reading lists

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
by Melanie Rehak
A great exploration of the history of the popular girl detective novels and the women who wrote them. I learned a couple of surprising things — that Nancy Drew was far and away the most popular of the Stratmeyer Syndicate’s kid book series, blowing away the Hardy Boys by a mile. I was also surprised to learn how much the Syndicate actually contributed to the novels. I was always under the impression that the ghostwriters, like Mildred Wirt Benson, got a raw deal because they wrote all the books but never got credit. But in reality the writing was more of a collaboration between the Syndicate (which was primarily Harriet Stratemeyer Adams) who created all the characters and wrote detailed plots; and the ghostwriters, who filled in the details and dialog. That’s kinda cool — I’m terrible at working out a plot, but I can write great scenes and dialog.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell
Re-read this after a quick read last year.

Deception Point
by Dan Brown
A fun mindless thriller that was entertaining and relaxing.

The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
I loved this complex novel about a man with a genetic mutation that causes him to be thrown backward and forward through time. Far from a fun or interesting quirk, his time travel is distressing and difficult — he can’t take anything with him; not even the fillings in his teeth. He can’t control where or when he goes, but shows up at various points in his own life, especially at traumatic events. But he also gets thrown back to visit his future wife when she was a child, beginning a romance that transcends time.

The Seven Daughters of Eve
by Bryan Sykes
A great science novel that’s not too intense or boring. Sykes is a Oxford scholar and human geneticist that has discovered a way to trace, through DNA, our matrilinial ancestry.

What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
by Thomas Frank
I just started this, and it’s shaping up to be an entertaining and interesting read.

The Nanny Diaries
by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
I enjoyed this light, comic novel as a easy summer reading book. I have to admit being frustrated by the level to which “Nanny” — the young female protagonist — put up with the crap of the Manhattan family that hired her to take care of their son. Any reasonable person would have walked away from the employment situation, so it’s hard to suspend disbelief at some of the plot points. But it was a fun peek into a society I don’t have access to.
A better summary from Amazon: “The Nanny Diaries is an absolutely addictive peek into the utterly weird world of child rearing in the upper reaches of Manhattan’s social strata. Cowritten by two former nannies, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the novel follows the adventures of the aptly named Nan as she negotiates the Byzantine byways of working for Mrs. X, a Park Avenue mommy.”

The Watchmen (Absolute Edition)
by Alan Moore
Unfortunately, I don’t time to write a review that would do this book justice, because it deserves a couple pages of thoughful analysis and philosophical examination. It’s an extraordinary graphic novel, written in the 1980s that still resonates in today’s political and social sphere. The author — Alan Moore — also wrote the graphic novel V for Vendetta, which was recently made into a movie (although he disavows any association with the film version). The watchmen is the story of a couple of generations of masked crime fighters, set in real cold war America in the 1980s. Unlike the primary-colored superheroes that we’re all familiar with, these complext heroes explore the moral ambiguity of vigilantism and of society itself.
I bought this after reading an Entertainment Weekly review that quoted some of my favorite writers and television producers (Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, the producers of Lost) as saying it was an enormous influence on them, and the influences are clear. One of my favorite things about both Whedon’s stories and about Lost are the subtle plot details that pop out on second and third viewings — a technique that’s used to extraordinary effect in The Watchmen.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design
by Raph Koster
I need to re-read this book to write a good review of it, and to really grasp what I read. That isn’t the fault of the book at all; it was great. It’s entirely on me that I didn’t get a complete picture because my free time to read has been so scattered lately, and it’s difficult to put a book down and pick it back up and remember where I was. I’m going to go over this book again after I finish reading the book I’m currently enjoying, which is:

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
Melanie Rehak
I’ll write up a full-scale review of this book when I’m done with it, because I’m thoroughly enjoying reading this great book about one of my childhood role models.

I’m currently making my way through a couple of bigger books — The Watchmen (Absolute Edition) by Alan Moore, and A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. But in between I’ve read a couple of shorter, fun books.

The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island
by Weta Workshop
An extraordinarily detailed bestiary and ecological guide to the fictional world of King Kong’s Skull Island, written as though it was a “real” account of the several scientific expeditions to the island after Kong’s demise in New York.

Going for the Bronze: Still Bitter, More Baggage
by Sloane Tanen
This is a hilarious picture book of tiny little exquisitely designed dioramas, starring fuzzy little chickens acting out funny human dramas.

Al Capone Does My Shirts
by Gennifer Choldenko
A fun eighth-grader’s novel about a 13-year-old boy — “Moose” Flanagan — who goes to live on Alcatraz Island in 1935 when his dad takes a job there as an electrician and prison guard. The move is prompted by the family’s need to place Moose’s older, autistic sister Natalie in a school that can help her become independent. Moose isn’t happy in his new home; he never gets to see his dad, he has to look after Natalie, and the warden’s daughter Piper is a scheming trouble-maker. But Moose eventually finds his place by becoming friends with other kids who live on the island and making contact with one of the island’s celebrated prisoners — Al Capone.