Chains and Twisted

These are both by Laurie Halse Anderson, and the reason I am putting them both in one entry is because I'm WAY, WAY behind on logging these nifty books I'm reading. I'm about ten books behind. So I'm putting these together because they were both really fast reads and both by the same author and both really good, but I don't really have much to say about them. I like this author a lot because she writes lots of different styles and about lots of different subjects. (There are some very descriptive words in those last few sentences. I'm very proud of them.) By that I mean she usually writes about teenagers (these are considered "young adult" books, which are generally my favorite kind of fiction) but she sets her characters in modern high schools, historically tumultuous times, outer space, you get it. So she's a really versatile writer and I generally enjoy her stories. But that's pretty much what they are: just stories, and since I'm not 13 I'm not amazingly overwhelmed by the profundity. I just like reading them.

It reminds me of Judy Blume books when I was a kid. Judy Blume everybody read. Her stories were all about normal every day kids and all normal every day kids enjoyed reading them. Then she would write the story that includes a makeout scene or a kids "discovering" their bodies, etc etc, and the book became THE hot item as soon as it was found out. It was passed under desks from giggly girl to giggly girl. Our parents were horrified and forbid us to read all Judy Blume books and tried to get her banned from the library. But luckily, Superfudge was an innocent story about a four-year-old so only individual books like Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret got kicked off the shelves.

That didn't stop us from finding copies anyway so we learned how we must, we must, we must increase our bust. Obviously I was too goody-two-shoes to use that charm for myself. Sigh.

Anyway, long live young adult authors. Long may those over-intelligent eight-year-olds learn more about adolescence than they were meant to by reading them. Long may they suffer the consequences... long may I continue to block my scarring memories from second grade.