Fine Lines, indeed

If you're a fan of US children's literature (especially books written for middle-school girls) from the 1970s and early 1980s, check out: Fine Lines. It's funny, and it's wrecking my plans to be more productive this evening.

dignified and no-longer-beautiful

I don't think I can explain this one, unless you've lived in my head for the last - good heavens - 23 years or so. Anyway, here's the thing: my nearest and dearest are probably aware of my affection for Ellen Emerson White's books. They might even be aware of how influential those books were in shaping my sense of humor, and speech patterns, for heaven's sake. I'm not saying they're perfect books - they're melodramatic at times - but there you go.
So what does one do with the revised editions of the first three books about Meg Powers, released last Tuesday? In my case, you read literally two pages before grabbing a pencil and running for the original. That was so I could annotate the new editions. So then I asked the SO - thank heaven for that 40% discount he gets - to buy me another set of the reprints, so I can have a clean copy to keep, and this marked-up copy for catharsis. (Great system, by the way - he's spared hearing the details of every altered adjective and every modernization).
At this rate, annotating every page, I should finish the trilogy around September. Maybe October.
So how are the new books, you ask? Darker. Meg's mom (the President) is more driven, and the family suffers more because of it. No idea what I think yet, really. Then-Senator Powers goes from looking "dignified and beautiful" to looking dignified and tired. Any reference to Meg's own attractiveness has been edited out, as have references to Meg's brother laughing uproariously and Meg's parents sharing an "I'm-glad-you're-here" moment. Hmmm.

random Malory Towers reference!

I was reading Go Fug Yourself just now,
and I was delighted to see an Enid Blyton reference! I love the Malory Towers books! They're not the best Girlsown out there, of course, but they were my first school stories as an adult, and they were what led me to start my collection of Girlsown books. So to see that on a favorite website was fabulous.

all fairy tales, all the time

Today the SO and I were talking about dollhouse books - I mean, books that you buy to put in one's dollhouse, often tiny facsimile editions of real books. I was musing aloud about how it's easy to find dollhouse books which are versions of fairy tales, but who would have a house full of fairy tales? I thought, "Jane Yolen", but kept the joke to myself; it was warm outside and I couldn't be bothered to say it. But then the SO did!
So - hunh. I'm not a big Yolen fan, but I'm blessed if I know what about her made both of us assume she (of all the people we could have said) would have a house full of fairy tales.

responsibility over time

I have a sizable database of all my school stories (which I collect, as you might know). Occasionally, I go on the fence about whether to include the Private series, or Ally Carter's series about the Gallagher Academy, or the Chestnut Hill series, or the Royal Ballet School Diaries. All of these were written in the last five years, but they're not exactly Girlsown. Ultimately, I threw these recent books in, but I haven't been happy about it.
I realized tonight that I haven't had much worry about including the books about younger girls (Royal Ballet School Diaries and Chestnut Hill). I think that's because these girls are young, so it's not much different than Clare Mallory's books about Merry (written in the late 40s/early 50s), or Brent-Dyer's or Blyton's books that focus on young characters (written between the 20s and the 1960s).
But the books about older people (I mean 17- and 18-year-olds here) are different. In books published before 1970 or so, it was assumed that by the time you were in the 6th form, you were sensible and responsible and self-controlled and things. (Of course, this wasn't the case in real life, always, but that's not the point here). In contrast, Reed in the Private series, or (good heavens) Jenny Humphrey in the It Girl series are fairly irresponsible.
Of course, they can be. When they're 18, they'll go off to college, and then they'll start working out what they want to do with their lives, and who they want to be. But girls from an earlier generation - basically, girls in most Girlsown books - start this process three or four years earlier.

P.S. For the sake of my reputation, I should mention that I don't own any It Girl books. I mean, enough is enough. Besides, Jenny's one of the most boring characters in the Gossip Girl books, so why read a spin-off about her?

Garfield minus Garfield

Last week, I was talking to someone about the inexplicable popularity of Garfield comic strips. I liked it, briefly, in my youth. But I'm pretty old, and Garfield was a pop culture phenomenon back then (and there weren't thirty compilations of comic strips about lasagna and eating!). Also, there was no Calvin & Hobbes, no Boondocks, no Fox Trot. It was Garfield, or Cathy (or Beetle Bailey, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, or Peanuts. I read Peanuts, too).
Anyway, given my dislike of Garfield, my delight at this website (garfield minus garfield)is almost boundless. It's Garfield, without Garfield - in other words, just these odd and surreal strips of Jon reacting to nothing we can see. Have a look!