Even this mom-of-a-boy loved “The Princess Diaries,” and if you’ve got a teen or tween girl, you’re going to want to know about this: Justine magazine, the national magazine for teen girls published right here in Memphis, is bringing author Meg Cabot, who wrote “The Princess Diaries,” “Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls,” and all kinds of other great girl books, to town NEXT WEEK. On June 19, Meg will be the featured speaker at a luncheon and fashion show just for girls at the Memphis Hilton – click here for an invitation and to reserve your spot (seating is limited). Best of all, though, is that Meg’s visit is to celebrate the launch of a new nationwide online book club for teen girls, called Spark, that Justine is starting, just in time to give you and your girls a little extra push through those summer reading lists.

And, oh yeah, Macy’s will put on the fashion show at the luncheon … with prizes and goodies for all. Sounds like a pretty good way to spend a summer afternoon. 

If you loved the book “The Kite Runner” as much as I did, you probably can’t wait to see the movie, now set to premier in mid-December. You probably also know that the release date was postponed from early fall so that the Afghanis who were in the movie, particularly the family of the child who plays Hassan (above), could get out of Afghanistan.

Hassan is the best friend of Amir, the main character in the book, and the entire plot turns on a brutal rape scene when both boys are children. As a reader, it rocks your world, and I was lucky enough to see the movie in previews a few weeks ago, and it’s an incredibly powerful scene in the movie, too. Handled quite delicately, I must say, though given the brutal ethnic conflict that still rages in Afghanistan, I can see why the actors and their families felt like they were in danger. (Though how did they consent to the movie in the first place? Was it just too lucrative to pass up, or did they not know what they were getting into?)

The company that is distributing the movie has launched a contest for a local screening of “The Kite Runner,” which you can access here. Let me know if/when you see the movie, and what you think. When the premier date gets closer, I’ll write a review, too. Though let me say this: When I finished reading the book, I spent weeks thinking about the obligations of friendship, whether there are mistakes that you can never recover from, and whether redemption is possible. After I saw the movie, I have wrestled with those very same thoughts.

If you were to spend a substantial amount of time around my family — and heaven help you if you did — you’d probably hear the word “gommy” tossed around, mostly by my mother. It’s a word we use to mean messy or weird or overly complicated. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else use this word, although it does exist in popular culture. So I’m not sure anyone else would understand exactly what my mother means by it.

All families have their own ways of communicating. Some even go so far as to make up their own words and phrases that would make no sense to outsiders. And Paul Dickson has a new book out — Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families — in which he catalogues many of these quirky idioms and words.

Some of them are downright hilarious:

GRISWOLD, v. — to rush through a museum or other attraction.
(e.g.: “I’m really hungry, so let’s griswold that museum and then eat dinner.”)

Does your family have any secret words?

You may have heard/seen this piece on NPR last week: Why Women Read More Than Men.   

The article talks about the gender gap between men and women when it comes to reading fiction. But it also has disturbing statistics about reading in general. Last year the typical American read only four books, and one in four adults read no books at all. Isn’t that awful? I can’t imagine not reading — what wonderful places you go and people you meet, what beautiful sentences by masterful writers…

Apparently reading has been on a downward spiral for awhile, and I find it interesting that we’re actually reading less, what with all the citywide reading programs, Oprah, and all these book clubs everyone seems to belong to, myself included.

And it gets worse: Kids read less than adults. The statistics show even Harry Potter may not be able to reverse the trend.

What book would you recommend to someone who hasn’t picked up a book in a year or three? (I bet all of my friends can guess what my pick would be without clicking the link….)

I absolutely love this time of year. Starting tonight through the end of the year (and beyond), there is at least one movie release almost every week that has some kind of Oscar buzz, although you may have to wait a little longer for some of them to come to Memphis.

You can start checking off your must-see list tonight with “3:10 to Yuma”  (see John Beifuss’ review here), and pencil in “In the Valley of Elah” in a couple of weeks. Be sure to make time for “Ira & Abby” (whenever it gets here), which is one of a couple of comedies this fall getting attention at film festivals. (I just loved writer/producer/actor Jennifer Westfeldt in “Kissing Jessica Stein.”) Brad Pitt follows soon after in the impossibly long-titled “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”

These all look good, but what I’m really waiting for are three films that are adaptations of some of my favorite books. Ian McEwan’s beautifully written tragedy “Atonement” opens in the UK today, but we’ll have to wait till November to see Keira Knightley and my new favorite actor James McAvoy as the ill-fated lovers.

“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is finally brought to the big screen with Javier Bardem as the romantic Florentino Ariza, who doesn’t get the girl but never stops pining for her over the course of 50 years (while taking solace in the arms of many other women). Hope the film includes my two favorite scenes in the book — when Florentino eats flowers and drinks perfume so that he may know what it is like to be with his beloved Fermina Daza (only to wake up in a pool of fragrant vomit), and when he watches her reflection in a mirror at a restaurant for hours then pesters the owner for months to sell him the mirror that held her reflection. Sigh…

The film that has the most potential to disappoint: “The Kite Runner.” It’s always risky to film an extremely popular book, and already the trailer for Khaled Hosseini’s bestseller has me a little worried. I know you can’t really take too much stock in trailers, but it makes it seem like the war tears apart Amir and Hassan instead of Amir’s cowardice and betrayal.  But there is the pomegranate tree, and I love director Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball” and the enchanting “Finding Neverland“), so I’m crossing my fingers…

What movies are you really looking forward to this fall?