Bridget Jones for teens

Those of you who enjoyed Louise Rennison's books, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (PB REN) and On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (PB REN), will be happy to hear that we've gotten the third and fourth books in the series: Dancing In My Nuddy-Pants and Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas.



Fortunately, Rennison includes a glossary of all those Brit terms in her American editions. In case you were wondering, "nungas" are "basoomas." As for "nuddy-pants," they are: "Quite literally nude-colored pants, and you know what nude-colored pants are? They are no pants. So if you are in your nuddy-pants you are in your no pants, i.e., you are naked."

Hot stoves

Warning: I sorta went nuts with the scanner on this one. But I couldn't help it. There was just too much good stuff to choose from. A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove by Laura Schenone (641.50973 Sch274) is a "history of American women told through food, recipes, and remembrances." I discovered that the idea of "stove" can mean many things.

Here's a photo of Navaho women making fry bread in 1956:



Slaves brought technical knowledge and skills from West Africa to the rice-growing regions of Georgia and South Carolina. Here's a photo of women pounding rice in Georgia during the 1920s:



Looks like incredibly hard work.

Drying food is another form of "stoving." This photo is of a woman placing seaweed on a rack to dry, sometime between 1890 and 1923:



Finally, technology comes to the rescue in this picture of an electric kitchen in 1896. Notice that each appliance has a burner with its own electrical plug.

Death by comma

Actually not, but if author Lynne Truss had her way, those who are careless with their punctuation would be called on it a lot more often. Her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (421.1 T775e2004), has achieved rare status for a book about grammar -- it's a runaway best seller.



It's her clever treatment of the topic that makes this book such a joy. Here's what she has to say about a sign that reads "Come inside for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's":
"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but just don't bother to go any further."

More on comic books and graphic novels

The latest issue of one of my library magazines (College and Research Libraries News) has a lengthy guide to digital resources on comic books and graphic novels. I thought I'd share a few of the sites that struck me as particularly interesting and/or fun.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is "dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights for members of the comics community."

Comics Worth Reading "provides industry news, reviews, and extensive recommendations for manga, independent, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics titles and series."

And my personal favorite, Comic Art in Scholarly Writing: A Citation Guide, which offers instructions and examples for citing comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels. Now, truly, there's a way to cite EVERYTHING.

Political poetry fun

Right before the November election, National Public Radio broadcast two political poets, Calvin Trillin and James Bowman, who read their rhymes before and after the various political conventions and debates took place. We just received Trillin's new volume, Oblivioiusly On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme (811 T734o):



Here's a sample:

A Word to George Bush, On the Occasion of His Mentioning That Iraq Was Not Responsible For the Attacks on 9/11

You tell us, with a casual by-the-way,
Iraq was not behind that awful day,
As if we'd never heard your staff and you
Implying just the opposite was true.
The Web must say, or maybe Lexis-Nexis,
If chutzpa is a word they use in Texas.

-- October 13, 2003

Speaking of books I could get in trouble for...

I'm amazed that our copy of The "Go Ask Alice" Book of Answers: A Guide to Good Physical, Sexual, and Emotional Health (613.0434 G534) has only been checked out once.



It's based on the award-winning Go Ask Alice! health Q & A website run by Columbia University. Find advice on an enormous variety of topics -- athlete's foot, smokeless tobacco, athletic performance anxiety, safe sex, iron deficiencies, depression, bumps on the inner thighs (no, I'm not making that up), abusive relationships, sexually transmitted diseases, gym manners, headaches, etc., etc.

Some raw stuff here, but frank, expert advice.

Physics in fiction

Despite its cheesy cover, I really enjoyed William Sleator's Singularity (PB SLE):



While house-sitting their great-uncle's deserted farm, twin brothers discover a secret in the locked shed on the property. (Warning, bit of a spoiler here) It's a singularity, a space where, for every hour that passes, only a second goes by in the outside world. What's worse, something menacing is coming up through the sink, something that surely comes from another universe. Take these circumstances and throw in a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, and you get a real page-turner.

Oh, those darned teenagers

This photo appears on the cover of The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, by Thomas Hine (305.2350973 H588r):



Hine makes the point that the whole idea of "teenager-ness" is a social construct, that it was more or less invented during the first half of the twentieth century when teens became an object of interest "to marketers and social reformers." Prior to that time, teens were considered merely not-quite-formed adults. Youth used to describe a person who was anywhere between twelve and thirty-five. In this fascinating social history, Hine concludes that perhaps it's time to retire the concept, that the label does more harm than good. "As we've seen, teenagers bear an inordinate share of the blame for society's failures, while they're given too little responsibility for its improvement. Teenagers are people of whom too much is asked and too little is expected."

More magazines?

I dunno, but it seems like our magazine collection is getting a little stale.



Anyone have suggestions for new subscriptions? As I wrote in an email message this morning, we are already pretty full-to-the-brim with fashion/teen-girl type stuff. I'm looking for magazines that will interest whole sectors of people we probably haven't served very well. Gamers come to mind, as an example.

Post comments here, on the survey that's in the library, on the (oh so LONELY) book chat, or just tell me what you think. I'm open to all reasonable ideas. Though I am Queen and get to make the final decisions.

Solid advice on beauty

The wacky women who brought us gurl.com and the book Deal With It!, Rebecca Odes, Esther Drill, and Heather McDonald, also wrote The Looks Book: A Whole New Approach to Beauty, Body Image, and Style (646.7Od2l). They articulate the concerns we think about constantly but don't dare voice aloud - why looks matter, why we are so obsessed with our appearance, why we think everyone else looks great but we don't.

Part 2 has a chapter on each body part women fret about. Really. Nose, mouth, teeth, boobs, butt, skin, even body hair. All topics are demystified and subjected to humorous scrutiny. Part 3 showcases a "look" per chapter. Bombshell, goth, new wave, baby doll, bad girl, diva, power jock, goddess, androgyne, girl next door, and a bunch of others.

The book is filled with funky, hip art. Here is a montage from a page of stylin' shoes:

Road trip

Here's a book that snuck in over the summer while no one was looking: On the Move: Transportation and the American Story by Janet F. Davidson and Michael S. Sweeney (Q.338.0973D283o). It's the companion volume to the largest exhibition ever created by the National Museum of American History. The book is full of all sorts of unexpected images like this one:



The caption reads: "Beginning in 1936, the annual Negro Motorist Green-Book listed restaurants, lodging, and other businesses that welcomed African-American travelers. A happy purchaser told Victor H. Green, the guide's originator and publisher, that it would prove to 'mean as much if not more to us as the AAA [American Automobile Association] means to the white race.' " Wow.