Rave #34: Confessions of a Chick-Lit Lover

The summer before 5th grade, I went to a Jewish summer camp. In retrospect, I was whiny and rather unappreciative, but in the moment I thought my much-declared misery had an edge of glamour to it, and that the appropriate way to handle my angst was to fill journals with abysmal poetry, rhyming "tears" and "fears" a total of 14 times. At camp, other girls received packages of Teen Vogue and Seventeen, chocolate bars nestled in the glossy pages. My mother sent me Pride and Prejudice, and my grandfather sent me a dictionary. I had not requested Pride and Prejudice, and felt insulted that my mother thought I would be interested in high-brow literature while on summer vacation. (I had requested the dictionary, as I needed to prove to my bunkmates, whom I tried to teach various word games, that "qua" was a word.) I knew, however, that Pride and Prejudice was overkill.

That day, sitting on the top bunk and ignoring the giggles coming from the girls painting their toenails on Alana's bed, mere feet away but emotionally leagues beyond me, was when I realized I was doing something wrong.

That afternoon, after I completed the hem of my challah cover, I borrowed a friend's (okay, acquaintance's) copy of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. That evening, I decided trashy young-adult writing was where I belonged. When I returned home, I tried to be furtive about my new passion for a while. My family is the type whom the charitable might say are well-read and the less generous call "supreme snobs". I knew they wouldn't be on board with the Sisterhood, so I tried to hide the telltale pink covers. This secrecy lasted until about October, at which point I couldn't stand it anymore and confessed everything.

During middle school, I read a few adventures and mysteries, but I kept coming back to the "young adult literature" (a legitimate-sounding, serious term I adored). I also read a lot of parenting books. My favorite books were the ones targeted at both high-strung middle-aged women and navel-gazing teenage girls. It's a niche market, but one book in particular -- Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes -- really spoke to me. After reading thirty or so parenting books and writing one of my own I felt I had gotten all I could out of that particular genre, and came back to young adult literature. At that point, however, I felt that I had outgrown my former love of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Gossip Girl, and the Clique books, and I made the natural step to trashy chick-lit.

In 9th grade, I was relieved to discover that my prep school cohorts were well-versed with The Devil Wears Prada, Nanny Diaries, and the entire Shopaholic series. The quality of the writing deteriorated: I went from The Devil Wears Prada (actually quite witty) to Jodi Picoult and soon I discovered myself in my dorm common room devouring The Truth About Diamonds, Nicole Richie's insightful social commentary and autobiography, thinly veiled as fiction. At some point, I stopped being embarrassed and furtive, and started saying things like "L.A. Candy? That's Lauren Conrad, right? It wasn't bad, but I think the plot dragged a bit, and definitely preferred Sweet Little Lies." It got to the point where a dear friend gave me A Shore Thing, by Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, as a gift. A gift that I have reread more than twice, the actual count unimportant.

I read a lot, though, and there are only so many trashy chick-lit novels out there, so I'm forced to read real books sometimes. My standards are not high, but I do like to laugh, I dislike having to stand up to get my dictionary, and I find punctuation and grammar mistakes very distracting. I read a lot of essays -- I have read everything David Sedaris has ever written, for example -- because I like a quick pace. I love a good short story. I love a good travel guidebook. And now, in the spirit of the holidays, I'll give you some book recommendations. With my history of variety in literature and chick-lit and guide books, I feel like I have a unique perspective and am able to give some excellent recommendations. But be nice.

Most Insightful and Uplifting Parenting Book:

Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. Very witty and clever.

Most Insightful Parenting Book That Makes Me Cry:

Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher. Nothing else is even close. Also, I sent Mary Pipher a note saying how swell I thought she was, and she responded within 5 days with a lovely handwritten letter on personalized stationary. I was very impressed, both that she took the time to respond so charmingly and that she owns personalized stationary, something I've always thought of as the height of polished elegance and organization.

Best Trashy Young Adult Literature:

It Girl series, by Cecily von Ziegesar. Ol' Cecily was quite prolific, and also penned the Gossip Girl series. Gossip Girl was equally dramatic and fun as It Girl, but the former is set in New York City, which I thought was so unbearably glamorous as to be unrealistic. It Girl is set in a boarding school, something I at least knew a little about. Knowing very little about New York City, the whole series just felt too depressingly unattainable for me. This is probably why I went to boarding school and am not a famous New York fashion designer.

Best Young Adult Literature I Wouldn't Mind My Grandmother Seeing:

Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling. Oh my God, I was so into Harry Potter. I made a personality quiz to sort friends into houses. It had 25 questions. I'm a Slytherin, but at the time I really thought I was a Ravenclaw. I was foolish and young.

Best Trashy Chick-Lit:

Everything ever written by Lauren Weisberger (to be specific: The Devil Wears Prada, Last Night at Chateau Marmont, Everyone Worth Knowing, and Chasing Harry Winston.) I especially love The Devil Wears Prada now that I've experienced life at a snazzy magazine company, where I interned last summer. (People were actually really nice to me, if impossibly hip and thin, perhaps seeing that I was zero competition. Don't ask me anything else. I've already said too much.)

Funniest Book I Ever Read:

Travels with My Aunt, by Graham Greene. This book is so great. Plus it's legitimate enough that I can talk about it with my mother.

Best Writing I Can Talk About With My Mother:

Maya Angelou. I adore Maya Angelou. My favorite of her books (this one's an autobiography) is The Heart of a Woman. You know me, I love reading about a mother/son relationship.

Best Collection of Short Stories:

East West, by Salman Rushdie. A short story is perfect for Rushdie: poignant and charming and not too precious, short enough that he's forced to keep the action snappy. (I have not read Midnight's Children. I hear it's fabulous. I'm afraid it'll be like The Satanic Verses, which I understood was controversial and important, but which had a lot of words and was tough to get through. I'm sorry, okay?! I'm flawed.) Yesterday I read Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri, which was fabulous. Less poignant and delicate, but the characters felt more accessible to me than Rushdie's.

Best Celebrity Memoir:

I read a lot of these. They're marketed as memoirs, but really they're more like collections of essays, essays with conversational tones, often even more casual than this blog. The tones are aggressively casual, which, depending on how I feel about the celebrity, can come across as forced, adorably open, competitive, patronizing, or welcoming -- or, in the case of Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, all of the above. Today I read Mindy Kaling's, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, which I giggled aloud at. In the past few months I have also read Tina Fey's Bossypants and Ellen Degeneres's Seriously... I'm Kidding (the ellipses being an awkward piece of punctuation the book would have done better without). I have read two of Chelsea Handler's books, but they gross me out and I don't recommend them.

That's pretty much it for now.

Let me know if you have recommendations. Just don't tell me to read Lord of the Rings. I'm not interested. Too many words and not enough romance.