It's a shame that Noah's in England this weekend, because I'm actually back in the Bay Area for a surprise visit. I just got back from seeing my dad's parents, and my two wonderful cousins, Hannah and Brittany. Brittany's about thirteen years old, and she reminds me a lot of me at that age: studious, serious, always reading, but she's also a real beauty. She's a big fan of author Lurlene McDaniel, a young adult novelist whose books strike me as being rather...Well, here's a representative list of titles:

To Live Again; Six Months to Live; I Want to Live; So Much to Live For; No Time to Cry; One Last Wish; Mourning Song; A Time to Die; Mother, Help Me Live; Someone Dies, Someone Lives; Sixteen and Dying; Let Him Live; Please Don't Die; She Died Too Young; A Season for Goodbye; Telling Christina Goodbye; The Girl Death Left Behind; Lifted Up By Angels; Till Death Do Us Part; Don't Die, My Love; Too Young to Die; Goodbye Doesn't Mean Forever; Somewhere Between Life and Death; Time to Let Go; When Happily Ever After Ends; and the subtle Baby Alicia is Dying.

I mean, one good book about a teenager learning to cope with grief and death might well be a very worthy and valuable thing to write; but fifty? I probably shouldn't judge one book, much less fifty books, by their titles...but I've long since learned never to trust anyone whose books take up an entire shelf in the Young Adult section. Maybe I should send Brittany a copy of The Catcher in the Rye instead...