Obscure books I read as a tween

If you were anything like I was, you devoured everything Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume wrote, then the entire Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High series.

But I took reading to a ridiculous level as a kid. I read probably three or four books a week in elementary and middle school. I remember eagerly awaiting the monthly release of the latest installment in each of the series I read, and asking my mom to take me to the closest bookstore on the DAY of the release so I could pick it up that very day.

One day a few months ago, my parents packed up two boxes of books I'd left in my old room at their house and sent them to me. I tweeted a picture of a few of the books, and Leigh asked me what other books were in the box.

Y'all. I read every series written for tweens that was ever written in the '80s. You think I'm exaggerating. I assure you: I AM NOT.

Here is a sampling. And when I say "sampling," I mean that I took pictures of maybe one-twentieth of the contents of the boxes. If that.

I mean, some of these series had upwards of 40 books in them ... and I owned them all.

Anything ring a bell yet? Anything? I mean, I read all the regular stuff, too, like I said. All your Sweet Valley High, Flowers in the Attic, Are you there God, It's me, Margaret? ... but when you read as much as I did, you go through a LOT of books.

I thought I'd show you some of the non-serialized stuff, too. Some of these I remembered as soon as I saw their covers. That guy with the black eye. Ha!

I didn't read many books more than once -- I still don't -- but A Smart Kid Like You was one that I read so many times I must have had it memorized at one point.

Nina Beckwith? Anyone remember her?

What did you read when you were growing up? Do you remember any of these books?

A little more about reading

Thanks so much for all of your helpful comments about kids' books last week! If you have a voracious reader and missed that post, please go check out the comments. Great ideas!

I saw this illustration on 22 Words last week, coincidentally published around the same time I wrote my post about Nathaniel:

So, so true. Nathaniel wedges himself into a chair to read, tossing and turning, but rarely sitting with his feet on the floor. I'm the same way.

In which I discuss my avid reader

All of our boys like to read, but Nathaniel is the one who's really taken off on his own. He reads everything he can get his hands on that interests him, and we're hard-pressed to keep him supplied with good books to read.

As we've established, he LOVES Harry Potter.

But he's read them all at least twice, some of them four or five times. He's also read and re-read Percy Jackson's The Lightning Thief series, as well as Jackson's other's series. He just completed the Conspiracy 365 series last week, and he's started The Hunger Games trilogy.

Next up, I have several books in Suzanne Collins' other series, The Underland Chronicles, about a child named Gregor, tucked away.

But Internet, we keep track of the boys' reading for school, and Nathaniel read over 4,000 pages in January. No lie. He reads for at least an hour a night, sometimes two to two-and-a-half hours, and all the time on the weekend.

(I know. How does he get all that TV-watching in if he's doing all that reading? Well, that's why I let him watch so much TV. Because he's reading so much I feel like it balances out.)

So here's my question: What else should be on our list? He's reading well beyond 3rd-grade level, probably more like middle school.

He loves: Harry Potter, Lightning Thief, Conspiracy 365, Big Nate, Wimpy Kid

He's already read and is tired of: Magic Treehouse, Boxcar Children, Nate the Great

He tried and didn't like: Hardy Boys, Lemony Snicket

I think I'm going to introduce him to John Grisham's new line of children's books, and I absolutely want him to read one of my favorite books from when I was his age, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

People have given me links to lists of age-appropriate books, but those are hard to wade through. I'd much rather have individual recommendations based on your own experience. Any thoughts?

Possibly the grossest children's book I've ever seen

We went to the McWane Center last weekend, and while walking past the gift shop, a book caught my eye.

And if you think I didn't turn around and make a beeline straight to that book, you don't know me at all. When I got there, I confirmed that it was what I thought it was. A BOOK ABOUT SCABS. All about them. Just about scabs.

I flipped it open to see what kind of gems I'd find inside. And the first page I flipped to didn't disappoint.

Eating scabs. Ohhhhhhkaaaaay. I was hesitant to go any farther, but ultimately I decided to look at one more page.

AND WAS IMMEDIATELY SORRY I HAD.

Internet, I really couldn't take any more. I snapped it shut and went back out to find my family. Of course, NOW I wish I had read more. Just to see exactly how disgusting it got.

I mean, HAVE YOU EVER?

Really enjoying

Right now I am having a fabulous time catching up on Cougar Town.

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I'd never watched it before Christmas, but I downloaded seasons 1 and 2 to watch while I feed Amelia at night. I'm finished with season 1 already, and I'm looking forward to starting season 2. I find myself with a small smile on my face at the end of every episode ... It's a quiet little triumph of a show. Anyone else watch it?

As for music, I am totally obsessed with Katy Perry's new song, The One That Got Away.

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I think it's her most "musical" song to date ... I love the melody, the harmonies and the music.

And I just finished Mindy Kaling's new book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And I enjoyed every single sentence.  She's a writer and actress on The Office, and she's a kindred spirit.

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This isn't a sponsored post ... I just wanted to share some things I've been loving lately while we all wait for my camera cable to get here!

Confessions of a serial monogamist

I've been reading Mindy Kaling's hilarious memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, and I highly recommend it. It is HILARIOUS and well worth the read.

I just finished the chapter in which she talks about how she doesn't understand her friends who routinely have one-night stands:

I don't even mean sexual health safety, like STDs. I mean good old-fashioned life-and-death safety. Here's what I can't wrap my brain around. I barely talk to strangers (a habit that I started as a child and that has served me well through my adulthood). So the idea of going to a stranger's house at night, or having that stranger come over to my house, sounds insanely dangerous.

Mindy Kaling and I are two peas in a pod in that respect.

Here is a major disclosure: not only have I never had a one-night stand, but I've only kissed three boys (men) in my entire life. When I was allowed to start dating, I dated my first boyfriend my entire sophomore year of high school (kiss #1). Great guy. Grew up to be a fireman and has a wife and three kids, and we keep in touch on Facebook.

I met boyfriend number two shortly after boyfriend number one broke my heart, and we dated from my junior year of high school through my sophomore year of college (kiss #2). Also a great guy, he ultimately moved to Birmingham and now lives less than half a mile from us, coincidentally. He just got married last month, and we keep in touch by waving when we pass each other in the car.

Boyfriend number three (kiss #3) turned into husband number one, and we dated for my junior and senior years of college, and then got married three months after I graduated. I was 22, and now we've been married for 16 years!

I don't think I really realized how unusual that is until I started working at The Place Where I Work Now. One day about five years ago, the girls (women, I guess) were all standing around talking about how many men they'd been with, just while they were in college. And when I told them about how many guys I'd kissed, they all broke into stunned laughter. (They may still be laughing.)

At any rate, I suppose I DO come off as pretty sheltered, but that's the big number. THREE KISSES.

That sound you just heard was my dad releasing a sigh he wishes he could have exhaled back in the mid-90s.

Umlaut this

** Updated! With the link! Because I'm helpful like that. **

I don't know how many of you have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and/or the other two books in the trilogy, but if you have, please do me a favor and click here. This made me grin for five minutes. This is exactly how the book felt to me. (I read the first one but can't bring myself to pick up the other two.)

I enjoyed it in general but felt like it was about one-third too long. I KNOW. I'M ONE TO TALK ABOUT RAMBLING ON AND ON, RIGHT? But wow. That book just kept going and going. And going.

And Lisbeth, while extremely interesting as a character, was also just a mite too Bella Swan for me.

Thank you, Laura, for bringing this great column to my attention. Made my day.

Books I still remember fondly

I've always been a big reader, and mentioning the Sweet Valley High series in a post recently made me start thinking about some of my other favorite books when I was younger.

Of course I was -- along with most other girls my age -- a big fan of the Nancy Drew series and all of Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby books ... and I was also addicted to Judy Blume, from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, to Blubber, to the controversial-with-middle-school-students'-moms Forever.

But there were two that totally jump-started my imagination at two different ages. One was Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater.

From Amazon.com: Poor Mr. Popper isn't exactly unhappy; he just wishes he had seen something of the world before meeting Mrs. Popper and settling down. Most of all, he wishes he had seen the Poles, and spends his spare time between house-painting jobs reading all about polar explorations. Admiral Drake, in response to Mr. Popper's fan letter, sends him a penguin; life at 432 Proudfoot Avenue is never the same again. From one penguin living in the icebox, the Popper family grows to include 12 penguins, all of whom must be fed. Thus is born "Popper's Performing Penguins, First Time on Any Stage, Direct from the South Pole." Their adventures while on tour are hilarious, with numerous slapstick moments as the penguins disrupt other acts and invade hotels.

This book was a huge favorite of mine in elementary school, mainly because I imagined moving penguins into our home, too. I imagined taking a garden hose, turning it on and spraying it down our basement stairs, then somehow freezing it so that we'd have the perfect environment for penguins down there. I spent more time thinking about that than was probably healthy. Thought about it last week, as a matter of fact.

The other book that completely fascinated me was From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. In this book, Claudia and her younger brother Jamie hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art overnight and have countless adventures while they're there.

Ever since I read that book, when I enter a museum, I think of Claudia and Jamie. I always wonder what it would be like to stay in the museum overnight, being somewhere I'm not supposed to be, but not causing any harm except for possibly damaging a multi-million-dollar piece of art.  ;)

I'm thinking about adding each of these books to Nathaniel's Amazon wish list, because even though they're for kids slightly older than he, he's reading way ahead of his age. I hope he enjoys them as much as I did!

Is reading worth the anxiety?

So it's time for another edition of "She So Crazy." This time it revolves around some of the madness related to reading.

- If I drop a book or magazine on the floor while I'm reading it, I suffer from a really disproportionate adrenaline rush and then a crushing sense of defeat. How long would it take to find my place again ... 30 seconds? What's the big deal?

- I always take a book or my Kindle to the doctor's office so I can read during the inevitable waiting period. When the nurse comes to the door and hollers, "Katherine!", for some reason I start freaking out internally. "Wait a second, let me grab my jacket and my purse. Oh, let me put my Kindle in my purse. I'm right here; don't leave without me. OH CRAP, I DROPPED MY KINDLE." I mean, she sees me; she realizes I'm coming. I have no idea why the freakout. Every. single. time.

- I also always have a book with me while I'm waiting to board a plane. Even though the PA system is incredibly loud (and I NEVER seem to miss the boarding calls for the six flights at NEIGHBORING gates), I am always worried that I'm going to get really engrossed in my book and miss my flight, EVEN THOUGH I'M SITTING RIGHT THERE. Paranoid? You might think. But it almost happened to me once. I didn't "snap to" until they announced the final boarding call and threatened to give my seat away to a standby passenger.

- I'm pretty sure I've NEVER broken the binding on a paperback book. When I read, I am careful never to bend the covers back at an angle that would cause a crease on the exterior binding. I've always loved for my books to look brand-new on my shelf, even after I've read them. Otherwise, the titles are really hard to read. Right? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? This particular quirk came in REALLY handy two years ago when I decided to part with all of my books and sell them on Amazon Marketplace. I was able to sell them all in "new" condition ... I sold several hundred books and made almost $2,000. BOO-YAH.

You guys just let me know when I've disclosed enough of my crazy that you decide you can't come back here. Or, alternatively, leave a Comment telling me that I'm not alone! Crazy LOVES company.

My thoughts on The Kindle

I'm still weeding through my pictures from our trip to Atlanta this weekend, and people have been clamoring for this post for a while now (well, one person has badgered me about it enough for 20 people -- hi, Mel!), so until I can decide which pictures to post of the weekend, I thought I'd go ahead and mesmerize you with My Official Review of the Kindle.

I tried to come up with a better title for this post, but I was pretty sure you wouldn't appreciate any puns about "rekindling my interest in reading," or anything like that.

So. You will remember that I received the much-talked-about Amazon Kindle (electronic book) for my birthday. And there was much rejoicing.

Now that I have one, people ask me questions about it all the time. Total strangers have struck up conversations with me at my dermatologist's office and in the break room at The Place Where I Work to ask me about it. And I have to say, I'm very, very pleased with it. In case you're thinking about buying one for yourself or a loved one, I thought I'd post a few of my Pros and Cons. Let's start with the good news:

PROs

- It is very lightweight. It weighs less than a hardback book, probably about the same as a paperback.

- It's compact and, therefore, very portable. I know paperbacks are portable, too, but I wasn't sure how easy it was going to be to carry my Kindle around in my purse laptop bag. As it turns out, very easy.






- The screen is very easy to read from different angles. It's hard to explain how similar it is to reading off of a real book page, but it really is almost exactly the same. It's not at all like trying to read e-mail on your Blackberry or your cell phone. It's not at all like reading text on a computer monitor.






- Books download instantly. When I place an order for a book on the Kindle itself or log onto Amazon.com to order one, the download begins instantly, and it's complete within about 30 to 40 seconds.

- It lays flat. Even with the protective cover, the Kindle lays flat on a surface, so unlike a regular paperback or even a hardback (if you're close to the beginning or end of the book), you don't have to keep your hands on it for it to remain open.

- It marks your place. If you walk away and get distracted for a few minutes, the Kindle turns itself off and saves your place, so the next time you turn it on, you can pick up right where you left off. Same thing if you turn it off yourself with the Power switch. No need to bookmark anything; it will remember where you were. You just select your book title from the menu, and it takes you to the page you were last reading.



(Unrelated note: Yes, I am finishing up the Twilight series. Yes, I was more than a little conflicted about reading four books about vampires. Yes, elements within them bothered me somewhat. No, I am not sorry I read them. Not sorry, but still conflicted. Book 4 is a pretty tough read. Now back to the Kindle review.)

- You MAY, however, WANT to bookmark or highlight something, and you can do that. You can also search within the book for words or phrases, all in the same menu and using the keyboard.




The keyboard, incidentally, is much easier to use than the one on a cell phone.


- New releases are far less expensive. Books in hardcover new release are $9.99 for the Kindle. Paperbacks are typically the same price, around $5 to $7. Since I usually buy my favorite authors' new books in hardcover, I'm saving anywhere from $10 to $18 per book by purchasing them on the Kindle.


And now, for the bad news, or at least for the less-desirable properties of the Kindle:

CONs

- I have to click a lot. You have to click "Next Page" to move on to the ... next page. Since I read pretty quickly, I end up clicking pretty often, often enough that I leave my fingers on the book at all times instead of taking them off and putting them back on repeatedly. If you're reading on a train or something, you'd probably do that regardless, but since I read on the couch or at my desk at lunch most of the time, I'd love it if the Kindle could just read my mind and turn the pages itself. Maybe in the next version.

- There's not enough text on the screen. This is sort of related to the prior point. Because I read quickly, I feel like I can take the Kindle screen in almost at a glance, meaning that I have to click forward a lot. I know I can make the text smaller or larger to make it more comfortable for my eyes, but I like the way it's set now ... at about the normal type size of a printed book.

- There are no page numbers. While many people might not find this disconcerting, I do. You track your progress through the book by looking at the Percentage Read at the bottom of the page. I have no idea why I feel so adrift without my page numbers, but I do. It's something to get used to. Especially when some books end at 94% (HELLO, TWILIGHT) and some end at 99% (like The Agency), and some top out at a nice, even 100%. I'm not sure what that's about.



- I can't pass my books on to others. I am in no way a proponent of stripping authors or publishers of their earnings, so I am happy to pay full price for every book I buy. However, I've always enjoyed passing along books I've purchased to friends I thought would enjoy them. I suppose that's, in a way, keeping the author from selling another book, but most of the time I think my friends wouldn't have spent the money anyway. At any rate, once you've read a Kindle book, as far as I can tell, it just sits on the Kindle and can't be passed on. So unless I want to loan my Kindle out (um, No), I can't share the books I've read and stored on it. Kind of a bummer.

- It blips to a grey screen between every page. Between every single blessed page. It's like this little nanosecond that I have to wait to get to the next page, and it might just be the thing I like the least about it. I read books (even Kindle books) the way I read music, which is to read to a point on the page and just before I'm really ready to flip, I take in the whole last batch of 12 words or so in one glance and then I flip. I'm ready to continue reading IMMEDIATELY on the next page, and in a hard copy world, that works. On the Kindle, I have to wait a second before the text pops up.

- It doesn't pull books down from my Amazon Wish List. I can go to the Kindle Store on the Kindle and it will let me search for any book, magazine, newspaper, etc., and then I can order it immediately. But I can't get to my Wish List from the Kindle and order straight from it, so I have two choices. I can either order a book I know I want on the Kindle and then later go take it off my Wish List from my PC, or I can go to my Wish List on my PC, click on the Kindle version of the book and tell it to download.




- The Kindle is an expensive thing to lose. At $299, it's not going to bankrupt me to buy a replacement, but it would cost a heck of a lot more to replace than your standard paperback.

Neither a pro nor a con is the fact that I recently bought a protective cover. I didn't want my screen to get scratched up (once I realized how much I liked it and that I'd be toting it around in my purse all the time), so I bought an inexpensive cover. I'm glad I did.



If you have any questions about the Kindle, please leave them in the Comments and I'll answer them if I can!

You want fries with that?

I just finished a book that Grayson bought me for Christmas after seeing it featured on BookTV. The mere fact that he thought ANY book featured on C-SPAN would pique my interest is blog-worthy in itself, but the book turned out to be really entertaining.

In a nutshell, the author was a creative director at an ad agency, making The Big Bucks, when he decided to quit and see how the other half lives. In the book, he chronicles his adventures as a construction worker, fast food jockey, pizza delivery man, ice cream scooper and a few other choice positions.

One of the funniest sections of the book speaks to how his wife handled this decision of his ... which I think I found so hilarious because -- while his change in employment status was voluntary and Grayson's was not -- I am currently enjoying the position in which she found herself when her husband up and quit his high-paying job.

Most days I leave Grayson a list of things I'd like done when he's taking a break from job-hunting on the Internet. It always includes laundry and dishes, and occasionally it includes something like "get the oil changed in the minivan" or "take out the recycling." I never add "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" to the tail end of each of the tasks on the list, because I am such a nice wife.

And if there was any doubt among you that a task that wasn't specifically listed on the paper would get done anyway, allow me to explain: Tasks that are not on the list do not get accomplished. A task's absence from the list indicates to the Taskee that there are, indeed, no tasks to be performed that day, even if laundry is overflowing from the baskets, trash is pouring out of the trashcans, and the only item in the fridge is a pack of cheese sticks from December. Of '07.

Anyway, this is a post about a book, not about my life. SO, here's a small taste of why I found this book so satisfying this week:

If you are not working and your wife is, there is a real discrepancy between her view of a productive day and yours. For instance, if she returns after a hump-busting ten-hour grind and asks what you did with your day, answering, "I shaved," is not sufficient. Nor, apparently, is it funny.

I was just happy to have time on my hands and thus the opportunity to do the items on the Honey-do list my wife would leave every day when she -- Okay, that's a lie. The Honey-do list broke me. Within a month, ANYTHING (except my old job) was preferable to the Honey-do list.

You see, here too, women's minds are very different from men's. While we men turn our brains off for extended periods of time, a woman's mind is always working ... and if a woman's husband is sitting around during the day and counts shaving on his list of accomplishments, the woman can simply use the man's hands to do the things she'd do if she had the time.

Here's a brief list of the projects the average woman would like done:

a) Tear down the home.

b) Rebuild it much, much better.

c) Take out the garbage.

d) Walk the dogs.

Bravo! I love it. Plus, that makes MY lists seem easy-breezy.

The book is written in easily digestible chunks, perfect for visits to the doctor's office, your lunch break, 10 minutes of reading to make you sleepy before bed ... and it's really witty. Thanks, Grayson, for such a fun book!