…the very first look at Disney’s new Girl Meets World, featuring Cory and Topenga as parents. Heck yes!
fun
Never.
#ThrowbackThursday: Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicholson series
This recommendation originally posted on Pimples, Popularity, and Protagonists in September 2010. My love of this series is still firmly in place!!!
A few years ago, I read Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I didn’t realize it was part of a ten book series. Then, this summer, I happened to notice a film version of it available for rent on Netflix. I put it in my queue and prepared myself for yet another disappointing book-inpired movie. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the movie version was, and it inspired me to check into Rennison’s other books. Imagine my surprise when I found another nine books featuring the Angus protagonist, Georgia Nicolson! It was pretty exciting. (I know I’m a book nerd, ok?)
I put all of the books on hold at my local library and waited until I had them all to start reading. Then, when they were all finally in, I tore through all nine books following Angus… in a matter of ONE WEEK. Several times, as I was reading in the evenings while my husband was watching TV, I would seriously laugh out loud at the sheer hilarity of the books. I’m seriously considering buying all of the books so I can reread them whenever I need to have a good laugh.
A note about content – some of the titles sound a bit risque sexually… but the content is not. Though all of Georgia’s friends are preoccupied with boys and the constantly rate themselves on a “Snogging Scale” (snogging is British for kissing), the girls never do anything beyond kissing with their boyfriends, and there’s very little inappropriate language in the books. Out of all the young adult series I’ve read, this one is pretty clean.
Basically, in the series, (don’t worry – no spoilers – this is VERY general) Georgia Nicolson and her group of friends navigate their way through a year or so of school at Stalag 14, an all-girls high school. The group calls themselves the Ace Gang, and they are absolutely hilarious together – constantly trying to pull little pranks, getting in trouble, and torturing the school’s staff. Georgia’s family is crazy (maybe certifiably) and full of funny situations, and Georgia’s love life is, well, complicated but constantly interesting and exciting.
I’d recommend this series to teenagers… mature upper grade middle school girls through high school and adult readers (especially if you work with or have teenage girls). Here are all ten books of the series, in order:
1. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging
2. On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex god
3. Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas
4. Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
6. The He Ate My Boy Entrancers
7. Startled By His Furry Shorts
8. Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
Better off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg – I LOVE THIS ONE.
Elizabeth Eulberg is the author of four previous contemporary YA titles, and I’ve had her on my radar since I read Revenge of the Girl With a Great Personality (a super funny and actually sweet YA behind the scenes of children’s beauty pageants and the families of the girls who compete).
Eulberg has an ability to tell a great story full of poignant, really valuable moments that also make you laugh out loud. When I saw she had a new book coming out, I knew I had to read it… especially when I saw it compared to When Harry Met Sally! I mean, come on. Who can resist that?
In Better Off Friends, we get to follow the friendship of Macallan, an eighth grade girl dealing with the still-recent death of her mom, and Levi, an eighth grade boy transplanted from California to Wisconsin. When Macallan is given the task of showing Levi around on their first day of school, she mostly just barely tolerates him until they realize they both love the same quirky British TV show. From there, Levi and Macallan become good friends over the course of the school year.
When high school hits, everybody thinks they’re dating, but they’re still just friends… best friends. The banter between the two of them, and the way they retreat into their own world throughout various situations in the book, is just nothing short of magical in quality. In addition to the alternating point of view between Levi and Macallan as they go back and tell their story, there are also snippets of their present day conversations in between chapters. Eulberg has written a couple of characters here that I would honestly want to hang out with if they were real; they are full of life and so much fun.
The book spans over about four and a half years, which seemed at first like it was moving too quickly, glossing over important things, but by the time I finished I realized the pacing had been perfect – watching Levi and Macallan basically grow up together over those years made the experience even more enjoyable.
Another great thing about Eulberg, and particularly Better Off Friends, is that she tells great stories for a range of YA audiences without profanity or glorified drinking/drug use and sexual situations. This book could be enjoyed by 7th and 8th graders looking forward to good, healthy friendships (and romance) in high school, high school students in the thick of it, college/early career readers reflecting on high school relationships, and moms hoping their kids have people like these in their lives as they navigate young adulthood.
As you can tell, I really, really loved this new title. So fun, smart, witty, and sweet!
Check it out here on Amazon or at your favorite bookseller.
A fun new YA romantic comedy
I’ve been a fan of Cassie Mae for a while. She writes fun romantic young adult and new adult titles, which I’ve reviewed here before… Friday Night Alibi, Reasons I Fell for the Fat Funny Friend, and Switched. She’s back again, writing under the pen name of Becca Ann, and this time it’s a joint novel with her writing partner, Tessa Marie.
In King Sized Beds and Happy Trails, best friends since forever Ryan and Lexie are going on their senior class trip to a ski resort, and through a series of events (all of which make me shudder as a teacher of teenagers who takes students on overnight trips, because if this happened on one of my trips, OMG), they end up sharing a cabin. Just the two of them and one king sized bed.
For Lexie, this is no big deal. She’s sharing a cabin with her best friend, which doesn’t matter much since she’s there to finally catch the eye of one of their classmates who she’s been obsessing over. For Ryan, though, this is a very big deal… his feelings for Lexie went from friend to much-more-than-friend a while back, and watching her pursue another guy is horrible. Thankfully, it’s not long before Lexi realizes the other guy is kind of douchey when she has Ryan so close to her and, well, then things get interesting.
I really love Lexie and Ryan in this. Their story in told in an alternating POV between the two of them which was really well done. The overall story was cute, funny, and sweet. I recommend this to upper high school and college – though it’s technically Young Adult, it feels more like New Adult to me. I know I’m definitely looking forward to another Lexi and Ryan story already!
Want to join in some fun? Becca Ann and Tessa Marie are hosting a release party today with giveaways on Facebook. It’s a public event, so stop by, join, and enter to win prizes all day long!
In Bloom by Katie Delahanty
It seems like, in general, the New Adult genre has slipped into a pattern of beginning with a character deeply affected by some horrible tragedy who finds another character deeply affected by some horrible tragedy and they cling tightly to each other and can’t survive life without the hope of their love. Aside from a few authors keeping it fun, like Cassie Mae for example, New Adult authors are giving off this impression that adulthood has to begin with depression or something. It’s annoying.
In Bloom is a breath of fresh air for the New Adult genre. Delahanty has written characters that are realistically flawed, but who do not let the circumstances of life become these huge depressing things that dictate whether or not they survive. If you’re looking for depressing New Adult, this is not it. In Bloom felt to me like a slightly older version of Jen E. Smith’s This Is What Happy Looks Like: charming, romantic, fun, and smartly-written. Delahanty has been shaping these characters for years through her blog, and you can totally tell. They feel like real people.
I loved Olivia as a protagonist. She handles the pressures of moving to LA to pursue her dreams wonderfully, making great friends and ignoring her crazy mom along the way. She gets a fun job and breaks into the Hollywood scene, meeting the front man of her favorite band, Berkeley. She is accident prone and witty and smart, and several times throughout her story I laughed out loud at her antics.
Then there’s Berkeley. He’s sweet and romantic and down-to-earth despite the fact that he’s a world famous rock star, and his pursuit of Olivia is the cutest thing. I developed a total crush on him as I read, and I can only hope he shows up again and again and again in future Delahanty books.
Until there are more books in this series, though, there’s always twitter… The characters in the book tweet at each other at the start of each chapter, but it never occurred to me that there would be actual twitter accounts I could follow. But then I found them, and it was magical. I mean, you usually finish a book and have to say goodbye to the characters, right? Not this time, though… find them on twitter, follow them, and let them interact with you. I hope it makes your day and much as it made mine.
One more thing I loved about this – Delahanty didn’t feel the need to make it sound like a “grown up book” by having her characters cuss all the time. I appreciated that. Like I said, In Bloom is a breath of fresh air. That being said, I wasn’t a fan of the graphic nature of the love scenes. It surprised me because the language was so clean, and I was thinking I could really recommend this to teenagers and students getting out there and making life decisions, but I can’t do that now. Plus, I think the love scenes would have flowed better with the overall tone of the rest of the book if they’d been more modestly written.
In Bloom releases today! Click here to find it on Amazon.
Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg
Ever wanted a humorous and realistic view into the heart of the beauty pageant world? This book is for you. In this, Lexli is a tired of seeing her mom waste what little money they have on pageants for her seven year old terror of a sister… that she doesn’t even want to be a part of anymore. She’s tired of seeing the guy she has a crush on go out with the wrong girl. She’s tired of not being listened to, period, and she has a plan.
While it might not seem like your typical comedy, Revenge of the Girl with a Great Personality is a smartly written story that I couldn’t put down!
A Bookish Beginning to the New Year…
Last year, I gave you lots of book recs for Christmas gifts, and from the feedback I got it seemed like you guys really appreciated the help. I’m sorry my list is so late this year. Where did all the time go? How is it 2014 already?
Anyway, let’s consider these ideas for good ways to get your year started off with great stories.
For the upper HS/College aged student who would love to travel: Gayle Forman’s books, Just One Day and Just One Year, center around a girl traveling during the summer after her high school graduation and the guy she happens to meet while in England. That description doesn’t do it justice AT ALL, so just trust me. If you’re only getting one of them, get Just One Day.
For the high school/college girl who loves all things British: Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. This series of books makes me laugh out loud constantly. It centers around Georgia Nicholson, a high school girl with a crazy sense of humor, a crazy family, a crazy cat named Angus, and a crazy crush on a very cool, very hot guy. This series goes on for ten books, and all ten are equally as hilarious. In fact, I love them so much that I once used every bit of my birthday money to buy them all in matching editions. True story.
For anybody who likes to think and be inspired: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card was just made into a movie about month ago. The movie was good. The book is infinitely better. People need to read the book. In a lot of ways, Ender reminded me of Jonas from The Giver – both boys are young when they take on the responsibility of changing their worlds for the better, and I’m a sucker for a story showing a young adult making a difference. What impresses me about Ender’s Game, too, is a completely unexpected and really beautiful display of compassion and empathy at the end.
For those who like a good dystopian trilogy: The Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth. There are lots of things I like about this. The whole dystopian, perfect society that’s actually completely horrible mostly because of the government thing is really well done in Roth’s trilogy. I also love the protagonist, Tris, because she’s smart and is beyond driven to do the right thing in all situations, causing you at times to want to yell at her through the pages of the book because you actually WANT her to think about herself a little bit. Tris’s love interest, Four, is incredible and totally book-crush worthy. And, without giving anything away, the ending of the trilogy solidified for me a few things about Veronica Roth: she’s super brave, she clearly has faith, and she’s one amazing writer. I put the last book down full of emotions from the book and full of respect for Roth.mpathy at the end. That’s all I can say without giving it away, but know that it’s good. Really good. And it’s not an easy read – I’d even say it’s not necessarily a YA book, but people would argue with me – so it’s good for readers aged 8th grade and up through adulthood, really.
For high school and college girls, period, because we live in crazy times: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. In Speak, the protagonist lives through the repercussions of breaking up a big summer party resulting in several upperclassmen getting busted. How did she break up the big party? By calling the police due to something horrible that happened, though we don’t find out what happened until the end of the book. It’s a powerful and important book about the power of your voice and the necessity of speaking out against awful actions.
For the teen (or adult for that matter) interested in classic rock and the Woodstock-era: Are You Experienced? by Jordan Sonnenblick. I really, really loved this. I’ve been a fan of Sonnenblick for a long time, and this might just be my new favorite of his. In it, the main character is transported back in time to experience the Woodstock festival, where he learns crazy things about his family and befriends Jimi Hendrix. Really. It’s not at all cheesy, either, in the way it’s done… totally realistic historical fiction with a smudge of mysterious time-travel.
I’d love to hear what’s on your to-read list for 2014!
Sherlock starts tomorrow!!!
Divergent movie scene released… Uhh, yes please.
I need this movie to come out NOW. Theo James as Four is perfect.
http://movies.yahoo.com/video/divergent-exclusive-first-clip-012029180.html?soc_src=copyp
Pimples, Popularity, and Protagonists 