Disappointing Literature

So while Ben and I were at Sam’s Club a couple weeks ago, I decided to take a stroll down the book aisle to possibly find a book for our trip. A little bit of history: I used to be quite the reader when I was younger, lost interest from High School through College and then around last year I decided to check out some books from the library and start reading again. A few months later I got too distracted/busy to have time to read, so I stopped. Since we were going on vacation and I’d have some spare time I thought I’d pick back up again what I did last summer and get a book.

Anyway, so I found a book that was on “The New York Times Best Seller” list. Not only that, but it was a book by Judy Blume. Being that I haven’t read very many books for several years, I confused Judy Blume with Beverly Cleary (author of Ramona the Pest etc.). I was pretty excited to read an adult novel by one of my favorite juvenile authors. Obviously I don’t even know who my favorite juvenile author is since I didn’t even get the name right. I knew I had heard of Judy Blume, so I guess I just figured it was the right author. I did check out Judy Blume's bio and found out that she DID write young adult novels, so I guess I wasn’t too far off.

After checking out the back of the book that described the story I thought it sounded cute,
“Summer Sisters is a coming-of-age novel about two girls who meet in their preteens and are complete opposites... there is Victoria "Vix" Leonard, a shy but intellectual wallflower, and Caitlin Somers, who is beautiful and confident.”

Ben asked me if I really wanted it, and I was pretty sure it sounded good, so we paid the $9 for the book. Mind you, we never buy books either; we typically check them out from the library.

So I started “Summer Sisters” on our plane ride to the Cayman Islands and I would gradually read here and there while laying out or lounging around. I was a little disturbed by the characters in the book, but I didn’t want to stop reading it since I forked out some money for it. I hate wasting money. I finally finished the book on Saturday morning, and basically I was pretty disappointed with the whole book. After I looked up the book on Wikipedia I read this: “Because of its heavy sexual content—including lesbianism this Blume novel is aimed squarely at an adult audience, not her pre-teen audience, books for which she gained popularity.”

Yikes, had I known this I don’t think I would have gotten this book in the first place! Here's to hoping I find a better book to read this summer.