Just Read

Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein

                                                       

                                                      

I recently discovered that out awesome library lets us borrow the e-books as well. Though I am not a very big fan of e-books, they certainly help me overcome the occasional boredom in office. So I read this book over a number of days in my office time as and when time permitted (Hushhh...)

Here the author goes out to describe in great detail about what is wrong with the “Pink” obsession and the “Princess” culture amongst the little girls. She has given some great fact and figures about the amount of money the companies make riding on this bandwagon alone. She has touched some other topics like child beauty pageants, Miley Cyrus, toy fairs and the like. She has also mentioned her own experiences with her daughter Daisy and her friends. I didn’t even know half of the brands and characters she has listed and Google-ed them along the way. To be fair, most of my current knowledge on children’s things like cartoon characters, songs, rhymes and stories is also because of Angel. We read the story book of ‘Frozen’ and since Angel liked the story, we subsequently watched the movie because she had a lot of Frozen merchandise and we didn’t know the names of the characters. I digressed. In short, the book deals with all the issues that I have been fuming over ever since Angel was born – like early sexualization of girls, the suggestive moves and lyrics in the item songs on which the children can be seen dancing on the reality shows, the way too pink, cute but uncomfortable tutus, the separate aisles for girls and boys in the toy shops.  It showed me that the situation is worse than I anticipated. It even scared me. Does it give me any answers – No, but it does make me more aware about the whole scenario.
I would recommend it to all the parents of little girls.
 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

 

It is a book for children and I tried it because I had heard so much about it.

This “novel in cartoons” is about a clueless middle schooler Gregory or Greg Heffley. It narrates the life of Greg from the beginning of the school term to the end of it in a diary or journal as he would like to call it, with sketches on every page. Greg is a not so popular kid who tries to create a better image of himself by being a school treasurer, cartoonist for the school paper, safety patrol member and a class clown for the year book. There were times when I cracked up, however there were other times when Greg was mean and dishonest like when he let his best friend Rowley take the blame of terrorizing the young children while in fact he had done it. Rowley again fell into his category of popularity. They got along quite well and he is always willing to do what Greg told him to. Gradually, Rowley’s stars begin to shine and their dynamics of friendship change. Other minor characters include Greg’s older brother Rodrick who never missed any opportunity to tease and make fun of Greg, his younger brother Manny who got away with anything he did and Greg’s parents.

It’s interesting how Rowley’s father reads about the violence content in each video game before letting him play it and how Greg’s mother is trying hard to raise her sons to grow up to be respectable adults.

It’s a fun book. Having said that, I don’t see myself reading any more books in the series (unless Angel pressurizes me to, that will still take some time though).

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

                                

I loved the writing style of the author. Its very different. The author has used a bunch of formats to tell her story including Google searches, Facebook entries, Facebook chats, texts, e-mails, Twitter and questionnaire)

This is the story of Alice Buckle who is forty four years old and probably going through the mid-life crisis with the big five-oh looming. She is a drama teacher in Kentwood Elementary School and she is not permanent there. Apparently, she has a loving family with a husband (William Buckle) and two children (Zoe who is 15 and Peter is 12), but she feels that she and her husband are growing apart. On the top of it, William loses his high paying advertising job owing to recession or his inability to keep his mouth shut. Alice suspects that her daughter has an eating disorder and Peter is gay. She then participated in and anonymous online survey about marriages called "Marriage in the 21st Cenury" which turned her life upside down.  In the survey, her psuedonymn is Wife 22 to protect identities which thus forms the title of the book. She is assigned a caseworker - Researcher 101, the questionnaire and their conversations form the essence of this book.  She also has a bunch of loving friends Nedra Rao and Kate who are a lesbian couple, Bunny who was her colleague during her initial stint at playwriting and her daughter Caroline who came to live with the family when she moved to their city in search of a job and was phenomenal in making her run again and in rekindling her friendship with Bunny with whom she had lost touch when life happened.

How her life took a 360 degree turn and whether it came back on track? To find out, read this wonderful book.

All the Images Courtesy – Google Images