Meg's Diary

Woof

We’ve entered the dog days of summer, but fear not: I’ve got tons of suggestions on how to keep cool….

–Why not visit the authors of Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume who’ll be chatting here at the Barnes and Noble on-line book club? Join me, Jennifer O’Connell, Alison Pace, Laura Caldwell, and others as we talk about Judy Blume behind her back (or not since Judy herself just stopped by…oops, my bad!). I’ll be popping in and out all month…

–And here it is…in stores at last! The new installment of the Jessica Darling series, Fourth Comings, by Megan McCafferty:

I got a sneak peek at this one, and believe me, you are not going to want to miss it. Marcus! Marcus! Marcus! Sigh. Megan assures me a fifth book is in the works, which is good because you’ll be demanding a sequel when you get to the end.

–Wait, there’s more–Jasper Fforde’s literary detective Thursday Next makes a return appearance in this fifth book featuring his crazy alterna-world:

I haven’t read it yet, but it’s sitting next to my bathtub. How can it not be splendiferous, since it features Thursday’s 16 year old son????

–My friend Sophia told me this book rules:

If it’s anywhere near as good as this author’s blog, then I’ll consider it $17.95 (with shipping) well spent. Of course, I love blogs that use the F word, though I refrain from using it on this site because, hey, kids come here (though I use the F word liberally in my real life since I was raised Catholic, and, well, we swear a lot).

–A lot of you have the attention span of a flea and can’t handle a whole book, especially pool or beach side. Hey, I know the feeling. That’s why you’ll be happy to know there are some great articles out there right now. Try a copy of this month’s Self (the one with Kelly Clarkson on the cover):

There’s an excellent article extolling the virtues of shallowness. I turned to it and practically squealed with delight even BEFORE I realized it was written by Val Frankel whose blog I also read (she uses the F word a lot, too).

Although this article did make me think…why is it that people like Val, who’ve endured the most heartache (she lost her husband, the father of her two young daughters, to cancer when he was 34), usually write the funniest stuff, while the people who’ve led the most relatively carefree lives, always seem to write the sappiest, most depressing stuff?

And yet…which books end up getting the most literary prizes/picks on Oprah? The sad ones! How unfair is that? Don’t you think it’s a lot easier to write about something horrible you never experienced than it is to write about something funny after you experienced something horrible, like Val?

You’d think those prize committees—and Oprah—would catch on. But so far none of them have. But only because they haven’t read this AWESOME GROUNDBREAKING BLOG ENTRY.

You can all thank me later, when Oprah picks one of Val’s novels–or better yet, her Self article–as her next Book Club Pick.

–On a lighter note, there’s an AWESOME article in this month’s Marie Claire (the one with Anne Hathaway on the cover) about hoarders:

My friend Beth used to live near a hoarder. Once, the hoarder asked her to catsit so we got to go in there (MY DREAM COME TRUE) and you would not have BELIEVED the piles of old stuff stacked up everywhere. It was AMAZING.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night I think about what I would do with all the stuff in the homes of hoarders I know. How I would hire a dumpster and throw it all out, and how I would redecorate and how the hoarder would come home and thank me with tears in his or her eyes. Really he/she wouldn’t do that because hoarders actually like living in their disgusting squalor. But these are the things I fantasize about.

–There is so much good stuff on TV I have to save it for another entry, but could I love the The Closer more now that Brenda is apparently going through menopause?

How much does it suck for the guys in that division that their boss is having hot flashes and mood swings? Brenda better get herself some Yasmin soon.

Yasmin, the perimenopausal woman’s friend

Guess who is helping with our kitchen renovation? Yeah, that would be someone whose initials are HWSNBNITB (also Slutty McSlut-A-Lot, because where HWSNBNITB goes, she goes). Neither HWSNBNITB or SMSAL has any carpentry experience that I know of. You should hear all the banging. Also, swearing. And meowing.

Thank God (and Michele Jaffe, who found it during a random Google search) that I have this to amuse me. I know it’s wrong.

But then…why does it feel so right?

More later.

Much love,

Meg

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