books 20, 21, 22

okay, it's time for me to get back on track now that school's over.

true notebooks, mark salzman
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okay, so this was basically my perfect book. it's got humor, sadness, truth, and juvenile detention centers. mark salzman, one of my favorite memoirists, volunteers to teach writing to teen-aged inmates at a juvenile detention center in los angeles. the book is about him, but also about them, and lots of excerpts from their writing are included. i laughed, i cried, etc. i love mark salzman's non-fiction.

speak, laurie halse anderson
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this is a young adult novel, and i've heard it called a "problem novels" which are those novels you hear about where the main character is bulimic and her sister is a cutter and her best friend is pregnant with her abusive married teacher boyfriend's baby and so on. but it's not nearly to that extent. it's about melinda, who is ostracized freshman year because she called the cops at a big party a few weeks before school started. there are hints all along that something terrible happened that night and it's all revealed at the end. it's painful at times, but really well done, and i think anderson's style is smart and spare. also, it took me no more than an hour and a half to read this, so it scores on that account. it won some awards a few years back. i'm working with some YA programming this summer at the public library, so you should expect to see lots of YA book reviews.

the girls, lori lansens
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my sister recommended this to me and i had her keep it for me so that i could read it when i went to visit my family this weekend. this is an awesome novel that's written as the joint autobiography of the world's oldest living craniopagus conjoined twins (they're thirty). rose writes most of the story, with her sister ruby chiming in at times. the twins' different voices are handled really skillfully. there were a couple weak moments in the story but mostly it was just really nice writing and some very vivid scenes that i haven't stopped thinking about since i finished it. apparently lansens has written some films and another novel so i need to check those out.