high school flashbacks

Lately, I've been wanting to contact former high school classmates, so that I can find out all about their lives and try to figure out my own. Is this a midlife crisis? Well, I wouldn't rule that out, but it's far more likely to be a result of reading What really happened to the class of '93: start-ups, dropouts, and other navigations through an untidy decade by Chris Colin. Until I typed that subtitle just now, I'd forgotten that aspect of the book. Colin's attempt to explain why his decade is unusual enough to warrant a book is weak. It's also unnecessary. Colin's high school class is fascinating, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thought about contacting long-lost classmates after reading this book.
So I'm off to search for classmates...

Haven't been reading much...

With my busy Olympics-watching schedule (four hours a night, minimum), I;ve had precious little time for reading. However, I took some time to read two incredibly campy and low-budget books by Nancy Krulik: The First Cut and Sneaking Around. These are the first two books in the "No secrets: the story of a girl band" series. Here's what amused me:
1) The characters, who all had very melodramatic stories (Hannah's mom is a maid! Melanie's friend dates a gang member! Cass has an eating disorder!)
2) The publishers have so little faith in the readers' imaginations that they have a photo insert. With action shots of imaginery people! The photo insert is in the middle of the book, which means that in every book,
3) The captions to the photos (which are, let me stress, in the middle of the book) give away the endings of the books. Krulik is a good plotter who can build tension, but the book designer (not Krulik, I hope and assume), made the books so much lamer because of the photo inserts.
I ended up only reading the first two, and skimming the others.

Olympics start in three days!

I'm very, very excited about the Olympics. I'm an Olympics junkie- I've even taken a few days off here and there, so I don't get too exhausted with all that constant TV watching. I'm very pleased about the increased TV coverage.
Naturally, then, I'm planning a re-read of some of my favorite books about Olympic athletes. I thought I'd start with The Girls of Summer by Jere Longman. It's all about the U.S. Women's soccer team and focuses on many of the athletes who will be retiring after these Games. Then I'll go on to Gold in the Water by P.H. Mullen, and then to Venus to the Hoop by Sara Corbett. Yes, I know some of those players have retired, but I really like Corbett's book.
Last book read: Perfect Princess by Meg Cabot. Almost totally content-free!

The Report Card

Just a quick blog today. I read The Report Card by Andrew Clements last night. I'd enjoyed Frindle and The Landry News, and I thought the iffy reviews for Report Card were some sort of Clements backlash.
They weren't. Well, not entirely.
While I saw the validity of the reviewers' comments, I saw a huge plot hole that Clements had overlooked. Nora is an excellent soccer player because she is so smart - fair enough. The ability to see where everyone is on the field can't be taught and is invaluable (see Woodsie's success in Bruce Brooks' underrated Wolfbay Wings series). The plot hole is this: why didn't anyone notice her success? On the soccer field, she made no attempt to hide her talent. It seems improbable that her parents (who latch onto her academic ability so quickly) wouldn't have pushed her in soccer. No travel team, at least? And why doesn't Nora see that athletics have an equal ability to divide people and make them feel inferior ("'m on varsity, and you're not").
I'm not convinced (as was one witty person, who hasn't even read Frindle) that this was a cheap rip-off of Frindle. I think that Frindle had a more manageable problem - introducing a word into the language, as opposed to changing the educational environment at a school.
I enjoyed the book - I just thought that Clements could have done better with this idea.

no two people see alike

I'm a member of several book-related listservs, and maybe it's the August weather, but everyone (including me) seems more contentious and quick to take offense than usual. No two people will react to a book in exactly the same way, and that's fine. If you don't enjoy one of my favorite books, that doesn't mean that I'm stupid, or that you hate me.

Last book I read: Beginning the World by Karen Armstrong. I didn't like this as much as I did Through the Narrow Gate; occasionally, I worried that my interest in the details was the same sort of interest that she didn't like. So I felt that my response to the book was slightly constrained.

Karen Armstrong, etc.

I spent the weekend thinking about Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong, which I just finished. It gave me a lot to think about - it seems flippant to say I enjoyed the book, but I did. At minimum, I enjoyed thinking about the book. So I was tickled to find its sequel, Beginning the world, on the shelf at my library today. I'd been on a waiting list for Narrow Gate and am still on one for her new book, The Spiral Staircase, but this one was sitting right on the shelf. Apparently, I'm not the only one who didn't know about it! Through the Narrow Gate was so complete in itself that I hadn't even thought to look for a sequel.
A year or two ago - must be two years by now - I'd really enjoyed Gail Gauthier's Hero of Ticonderoga. So I was pleased to discover Gauthier's blog: http://home.cshore.com/gailgauthier/blogger.html . I was amused by her comments - though I don't agree that the Winona Ryder Little Women is the best version! But that's a detail.