Average Girl Reads

33 Things Every Girl Should Know: Stories, Songs, poems, and Smart Talk by 33 Extraordinary Women by Tonya Bolden

Genre: Essays
On my TBR list? Yes

This is a compilation of essays, comics, poems, and short stories that are supposed to be inspirational and build self-esteem in middle-school girls and older. I think it probably would have seemed cool to girls reading it back in 1998 when it was published, but it is dated now. My girls (age 12 and 16) have never heard of any of the women mentioned in the book and one of the comics does a Madonna parody that would go completely over their heads. The best part of the book was the short stories that were written from the point of view of a teenager because they didn't sound like an adult saying, "Things are bad now, but they'll be better when you grow up."


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Genre: vintage girls' fiction
On my TBR list? Yes

Books 4 and 5 of a 7-book series

These two volumes document the continuing nursing adventures of Sue Barton. In Sue Barton, Rural Nurse, we follow Sue back to her home state as she leaves the Henry Street nursing program to work alongside her fiance Dr. Barry. The events in this book lead to her becoming head of a nursing program in Sue Barton, Superintendent of Nurses.

The writing style of this series is different that what I am accustomed to. With other books, I feel like I am following the main character around and looking over her shoulder, waiting for the next event to occur. Boylston's writing style is more like an account of a certain period in time. As the reader, I felt farther removed from the events. It was like sitting down to coffee with someone and having them try to give you their life story in a nutshell as opposed to watching the events unfold for yourself in a movie. Other authors make you wonder right up until the end whether there will be a happy ending. In this series, I never doubted the happy ending, but I was still intrigued enough to wonder how it was going to come about.

I think this series might be a fun read for a nurse. There is a lot of information in each book about nursing procedures, and a modern nurse might get a kick out of reading about how things once were done.

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible by David Plotz

Genre: nonfiction, stunt memoir
On my TBR list? Yes




DISCLAIMER: If you follow me on Goodreads, you will find this book on my Abandoned shelf. It is only abandoned because I didn't get to finish it before it was due back at the library. I'm posting a review anyway because I feel that I read enough to get the gist of the book.

I am a Christian who believes in reading the Bible. However, in actual practice I have trouble cracking it open regularly because I don't like to re-read anything. If you are like me, reading through the Bible for the third or fourth time and need help sticking to it, then this book might be for you. The title is a bit misleading because Plotz doesn't read through the entire Bible, but rather the entire Bible as Jews see it -- meaning the Old Testament. Still, it is interesting to read a fresh take on it from someone who isn't an evangelical Christian but isn't an atheist or skeptic, either.

The author describes himself as a lax but well-educated Jew who acquired most of his knowledge of the Bible secondhand through what his teachers told him and references in popular culture. Then a random reading of the Old Testament made him realize that he didn't know as much about the Bible as he thought he did. So he sets out to read every word of the Old Testament to find out what else he missed.

Good Book started out as a blog that I vaguely remember reading years ago. Although the writing isn't as tiresome as some blogs-turned-books, in my opinion this book would be better enjoyed in small doses. That's why I say it would make a good companion to a Bible reading program like B90X (reading the entire Bible in 90 days). Actually, the way Plotz has organized the book promotes such a use. His chapters correspond with the books of the Old Testament and then are further broken down so that you can easily read a couple chapters of Genesis and then flip to Plotz's comments.

Reading the Bible is supposed to be its own reward, but there are times when I need a little push. When you are trying to drag yourself through Leviticus, Plotz's pithy comments will lighten your mood. I especially like the bits where he describes how his newfound knowledge affected the way he practiced his faith. I think that this is a book that Jews and Christians could both enjoy.

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From Average Girl Reads

My 11-year-old son DJ started reading Twilight last week. In a way, I wasn't surprised that he picked it up. The book has been in and out of our house as each of his three older sisters made attempts to read it (C1 was the only one who found it captivating enough to finish and move on to the next book in the series). I was still a little worried when I saw him getting so engrossed in it, though. I wondered if other boys would pick at him for reading a "girly" book. After all, the jokes about the series always center around "sparkly vampires". To me, that sounds like the type of book that could get a kid beat up.

Turns out I needn't have worried. I decided to put my fears to rest and casually ask my kids if boys at their schools are reading Twilight. The consensus is that boys from 7th grade on up through high school think that the books and the movies are solid chick territory, but 6th-grade boys just view it as a painless way to rack up AR points. Even though it is rated as being on a 4th-grade reading level, the book is worth 18 points. An easy-to-read book with that many points is like the Holy Grail :-).

TBR List: I feel like I am treading water. Even though I finished three books last week, my list is still only down to 108 titles. That's only one title less than last week. Three books in a week is pretty good for me, so seeing the list barely budge is disappointing. However, I am reminding myself that part of my goal was to at least refresh the titles on the list if I couldn't reduce the number of titles. Also, I have several titles that are a continuation of the three series I'm reading. If I blaze through those, I should be able to make a dent in the list.

Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse by Helen Dore Boylston

Genre: fiction, romance
On my TBR list?: Yes

Book 3 of 7

Blurb: In this installment of the series, Sue Barton has graduated from her nursing program and has been accepted as one of the famous Henry Street nurses in NYC. She loves her job, but will she choose it over marriage to Dr. Bill Barry?

I'm not sure what age group this book was intended for when it was published in 1938, but I imagine that it gave young girls a good idea of what public nursing was about. I know that it drove me to find out more about Lillian Wald and the real Henry Street program.

Another aspect of this book that I enjoyed is that Boylston shows Sue Barton as something of an independent woman, or as independent as a woman could be in the 1930s. Not only does she insist on having some time on her own before she marries, but this agreement with her fiance becomes a major plot point. This is in contrast to "The Real Thing" by Rosamond DuJardin, a book that was probably aimed at the same audience but that made husband-hunting sound like the main reason for going to college.

This is the type of book I would have no problem handing to my 12-year-old, but she probably wouldn't read it because of the outdated writing style. It is a good "palate cleanser" for an adult who just finished reading a more intense book, though.

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The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Caught by Neta Jackson

Genre: Christian fiction
On my TBR list?: Yes

Book 5 of 7 in a series




This book gives the reader another roller-coaster ride with the Yada Yada Prayer Group. They deal with people going into jail and getting out of jail, young love, pregnancy, job changes, a church merger, and domestic violence. All the while, our narrator Jodi struggles with staying strong in her faith.

Reading this book was like talking to a friend that you've known for a while. Old friends tend to repeat their stories, and Jackson did a LOT of recapping in this volume. I know that it is difficult to know how much you should reference previous events for the benefit of the new readers or those who haven't read the other books in a while. Still, this installment seemed to have a lot more references than the others. I found myself skimming a lot to get to the new plot points.

There also seemed to be a lot about transportation. This is the fifth book in the series; I'm not sure that we still need descriptions of how the various characters get around town, except in the instances when it is germane to the plot. Besides, shouldn't the Baxters have a second car by now?

All in all, it wasn't a bad installment of the series, but I'm starting to feel like I did when I watched the last season of "7th Heaven". I kept watching to the bitter end because I had invested time in the characters. I'm hoping that the last two books take the series out with a bang and not a whimper.

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The Wizard, the Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey by Lisa Papademetriou

Genre: YA, fiction, fantasy
On my TBR list?: Yes

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Brief description: Two girls who are total opposites get zapped into the fantasy book that they are studying for English class, changing the plot and themselves in the process.

I checked this out of the library for myself, but my 12-year-old daughter got to it first. She devoured it in two days and proclaimed that I had to read it. Her enthusiasm was the only thing that got me through this predictable book.

To be fair, the one-dimensional characters probably wouldn't be so predictable to a middle schooler who hasn't been exposed to as much television and film as I have. You have the nerdy girl and the rich airhead, the less handsome guy who turns out to be a better person than the buff hotties, and the wisecracking talking animal thrown in for comic relief. I knew before the end of the first chapter what lesson each girl needed to learn. This would be the perfect set-up for a Saturday night movie on Disney Channel, so I wasn't surprised to find out that the author has written novelizations of Disney series like "Lizzie McGuire" and "That's So Raven".

Not only was the book predictable but it also had an identity crisis. There were a couple dark secrets thrown in that didn't fit the otherwise light tone of the book -- not too dark for a 12-year-old to handle, but dark enough to make you wonder which direction the book is going in. If I had a choice, I would have gone with the more serious tone and get rid of the lame jokes that sound cute coming out the mouths of Disney's young ingenues, but fall flat on the page.

Bottom line: although many YA novels appeal to adults, this is not one of them. Save it for your kids.

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