Why Girls are Weird

This book, by Pamela Ribon, is one of those grab-as-I-run-by-the-shelf finds. It’s about a twentysomething woman living in Austin who decides to start a blog before most people really know what the heck a blog is. She chronicles her life but forgets to mention that the boyfriend she’s writing about is actually an ex-boyfriend, and she fudges a lot of the minor details of her life, for creative as well as privacy purposes. Then she meets people, gets involved in the blog world, has a family crisis, has run-ins with the ex, etc.

It was a fairly decent book. The storyline wasn’t my favorite, but it was written with “blog posts” inserted into the narrative flow, and I really liked some of the blog posts. I am, obviously, a big fan of blog-writing, and I think it’s a special kind of beautiful if you can write an eloquent, moving statement on existence one day and an exegesis on cat poo another. But that’s just me. (And just for reference? The post I really looooved was the one about being the new girl. Shocking, I know.)

The problem I had with the story, I think, is that one of the love interests came out sounding a little creepy at first, so when you figure out he’s a serious love interest, it just made me feel a little weird. Some of the story is laid out in emails these people send to each other, and I feel like maybe more emails that weren’t quite as stalker-ish would have been appropriate to make me feel comfortable with this guy.

But I thought the format worked really well—it was different but very functional and pretty fun to read. I’m not really into the whole “twentysomething Austin scene,” but it was still decent.

Oh, and I was surprised to discover, upon finishing the book, that the author is a famous blogger, and that the book is quote—mostly fictional—unquote. That was news to me! Apparently at least some of those blog posts I liked so much were taken straight from her blog. Thus, I’ll have to go check it out now! (www.pamie.com)