Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume

Submitted by Missy

“It is the morning of the funeral and I’m tearing my room apart, trying to find the right shoes to wear.” With these words, Judy Blume takes us into the world of Davis “Davy” Wexler, a fifteen-year-old girl struggling with the recent murder of her father. 

Unable to articulate her intense grief, Davy internalizes her sorrow and passes out several times at school.  On doctor’s advice, her mother takes the entire Wexler clan, including Davy’s seven-year-old brother Jason and her cat Minka, on a journey from Atlantic City to Los Almos, New Mexico.  What begins as a summer trip drags on; soon Davy and Jason are being parented by their fearful Aunt Bitsy and strident Uncle Walter,  their mother having wilted under the weight of her panic and sorrow.

Trying to escape her own numbness, Davy takes an impulsive bike ride to the nearby canyons, where she meets a young man calling himself simply “Wolf.”  They strike up a friendship that provides them both with joy they can’t find elsewhere.  Davy dreams of marrying Wolf; he fondly… read more »

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis is one of the young generation of disaffected druggie writers (the literary Brat Pack), along with Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City) and Tama Janowitz (Slaves of New York). His first book, Less than Zero, was practically a Catcher in the Rye rip-off (naturally missing the real point of Catcher, as so many people do), but by the time he published American Psycho in 1990, he'd come into his own.

Patrick Bateman is a man of high fashion, high society, and high stakes. He wears expensive suits, eats at the finest restaurants, and makes crazy business deals. He has strong opinions on many aspects of culture, especially music – he's a big fan of Huey Lewis and the News and Genesis. He is possibly the ideal man of the late '80s New York upper-class business culture, except for one thing – he kills people. Graphically. In many awful ways. And he gets away with it. Or does he?

Patrick is a wonderful narrator; he sounds so wonderfully sane for the first two-thirds of the book. He's an… read more »

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Submitted by Maya

(Warning: Some spoilerish comments included, because they refer to the story’s banned status. Hopefully this isn’t too big a violation of review procedure considering the book is over a quarter century old).

The story begins with a 13-year-old girl alone in the Alaskan wilderness, desperately yet systematically trying to establish communication with a wolf pack as her last means of avoiding starvation. As opening hooks go, the question of how someone so young got into such a predicament is powerful.  The author is in no hurry to answer, with the full background sprinkled a paragraph at a time throughout the story in between descriptions of current efforts to stay alive in a landscape moving from autumn to arctic winter.  Survival isn’t just a physical challenge, but a mental and emotional one as well; the heroine knows that singing to herself, inventing rhymes and dances, reliving happy memories, and imagining her future life are just as important as creating shelter and locating edible plants. And it is through these efforts to keep spirits up that the… read more »

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Submitted by Angelina

This book is the first in a loose trilogy written by Lowery about a far future utopian/dystopian society. It is followed by Gathering Blue & Messenger.

Fans of 1984 and Brave New World will not be disappointed. Society has become a disinfected and homogenized version of what it was. Children are born to designated Birthmothers and given to “families” during the ceremony of One. Family is no more, adult males and females live together only long enough to raise the children in a secure environment. All citizens look basically the same, everyone must conform. If you deviate in any way, you will be Released (euthanized).

This story follows Jonas. Jonas is preparing himself for the ceremony of Twelve. The ceremony of Twelve decides what occupation will be given to each citizen. Jonas is excited, as are all the children. However, Jonas is different from the other children. While the other children all have dark eyes, he has light eyes. You later learn that this is what gives him the ability to “see beyond”( color).  During his ceremony of Twelve, it is… read more »

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

Submitted by Collette

I read The Pigman by Paul Zindel when I was in junior high, many years ago (*cough* THIRTY *cough* how did that happen? *screaming inside my head*).  Although it’s currently on the banned books list, I was given it by my mother, a children’s librarian.  She’d bring home piles of books for me to read so I went through a lot.  What strikes me is how much I remember about this book, especially in light of how many books I’ve read since then. 

The Pigman is about John and Lorraine, two kids who start out pulling pranks on the unsuspecting.  They eventually pull a prank on Mr. Pignati, who, through a series of events, becomes their friend.  He is a kind, sweet, lonely old man who is good to these also lonely teenagers.  What I remember most starkly is how badly it all turned out.  At first, there’s the hope that, although they met through pranks, somehow something better, something bigger would come from this friendship.  And, it’s true, for a while at least.  They gain something… read more »

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Submitted by CC

I am doing this review from memory, since my signed copy is still in a moving box and I haven’t read it for a few years. I love this book and have given copies to a variety of people over the years, all of whom agree with me, it’s a magical read.

—Sixth grade, a new school, I’m changing and so is the world around me. My teacher, Mrs. Harris, reads a book out loud every day after lunch. She read “Rifles for Waite” by Harold Keith, the book that led me to my profession as an historian, she also read “Bridge to Terabithia.” She simply sat down, opened the book, and started reading. We were transformed. No other book had been as compelling to us before. No other book had us talking about it at lunch and wondering what would happen next. No other book earned such an emotional reaction with boxes of tissue being passed around the classroom while we listened as one of our new best friends died.

The story of two kids and the imaginary world… read more »

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Submitted by Goblin

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, is the story of two men living in desperate times, but it’s also a story about the necessity of hope. Most characters in the book cling to some (often heartbreakingly pathetic) hope of a better life while they struggle through the brutal realities of the Great Depression.

The story focuses on George and Lennie, two migrant workers. Lennie is physically powerful but mentally sub-normal. George is a cynical but essentially kind-hearted man who looks out for Lennie. Their dream is to save up enough money to buy a small farm where they won’t have to work constantly in order to survive.

Lennie likes to stroke soft and pretty things, but he doesn’t control his abnormal strength well. At the beginning of the story, George forces Lennie to throw away the body of the pet mouse Lennie has accidentally killed. It turns out Lennie once killed a puppy in a similar fashion, and that the two men are looking for new employment because Lennie tried to stroke the dress of a girl who thought he… read more »

The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B Cooney

Submitted by Jen C

The Face on the Milk Carton tells the story of a teenager, Janie Johnson, who looks down at her milk carton at lunch one day and realizes that the missing- child picture on it is her own.  She starts investigating, and discovering that nothing adds up.  Who is Hannah, the mysterious child her parents have never spoke of?  Why does the milk carton picture of “Jennie Springs” look like her?  Why do the Springs have that same red hair?  How can she destroy her life by confronting her parents with the truth?  Will her best friend, Sarah-Charlotte, ever stop talking?  Will Janie have sex with hot neighbor Reeve? Will there be three sequels, the last which will completely contradict the first three?

I have loved this book for more than a decade, now, and I have never exactly been able to ascertain why this book gets banned. Reeve is constantly thinking about sex, though in that middle-aged-woman-writing-this way- he wants to run his hands though Janie’s ‘serious’ red hair and put his body next to hers,… read more »