Sunday Salon: Confessions of a Teen Sleuth (1)

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Currently reading: Chelsea Cain, Confessions of a Teen Sleuth

Pages read: 32
Time spent reading: 37 minutes

Thoughts: I actually never read Nancy Drew when I was little. Why? Because she was a girl. Really. (I write this having just read Hsien Lei's vagina post.) Girls, to my mind back then, were dull; boys did interesting things. And so I read the Hardy Boys mysteries, not that I really remember much about the experience.

But now in adulthood, well, (1) I'm happy to be female, and (2) I kind of regret not reading Nancy Drew. For some reason I now find the whole idea of it fascinating. I've loved reading Leila's Nancy Drew reviews over at Bookshelves of Doom. And I found Melanie Rehak's book about Nancy Drew and the Stratemeyer Syndicate really interesting. I could, of course, read the books now, but you don't absorb things in adulthood the same way you do as a kid. So I'll never be someone who was steeped in Nancy Drew.

Now I'm reading Chelsea Cain's Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, which is a parody of the Nancy Drew books. It's written in the style of the books, with the same earnestness of the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy novels. And speaking of the Hardys, it turns out that the elder male teen sleuth and Nancy had a thing. The book (which purports to be Nancy's posthumously-published memoirs) is dedicated to Frank Hardy, and she begins the book thusly: "Readers of Carolyn Keane's version of my life's events may be surprised to learn that Ned Nickerson was not the love of my life." So, sit down, because Nancy's real life was PG-rated!

I just finished chapters 4 and 5 of the book, in which the titian-haired sleuth finds out the shocking truth about her mother and about longtime Drew family housekeeper Hannah Gruen! It's a good book.

Tags: Nancy Drew, Chelsea Cain

Comments

[Hsien Lei]

Oops! Seeing your click here for info at the top reminded that I forgot to link to The Sunday Salon page! Corrected now....

And I fear that my aversion to the word "vagina" is stronger than I thought. When I read it above, I thought it said "Hsien's vague post." @#!

[Debra Hamel]

Hsien Lei, vaguely writing about vaginas....

[Ann Darnton]

Do I need to have Nancy Drew to appreciate this book? Would seeing the film do as I'm not sure just how available the ND books are in the UK.

[Debra Hamel]

I think you can get it without having read the books. Or if you just go over to Bookshelves of Doom and read one of her reviews of the ND books, you'll get a pretty good sense of what they're like. It's true that we won't pick up all the references, but I think it's good enough. (And how many readers can really count on remember all the details anyway?) It's a fun read. I'll be posting a review soon on book-blog.com.