The Aqua Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town [Paperback]

Jennifer Niven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2010

Jennifer Niven quit her job as a television producer to write the true story of a doomed 1913 Arctic expedition in her first book, The Ice Master, which was named one of the top ten nonfiction books by Entertainment Weekly, and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. She received high praise for her follow- up arctic adventure, Ada Blackjack, which detailed the life of one woman who overcame enormous odds to survive. Now, Niven tells a survival tale of a different kind; her own thrilling, excruciating, amazing, and utterly unforgettable adventure in a midwestern high school during the 1980s.

Richmond, Indiana, was a place where people knew their neighbors and went to church on Sundays. It also had only one high school with 2,500 students, and for both the students and the townspeople, it was the center of the universe. In The Aqua-Net Diaries, Niven takes readers through her adolescent years in full, glorious—and hilarious—detail, sharing awkward moments from the first day of school, to driver’s ed, and her first love, against a backdrop of bad 1980s fashion and big hair. Like Chuck Klosterman in Fargo Rock City, Niven’s talented voice perfectly captures the pain, joy, and shame of going through adolescence in America’s heartland, making a funny, touching, and universal experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

High school is full of ups and downs, wins and losses, the highest highs and the lowest lows, and it’s pretty much the same regardless of time or location. Niven is so sure of the timeliness and universality of high-school experiences, she retrieved old memories and dug up all her old memorabilia from her less than glamorous high-school years in the mid-1980s in a small farm town in southern Indiana. Nevertheless, as Niven tells tales of her life as Jennifer McJunkin, spraying her hair to enormous heights and dreaming of fame, she does manage to rediscover the fun, excitement, and drama of those crucial times. Whether she’s organizing a speech team, arguing with classmates about Walter Mondale, or talking on the phone with Matthew Broderick, Niven relays it with humor, even if it was humiliating at the time. People who didn’t have the best time in school might find this memoir too cloying, but everyone will recognize themselves or people they knew in Niven’s chronicle. --Hilary Hatton

About the Author

Jennifer Niven divides her time between Atlanta (where she was named one of Jezebel Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People) and Los Angeles (where her film Velva Jean Learns to Drive won an Emmy Award and she once played the part of Shania Twain in a music video). Her first book, The Ice Master, was released in 2000 and named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year by Entertainment Weekly.  Jennifer's second book, Ada Blackjack, released in 2003, was a Book Sense Top Ten Pick. When she isn't writing, Jennifer studies belly dancing, yoga, and electric guitar; and explores her inner bombshell.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Gallery Books; Original edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416954295
• ISBN-13: 978-1416954293
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #976,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jennifer Niven's first book, The Ice Master, was released in November 2000 and named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year by Entertainment Weekly. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer, Jennifer has ten different publishers in ten separate countries, and the book has been translated into eight languages, including German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Danish, and Icelandic.

Jennifer and The Ice Master have appeared in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Talk, Glamour, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, The London Daily Mail, The London Times, and Writer's Digest, among others. Dateline NBC, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel have featured The Ice Master and Jennifer in hour-long documentaries, she and the book have appeared frequently on the BBC, and the book has been the subject of numerous German, Canadian, and British television documentaries. The Ice Master has been nominated for awards by the American Library Association and Book Sense, and received Italy's esteemed Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002.

Jennifer's second book, Ada Blackjack -- an inspiring true story of the woman the press called "the female Robinson Crusoe" -- was released in November 2003, was a Book Sense Top Ten Pick, has been optioned for the movies, was recently translated into Chinese, French, and Estonian.

Jennifer's third book and first novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive (based on the Emmy Award-winning film of the same name), was released July 2009 by Penguin/Plume. Her fourth book, a memoir -- The Aqua-Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town -- was published in February 2010 by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, and was optioned by Warner Brothers as a television series. Jennifer recently finished work on her fifth book, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, which will be released by Penguin/Plume in September 2011.

She is currently at work on books six and seven, the third and fourth volumes of the Velva Jean series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I have mixed feelings about this book...., March 7, 2010

By 

full moon (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Aqua Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town (Paperback)

I'll start with the good.

The author is a talented writer, adorable then and now, and certainly has a knack for taking us right down memory lane with the snippets of 80's nostalgia that made me say numerous times, "Ohhhh ya!!! I remember THAT!" Overall, I did enjoy this book and certain memories it evoked.

However, I also realize that money talks, and good looks talk even louder, especially in the social jungle called high school. The author appears to have been blessed with both, and that opened a lot of doors for her that didn't for countless other kids.

She has the social caste system nailed perfectly; however, doesn't see herself at the top of it which I found baffling.

She actually notes that she sees herself many times as an outsider trying to fit in, which I cannot understand at all....sure, there might have been one or two higher-ups like Rip or Tom who she seemed to want to be noticed by to the point of groveling; but believe me, if she could have been ME in high school for one week, no, one DAY - with my acne, shyness, braces, dressed in my older brother's hand me downs when Esprit was indeed the epitome of popularity, then she would have known what being an outsider really felt like. I had about 2 friends and certainly none of the parties, hi-jinx, fun-spirited teen mischief, different dates with the most popular boys every weekend, 4 hour long nightly phone calls with a male best friend, guys carrying her around like a wheelbarrow to classes and trying to steal her shoes, etc. All of those things in my high school were completely out of reach for those who didn't fit into a certain mold. Sure the nerds and the geeks hung around with each other, but were basically ignored by the upper caste, which the author certainly seems guilty of doing as well, noted by the complete absence of them in her book. ALL of the pictures she included of her friends, there is not one kid who looked any "less" than her in looks, popularity, style, hair, etc. She never mentions befriending ANY one of the less popular kids - I would have loved to have seen one story or picture of the author with a kid that was a nerd or one her friends didn't approve of, but there are none and this makes her seem shallow indeed. And the gay male best friend would have been bullied out of the stratosphere in my school by the upper caste kids but would have hung out with the nerds or geeks.

Another thing - although this was just an annoyance while reading - was she skipped around a LOT, senior year back to sophomore year, junior year back to sophomore year. This was very distracting.

I am happy that the author has such fantastic memories of high school, but for a lot of those who were totally ignored, not accepted, or sometimes even bullied by the upper caste in high school because we didn't have the proper looks or clothes, or were different in some way and otherwise didn't meet up to their standards, our memories are not quite as sweet.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The water's (often) shallow, February 21, 2010

By 

Bearette24 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Aqua Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town (Paperback)

This is a memoir about going to high school in Richmond, Indiana, where people are happy in a wholesome Midwestern way and nothing much happens. I got a little tired of reading about immature pranks involving trashing people's cars and passing notes about so-and-so's outfit, but every time I considered putting the book down, there would be a genuinely funny anecdote. So I found the book patchy and uneven but sometimes enjoyable. A one-time boyfriend of the author told her that she was so complicated, it was as if there were all these boxes and she wasn't letting anyone in, and this was a problem with the narrative too. I don't think there was enough introspection or depth.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars People get paid to write this? Really????, May 5, 2010

By 

J. C Clark "eanna" (Overland Park, KS United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Aqua Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town (Paperback)

(What's this?)

A memoir can be written for many reasons. A famous person, well, that's easy. One who has endured remarkable or brutal experiences might pen a memoir to inspire or inform. A person who lived in a recently vanished word, like Flora Thompson or Laura Ingalls Wilder, shares a vision of what was, but no longer is. But Jennifer Niven has written a memoir because she is a self-absorbed person who loves to see her name in print and lives for praise, however empty and fatuous it may be. She has almost nothing worth sharing, and writes those boring reminiscences in a meandering and tedious manner. She reflects on none of her experiences, offering no insight, remorse, or meaning, but shambles on in a tiring stream of (vaguely) consciousness, much like an overheard cell phone conversation. "And then I said...Oh, and no one else did anything, so I HAD to take control...And oh, isn't he cute?...OH MY GOD! What does she think she's doing wearing THOSE shoes?....And then I made out with....God, I looked hotter than anyone at the dance....Ohhhh, guess who talked to me....And then I won...Oh my was he drunk..." How many pages of that would you like to read? Flee, prospective reader, flee!

This book desperately needed an editor to ask hard questions, cut the sludge, and enhance what few things were worthy. Without that guidance, what is left is either lugubrious and exasperating or creepy and weird. She created a history team so she could sit on the warm spot on her couch left by the boy she wanted? Yuck. She dumped an apparently endless string of boyfriends so she could move up the status ladder with the next one? She fixated on who was admiring her? She drove around rural Indiana nightly looking for parties? Jennifer and the catty and loathsome Joey thought about no one but themselves, using everyone they wanted something from, asking for salvation whenever they were in a jam, and expecting someone else to pay the bill (there is no mention of jobs here; who filled the tank, bought those cute clothes, and paid the insurance?) They did all this while despising those from whom they could not benefit. This is one sad life, full of sad people. Not only could I not identify, I could not even imagine how they thought. (It was her job to make me care and understand, but because she has apparently never been aware of anyone or anything other than her wants, contemplating a potential reader was not ever a concern.) I have had more empathy and understanding reading anthropological texts about remote tribes in the Andes.

This book needed a point, improved organization, better writing, and central characters who were not repulsive. One of the things we do as we get older is wonder if there was a road not taken that might have yielded better results. Well, I was not popular in high school, and never really understood what was going on while I was there. If this is what was occurring around me, I'm grateful I didn't comprehend it. Frightening and pitiable.