Bookworm

Nation is different from the other Terry Prachett books. It is closer to our world - and then again not quite. It has taken me a long time to digest it. It is about a boy on an island. A girl who's father is the 37th heir to the throne of England... or something. It's about death and life, growing up, and in a way, very much about science.

Oh, and it is his best book ever. I am glad he got to write it.

- by Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer

Sassy was a teen magazine mainly for girls which existed from 1987 - 1994, when I was 14 - 21. It was different from the other US teen magazines and would discuss controversial subjects like sex, gays, suicide. Also it would talk to it's readers in their own language and meet them where they were, and introduce different values from just getting married, doing home decoration and being a good girl.

Being an outsider, I would have been pretty much the target group - except I didn't know it existed. I lived in a small Danish village and I have no idea if I could have come across a copy by chance in the neighborhood, probably not. Instead I listened to Bruce Springsteen and found a sort of inclusion in the surviving-day-to-day-while-the-real-world-crushes-any-illusions-you-ever-had attitude.

I heard about Sassy for the first time on Tavi's blog

http://www.thestylerookie.com/2010/04/are-you-tired-of-sassy-yet-answer-is-no.html

and I recently got around to buying the last copy of "How Sassy Changed my Life" on the UK Amazon. This is the story of a teenage girl magazine that hit the exact right spot at the right time for a lot of girls, in a way so they really feel it changed their lives, made them feel included instead of left out, gave them courage to go and do cool things and a self confidence that shaped their future. However it is also a story of these same teenage girl values clashing hard with the evil grown-up world called reality when the magazine had to shut down, after having a lot of trouble with advertisers and the general "family value" attitude in the US.

The book tells the story of Sassy with a lot of honesty about the magazine's good and bad sides and the people behind it, written by two now grown-up readers who loved Sassy and have later tried to understand what happened back then.

When reading this book I cannot help wondering if Sassy would have changed my life if I had come across it? I am not sure it would. I get this wonderful feeling of "girl power" and inspiration and that I would have enjoyed reading it and loved it far too much. The again, Sassy defined a new type of cool, but in the end it was still exclusive and spiteful to those who were not in the group. I wouldn't have been cool or interesting or punk enough. Also, in Denmark, we did not have the same level of taboo about some of the subjects which some US grown-ups found so controversial in Sassy - so our need was probably not so great.

So why do I feel that I missed out on something important?

I read this book in August / September or something but I needed some time to think about it before commenting on it.

Most people have probably read this book or heard about it. I guess most people have actually not read it, but only heard about it, and been forced by their teacher to read a chapter or so...

But it is written shortly after the second world war and describes life in 1984 as the author imagines the world might be.

Did he guess completely wrong or did he hit spot on? Well first of all 1984 is a long time ago and I shall compare the book scenario to now, not to 1984. In 1984 I was in school and the world was a much simpler place, even if definitely not better...

He has not foreseen the Internet. OK nobody had. He has not foreseen the level of welfare / living standard in the West. He imagines having to force people to have the TV on always while in real life, they do it happily of their own accord. He imagines a lot of monitoring of peoples lives, like in the old east Germany, with people from the Party actually having the time to look at all the information.

He does not predict total information overload.

However, he does predict one thing very sadly and very accurately: Newspeak, doublespeak. Having to pretend all through your work day and even your school day that what ever management bull they come up with is true and you never thought otherwise, and no other truth exists. TV news showing only what we are supposed to see, critical journalism dead. Reality TV to serve as pacifiers. Semi-religious entertainers as well as "old" religions trying desperately to convince young people that their fantasies are much truer than science, and succeeding to an alarming extend. We don't need a ministry of Truth. Are we pretty brain washed to put up with this? Yes, we are. Somebody ought to write a book about it...

A biography of a dog.

As I understand this dog has lived and a big part of the external facts are correct, but she didn't know it that closely and a lot of it is made up.

However it is written as a biography, from the dog's point of view. Being a sucker for animals and especially cats and dogs, I probably miss some of the supposed irony and actually finds it very sad when something bad happens to the poor thing. Still it is a well written book that describes some things about the period she lived in, the people in upper class London, and how much have changed in the way we keep pets. Frontline, for one thing. My cat and I think it the best invention in our time (well in my time, it was before his).

Anyway it is probably her most lighthearted book and it is not difficult to read.

I have finished quite a few books recently but haven't been in the mood for posting. However, this book needs telling about it

Last weekend my mother came by and left some old books behind for me to have, and this one I happened to catch my attention.

I started in last night on the train home and finished it today. It is not a detective story as such, but it is about a bank robbery, so I'll call it a crime story.

The plot is a woman robbing her husband's bank, and getting away with it by wrapping a lot of men around her little finger in a rather unrealistic way. But it is a funny charming little book. The main person is quite something. Definitely worth the 2 or 3 hours I spend reading it.