I feel like an old lady

I realize that I always say I'll respond to your compelling posts, and then never do. This time is no different. One point I want to raise and a book list, and then I need to sleep (England/Portugal had me up far too early this morning). I was hanging out in the young adult section at work today, shelving bright pink books, when I realized how many of them are about explicit sexual topics. Example: The Lipstick Party, I think it's called. A high school sophomore invites a bunch of people over to her house for a "lipstick party", hence the title. There have to be six girls and six guys, one for each color of the rainbow. Each girl puts on lipstick and gives each guy oral sex, so the guys all end up with rainbow-hued genitals. The point, I'm not sure. Turns out, though, that someone has gonnorhea, and by the end of the book, something like 2/3rds of the sophomore class at this high school have the disease. I clearly just gave away the plot, so sorry if any of you were going to read this. The point, from the author's and publisher's perspective, is to teach kids to engage in safe sexual practices. Plenty of the other books, though, don't seem to have any redeeming social qualities: The Crush Diary, The Gossip Girls, The Clique Sisters (or something), and so on. The Lipstick Party is more explicit, I think, than any of these other books, but they all kind of revolve around ditzy girls being manipulative and using sex as a social method. Two questions, I think, emerged for me: 1. Were these around when I was a kid? I certainly never read them. I did skip a whole lot of YA, though, so it's possible I just missed them. And my parents never censored my reading (I've thus read a lot of really strange and inappropriate stuff), but I can't imagine they would have been okay with their twelve-year-old daughter reading about oral sex parties. Which leads to 2. Do kids read these things and process the messages? Do their parents care? I feel like a prude, but I'm not sure twelve-year-olds need to know about the dangers of oral sex? Maybe I'm naive or sheltered, but is this really an issue for most middle schoolers? Just some thoughts. And I realize I misspelled gonorrhea. Maybe that time it was correct. Anyway, some food for thought.

Now for the list:
This week was Phantom Tollbooth, Crossing California, and The Moffats, I believe I said. I surprised myself by finishing all three. Partly because I didn't leave the couch for three hours this morning. Phantom Tollbooth, as always, was magnificent. Crossing California was enjoyable, but ultimately too long and lacking any true point. And The Moffats was remarkably dated (yeah 1941), but still cute. Not as good as I'd remembered, but a good hour-long read.
I've started The Princess Academy, and I like it so far. I'm also planning to read something from my pile of library books (Skeletons on the Zahara, about Africa, maybe, or The Lake of Dead Languages which I got for the title), and something from my ever-increasing pile of books that I've bought at Kepler's (possibly Alice Munro's Runaway or Orhan Pamuck's Snow). And then there's my nine months worth of Believer Magazines (Dave Eggers' wife's magazine about books. I love it.). Bronwen, I know I just emailed you, but I have the Philip Pullman books for you, if you want to borrow them.

Okay, c'est tout. One of these days I'll actually respond, instead of just posing new questions.

happy reading!