A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet

A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet

Title: True to Form
Author: Elizabeth Berg
Publication Date: 2002

In the 1990s, I had a part-time job at a bookstore. One of the perks was being able to borrow any hardcover book you wanted. It was my own lending library. It is through this experience that I discovered Elizabeth Berg and also the reason why I don't own my favorite of her books (Talk Before Sleep), which I borrowed from the store.

From that experience and that first book, I began a decades-long appreciation and love for Berg's characters and her books. This challenge allowed me to revisit Berg and reacquaint myself with her beloved character Katie Nash. True to Form has been on my TBR shelf for at least 10 years. Having read it, I'm not sure why I delayed so long.

True to Form is Berg's third book about Katie Nash though I found it to stand on its own quite well. I have vague memories the other stories (Durable Goods, Joy School) yet I appreciated and loved this story without needing to re-read those.

When the story picks up, Katie is living in Missouri with her Army dad and stepmother. We follow Katie across the summer of her sophomore year of high school as she works two jobs secured for her by her father and spends time with her best friend and corresponds with a friend she left behind in Texas, her father's previous assignment.

Katie has a secret. She wants to be a writer. And not just any kind of writer: a poet. Berg captures Katie's yearning to be a writer as well as her talent beautifully. Just as I love John Green's ability to write dialogue among teens, Berg nails the trials and tribulations of being a teenage girl.

This is among one of my favorite passages, picked in honor of my Must Love Dogs book club:

I walk far out in the fields, then let the dogs loose. They get busy right away, sniffing everything, running around. I wonder what they smell. You can tell the scents are all different. Sometimes they just take a little whiff and keep on running; other times they stop dead in their tracks and sniff forever. And sometimes they sniff very delicately, their lips drawn back a bit, as though they're saying, Ewww, this smells awful, let me smell it some more.

Though it took me 10 years to return to Elizabeth Berg, I know it won't be 10 years before I read another of her books. And just think, I have a decade of her writing to choose from.

Five stars (Really)

Next challenge: I don't know what challenge it'll be but I know I'm reading One by One by Jojo Moyes. Come back to find out which of the remaining 41 challenges it accomplishes.