Waiting on Wednesday

Smile for the Camera by Kelle James, a memoir.

Smile for the Camera is listed at Borders.com, Tower.com and a few other places as Smile for the Camera: Dirty Things That Good Girls Hear and that title alone would make me want to give the book a try. The cover, too, would make me pick it up to see what it was about (or to at least read that super amazing title).

It also sounds like it's about something I would like to read about regardless of the title or the cover, too, though.

"Smile For the Camera is a true story of escaping abuse in a small-town to encounter more in the big city and the way one girl overcame them both."

I had a friend who was a model and never got the chance to talk to her too much about it before she passed away. While I know her experience was likely different from that of James' I still like this real life look at things.

I also really enjoy reading memoirs of young people (especially women) in modern times. I've read a few from girls/women in other countries (non Western) but really enjoyed how it was still so easy to connect to them because as girls we still experience so many similar things regardless of whether we're living through a war or facing persecution, we still worry about school or our hair or the other trivial things that ultimately connect us all.

I might not be great at explaining all of that without thinking through it, but hopefully I'll be able to review some memoirs soon (Smile for the Camera and/or some others) and explain it better then with a direct example.

Kelle James' memoir Smile for the Camera from Simon & Schuster's Children's Publishing comes out November 2, 2010 in hardcover.