News

Amid the truly amazing (to me, at least) response to this book from creatures great and small has been one teeny sadness: a noticeable lack of hometown love.* (Brian Lehrer — seriously? Why don’t you think women should be allowed to read????) Still, I could not have chosen two more echt-hometown organs, nor more wondrous writeups, than those with Newsday** and THE POST!!!. Excerptry:

From my interview with Newsday’s Carmela Ciuraru:

What do you think about parents monitoring their teenagers’ reading habits? Many parents have slammed the “Twilight” series. I take a dim view of telling other people what to read. What I liked so much about this period of reading in my life is that no one was paying any attention to what I was reading, or why I was reading. People don’t give teens credit for being able to enjoy a book while still seeing its flaws.

And from Sara Stewart’s writeup in The New York Post, w/ONE of my favorite parts:

At her best, Skurnick alternates between reveling in the familiar details (like the time Nancy lied about getting her period in “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret”) while layering in edgier interpretations: ” ‘The Big Woods’ lays the groundwork for all the sublimated sensuality that comes thereafter,” she writes of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s first novel, “including Mary and Laura’s epic, savage rivalry . . . Laura gathers too many rocks by the shores of a lake and tears out her pocket — Mary is clean and neat and keeps her hands nicely folded in her lap. (Of course she does, the f – – – ing bitch!)”

Thank you hometown! I may live in Jersey City, but I was BORN in the Bronx.

* This psychological process is actually true: positive attention begets complaint! Fascinating. I asked for yellow M&M’s only, goddamnit!

** Apparently there is a picture in the print version, which I haven’t seen yet. I had coincidentally had my hair done at the House of Curl Expertry, the Devachan salon, that day, so I am glad to have a record of the amazing HAIR, despite what else happened, because I have of course been unable to replicate it.