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Why Girls Are Weird : A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It's been a long time since I've played with dolls..." (more)
Key Phrases: tiny wooden hand, pizza guy, jumping jack, Action Grrlz, John Cusack, Lloyd Dobler (more...)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Anna Koval aspires to be a writer but pays the bills by working as a librarian at an Austin high school. Killing time at work, she posts a story about "Slutty Barbies" online and is amazed at the response. Soon she is "creating an entire life on the Internet" and changing from Anna Koval, a "nothing-special-twenty-something to Anna K: Web celebrity." She writes about her shortcomings, her fears, and her love life, and hundreds of readers, including a neurotic groupie and a potential new love, respond in amazingly personal e-mails of their own. When Anna's father dies unexpectedly, she pours out her grief to her invisible fans, and then realizes that she is revealing too much of herself. Feeling overly vulnerable, she gradually deletes her files because, as she explains, "too much of me was up on that webpage, plastered like a billboard." Ribon herself kept a popular Web journal called "Squishy," and she is also a comedian, experiences that shape her light and entertaining first novel. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Product Description

She was just writing a story.

When Anna Koval decides to creatively kill time at her library job in Austin by teaching herself HTML and posting partially fabricated stories about her life on the Internet, she hardly imagines anyone besides her friend Dale is going to read them. He's been bugging her to start writing again since her breakup with Ian over a year ago. And so what if the "Anna K" persona in Anna's online journal has a fabulous boyfriend named Ian? It's not like the real Ian will ever find out about it.


The story started writing itself.

Almost instantly Anna K starts getting e-mail from adoring fans that read her daily postings religiously. One devotee, Tess, seems intent on becoming Anna K's real-life best friend and another, a male admirer who goes by the name of "Ldobler," sounds like he'd want to date Anna K if she didn't already have a boyfriend. Meanwhile, the real Anna can't help but wonder if her newfound fans like her or the alter ego she's created. It's only a matter of time before fact and fiction collide and force Anna to decide not only who she wants to be with, but who she wants to be.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Downtown Press; 1 edition (July 1, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0743469801
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743469807
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #154,499 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Pamela Ribon
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Pamela Ribon Page
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
It's been a long time since I've played with dolls. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
tiny wooden hand, pizza guy, jumping jack
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Action Grrlz, John Cusack, Lloyd Dobler, Julia Roberts, Vinnie Testaverde, Beastie Boys, High Fidelity, Jennifer Aniston, Stephen King, Super Bowl, Tess Subject
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Why Girls Are Weird : A Novel
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Why Girls Are Weird : A Novel 4.3 out of 5 stars (86)
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Why Moms Are Weird
12% buy
Why Moms Are Weird 4.7 out of 5 stars (18)
$11.05
The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke
5% buy
The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke 4.5 out of 5 stars (117)
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Come Together
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Customer Reviews

86 Reviews
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 (55)
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 (18)
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (86 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The bit about Barbies alone is worth the cover price, July 1, 2003
By juliannagirl (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews
A few months ago I discovered the author's web site, and on a whim bought the book. The chapter on how six-year-old girls *really* play with Barbies is reason alone to read it. Her writing style is very accessible, making this 300-page book a fast read. The story itself is entertaining, touching, funny, and true; there were so many moments I went, "I do that! I know that! I thought I was the only person who ever <fill in the blank>!" Perhaps that is why people who follow online journals feel like we "know" the people writing them, since they write about everyday stuff and we eagerly identify. The more interesting parts are the protagonist Anna's thoughts on the web journaling phenomenon: why people do it; how much of what's written in online journals is true; just how much of her life should be accesible to her readers; and where to draw the boundaries between a person's on-line and off-line lives. An entertaining read, and the chapters are short so it's a good book for people who can only read a few pages in one sitting. (I have friends with kids and businesses to run, so this factor is important when choosing books.)
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Why Pamie Kicks Every Kind of ..., June 29, 2003
By A Customer
....

Those of us who have been following pamie.com for some time have known that Pamela Ribon is a talented writer. She'll make you laugh until your sides ache, and then she'll turn around and break your heart and leave you trying to wipe the tears out of your eyes before the person in the cube across from yours realizes you're crying. So when I heard she had written a book, I couldn't wait to read it.

Once I actually got my hands on the book, I couldn't put it down. I read it in one sitting, and I was again reminded of why she's one of my favorite writers.

This is a terrifically crafted story. While it may appeal to the same demographic as Bridget Jones, don't be fooled into thinking it's another knock off. Reading this book was like hanging out with your best friend and getting to read her journal all at the same time. It's funny, it's touching, and it has a lot of heart.

Girls - this should be required reading. You should buy this book just for the piece on "How to Fake a Football Orgasm" alone (if I'd read that before last year's football season I might have saved a relationship). Guys, if you want to know how to get to us - read this book.

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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars good first novel, July 9, 2003
By A Customer
The good: Pamela Ribon does bring the funny. In several places, this book is laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The bad: if you've read her website (pamie.com), you've already read many of these jokes. There's lots of new stuff...but I found myself skimming over a fair amount of material that I'd read before years earlier. My girlfriend thought the entire book was drop-dead funny from start to finish and I was painfully jealous that I couldn't have the same reaction since many of the bits were old hat to me already.

the good: The author has keen observations about modern dating and the relationships (romantic or platonic) that spawn from the internet. In some ways, it could be read as a cautionary tale about who is online. Through her web-site, the main character (Anna) attracts legions of readers, including an ex of her ex-boyfriend, a moderately disturbed girl who seems obsessed with Anna and another who, infatuated with Anna's description of her old boyfriend, sets out to make him her own.

Some of the funniest and best written parts of the book are the chain of flirting emails between Anna and a boy who lives far way that she's falling in love with. This might be the best romantic comedy dialogue (OK, truthfully it's correspondence, but it packs the emotional intensity of dialogue) that's been seen in years. This is where Why Girls are Weird really shines. The rhythm and dynamic of email relationships as presented here ring true and I don't think anyone has ever captured this in print quite so well.

the bad:
For the first 100 pages or so, I found Anna depressed, slightly mean-spirited and rather unlikeable. The junkies in Trainspotting seem warm and compassionate by comparison to Anna in the first third of this book. I kept hoping she'd get a prescription for Zoloft or make some kind of positive changes and stop being so tediously self-absorbed. It's only after change does enter her life ( albeit tragically, through the death of her father) that Anna seems to wake up and becomes a sympathetic character who is invested in something other than her own troubles.

Some of the secondary characters are jarringly two dimensional. For example, her best friend and confidant comes off as little more than a quirky homosexual stereotype who spouts catty jabs or pop-culture references every third line.

Overall: it's a worthy and often clever first novel that captures the zeitgeist much like Douglas Coupland did years ago with Generation X and Microserfs.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Why Girls Are Weird
This book is the story of Anna Koval, a librarian who plays around with HTML who creates a web journal that initially was just for her friend, Her entries are almost always... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Kat

4.0 out of 5 stars Internet Hooking Up?!?
Cute book that had me reading a little out of horror for the internet world of hooking up with an unknown. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Rebekkah

5.0 out of 5 stars Oops my homework is not done
I bought this book in hopes of reading it during the winter break from school, but today found myself reading the entire book with much difficulty putting it down for more than... Read more
Published on November 11, 2007 by Lo

5.0 out of 5 stars LOL!!!! XD
this book was soo funy i told everyone at work who asked how funny it was and i seriously laughed out loud while reading it. Read more
Published on September 18, 2007 by Katamira

3.0 out of 5 stars I was hoping to like it more
WHY GIRLS ARE WEIRD by Pamela Ribon
August 30, 2007

Amazon Rating: 3.5/5 stars

I read WHY MOMS ARE WEIRD first, which I found hilarious, but I had... Read more
Published on August 30, 2007 by Ratmammy

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious
I picked this book up from a book sale because it looked like a good beach book. I'm sure glad I did. It was hilarious. Read more
Published on April 3, 2007 by Chantel

2.0 out of 5 stars no satisfaction
I loved Pamie's site for years. Thought the book was terrible, but it might be funny to you if you didn't know how much funnier and deeper the site could be. Read more
Published on October 4, 2006 by Luisa Rey

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
I saw the cover of this book one day when I was at the library and I laughed to myself, but I checked it out anyway and have been a huge fan of Pamela Ribon's work ever since... Read more
Published on September 1, 2006 by "Roxanne"

5.0 out of 5 stars A great first novel
It's hard not to relate to Anna. Out of sheer boredom, the twenty-something school librarian began a blog, where she posted funny stories about her childhood. Read more
Published on August 1, 2006 by Joanna Mechlinski

4.0 out of 5 stars Pamie, I love you.
I have been a fan of this author, through her blog and her work over at TWOP, for a couple of years now. I couldn't wait for the book, which I knew was going to be funny. Read more
Published on July 19, 2006 by Alyson Lipscomb

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