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When I started SHELF DISCOVERY, I immediately remembered so many small details about some of the books, silly little inconsequential details that have no effect on the plot, story, or characters, but nonetheless remained wedged in my brain (in some cases 25+ years later). Is it shameful that I can’t recall the major characters and plots of most of my “required” high school and college reading, but can remember that in Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, she had been humming the song “Beautiful Dreamer” to herself while floating in an inner tube when she was stung by a man-o-war? Or that in The Cat Ate My Jumpsuit, Marcy is worried that her new purple pantsuit with make her look like an enormous grape at her friend Nancy’s party?

The blog Syndicate Product Covert HQ puts me to shame with a really lovely rundown of the inconsequential details we all nonetheless remember from these books. I had forgotten the thawed-out PB&J Jill sneaks in the bathroom! Why do I think it’s just PB, though? Or is there another book in which a mother makes and freezes PB sandwiches that the daughter hates to eat? In any case, go witness.

I reviewed It’s Beginning to Hurt, by James Lasdun, for LAT:

It’s the ability to delude ourselves that Lasdun keeps coming back to, knowing it can lead only to a more horrible moment: when we realize that we should have noticed sooner how we were going wrong. (That’s perhaps truly clearest in “The Old Man,” where a fiancé has the dreadful realization that he’s about to marry a murderer.) Most moving is the moment in the title story when a man recalls with despair his mistress dismissing him: “Marie never asked him to leave his family, and he had regarded this too as part of his luck. And then, abruptly, she had ended it. ‘I’m in love with you,’ she’d told him matter-of-factly, ‘and it’s beginning to hurt.’ ”

In this marvelous, masterful collection of such unexamined moments, that minor character is the only one who ever sees it coming.

Booklist’s Book Group Buzz wrote a very nice post about how you should have your book group use my book, which you should:

I have found an entire shelf of tween-favorites in this book. After I spent a weekend strolling the bookshelves of my mind (and placing reserves on all these life-shaping books that I neglected to keep), I began to think about talking about these books with other readers.

Skurnick is not only paying tribute to these great, classic novels of teengirldom, but she’s also thoughtfully looking for the messages, ideas, and crafted writing that we missed as kids. These are the subjects I believe will make great discussion topics in a book group.

I am actually not in any book clubs, because book reviewers are horrible bullies and that’s why we work alone. But I am happy to COME to any book club and just eat all the cookies.

If you would like to read one of the few love letters I have ever actually mailed to the other party, check out Library Love Fest: Lizzie Skurnick Loves Libraries!, where they’ve reprinted a letter I wrote to the teen branch of the ALA, YALSA, this summer. ALSO AND INCIDENTALLY, you have a chance to win one of 25!  I do love librarians — mine really was nice and let me take the same book out for weeks. (And yes, she did notice.)

Dear Librarian,

I can still remember the exact cover of the book (pink plastic dust jacket, fraying) and where it was shelved (fourth bookcase on the right towards the back, middle of the second shelf from top). The spine had long since been rubbed to illegibility, and, looked at from the side, the crumbling pages were jagged, like teeth. The condition of the book may have been due to the fact that my grade school library in Englewood, NJ simply was in dire need of funding. But I suspect I inflicted much of this damage personally—since for a period of some months, that copy of Louisa May Alcott’s…..

Three of the wonderful people of Baltimore, where I lived for about 8 years, threw me a book party this weekend which was BEYOND FUN even though one friend made me read and stand on a kids’ table like I was on a bima and I really feel that I almost broke it, but I just gave a big quiz about blacking and papooses and survived. AND and more relevantly…apparently my old friend Tom Hall ran the interview I did with him a few weeks ago about Shelf Discovery for WYPR’s Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast while I was there! I missed it but in my grand campaign to upload and flash everything, here you go:

Witness the ending theme music! I love that.

And here’s me giving some little web extra about how I hate lessons, a trait unfortunately reflected in many aspects of my life:

(I haven’t been authorized to post photos of others, but here’s the offending bima, my accusatory wine glass. Actually I’m pretty sure that was a toast to Christine, Jane and Liz. Thank you darling ladies.)

Who were the geniuses who invented placing books not on shelves but in stacks on tables like so many sweaters at J. Crew? I don’t know, but they were smart. And I am on two tables! (Presumably more, but who knows where.) Thank you, B&N and/or marketing geniuses. Pics, this first from my agent:

Powell's in Portland

The West Village, where I made some poor Danish tourist take a picture of me on the way to therapy. She was clearly terrified that it all had something to do with drug-running or human trafficking but she acceded. Then I took the book from that part of the shelf and swapped it with the one copy left of Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father, because I don’t think he’s being aggressive enough on health care:

Sixth Ave B&N

I forgot I had this last one, but here it is at B&N uptown, shelved in literary criticism. I pointed out to the saleslady (humorously, I humor myself) that it says “Memoir” on the cover and that’s the way the Library of Congress indexes it. She gave me a frozen look and said, “We shelve it here.” HEIL.

82nd street B&N

Under Faulkner. HarperCollins tried.

Don’t get me wrong — I love the book reviewers. But I love the bloggers MORE, because they have no filters, and let’s face it, who do you want to sit next to at a party. Here are some lovely online mentions of the book over the weekend:

From Librarian Avengers:

If I suffered from Pageant-Mom syndrome and wanted to create an exact replica of myself from the raw material of some random pre-teen girl, I would begin my narcissistic experiment in literary manipulation by having her read all of the books celebrated in Shelf Discovery.

And from The Hoyden! (Exclamation point mine):

I also want Lizzie to be my friend because she is, under her full name, a poet with huge gifts with language (just making a gift package featuring her “Bells” to my long distance sweetie RIGHT NOW) and when I e-mailed her for real to beg that she come to my town on her tour, she e-mailed right back to ask if Louisville had good barbeque.

GIRL. AFTER. MY. OWN. HEART.

Thank-you blogosphere!

In my continuing campaign to use this flash link for everything audio I have ever done, I am placing below the thinger for my appearance on The Bob Edwards show, which has now been shortened so it is only me. To tell you the truth, I really liked the man who preceded me, James Lovelock, whose curmudgeonly view of the current environmental movement moved from merely amusing to completely delightful once he asserted that pesticides were not a problem because, “Of course, we’re living longer than ever! That’s the problem.” If you’d like to hear him too, which I recommend, go click this link to the full show. But if you are pressed for time and merely want to see me break the record for saying “period” within a 2-minute interval, just click below.

My wonderful Caketrain publisher Joseph Reed told me about this FLASH plugin so that I can put a player on the site! I am obsessed. I am especially happy as it allows me to easily link to all AUDIO, like this freakishly enjoyable interview I did with Kim Alexander of XM and Sirius’s Fiction Nation. After we talked about Neanderthal rape and mothers clasping sons to bosoms and smoked whitefish porn I WAS OBSESSED and almost followed her home so that we could talk forever and ever. There is also lots of lengthy explanation about my career and blah blah but just skip ahead to dirty parts.

This summer I’m toting around Lizzie Skurnick’s Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, which was excerpted in Double X in July. In it, Skurnick and a few co-contributors (though it’s Skurnick’s warm, sardonic voice that dominates) re-read and re-assess the young-adult books that they remember loving as girls: Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Beverly Cleary’s Fifteen, Katherine Paterson’s Jacob Have I Loved, and dozens more. Shelf Discovery is like a mini-bibliography of literature for young women, annotated by your brainy best friend.

Dana….I’m buying! (No, really.) If Julie could come tonight, she could buy too.

I’m somewhat hamstrung because my issue didn’t get delivered and I can’t read it online, but thank you, Glynnis, for calling out the New Yorker for not crediting me. I don’t actually think Thurman knows I’m alive but it’s always fun to launch accusations:

Here’s the bigger question: why this piece now? And going in, the answer(s) actually seemed somewhat clear at least. Just last month Jezebel writer Lizzie Skurnick published Shelf Discovery, a collection of essays based on her enormously popular Jezebel column Fine Lines, which is devoted to reviewing Young Adult classics from the 70’s and 80’s. Shortly after publication the book came close to hitting a top 500 Amazon ranking. A quick look at the index reveals title like, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, Tiger Eyes, Harriet the Spy, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Jacob Have I Loved, and yes Little House on the Prairie, which technically was published in the 1930’s but enjoyed renewed relevance thanks to the 70’s TV show (Skurnick refers to the LH books “As the Most Important Work of Our Time” – hence the title of this post). The other day at a Shelf Discovery bookstore reading I attended, Skurnick suggested that if she hadn’t started the Fine Lines column someone else would have, because it was just the right time for it. Which makes sense since the generation who grew up on these books is now at the age where they are having children of their own (or know a lot of people who are having children of their own, as the case may be). So classic YA books are in the air! And yet Thurman doesn’t mention Skurnick, or even spend any time in her piece dissecting why the books themselves were so popular, for that matter.

Read the rest here — there is an impressive segue to Sarah Palin.

I was away this weekend and I think I forgot to post this Q&A with the marvelous Teenreads.com, who I’m sure you all know but if you DON’T is a wonderful resource for teen literary anything. I’ll talk boys if you talk NED KELLY AND THE KINGDOM OF BEES:

TRC: Most of the titles in SHELF DISCOVERY feature female characters learning about themselves and their world. Do you think girls have a different relationship to books than boys? Can you recommend a “books for boys” equivalent to your book?

LS: I do think that for the most part girls become dedicated readers a bit earlier, so it’s not surprising that they’re the most active readers for teen books. (Or any other books around.) And women writers have often been shuttled into the YA or midlist market, which is more interested in girls’ and womens’ stories, and those books garner far fewer prizes, get less attention and have a shorter shelf life. When I started this column, I wasn’t really thinking boys/girls — I was writing about the books that were important to me. But I’m surprised at how many people seem to think it’s my responsibility to throw in some boys! When the publishing world starts to be ruled by books for and about women, I’ll be happy to throw them a bone. For now, any reviewer who thinks I’ve neglected boys or books for boys is totally welcome to get to work on a book like this for boys, which would be great, I think. (And did I mention NED KELLY AND THE KINGDOM OF BEES? I, ROBOT? Also, A LONG DAY IN WINTER, or A LIGHT IN THE FOREST…. Oh, maybe I should just do one for boys.)

Just did another interview with the lively Amanda Marcotte of RealityCheck.org, a U.N.-associated podcast that also does books coverage. Man, I have to say, if you ever have to do a battery of interviews, I REALLY recommend this morning thing. As the caffeine surges through my system I’ve found my ideas on vintage YA are eerily clear, like they’re about to plunge off a bridge and have to revisit all the high points. Also, I discovered if you mix the milk and sugar FIRST and then put in the French press it really does a nice thing to the emulsification. Podcast will post once available.

Just did an interview with the equally biblomaniacal Dr. Alvin Jones, whose website also posts conversations with my party-demanding compatriot Irina Reyn and Edie Falco. I am lying — (Edie Falco is not my friend but because a) I wish she were and b) I can’t find the interview of my actual friend and SD contributor Laura Lippman, she will have to do for the present.) I sort of wish Dr. Alvin Jones could interview me EVERY morning, as there is something bracing about getting your thoughts together for an invisible audience first thing in the morning. Anyway, clip incoming — and I’m doing another podcast in 4 minutes that will be incoming too.

….The book’s only shortcoming is that it lacks an index, which means that if you want to see how many of Judy Bloom’s books are included, you have to flip through the contents list and try to remember which books Bloom authored. But that’s just small annoyance and has the benefit that it forces you to dig deeper into the book.

The Lindsay Post has this very nice review which complains only that the book doesn’t have an index (something I would have liked too) but takes the Wilder-esque point of view that there’s no great loss without some small gain. I LOVE LIBRARIANS.