Average Girl Reads

I'm trying to work my way through Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. My friend LS2 and I are a book club of two, and it was my turn to pick a book from the 1001 Books list for us to read. I thought this one would be easier to read than our last few picks, but I'm still trying to adjust to Lewis' writing style. The book isn't exactly difficult to read, but the writing of the 1920s is quite different than what is found in a modern chick lit novel. It requires more concentration than my last book, The Yada Yada Prayer Group.

Whoever had this copy of Main Street before me made plenty of notes in the margins. I would surmise that the note-maker was a student who checked the book out in the past twenty years because all the notes are definitions of words that I don't see a lot these days, like "stolid" and "propinquity". It made me think of an essay in the book Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader where the author talks about words that have gone out of fashion to the extent that modern readers don't know their definitions. It also reminds me of the reason I chose a book from the early 20th century. I enjoy all kinds of words, but most especially words and phrases that you don't hear every day.

One of my readers let me know that my blog was difficult to read with the tiny brown-on-beige text. With my lack of programming skills, I couldn't fix the existing template so I went searching for a new one. Trying to find a template that is free, yet doesn't look like every other blog on the block is no easy task. After wasting an afternoon searching, I decided to go with one of Blogger's standards. Hopefully my reviews will be so sparkling that you won't notice the drab surroundings!

The Yada Yada Prayer Group by Neta Jackson

Genre: Christian fiction
Recommended for: Christian women's book clubs or prayer groups
From my TBR list: Yes


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I thought that the story of a multi-culti women's prayer grooup would be just too precious for words. Surely it would be filled with scenes of everyone holding hands, singing "Kumbaya", and ignoring racial differences, right? Well, there is some of that in this book, but it also touched my heart more than I expected it to.

The story is told in first person from the point of view of a middle-class white Christian woman (the opposite of what I am), yet I truly identified with her and where she is in her Christian walk. Jodi Baxter isn't the perfect heroine that I've encountered in some Christian fiction. She worries about fitting in with the other ladies at the conference, makes assumptions about people who do things differently than what she was taught in her church growing up, and wishes that she could worship unashamedly like some of the other women in her prayer group. Jodi's struggles with finding time to read the Bible and pray without distraction parallel my own.

Jackson did her research when writing this book. Her portrayal of the black characters and the black church experience was so spot-on that I had to stop in the middle of the book to check the internet and see if she was black or white! There were plenty of references to popular gospel artists, and she captured the flavor of a women's conference perfectly. Unfortunately, the one Jewish character in the book (Ruth) bordered on caricature. Ruth's speech pattern sounded like something from a New York Jew in a 1960s movie.

The copy I read has discussion questions in the back that would be useful for a prayer group, but the book doesn't feel like it was constructed just to be an object lesson. The story was engaging without being preachy, and it wrapped up nicely while still leaving room for more stories. I will definitely be picking up the next book in the series.


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If I don't stop adding books to my TBR list, I won't get very far with my goal to pare it down by the end of the year. Last week, I read one book from the list but I added nine more! That's what happens when I spend an afternoon reading book blogs.

This week I hope to move in a more positive direction. I have three books from my TBR list on my bedside table:



Back to the book blogs: I found a blogger whose entries are a perfect example of how I would like to write about books. The blog is called YAnnabe and it is written by an aspiring YA author named Kelly. The tone of the blog is light and conversational, which is what I am aiming for. Instead of doing a scholarly formal review, Kelly tells you why she picked the book and what she felt about it. She also does posts about books she quit reading and explains why she gave up on them. If you like YA books, check out this blog!

Like a lot of people, I had never heard of the Sookie Stackhouse book series until the HBO series True Blood started attracting buzz. As is my nature, I have trouble doing things out of order so I wanted to try reading Dead Until Dark before renting the first season of True Blood. I guess I'm not the only one who had that idea because I have been on a waiting list at the library for a month to get the book. Who knew it was so popular?

In the meantime, I keep hearing reviews of the TV show and how good it is. The first season is available on NetFlix, and I'm pretty sure I could have the first few episodes in my hands before I will get the book from the library. My summer viewing schedule isn't as full as it will be in a couple months, so I am tempted to add True Blood to my queue. Will I kick myself if I watch the show before reading the book? If I read the book first, I will watch the show but if I watch the show first I will probably skip the book altogether. Will I be missing a lot if I skip the book?

Yesterday, I was filling out a survey that asked how many books I've read in the past year. I hopped over to Goodreads to count the books on my Read shelf. According to what I've entered, I've finished 50 books since January 2009. That's crazy! To be fair, several of the titles were audiobooks, cookbooks, or YA books, but that was still a lot. For the same period last year, I only read 9 books and that includes all of the categories I mentioned.

I've been mentally chastising myself for falling down on my reading goals, but clearly I'm reading more than I thought. This gives me hope that I can accomplish my current goal of whittling down my TBR list, especially since several of the titles are in the same easy-to-read categories that I zipped through during the first half of this year. Now that I know reading the books isn't the problem, I need to work on writing my impressions of the books and posting them to the blog in a timely manner.

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Harry Potter series made it difficult for me to pick up any other books about magic. Every one that I picked up seemed to pale in comparison. I'm glad that I've finally gotten over that mental block; otherwise, I would have missed out on a great story in Skulduggery Pleasant. It is about a 12-year-old girl named Stephanie who discovers a magical underworld in her city when her uncle dies. She is led on a tour of this underground community by her uncle's best friend, who happens to be an undead skeleton called Skulduggery Pleasant.

The author did a good job creating a new universe for his novel that didn't make me compare it to other book in the genre. The explanations of how magic worked in that universe and who the bad guys were was The banter between Stephanie and Skulduggery made my 12-year-old and 16-year-old giggle. As for the ending, it was just right. It made me want to read the next book without resorting to a cliffhanger.

The only hesitation I have about recommending this book is that there is more death than I expected in a kids' book. I would say that if your child can handle The Graveyard Book or the final Harry Potter book, then she can handle this one.






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I've mentioned on this blog before that I use Goodreads to keep track of the books I want to read. It occurred to me that I should also be using it to keep track of where I heard about the book. Today I was constructing the opening paragraph of a book review in my head, and I couldn't remember how I found the book. It isn't a hot title like Twilight that has been mentioned repeatedly in various media outlets, which means that I most saw it mentioned on another blog. I've been finding a lot of books that way lately, and I think it is only fair that I give the bloggers a little mention when it happens. So now when I add a book to my Goodreads TBR list, I plan to type the name of the blog in the Recommended By field.

QUESTION: Do you try to keep track of who told you about a book?


The strange thing about my TBR list is that I keeping adding to it but I haven't been reading anything on it. When I hear about an interesting book, I check my local library. If they have it, I either check it out immediately or add it to my TBR list. So most of the books on my Read list have never been on my TBR list. At one point this year, my TBR list was almost 200 titles long. Once I weeded out the books that weren't in my library, I was still left with 80 titles. Starting this week, I will be attempting to check out books from the TBR list exclusively. I doubt that I can read 80 books in 6 months and I can't promise that I won't still be adding books to the list, but I hope that I will either have less than 50 titles on the list by the end of the year or that I will have rotated off the current titles and have all new ones. Wish me luck!

QUESTION: Do you have a crazy long TBR list?

Can You Get An F In Lunch? and Madame President are the first two books in a series by Nancy Krulik called How I Survived Middle School. My twin daughters, who just finished 6th grade, sped through these books and asked for more so I thought I should read them myself.

The series chronicles the experiences of an 11-year-old girl named Jenny McAfee as she starts 6th grade in a new school. The main conflict is whether Jenny should stay true to the person she was in elementary school or try to act older and look cool like some of the other kids in middle school. This comes about when Jenny returns from sleep-away camp and discovers that her lifelong best friend Addie no longer wants to have anything to do with her. Addie spent the summer hanging out with 7th graders and started the school year as one of the "Pops", or popular kids. Jenny finds her own group of friends by the end of the first book, so one of the themes ends up being Pops versus non-Pops.

These books are a quick read; even C2, my reluctant reader, managed to finish one in a couple of hours. Krulik addresses the common fears that a new middle schooler might have, such as getting lost in a bigger school building and not getting a morning snack like you got in elementary school. The author also comes down on the side of not growing up too quickly, which parents will love.

One thing that annoyed me was the constant mention of middleschoolsurvival.com, which is the website that Jenny turns to whenever she has a problem. It is a real website run by Scholastic, and all the quizzes that Jenny takes in the book are on there. The frequent references broke the flow of the story for me ("I wonder if Addie is really my friend? I'll go take a quiz and find out!") My daughter C1 even asked me why the website existed. I'm sure some kids who don't like reading that much will think the connection to the internet is cool, but an avid reader may find it a nuisance.

All in all, I believe this series makes good summer reading for girls during the summer before 6th grade, especially if they will be going to a different school. It will help them prepare for the changes they will encounter while presenting characters they can care about.

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History by Katherine Ashenburg

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


Since I only made it through half the book, this isn't a proper review. Rather, I will be sharing my impressions.

This book is a history of bathing and the varying importance placed on a clean body. The author was very thorough, which made some of the passages repetitive. Bathing was good, then bathing was bad, then bathing was good again, etc. Ashenburg's writing style isn't as dry as some history books can be, but her attention to detail still made it dense. I only made it up to the 18th century before the book had to be returned to the library.

This is not a book I would buy for myself. However, I wouldn't mind receiving it as a gift, if only to be able to skim it at my leisure and share the craziest excerpts with my husband.


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Squids Will Be Squids by Jon Scieszka

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a picture book of modern fables, and it features Scieska's quirky sense of humor. Some of the morals to these one-page tales are straightforward (like not telling people that your mom has hair on her upper lip), while others are just weird. All of them made my kids giggle, which is the point of the book. If you are expecting life lessons, these aren't the fables for you.


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