Sorry for a long lapse in posting. I started a new job and my daughter has been sick since I last posted, and I just didn't have the time to update the blog. But I am back!
Thanks to everyone who weighed in on my Twilight post last week. Really interesting comments. I can't say I am that much more disposed to read the books, though I have it on good authority that there may be a copy of Twilight headed my way next week. So I will have to see what I think once I pick it up. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who weighed in, as well as the range of comments.
On to today's book. [I am still reading A Friend of the Family and really enjoying it. I am so impressed with Lauren Grodstein. Must learn more about her.] So… today's book is one that I read about in More magazine last month. It's called Normal People Don't Live Like This, by Dylan Landis. More said: "This debut collection of linked stories is a clear-eyed account of what it's like to be a teenage girl. Leah Levinson is gripped by the sexual escapades of her classmates and enamored of mean girls (her 'heart sprouted like a seed' when one phoned her.) The tales in this bravura work, set in the 1970s, are timeless: They could easily belong to our daughters' generation instead of our own."
The L.A. Times reviewed reviewed Normal People Don't Live Like This and gave it high marks, saying "As for Landis, watch her very carefully. Once you can create characters
like Leah, there's no stopping you." The Katrina Denza Blog said "This is an incredible collection. Landis has delivered with precision,
honesty and art, the adolescent female mind. Her sentences, vivid and
daring, are honed to the clarity of a mountain stream. The details in
her prose will surprise as will her characters even as their actions
seem inevitable. I enjoyed the science threaded through the stories as
well."
More on Dylan Landis – apparently she is local (lives in here in D.C.), and here is a blog post about what she's reading these days. I am very bummed to learn that she was at Politics & Prose last month and I missed it.
Finally, how great is the title of the book??