Nostalgia #2

I can't remember when I first read this, but I'm guessing around the same time as the last review. It's a similar-sized, similar age group book. This one was written in 1985 though, so a bit earlier.

Buddies is the story of Dinah Feeney, a girl so kind she can't say no to anyone. She gets hand-me-downs from the entire neighborhood dumped on her. Just take them to the friggin' thrift shop or something. One of the other characters talks about her crappy camp projects being donated, so it's not like that isn't a thing.

Dinah decides a trip to camp might help her reinvent herself and she is thrilled to find she's cabinmates with two girls destined to be some of the most popular at camp.

Marilyn Powers is the granddaughter of the guy who put up the money to build the camp. So she's been stuck going there since she was six and she hates it. She's bold, sarcastic, loud and hilarious. I've always liked Marilyn a lot.

Cassandra Barnhill is your run of the mill popular girl. She dresses like she has money, acts as adult as she can, and is definitely your pretty, prim and proper type. She's got an emotional side, so she does come across as more likable than not, despite her flaws.

Dinah's problem is that a destined to be UNpopular girl met her in the bus parking lot before leaving for camp and has latched herself onto Dinah. Fern is one of the least likable, least sympathetic and most downright gross characters I've ever read in a book meant for kids. Aside from people meant to be villains and bullies, of course. The entire book is like a catalog of Fern's poor hygiene. Dinah tries to tell her multiple times that she should go make some new friends and she just doesn't get it. The other girls are clearly giving signs that she's pestering them to death and they're all about to lose it, but she's so socially backward that she misses every single cue.

Which means it's time for something drastic.

Dinah ends up pushing her out of a canoe when they're switching places so Fern can paddle. Then the next several chapters are Dinah beating herself up for it, getting angry at everyone about it, using said anger to forget about Fern and enjoy herself, and then trying to make up with her not once but twice, both of which end up as ridiculously over the top painful incidents.

By the time she's home, I think Dinah realizes she'll likely never forget what she did to Fern in exchange for a couple weeks of friendship and popularity with girls she'll likely never speak to again. I'm not convinced she's learned how to not be a complete pushover, but maybe she'll start doing more for herself and less for others in the future.

The real lesson here is don't be afraid to tell people how you feel, even if it is a hard conversation. Fern was obnoxious as fuck, but she deserved to be told so in a way that finally reached her, not pushed out of a canoe because things finally got to that level. Although she hopefully learned some lessons as well, because knowing when you're not wanted is a pretty valuable one.

Two covers exist for this book. The first one up at the top is my own photo of my book. This one on the right I found via Google.

I like both of them, but these are seriously ambiguous.

Fern isn't on the first one at all and she's obviously the girl in the pot in the second.

Cassandra with her auburn hair is also obvious on both. On the first, she's the one in blue. On the second, she's the cannibal in the center.

Now Dinah and Marilyn are where the problem comes in. All we know about Dinah is that she has brown hair and blue eyes. Marilyn is only described as "tall and tan" and she wears funny tees. Well, none of these girls is wearing a funny tee.

For the first cover, I've always thought Marilyn was in the red and Dinah was in the light colors on the right. Marilyn is a casual goofball and I just can't picture her with the long side-ponytail in that nice an outfit. That girl has a kind, sweet face, which is much more fitting for Dinah. And the one in red is more sassy, which works for Marilyn.

On the second cover, I'd say Dinah has the short dark hair on the left, while Marilyn is sprawling blonde on the right. But it's completely ambiguous.

The book is another enjoyable, quick read. There's something fun about it, even though Dinah tortures herself waaaaaaaaaaaay too much.

Nostalgia #1

I made the mistake of talking about a nostalgia book the other day and that's opened the door to rereading it and a couple others.

These are like staples on my nostalgia bookshelf. They're always out, always accessible.

I don't remember who gave me this book, but someone did. It's written in the front. 

This was published in October 1988, so I would have just turned 10. Heh. Not sure when exactly I got it, but there's some life context for no real reason.

The author is Ann Reit, who looks to have done some other romance stuff, but I never looked for any of it. And I'm not going to now. At 133 pages, this is a very fast read.

The basic premise is that two 14-year-old best friends date the same guy and it completely changes their relationship.

There's a lot going on in here though.

Phoebe, the blue-eyed blonde, feels plain next to Eve. A bit unusual for the time, because it was typically the blondes that were the glam ones and the brown-eyed brunettes that felt plain. Eve is the bubbly, friendly, outgoing yet also pretty superficial one. Phoebe is the Smart One. Not nerd-level smart, but you can tell this is the distinction between them and it's kept up through the entire book. Each girl has moments of wanting to be more like the other one. Phoebe wants Eve's family, especially her older sister. Because the book is from Phoebe's point of view, you don't know what Eve thinks about Phoebe's family, but she definitely doesn't have as good as relationship with her sister as Phoebe does. Phoebe thinks her mother is a neglectful scatterbrain. She's definitely a scatterbrain, but she proves by the end how much she does pay attention. She thinks her parents fight all the time, but that's explained by her mother as just their odd way of showing love. Her mother says Phoebe is the only one her father openly shows how much he loves. It's Phoebe who grows throughout the book, coming out of her place in Eve's shadow, making new friends and seeing her family in a new light. It's even recognized in the text that she realizes it's she who's different and not Eve.

Eve isn't an unlikable character. She's simply different than Phoebe and because we don't get into her head, we don't get to know her very well. Her presentation as shallow is compounded by this.

So these two girls are super close. They're obsessed with Gone with the Wind and reference it constantly. They wear the same colors to parties, only in reverse.

"Okay," I said. "I'll wear the gray short skirt, my red sweater, and those printed red tights. Now you."

"You picked good, for a change. I'll wear my red pleated skirt, the gray fuzzy sweater, and those crazy gray stockings your mother gave me last Christmas."

You've got to be besties to pull that shit.

Until a boy comes along.

The relationship is a bit odd. A new boy comes to town and decides to date both Eve and Phoebe. They take turns. It's not clear if he's dating other girls, too, though it's quite possible. It feels like a lot of time passes, but it really doesn't. It's October in Chapter 2 and Christmas in Chapter 10. Phoebe says "the weeks went by" in Chapter 11, which is the final one. So maybe it's spring?

The odd dating system goes on for a while, with people commenting about how weird it is that the girls aren't jealous of each other. They say everything is fine, until suddenly it isn't. It's Phoebe who falls for Quentin, the guy, first, but Eve is close behind. And it doesn't take Phoebe long to realize Quentin has fallen for Eve. Then it's only a brief matter of time before Quent and Eve are an exclusive couple, Phoebe and Eve drift apart, and Phoebe discovers she's got to figure things out on her own.

It's annoying to watch one idiot boy, because there's not anything especially likable about Quentin, tear apart these two friends. Phoebe's not comfortable around Eve because she feels rejected, hurt and jealous. Eve isn't comfortable around Phoebe because she feels guilty. So Eve and Quent disappear into couples land, while Phoebe makes new friends, gets over everything, still misses Eve, and eventually gives another boy a chance, only to realize they're meant to be friends only. But she does get a neat friend out of it. I like Ernie.

So what happens with a boy like Quentin? A boy like Quentin moves on. One day, Phoebe sees a messed up Eve in the cafeteria, obviously upset, so the two ditch school and Phoebe takes Eve home to talk. They end up mending fences in the end and Phoebe realizes that nothing is ever going to go back to being the same, because she's changed, but she's okay with that.

The scene on the cover is from the very last page of the text, where Eve is washing out some bleach or whatnot she put in her hair because she wants a blonde streak. She jumps in the shower with her clothes on and Phoebe goes in with her. "Ernie wouldn't understand this, and Carrie probably wouldn't either. But I did. And Eve did."

If this was written in modern times, I think we may have gotten the ending we deserved: the girls end up a couple. Throughout the book, Phoebe doesn't seem that into kissing boys. It doesn't take her long to dismiss Ernie from possible boyfriend status to just a friend. And her descriptions of Eve are...well...

I watched Eve sitting on her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her head bent toward her feet. She was carefully painting small white dots on top of the bright purple polish already on her toes. The tip of her tongue was sticking out of her mouth and she was barely breathing. Suddenly, she let a huge noisy burst of air out of the corner of her mouth, trying to move a dark brown curl of hair away from her eyes. That was like Eve. She could do a totally graceless thing and look good doing it.

And...

Her eyes filled with excitement and confidence. Her cheeks flushed with a sweet, pale pink and a mist of perspiration on her forehead that just made her look dewy, not sweaty. I knew he saw the way her dark hair curled around her face and head, and how she was biting her lower lip, making her teeth look whiter against the pink of her mouth.

Even when she realizes she really likes Quent, she doesn't describe him with an ounce of the force she uses to describe Eve.

I've always been disappointed in the cover for this reason. I want to see the Eve that Phoebe sees, not her with wet hair (that in no way could have been as curly as the book describes) and her eyes closed. Where is this captivating Eve?

I don't know what it is about this book that it's something I've always come back to, but there's just something there. It's not the best written thing. It's certainly not very long. I'd love to see it redone with a version from Eve's point of view, too. Not intertwined, but the same story from her point of view in a completely separate book, but the two books are sold in one copy.

The World of NIGHTSCHOOL

The original run of Nightschool was from 2008-2010, but in anticipation for the release of a new book set in the same world, all four volumes were recently collected into two bigger volumes.

Nightschool is the creation of Svetlana Chmakova, who is one of my current favorite creators. She's the brilliant mind behind the Berrybrook world: Awkward, Brave, Crush and Diary. (An E book is slated for next year. Yay!)

You don't really see much of Berrybrook Chmakova in Nightschool. It reads more like a typical manga that could have been written by anyone. The characters are interesting, but there are a lot of them and sadly, the short run only just touches upon them, which is its largest failing.

The world of Nightschool shows how supernatural creatures, which are simply called "night things" (boring), get their education. There's a human school that transforms at night to become Nightschool. There are vampires, werewolves and other "shifters," demons, mermaids, and weirns, which are a distinct type of witch that has a demon bound to them from birth. These demons are called Astrals and you can see Alex's Astral in the upper right on the cover there. 

I have no idea how to pronounce "weirn," which drives me nuts. My German-focused mind says something like vie-ern. (Sort of like "iron" with a V in front.) But it's probably really something simple, like "weird" with an N.

The story in Nightschool is quite complex. Alex's older sister is the night guardian, who basically makes sure the school looks presentable before it becomes a human school again in the morning. Why they don't just have their own school is beyond me. Seems like it would be easier. But anyway, her sister goes missing to the point that no one knows who she is except for a handful of select people. Alex goes to school to investigate and the book is mostly about her trying to find her sister while all these other complex storylines weave around it. I don't want to give too much away, so I won't go into detail. I also don't want to try to write it all out because there's a lot!

Seems like a good place for a photo of the second collected volume.

Anyway, I'll touch briefly on some of the character groups.

Alex is the main character, a weirn girl. She's not very likeable, but she's written that way on purpose. She was cursed and if she shows affection towards anything, bad things happen to it. So she's very, very cold and distant.

Of the students, you mainly see one older clique of three (Ronee, Sion and Remy) plus Ronee's younger sister Rochelle, who is Alex's age. Ronee, Sion and Rochelle are all weirns. Remy is a demon. (I liked Remy a lot.) Rochelle is more bubbly and likeable, but she has to be. She's like a foil of Alex, who has to remain distant. Rochelle's thing is apparently a bloodline curse. If she becomes upset it causes actual physical pain to her older sister, Ronee. Weird. Ronee is one of the few people who remembers Alex's sister, so they work together in the second volume.

Then there are the Hunters, a group that protects humans from night things. You meet many of them, though three are sidelined at their first appearance, which annoyed me because the character with by far the coolest design is one of them. Their leader, Daemon, is extremely powerful and pretty awesome.

Mr. Roi is one of the Nightschool teachers and he's crazy powerful, too, as is the principal. These two characters and Daemon are all Night Lords or Nereshai.

There's a young seer character named Marina who's instrumental to the story. She's not a Hunter, but connected to them.

Nightschool was written more for an older audience. The characters are mostly older and the plotlines and actions are, too. I feel like the length is what caused the problems I have with this. There's a lot of world-building, but it leaves you with more questions than answers. There are a lot of characters that leave you wanting to understand them better. This needed to be a longer, more drawn out, way more in-depth series.

So Chmakova moved on to do the Berrybrook world and at some point, she must have thought "I can  combine these!" And so she did.

The Weirn Books is basically Berrybrook set in the Nightschool world. The characters are younger and more developed in one volume than the Nightschool cast throughout the entire run. Like Berrybrook, it's aimed at middle-grade readers.

The main cast are weirns. Ailis is on the right there, alongside her cousin Na'ya. They're kind of outcasts at school. Ailis is a bit awkward. Na'ya is obsessed with dragons and wants to be one. I have no idea how to pronounce Ailis, but her nickname is Leesh, so I'm thinking it's like Alicia without the "ia." Aleesh. With a short "a" or long "a" maybe. Ay-leesh. Hang on. Research time. Okay, it seems to be Irish, yet that's pronounced "Ay-lish" so the nickname for that would not be Leesh.

Seriously, authors, if you give your characters unusual names, put something in there about pronunciation. It's such a pet peeve of mine. It's easy to do a scene where another character is dragging out that name for some reason and that's a great place to stick in pronunciation. "Ayyyyy-leeeeeeeeshhhh."

Anyway. Other characters include the girls' grandmother, Na'ya's younger brother (D'esh), the werewolf boy Ailis has a crush on (Russ), the weird boy from next door named Jasper (he likes Na'ya), and the mean weirn girl at school (Patricia).

The plot is pretty simple. There's a spooky house in the woods and the girls learn it used to be a weirn school their grandmother and her twin brother attended. Grandma faked sick to stay home one day and that day turned out to be the one where all the kids and the teacher went missing. She never saw her brother after that. So shortly after learning this story, Patricia starts acting weird at school and the cousins are suspicious. Is this connected to what happened decades ago? Of course it is. But you'll have to read the book to find out how.

I absolutely loved this. Not on the level of Berrybrook, but it's not far behind. You don't need to read Nightschool to enjoy this new book at all. Nightschool is fun reading, so I do recommend it, even though I had issues with it, but it's definitely not necessary if you want to skip right to Weirn Books.

MICHAEL FARQUHAR 1

This popped up in my Amazon recommendations and honestly, I'm not sure how I never looked up more books by this author. I've had an older Michael Farquhar book for ages now. I'll get to that one down below.

Bad Days in History is exactly what it sounds like. It's a collection of 365 entries, one per day, that each tell of some bad bit of history. The entries aren't all from a specific time period. You can go from something within the past decade to BCE in the next entry. Its only limitation is that I think it was written in 2015, so it's not exactly up to the present day.

Although happily, a sequel is coming in November!

I've eaten this book up since I got it a few days ago. I finished it last night and promptly picked up the older book I have by the same author to reread it. I have a couple of his other books on their way, too. This is definitely a fun book for anyone that's a fan of history. It may sound like it's depressing, but it's actually not.

This is the older Farquhar book I've had for ages. It was written in 2001, though I didn't discover it until 2005. (Thank you, Amazon, for keeping track of my purchases.)

I'm a big fan of these crazy history books, but this is one of the best. I had "Sex with the Queen" and "Sex with Kings" (yes, I realize how that sounds) and recently reread them before the hurricane, but both were abandoned in the move. This one though? Came with me. Had Farquhar written the first two, they'd have come along as well. but I remember being bored during parts of those, while this one is not boring.

Farquhar has written a handful of other books. A Treasury of Great American Scandals came in 2003 and A Treasury of Deception in 2005. I have both of those on their way in the mail. A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans is the fourth in the series, though I haven't bought it yet. I plan to soon. And then he's done two "secret lives" books, one on British royals and one on the tsars. I'll be picking those up as well, so expect more of these entries soonish.