ghost of a boy missing for decades and decides to solve the mystery of his disappearance. " I only read about four pages, and gave up when they started discussing bras.

Normally like Jen Calonita's stuff, but could not get into Sleepaway Girls. ("When the exceptionally people-pleasing Sam spends a summer as a counselor-in-training, she learns how to say no, to stand up for herself, and what it feels like to have a crush on a great guy. ") The girls will like this one, but I gave up during a long discussion of boys. Occurred to me that the novel I wrote in 8th grade was about camp, which probably colored my opinion.

And an apology: Apparently, Lander's Stuff White People Like offends a lot of people. I was reading it as satire without real social purpose, sort of a Jeff Foxworthy for people who spent their junior year in Europe. So, if you picked it up and were scandalized, I am sorry.

4 comments:

  1. Oh dude--hang in there with Shadowed Summer. Pick it back up. It does get going...

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  2. Who complained about Stuff White People Like? It's FUNNY for crying out loud. So are all the riffs on it: blogs like Stuff Black People Like, Stuff God Hates, etc. Peoples are just too serious sometimes...

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  3. Boo hoo on the Jen Calonita, I usually love her. I've read lots of not-so-great reviews for this one, which stinks, because it sounds so fun and cute.

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  4. As I think I've said before (-:) I don't like quirky Southern stories either...and I can totally say this because I grew up in the south! and I moved to Wisconsin at the first opportunity.

    I've never heard of Calonita - I'll have to check out some of her other books!

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