Books Written For Girls - part one

Hey ladies

Sorry I haven't been around for a few days. I have quite severe food allergies and had a bad attack on Friday morning, which kinda knocked the stuffing out of me. I'm fine now - in fact, I've just finished lying on my living room floor doing a Pilates workout and before I head back to book revisions, Josie posted that: ive read all the books i own and im stuck for a new one to read, as im just reading the end of Pretty things and its an amazing book, so do you have any good books to recommend that are in the same style as your own?

Well, I don't know about in the same style as me, simply because I don't read a lot of teen fiction. Mostly because I find that when I'm writing, I don't want to be accidentally influenced by the books I'm reading, especially if they're in a similar genre. And the other reason is that I don't like a lot of teen fiction and find it really obviously written by adults who wouldn't know what to say to a fifteen-year-old girl if she bit them on the nose. How controversial!

Anyway, having said that this is the first in an occasional series of books written for and about teenagers that I really love. Some you might have heard of, some you might not but they all mean a lot to me. (Oh, and they should all be available through Amazon.)

Girl by Blake Nelson
"And then I felt daring and wrote how Carla had been so nice and how me and Rebecca thought she was such a bitch because we were afraid of her and how people always hate each other if they're dressed cooler than them or if they're artsy or pretentious or whatever. But then I crossed the Carla part out and recopied the page but then I decided to leave it in and I had to recopy it again. It took two frozen yoghurts and three coffees to get it all done but I was so excited and I signed it, "See you" and kissed every corner of the page. And then I ran down to the post office and kissed the enevelope ten more times and drew some flowers on it and dropped it in. And the minute it fell through the slot I felt sick from nerves and caffiene and yoghurt."

Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
"We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuritating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt so compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colours went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fahtom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them."

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
"I met Cyril lin the wood as arranged. I told him what to do next. He listened to me with a mixture of dread and admiration. The he took me in his arms, but I could not stay, as it was getting late. I was surprised to find that I did not want to leave him. If he had been searching for some means of attaching me to himself, he had certainly found it. I kissed him passionately. I even longed to hurt him, so that he woould not be able to forget me for a single moment all the evening, and dream of me all night long. I could not bear the thought of the night without him."


I'll be reccing more books in the future. And over the next week, I'll try to answer some of the questions you've left for me. Have a sunny Sunday!