Fancy Nancy by Mo Willems ... ?

This is my mix-n-match post, inspired by an awkward mix-up in wording on a summer reading shelf talker, in which I throw a bunch of titles and authors into a hat and explore what some well-known titles might look like if penned by a different author.

Fancy Nancy by Mo Willems

... or maybe Fancy-Pants Nancy and Her Handy Parisian Phrasebook would be a more Willems-esque title ...

 Junie B. Jones and Some Sneaky Peeky Spying by Judy Blume

... one morning, a five-year-old catches her parents kissing and begins to wonder if her hatred of Meaning Boy Jim might actually be something else ...

Go Ask Alice by Margaret Wise Brown

 ... I don't have anything clever to say about this, to be honest. It's basically the most disturbing combination I could come up with ...

Best Friends for Frances by Ian Falconer

... actually, I see this one more as a mash-up of Frances the Badger and Olivia the Pig. Either they'd kill each other or they'd be best friends and rule the world through combined force of will. Either way, I'd love to see it! ... 

The Hunger Games by Eric Hill

... see Katniss run. Run, Katniss, run! Also, see Eric Hill break down a complex plot line into its most basic elements: life + isn't + fair.

My Way or Norway, or; Tied Up in Knuts

Knut Hamsun is considered one of Norway's most important writers. He's not read very widely in the US despite Hemingway's claim that "Hamsun taught me to write." But Hamsun was a hugely prolific author and one of only 11 Norwegian Literature Nobel laureates. His books are spare, taught, with deep characters and lush Nordic atmospheres. It sounds oxymoronic but he is really worth reading to understand what I mean.

Just this last week the UBC coincidentally acquired several of the few novels of Hamsun's translated into English from different customers throughout the week. Get a foothold in Norwegian literature with Hamsun, or discover a new writer. There are many points of entry and no two of his novels are alike.

Here are the ones in stock this week:

A perennial Hamsun favorite; considered his masterpiece by the Nobel committee. Chock full of Norwegian landscape it is the story of man in nature told through a village of homesteaders at the turn of the 20th century.

A masterpiece of existentialist literature. A man wanders the streets of Oslo starving himself in order to fuel his experience and creativity. Haunting, creepy, like staring into the gaping maw of an Edvard Munch painting or reading a depressing Kafka story turned grotesquely realistic.

One of those heartbraking love stories where the poor young man is in love with the wealthy girl, but she is expected to marry into her own social caste while he works desperately to make something of himself.

A mysterious stranger moves into a shack near a village. He lives a solitary life with his dog until a village girl wanders by. They fall in love but neither knows the other's feelings. A bittersweet modernist fable.

Protagonist Ove is a drunk, a womanizer, an incorrigible. His interactions in the microcosmic world of his Norwegian fishing village occupy this slim, humorous novella.