The James Logan Courier

Editor's Note: Each week, The Courier spotlights materials recently arrived, or soon-to-arrive, in the Media Center's collection.

Devil in the Details: Scenes From and Obsessive Girlhood, By Jennifer Traig
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (September 14, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316158771
ISBN-13: 978-0316158770
Hardcover: 256 pages

From www.hachettebookgroupusa.com:
Being a teenager is hard enough. Jennifer Traig's adolescence took angst to new heights, adding a layer of obsessive-compulsive drama that made ordinary mortifications like bad hairstyles and fashion errors feel like the good parts. Devil in the Details is her unforgettable, hilarious, wrenching account of growing up weird.

Jennifer Traig's adventures in obsession began at the age of twelve, when her religious studies introduced her to a body of rules that she hadn't known existed. This unleashed a level of religiosity completely alien to her upbringing. Psychiatrists call this disorder scrupulosity-her family just called it strange. Fervent prayer was only the beginning. On a given day, Jennifer might be putting all her possessions in the washing machine to cleanse them of the pork fumes emanating from the kitchen. Or clipping the lawn according to Old Testament regulations. Or covering her hair with Kleenex while she maintained her constant state of prayer.


Jennifer's family treated her condition with humor ("Ready for your big casserolectomy, Dr. Traig?" her mother asked as she scrubbed her hands for thirty minutes before a meal). But her obsessions wore increasingly on her, her family, and her few friends, leading to a crisis that not even joining every single school club, no matter her level of interest or aptitude, could save her from.

With an unsparing eye and deep affection for those who put up with her and got her through, Jennifer Traig delivers a masterpiece of rueful candor-funny, heartbreaking, and irresistible for anyone who ever looked back at their teenage self and cringed.


Feed, by M.T. Anderson
Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition (February 23, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0763622591
From Candlewick.com:For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play around with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who knows something about what it’s like to live without the feed-and about resisting its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires.

Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a brave new world - and a hilarious new lingo - sure to appeal to anyone who appreciates smart satire, futuristic fiction laced with humor, or any story featuring skin lesions as a fashion statement.