Snobbing out, dorking out, etc.

Okay, so. I loved Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist so much that I bought the other book Rachel Cohn and David Levithan wrote together, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, and I think I liked it better. I can't quite tell, because... I kind of hated Naomi, and she's one of the main characters. But I really liked how the story was told through the points of view of nearly all the people involved. And I really liked the gay love story--and it was a boy gay love story. Not that I don't love gay boys or anything, but you know I like to hear about girls falling in love much better.

Anyway. I can't quite figure out why I hated Naomi, but from the very beginning I kind of had no patience for how she was still stubbornly holding out for her gay best friend to fall in love with her. I should cut her some slack, because she's only eighteen, and that's a little bit young to be able to see those kinds of things. And maybe because I've never been in love with a boy, gay or otherwise. I've never actually been in love with anyone, but you know. Serious crushes? Always on girls. Straight girls. So I get that part of being totally into someone who'll never want you that same way, but, you know, even when I was eighteen, I knew it would never happen. You know, because the girls--they weren't into girls. And I didn't think so much of myself that I thought I could turn them or anything. Even during some of my more protracted crushes, I never really thought anything would happen. And the crushes that lasted the longest were the most hopeless. Ugh.

Also, she's flunking out of college in this story, which is another thing I have no patience for. I realize this makes me a snob of the highest degree, but... Go to class, do the work--or at least just do the work--stop bitching. I'm not very sympathetic to the problems of this character. That's why I hated her. And I mean, her parents' marriage imploded, which I should have been able to sympathize with, but she was just so...blech about everything else that I didn't give a crap. Plus, she was super mean to Ely, and Ely, though not without faults, was not an ass to her, so. Eff you, Naomi.

This book wasn't as full of trying-too-hard hipster references as Nick and Norah--in fact, there were copious references to things that are decidedly unhip, like High School Musical and Dawson's Creek. But there was this one story Ely was telling about...something he did with Naomi, and he finished it with, "It was a time," which is something I often say, because it comes from... My So-Called Life. "We did. We had a time," Angela muses after her evening with Rayanne at Let's Bolt. These authors--or at least one of them--clearly dig My So-Called Life, and I just can't hate on that, can I?

I want a book like this, like Nick and Norah about girls. Annie on My Mind is totally the only good teenaged lesbo book I've ever read. I've read a lot of mediocre and a few bad ones. I want a good one for the 21st century.

Shit.

Does that mean I have to write it?