While in general I'm quite pleased with my contrarian pose, there are times when it comes back to bite me in the ass. So yesterday we were meeting people in the library, and they were really late, so I went to the graphic novel section to find something to kill time with. Because I figured I wasn't going to read an entire book in half an hour or whatever. At first I thought I'd pick up one of the manga books, because that's a phenomenon I don't get at all, but they only had episode 16 in a series, and I wasn't willing to work hard enough to try to figure out what's going on in a series I know nothing about. Finally I settled on Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. 
I had resisted picking this up in the past because of my contrarian pose. Because people who would never otherwise pick up a comic book will pick up a comic book if the New York Times tells them it's a graphic novel. Which has nothing to do with me. Like I said, the whole contrarian pose is pretty dumb sometimes. But I do get a kick out of saying, "No, I haven't read In the Shadow of No Towers, but Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil kicks total ass!"
Anyway, back to Fun Home. This book completely knocked me on my ass. It's just fantastic: funny and moving and profoundly sad and completely riveting. Go read it.
Daughter #1 and I watched and enjoyed Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior on the Disney Channel. 
This featured Brenda Song from The Suite Life, here playing a less irritating character than she does on that show. She's a bubble-headed Chinese American high school student who discovers that she's the reincarnation of a mythical Chinese warrior and has to fight evil instead of becoming Homecoming Queen. It was cheesy and predictable and I liked it anyway. Lots of wire fighting, a little Shaolin Soccer, and a positive message about appreciating your cultural heritage. Also there were terra cotta warriors coming to life and being posessed by evil spirits.
I read Carolyn Parkhurst's Lost and Found and really enjoyed it. It's a novel about an Amazing Race-style reality show. It's my favorite kind of book--fast-paced and readable with some real depth. I like it when you can get wrapped up in a page-turner and not hate yourself for it. My only quibble is with the cover. 
The paperback cover makes this look like the kind of book that will suck all the testosterone out of your body if you so much as pick it up, when in fact, this is really a kind of adventure novel. It's a given in publishing that men don't read, so everything has to look especially female friendly. So they put a mom and daughter frolicking on the beach on the cover of this book that men would actually like, thus assuring that men won't pick it up. Thus proving that men don't read.
