Wearing the hat

To explain the post title, whenever anyone in our office does or says something incredibly stupid, the punishment is to have to put on the fire warden's hat, and stand and say a line in front of everyone else. I think the line comes from What's Eating Gilbert Grape, although I could be wrong there and it is something about climbing a water tower.

So in my recent analysing my YA reads post, I said:

As for mystery, are there even YA mysteries around?

I think that perhaps I meant any new YA mysteries around, because there was plenty around during the years when I really was YA. These days I am way past target audience range, but like so many other adults I still enjoy reading YA novels.

The big three were probably the Nancy Drew books, the Hardy brothers, and, my favourite, Trixie Belden and her friends. I cannot tell you how many times I read through the Trixie Belden series.

Confession time - over the years I have felt quite an affection for quite a few auburn/red haired men in fiction. Yes, Jamie Fraser is right up there, but my first ever love in literary terms was Jim Frayne, adopted brother to Trixie's best friend Honey Wheeler. I always thought Marty was really funny and older Belden Brian very serious, but to make a young girl's heart flutter then Jim was the man for me.

I wonder if tweens or teens who read this series now would find the books dated? I certainly didn't despite the fact that I would have been reading these in the early 80s (*ahem*) but the first of these books was originally published back in 1948. They certainly experienced a bit resurgence twenty years or so ago.

I was a little surprised to see that there were 39 books in this series. I know that I owned the first twenty or so, but no idea if I read the whole series or not. As an aside, over the last few days I have been thinking about doing a post on the series that I am reading. Apparently my love of ongoing series of books started early and has continued all through my reading life!

This next part of the post is only connected to the first part because it relates to my teenage life. I was watching Pretty in Pink tonight. Such good music, such fun fashion. I do have one question. Why on earth was Andrew McCarthy such a huge teenage heart throb? I will say that Jon Cryer made me laugh in this movie, and he still does now! Here's the Duckie dance just for fun.