Pax Ex, it's the Summer Holidays

What's up Homo? It's the Summer Holidays!! So much fun to have but also so much studying do get done. So, what will you be reading over the holidays? The last two books I read were Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. 

The previous (and first) time I read Playing Beatie Bow was in Year Six. I must have been the only person who liked the book. Every week we read a couple of chapters and over the weekend we had to write a couple of pages long reading response - oh! the tears shed getting it done! In retrospect, I think that when we were ten/eleven/twelve, we really didn't get the book, especially the main character Abigail, who was fourteen. She was super Indie, okay, she was into vintage things and was a "weirdie". Dude, you could so hate that book because no one says "weirdie", it's "weirdo". We were too young to understand Abigail throughout the whole book and also the journey she undertook. In retrospect, it's ironic because we now can see ourselves in Abigail and can see how teen-angsty she was, and also how like her, we thought we knew everything. Read it.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was so funny!!! I thought it would be really terrible because I first heard about it earlier this year in Singapore where they made a big hoo-ha about it and every review was negative. The author is this Chinese-American writing about being a Chinese mother to half Chinese children. It's Indie - the children were also Jewish. The story is crazy and her writing is honest. They must have hated the book in Singapore because she was hanging out the dirty laundry about Chinese parenting!!!! 

What I will be reading these holidays (I've actually already started You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead by Marieke Hardy and it's funny) is Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers by Cynthia Voigt. Yes, the name is weird, but it's extracted from a poem. I guess this book is Indie because I've never met anyone who's read it. (Or maybe I'm just Indie?). The story is set in Stanton College in the sixties and is about the friendship between these three roommates. The three girls are very different in character and extremely vividly created. One really feels the changes in dynamics between the friends and all characters. I fall in love every time I read it, which has been every year, starting in 2007. If you liked Home Coming, you'll like Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers and if like me, you couldn't get into it, you'll like this book even more. Oh, and the book is so preppy.

This makes me reflect on friendship. I love my friends (yes, also the TV series) so much and now I've made new ones at my old/new school (weird feeling because I was only there for six weeks) (and I plan to make new ones at my new school next year. LOL.) At my old old school (I'm technically between schools right now, right?) we had a colour group, which was a class/group of girls having four subjects together. This spanned two years. Dude...so close...the sisterhood of Colour Group Four! We were always bragging about having the best colour group. This time last year (end of Year Nine) was emotional because so many of us were leaving the school.

Message of the story? Remember the ultimate girl-gang, better than all those mentioned on RookieMag last month. Last year, the colour group came together in song to this in the pool change rooms:

Now I will go and clean my room and stop being weird.