BSC update [books 43-46]
Apr. 6th, 2006 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wisdomeagleEDITED to satisfy the whims of the flist with their crazy anal definitions of "word." :p
Guess who's going to be on vacation next week and I won't see for over a week and left at four this afternoon with a hurried goodbye and no hug? THAT'S RIGHT.
To take my mind off things, some BSC stuff:
#43: Stacey's Emergency. One of those good book/no squee things.
So, on the one hand, this deals a lot with her parents' divorce, and while I don't identify with the monkey-in-the-middle syndrome (I'm not in the middle; I'm firmly on one side) I do identify with a lot of the other stuff Stacey experiences, and the hoping-against-all-logic that her folks will get back together even though she sees they can't stand to be in the same room as each other.
And on the other hand, I really like that Stacey goes off her diet in a major way, eating chocolate and sugary stuff and I love how that's depicted; she knows she shouldn't and it's making her sicker but she's too tired to resist, and then after eating it, she just feels guilty... And I love the secrecy of it, stealing fudge and Ring-Dings...
I just really enjoyed this book. It's probably my favorite Stacey book, since she's not usually someone I identify with a lot.
#44: Dawn and the Big Sleepover. I have *nothing* to say about this book. It wasn't bad, it just... nothing to say.
#45: Kristy and the Baby Parade. This book totally wins the award for the most bizarre structure ever.
For instance, in chapter 4, Kristy starts taking a baby care class and one of the instructors is this hot middle-aged guy, slightly younger than her stepfather. Okay.
At the beginning of chapter 5, four weeks have passed and she still has a crush on this man (what? she had a crush on him? SHOW DON'T TELLANN Ellen Miles) but suddenly when she meets his v. young son, the crush evaporates. "My crush disappeared. Just like that. I still liked him, but I was no longer 'infatuated,' as Mary Anne had put it." OMGWTFBBQ. SERIOUSLY. Don't tell me that it works like that in the real world, people. Yeah, okay.
The rest of this book is a massive experiment in the baby-sitters being not perfect, and let's just say it doesn't work very well, okay. There are modes other than "perfect" and "so frelling whiny and immature they remind the reader forcably of OoTP!Harry," you know. Or, the baby-sitters have a fight and fail at float-building 101 because they don't work together.
On a more serious note, where is the Prezzisocest people??
Jenny sat down next to us and watched eagerly as Andrea sucked at the bottle. "See how her eyes open and close?" she said. "Look at her little hands."
Jenny was obviously in love with her baby sister. - p. 57
No, when Andrea gets older, and Jenny needs to teach her how to do big girl things... THIS FIC WRITES ITSELF. How can you have Mrs. P for a mother and grow up totally normal?
#46: Mary Anne Is Straight For Logan. Srsly. I had forgotten how quickly after the break-up they got back together. In my head there were twenty, thirty books of single, independent Mary Ann-ness. Apparently I was delusional. *sighs hard* So I'm going to talk about things I did like in this book: The RPFS shout-out, the Kormans, Mary Anne/Cokie, and some genuinely funny bits.
1. RPFS shout-out.
"You know what I've been wondering?" Stacey spoke up. "I've been wondering who I'll get to study. Wouldn't it be great to be assigned Lois Lowry or Madeleine L'Engle or Paul Zindel?"
"Or Megan Rinehart or Paula Danzinger?" I said, feeling excited despite myself. "If I got to study Paula Danzinger I would just die. Of happiness, I mean." - 40-41
And it turns out Megan Rinehart is the author Mary Ann gets to study, and she totally has a litcrush on Megan and we ALL KNOW that Mary Anne is Ann's avatar AND this book wasn't ghosted so TOTAL RPFS SHOUT-OUT OTP LIKE WHOA.
Also, there's this amusing bit, when Mary Anne actually meets Megan Rinehart....
After awhile the questioning got out of hand. Didn't anybody listen to anyone else? People asked the same questions over and over. For instance, someone asked Megan Rinehart where she got her story ideas, and then, like, two minutes later, Cokie asked her the same question. - 128
WOW ANN. META MUCH? So that was funny.
2. Kormancest. The B-plot in this book is about this family who moved into the Delaneys' old house (when did Amanda and Max move? This must've happened in a book I don't own/didn't reread. Or maybe in the BSLS series. Oh, the crazy continuity.), the Kormans. They're much more fun than the Delaneys are. There are three kids, Bill, who's nine, Melody, who's seven, and Skylar, who's two. Skylar is adorably cute, and reminds me of the Olsen Twins' character on Full House. I think I might like her more even than Gabbie Perkins, and Gabbie is pretty much the awesomest two-year old in the BSCverse.
The older kids have just moved into this new house and have lots of fears about the new neighborhood and school that they project onto monsters living in their house, particularly the Toilet Monster.
YES. The whole B-plot is about a TOILET MONSTER. Bill and Melody are very frightened of him, and express this fear in various healthy ways, like sleeping in the same bed together. I AM NOT KIDDING.
She [Dawn] raced into Bill's room -- and stopped short. Melody and Bill were crowded into Bill's bed, Melody at the foot, Bill at the head. - 53
OTP. DUDE.
3. Okay. This third thing is a Mary Anne/Cokie thing, and yeah, so not my pairing, but it CANNOT BE DENIED.
I wondered if Cokie would have gone after Logan if he and I had been assigned to separate groups? - 67
This after a long rant about why Cokie and Mary Anne are Mortal Enemies. So... Cokie's going after Logan (romatically) to get back at Mary Anne? We havea word a phrase for this, people! Triangularization of desire much?
4. There are also some laugh-out-loud funny moments in this book, unrelated to any wrongness in my head:
"And you know what?" said Melody, as she slid into her chair. (She lowered her voice to a whisper.) "My teacher is scary. I think she's really a warthog, but some monster changed her into a lady and then put a Meanness Spell on her." - 21.
"I read four books once," said Cokie, staring into space. "Four little books. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle. I was ten years old. It only took me a week. - 71
With so much awesomeness in this book, WHO CAN FOCUS ON THE HET? Not me, that's for sure.
Finally, I'm reading Super Special #6, New York, New York! Notable things so far: Dawn has a crush on a guy. She says this guy reminds her of Mary Anne. WHAT CAN I SAY? Canon OTP, baby.
Guess who's going to be on vacation next week and I won't see for over a week and left at four this afternoon with a hurried goodbye and no hug? THAT'S RIGHT.
To take my mind off things, some BSC stuff:
#43: Stacey's Emergency. One of those good book/no squee things.
So, on the one hand, this deals a lot with her parents' divorce, and while I don't identify with the monkey-in-the-middle syndrome (I'm not in the middle; I'm firmly on one side) I do identify with a lot of the other stuff Stacey experiences, and the hoping-against-all-logic that her folks will get back together even though she sees they can't stand to be in the same room as each other.
And on the other hand, I really like that Stacey goes off her diet in a major way, eating chocolate and sugary stuff and I love how that's depicted; she knows she shouldn't and it's making her sicker but she's too tired to resist, and then after eating it, she just feels guilty... And I love the secrecy of it, stealing fudge and Ring-Dings...
I just really enjoyed this book. It's probably my favorite Stacey book, since she's not usually someone I identify with a lot.
#44: Dawn and the Big Sleepover. I have *nothing* to say about this book. It wasn't bad, it just... nothing to say.
#45: Kristy and the Baby Parade. This book totally wins the award for the most bizarre structure ever.
For instance, in chapter 4, Kristy starts taking a baby care class and one of the instructors is this hot middle-aged guy, slightly younger than her stepfather. Okay.
At the beginning of chapter 5, four weeks have passed and she still has a crush on this man (what? she had a crush on him? SHOW DON'T TELL
The rest of this book is a massive experiment in the baby-sitters being not perfect, and let's just say it doesn't work very well, okay. There are modes other than "perfect" and "so frelling whiny and immature they remind the reader forcably of OoTP!Harry," you know. Or, the baby-sitters have a fight and fail at float-building 101 because they don't work together.
On a more serious note, where is the Prezzisocest people??
Jenny sat down next to us and watched eagerly as Andrea sucked at the bottle. "See how her eyes open and close?" she said. "Look at her little hands."
Jenny was obviously in love with her baby sister. - p. 57
No, when Andrea gets older, and Jenny needs to teach her how to do big girl things... THIS FIC WRITES ITSELF. How can you have Mrs. P for a mother and grow up totally normal?
#46: Mary Anne Is Straight For Logan. Srsly. I had forgotten how quickly after the break-up they got back together. In my head there were twenty, thirty books of single, independent Mary Ann-ness. Apparently I was delusional. *sighs hard* So I'm going to talk about things I did like in this book: The RPFS shout-out, the Kormans, Mary Anne/Cokie, and some genuinely funny bits.
1. RPFS shout-out.
"You know what I've been wondering?" Stacey spoke up. "I've been wondering who I'll get to study. Wouldn't it be great to be assigned Lois Lowry or Madeleine L'Engle or Paul Zindel?"
"Or Megan Rinehart or Paula Danzinger?" I said, feeling excited despite myself. "If I got to study Paula Danzinger I would just die. Of happiness, I mean." - 40-41
And it turns out Megan Rinehart is the author Mary Ann gets to study, and she totally has a litcrush on Megan and we ALL KNOW that Mary Anne is Ann's avatar AND this book wasn't ghosted so TOTAL RPFS SHOUT-OUT OTP LIKE WHOA.
Also, there's this amusing bit, when Mary Anne actually meets Megan Rinehart....
After awhile the questioning got out of hand. Didn't anybody listen to anyone else? People asked the same questions over and over. For instance, someone asked Megan Rinehart where she got her story ideas, and then, like, two minutes later, Cokie asked her the same question. - 128
WOW ANN. META MUCH? So that was funny.
2. Kormancest. The B-plot in this book is about this family who moved into the Delaneys' old house (when did Amanda and Max move? This must've happened in a book I don't own/didn't reread. Or maybe in the BSLS series. Oh, the crazy continuity.), the Kormans. They're much more fun than the Delaneys are. There are three kids, Bill, who's nine, Melody, who's seven, and Skylar, who's two. Skylar is adorably cute, and reminds me of the Olsen Twins' character on Full House. I think I might like her more even than Gabbie Perkins, and Gabbie is pretty much the awesomest two-year old in the BSCverse.
The older kids have just moved into this new house and have lots of fears about the new neighborhood and school that they project onto monsters living in their house, particularly the Toilet Monster.
YES. The whole B-plot is about a TOILET MONSTER. Bill and Melody are very frightened of him, and express this fear in various healthy ways, like sleeping in the same bed together. I AM NOT KIDDING.
She [Dawn] raced into Bill's room -- and stopped short. Melody and Bill were crowded into Bill's bed, Melody at the foot, Bill at the head. - 53
OTP. DUDE.
3. Okay. This third thing is a Mary Anne/Cokie thing, and yeah, so not my pairing, but it CANNOT BE DENIED.
I wondered if Cokie would have gone after Logan if he and I had been assigned to separate groups? - 67
This after a long rant about why Cokie and Mary Anne are Mortal Enemies. So... Cokie's going after Logan (romatically) to get back at Mary Anne? We have
4. There are also some laugh-out-loud funny moments in this book, unrelated to any wrongness in my head:
"And you know what?" said Melody, as she slid into her chair. (She lowered her voice to a whisper.) "My teacher is scary. I think she's really a warthog, but some monster changed her into a lady and then put a Meanness Spell on her." - 21.
"I read four books once," said Cokie, staring into space. "Four little books. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle. I was ten years old. It only took me a week. - 71
With so much awesomeness in this book, WHO CAN FOCUS ON THE HET? Not me, that's for sure.
Finally, I'm reading Super Special #6, New York, New York! Notable things so far: Dawn has a crush on a guy. She says this guy reminds her of Mary Anne. WHAT CAN I SAY? Canon OTP, baby.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 11:45 pm (UTC)(Love the use of Betty icon for this comment. Points to you!)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-06 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-07 04:13 am (UTC)And omg, you. I've been buying BSC books from trademe since you've been writing these! I got four in the mail today, and I'm all a-glee. I'd never read the "Dawn" portrait book before, but it's all sweet and "my first real friend was just like Mary Anne and I cried and cried when I couldn't be with her anymore", and, just, aww.
And hey, weren't Ann and Paula Danziger
gay for each otherBFFs in real life?(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-07 01:49 pm (UTC)We so crazy :)
(Upon furthur consideration I think "term" would sound best in that sentence. *is dork*)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-08 09:18 am (UTC)Also, yay for the mentions of Danziger and Lowry. It was the harping on about Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye that made me go find that book and I do love it. It's my second-favourite Lowry. After Number the Stars. Which I totally plagiarised at Writers Camp one year. Without really meaning to.