Monday, November 11, 2013

Title:     Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging [Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, book 1]
Author:   Louise Rennison
Rating:   ★★★1/2

Oh, I know, I know, I'm so behind the times on the books I'm reading, but I haven't really been interested in reading the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series before. Then I saw it in the bookstore and read the synopsis, and I was just laughing, so I said, okay, fine, I'll read it. I have the ebook anyway. After reading it, well: fabbity fab fab, I say!

There are six things very wrong with my life:

1. I have one of those under-the-skin spots that will never come to a head but lurk in a red way for the next two years.

2. It is on my nose

3. I have a three-year-old sister who may have peed somewhere in my room.

4. In fourteen days the summer hols will be over and then it will be back to Stalag 14 and Oberfuhrer Frau Simpson and her bunch of sadistic teachers.

5. I am very ugly and need to go into an ugly home.

6. I went to a party dressed as a stuffed olive.

In this wildly funny journal of a year in the life of Georgia Nicolson, British author Louise Rennison has perfectly captured the soaring joys and bottomless angst of being a teenager. In the spirit of Bridget Jones's Diary, this fresh, irreverent, and simply hilarious book will leave you laughing out loud. As Georgia would say, it's "Fabbity fab fab!"

At the start, I almost stopped reading. I was expecting it to be funny, and for several chapters, I wasn't having fun. I cannot get on with Georgia Nicolson's humor and I cannot understand some of her words. But I continued reading and then one day, I suddenly laughed.

And I flipped more pages and kept chortling.

I finally let myself remember how it was when I was fourteen (which is like...eleven years ago) and how boy crazy me and my friends were. While I didn't have Georgia's active love life, it was fun seeing puppy love and first relationships through her eyes. I think adulthood is great, but sometimes it's nice to just sit back and recall my turbulent teen years. And it's even better when you're reading about someone else's (mis)adventures because you get to laugh, without all the mindless confusion and staying up all night wondering if you should have done this or didn't say that.

At first, I didn't like Georgia Nicolson. She was like a boy crazy, unsentimental, hard-hearted teen to me. But once I let my "adult" persona slip away, I felt like one of her best friends, and wanting to root for her (and sometimes, to tell her to just dump this boy's ass). Louise Rennison balances Georgia's crazy teen hormones with some cleverly inserted glimpse into how she truly feels about her parents (which I liked).

Adding to Georgia's funny, and admittedly realistic thoughts, are Libby's antics, and her mom and dad's behavior. It's not funny to Georgia, but it was definitely funny to me! The dictionary of sorts at the end of the book was helpful, but I wish it's posted at the start because there were quite a number of times when I couldn't understand what Georgia was going on about.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging is not a laugh-out-loud all the time book, but it definitely gave me enough moments of joy to truly enjoy it. :)