It's still snowing here in Chicago, and I still need to avoid thinking about my Serious Novel (tm), so why not hearken back to the heady summer days of 1987 for. . .whatever this is.
Haha, Melanie's Agatha Christie luv is the only thing that makes her sound remotely endearing to me. Can't vouch for the complexity of Marple, but Poirot is light years past Nancy Drew.
Hee hee, yeah, definitely the Agatha Christies are better written and plotted; it's more just that Mrs. B acts as if there's something inappropriate about a 14 year old reading them.
Ahahaha Keeping Up Appearances!
And yeah, the sweatshirt is not only not particularly clever, it totally seems like something a suburban mom would wear, not a teenager. Of course, Ann also thinks it's appropriate for an 11-year-old to wear an "I :heart: KIDS" t-shirt.
I'm excited for the next part, since I haven't read this book. Though the cover looks familiar...Stacey's Lie, anyone? Actually, this half of the book sounds awfully familiar to Stacey's Lie. I guess it's easier than coming up with an original story, but it's weird to sort of rip yourself off.
Melanie sounds like she's the worst, pretty much. Lacey's much better off without her. It's one thing to be a flake and to be that girl who ditches her friends for a guy (which, while not cool, is something a lot of girls have done, especially at their age). It's another to be an oblivious jackass. How far up your own butt do you have to be to not know what's going on? And even worse, Melanie doesn't even care that she hurt her friend's feelings once Lacey spells it out for her. Ugh. I hope Melanie gets her comeuppance, but since this is an Ann book, things will probably work out in the end.
I look forward to the unintentional Ann humour! It's usually a gold mine.
I am fairly convinced that Ann's view of what it means to be middle class is like, your vacation house in a rich resort town is not a mansion and your domestic help doesn't live at your house. I've spend a fair amount of time in both Princeton and Bronxville, and Princeton is very rich as well. I think Ann just has never really been around not-rich people, so she thinks upper middle class=middle class. Kristy was kind of painted as being poor in the beginning of the series because her house in a rich part of Connecticut had a small fourth bedroom.
That's probably true, although having read the biography, it does make me a bit nosy about if they had family money--there's a line about Hank Martin's "struggles" as a cartoonist, but. . .you know, struggles where you live in Princeton and can buy land to build a house of your choice while in your late 20s/early 30s while supporting a wife and two kids.
I grew up in a Chicago suburb that is very solidly upper middle class, so I definitely get the mindset, although I do kind of wonder why no one else ever gently tweaked some of those references.
Hmm. As far as family money goes, I am trying to figure out who Charles E. Martin is (also a NYer cartoonist, and mentioned in Everything Changes) in relation to Ann--whether he's her uncle, cousin, or no relation at all, just a family friend with the same last name. If we go with the theory that they are related, Charles Martin's original last name, according to his site, was Mastrangelo, and he grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. But he seems to have only changed his last name after WWII, and Ann's dad graduated from Princeton in 1948 and is from Louisville, so maybe it's a dead end. Also, interesting but random fact: Ann's sister was Woody Allen's assistant in the eighties. But as far as family money goes, since we know that Ann's mom AND grandma both went to Mt. Holyoke, so it was a big deal that Ann went to Smith instead, we can infer that Ann's mom's side is probably fairly well-off, since not too many women went to fancy private colleges in those days. It could have been that Henry's "struggles" were judged against the
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To be fair, “This argument’s forfeited on account on mugginess.” actually made me laugh. But then that's because it reminds me of Angela Anaconda, so... more unintentional humour from Ann?
"Another couple days and they have another boring conversation about how long they have until Labor Day, and Justin says ominously he won’t be back next summer"
I'm guessing he's either got a girlfriend (Ann loves writing boys as cheating bastards), or he'll be turning himself in for murder. This guy is creeping me out.
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Ahahaha Keeping Up Appearances!
And yeah, the sweatshirt is not only not particularly clever, it totally seems like something a suburban mom would wear, not a teenager. Of course, Ann also thinks it's appropriate for an 11-year-old to wear an "I :heart: KIDS" t-shirt.
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Melanie sounds like she's the worst, pretty much. Lacey's much better off without her. It's one thing to be a flake and to be that girl who ditches her friends for a guy (which, while not cool, is something a lot of girls have done, especially at their age). It's another to be an oblivious jackass. How far up your own butt do you have to be to not know what's going on? And even worse, Melanie doesn't even care that she hurt her friend's feelings once Lacey spells it out for her. Ugh. I hope Melanie gets her comeuppance, but since this is an Ann book, things will probably work out in the end.
I look forward to the unintentional Ann humour! It's usually a gold mine.
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I grew up in a Chicago suburb that is very solidly upper middle class, so I definitely get the mindset, although I do kind of wonder why no one else ever gently tweaked some of those references.
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I'm guessing he's either got a girlfriend (Ann loves writing boys as cheating bastards), or he'll be turning himself in for murder. This guy is creeping me out.
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