Miss Edith Reads Fiction for Cranky Girls -- so, what else is new?

Lest you think that all I did when I was in Vermont was read books I hated and watch movies I hated, I’d like to assure you this was not the case.

I also enjoyed a few things while I was up there.

While the chickens clucked in their little house a few yards from the porch where I perched, I re-read Alice and Martin Provensen’s classic childrens’ book, Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm. This is a book I discovered, thanks to co-workers at a bookstore, only a couple of years ago, but it is so utterly charming that I bought a copy for myself, and I actually read it on a surprisingly regular basis. Whether you are a city child or a country child, this book should be required reading for all little ones. It’s just a delightful book with the greatest illustrations and totally honest descriptions of life with animals.

I also read the one Jennifer Weiner novel that I had not yet read, a book I’d really forgotten about entirely though surely I’ve sold many copies of it over the years – Little Earthquakes.

Jennifer Weiner: when I was first hired as the buyer at that wacky joint downtown, I remember, I gave myself a little assignment, which was to figure out this chick lit thing. I asked the staff to make a pile of books for me to read; clearly this was a big trend, and spending a decade in rare books was all well and good but it didn’t give me a good background in selling cutely designed pink paperbacks to girls who were old enough to drink legally.

Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed was in that first pile of books assigned to me. It was, if I recall, one of about six titles I read one after the other, very fast – so fast that now I can’t remember any of the other titles I read, though I know I read a book by Marian Keyes. The Jennifer Weiner book was shocking to me, quite frankly, after reading all those candy-colored tomes, because it was just so much better than any of the other books. It was just head and shoulders better. It was still chick lit, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying it was like reading Edith Wharton – but it was a different kind of chick lit. I quickly read In Her Shoes and enjoyed it thoroughly, and made a mental note: this Jennifer Weiner – she’s worth hanging onto. Jennifer Weiner knows how to put together a respectable sentence; she's good good comic timing; and she's actually...smart. More importantly, perhaps, her characters are allowed to be smart, and reflective, in ways that you seldom see in this genre, which I'll actually call "women's fiction" even though that's really no better than saying Chick Lit. I loved the Bridget Jones books, and nothing came close to them, as far as I was concerned, until Jennifer Weiner -- though they're such different types of chick lit that it's not a truly fair comparison. Bridget is meant to be a lark. Weiner's characters, her books, are clearly intended to have a little more weight to them than Bridget Jones ever could. Bridget is a comic conceit. Weiner's characters are characters in a larger sense. And Weiner writes them without the crutches that are littered about the Bridget Jones books like cigarette butts on a the floor of a nightclub.

I read her Goodnight Nobody when it came out, and was simultaneously pleased and frustrated by it, because it was such a carbon copy/tribute to Susan Isaacs – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think I’d hoped for something a little less derivative. Initially I was peeved by the similarity, but once I realized that this was a deliberate process on Weiner’s part, I thought, “Well, ok, babe. Go for it.” And I heartily recommended the book to Weiner’s fans, saying, “You’ll also want to read Susan Isaacs’ Compromising Positions” – which I promptly ordered for the store – and rang up sales with a clear conscience.

Little Earthquakes, though, somehow got past me. So when I noticed it on the shelf in Vermont, I thought, Oh, cool. Beach reading.

For those who want to dip their toes in something light and bright and intelligent; for those who could use a break from all that aggressively literary fiction that is pressed on us all the time; for those girls who look like McSweeney’s fans but are secretly annoyed as fuck by all the gimmickry, and just want to read something FUN, for fuck’s sake – for those girls, in particular the ones who are pregnant or new mommies (Miss Edith is not among your count, but trust her anyway), Little Earthquakes is an entirely enjoyable read. Fast. Sparkly. You won’t remember a thing about it when you’re done, in all likelihood, but that’s a nice thing – that means you’ll be able to revisit it in a year or two and you’ll enjoy it completely, all over again.

Miss Edith read a book just today that would appeal to the same kind of person who likes Jennifer Weiner, too – and maybe some straight boys, as well. It’s a young adult novel entitled Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. This bugger came out as I was leaving my job as buyer, if memory serves, and I remember being interested in it but didn’t actually lay hands on a copy until today. (Why the local public libraries haven’t ordered this title is simply beyond me; I had to get it through interlibrary loan! Mr. Armstrong! What gives!) This book is the kind of YA novel I would have died for when I was about 14, 15 years old. It’s smart, it’s funny (in a low-key way), and it absolutely captures the total insanity of young attraction. I don’t want to say young love – it’s not that. It’s about how one night can be forever – this holds true regardless of how old you are, but when you’re in high school…. Oh, forever is a very long time when you’re in high school.

The novel, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, is set up so that our heroes, Nick and Norah, trade turns narrating each chapter. Nick, newly broken hearted, is in a band playing a nightclub in lower Manhattan. Norah, also brokenhearted, and fairly cranky to boot, is there, and through a short series of coincidences finds herself sort of swept off her feet by Nick, and they spent a night going from club to club and going on emotional roller coaster rides in the process. The characters are seniors in high school, but the book’s readership shouldn’t be limited to that age. A young teen would love this. It’s cool in a way that might date it pretty quickly, but it’s also cool in ways that will, I hope, allow it to transcend that problem. Teens obsessed with punk, or adults who were teens obsessed with punk, should read this. It made Miss Edith – even Miss Edith – a little misty for her own wretched teen years.

Ah, youth. Miss Edith raises a glass and drinks a toast to the days when she had purple hair and wore black and white striped tights. Odd, but those days didn’t end so long ago, did they?…