Day 7: A Book That Makes You Laugh

The Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books (Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging et al.) by Louise Rennison. I remember I picked up the first book in Borders many, many, moons ago (remember Borders y’all?) and started reading and was laughing so hard I got a few dirty looks. I knew I needed to have this book but had no idea how to get my mother to buy me a book with the word “Thongs” on the cover. I did it somehow, and it led to many years of laughter with the series. Just thinking about these absurd books makes me smile. One of the best parts of the series was that the American editions had an “English to American” glossary in the back. Very few books have made me laugh until I cried, but these did.

Looking back, there are definitely more than a few problematic things about the series that would not fly today, but it still captured a lot of the absurdity and angst of being a teenage girl. Georgia was shallow, materialistic, boy-crazy, judgmental, and could be very insensitive at times, but she was also funny and got herself into the most absurd situations (in the first 25 pages alone she recounts going to a fancy-dress party dressed as an olive, and accidentally shaves off her eyebrows). The series was never meant to be taken seriously but it also never belittled the experience of being a teenage girl and the growing pains of youth, and let’s face it, we were all a little shallow, insensitive and judgmental when we were young and ignorant of the world.