Hey everyone! Today I have the wonderful privalge of hosting one of today's stops of the Geek Girl blog tour! I would also lik...
Hey everyone! Today I have the wonderful privalge of hosting one of today's stops of the Geek Girl blog tour! I would also like to welcome and thank Cindy Bennett for her wonderful book and awesome guest post too!
Guest Post: Trends by Cindy C. Bennett
As a kid, I remember our first house had a green kitchen.
Not just any green—avocado green. As if that weren’t nauseating enough, add to
it the orange and brown accents. Sometimes I wonder how much being exposed to
that plethora of color affected my life. I hate avocados, I only wear orange
shirts if they have a Harley symbol on them, and . . . well, I suppose I can’t
really say too much against the brown. It is the color of dark chocolate, after
all.
Trends come and go, some more memorable than others.
Remember beehive hairdos? As a young girl I would sit and
watch my 4’11” mother rat her hair for hours on end to raise the illusion of
her height. It was only washed once a week, and wrapped in a scarf at night for
sleeping. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the little wiglet she
used to crown the ‘do. Have you ever seen one of those things? It looked like a
large, hairy spider. Hmm, suddenly my terror of spiders makes sense.
I was a teen in the 80’s, with big, flammable hair (due to
the gallon of hairspray required to hold it in place), purple eyeshadow,
wearing net shirts (thanks a lot, Madonna), leg warmers (Let’s Get Physical),
and clogs (tall, clunky, inflexible, uncomfortable shoes). I honestly believed
that when I had children, they would look at those pictures of me and see how
stylish I was. I would never look as
ridiculous as my parents looked in their 50’s photos. Imagine my amazement when
eventually I laughed alongside my kids at my pictures.
Even foods go through trends. Bagels, doughnuts, cupcakes .
. . why is it always junk food? I haven’t yet seen a trend of veggie stands on
every corner, though I suppose the fast food places went through a brief period
of offering healthy alternatives to fries—alternatives that are no longer
offered.
Books reflect trends as well. Some books will be trendy
(vampires and werewolves, anyone?). But good books, though filled with trends,
will survive the test of time. A book filled with trends can become an
entertaining time capsule, even if just to show what popular thinking or ideas
were at the time. Or they can affect the future of books. Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1984) comes to mind. Big Brother in some variation or another has made it into
countless dystopian novels since it was first published in 1949.
So though we will continue to see trends in any given time
period, I say keep them coming. After all, how else will my children, and my
children’s children, be able to blame something as simple as the current trend
of sewing feathers into their hair for their future repulsion of anything fowl.
Review:
"Think I can turn that
boy bad?" 17-year-old Jen turns her life upside down when, out of
boredom, she makes a bet that she can turn school geek Trevor into
someone like her. Instead, the goth girl finds herself sucked into his
world of sci-fi movies, charity work, and even-ugh!-bowling. To truly
belong with him-and with her new foster family-she must first come to
terms with her violent past.
Authors note: Geek Girl has been optioned by Cedar Fort Publishing,
and is therefore currently unavailable. It will become available again
in December, 2011. Thanks to everyone who has asked about it, and want
to know when it will be available!
Geek Girl reminded me so much of high school and was really great aside from the predictable bet plot that we have all seen before, but it didn't matter. I was so sucked up in the story I didn't care.
Jen is a foster care kid so her dark exterior is expected from all the bouncing house to house experiences.
Trevor was completely adorkable that of course it was inevitable that Jen fell for him.
I highly reccommend this book to everyone if you like a really good feel good book to snuggle up with.
