2006: #93 – Why Girls are Weird (Pamela Ribon)
Book #93 was Why Girls are Weird, by Pamela Ribon. The back of the book reads:
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.
This book was great. It grabbed me right from the beginning with a not quite PG-rated missive about Barbie dolls. The characters were believable and easy to relate to. The situations were 100% realistic (which I find rather rare in books that talk about the Internet). And if you’ve ever been 25 and lost and lonely, something in this book will speak to you.
Book count: 93
Pages in book: 306
Page count: 39,610
Words in book: 91,120
Word count: 11,802,265
1,000,000 words surpassed — 2/2/06
2,000,000 words surpassed — 2/14/06
10,000 pages surpassed — 3/10/06
3,000,000 words surpassed — 3/16/06
4,000,000 words surpassed — 4/3/06
5,000,000 words surpassed — 5/30/06
50 books surpassed — 6/12/06
20,000 pages surpassed — 6/29/06
6,000,000 words surpassed — 6/29/06
7,000,000 words surpassed — 7/21/06
8,000,000 words surpassed — 8/18/06
30,000 pages surpassed — 9/3/06
9,000,000 words surpassed — 9/6/06
10,000,000 words surpassed — 9/27/06
11,000,000 words surpassed — 10/9/06