A review by yourfriendtorie
Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume by Jennifer O'Connell
1.0
I was so excited to read this book. I recently bought my 12-year old niece the "Best of Blume" 4-book set for Xmas. It has all my favorites: Are You There God?, Blubber, Starring Sally J., and Iggy's House. I was probably fresh from the rapturous online purchase when I noticed Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl in the "People who bought this book also liked.." bullshit section. So I jumped up from my desk and headed to the stacks with my call number, eager to hear what kind of magic Judy Blume had performed in other women's lives. The level of appreciation, devotion, and straight-up nostalgia didn't disappoint. Every time I think that my love of Judy and other 1970's YA authors would make me a great Young Adult Librarian, I catch myself and remember that YA's Golden Age passed at around the same time that classic Prog Rock did. It's an awkward comparison, I know, but I guess I need a YA Librarian to show me the Blubber, the Zia, the Dicey's Song of the current generation. But, I digress...
I couldn't figure out why I was getting so irritated with the writing of each of these essays until I was about a third of the way through the book. Then I realized that nearly every single one of the contributors is a "chick lit" or millennial YA author. No disrespect to y'all who are into that sort of thing, but once I caught on I knew there was no way I could finish the book, which was beginning to get repetitive anyway. I left it half-finished and never looked back, knowing that my feelings for J.B. didn't need to be validated anyway.
I couldn't figure out why I was getting so irritated with the writing of each of these essays until I was about a third of the way through the book. Then I realized that nearly every single one of the contributors is a "chick lit" or millennial YA author. No disrespect to y'all who are into that sort of thing, but once I caught on I knew there was no way I could finish the book, which was beginning to get repetitive anyway. I left it half-finished and never looked back, knowing that my feelings for J.B. didn't need to be validated anyway.