Amy Reiter

A notoriously difficult interview — he has called journalists “vermin” — Reed, 63, is, in fact, fiercely protective, even evasive, speaking over some questions, refusing to answer others, putting me on notice every step of the way. But as he carries our conversation along, with me and my ignored list of questions trailing hopefully after him, it becomes clear that something else is going on here: Reed is yearning to make contact, longing to be understood. C’mon, babe, he seems to be saying to me as, mid-interview, he reaches out and gives my hand an encouraging pat, take a walk on the wild — or at least the wildly colorful — side.

That’s where his photography comes in. Reed’s photos, which will also be shown uptown at the Gallery at Hermès and compiled and released as a book, offer the world a chance to look at New York through Lou Reed’s eyes. Taken over the last three years, some of them from the window of Reed’s own apartment, the photos are a vivid exploration of light and movement, and they are surprisingly beautiful, even — dare I say? — sentimental. Devoid of people, replete with brilliant sunsets and neon, they’re certainly not the gritty-underbelly shots you’d expect from the man who, in his Velvet Underground days, turned out songs like “Heroin” and “Sister Ray.” But Lou Reed, who catches me off guard by enveloping me in a warm hug as we wrap up our interview and then pulls me back into the gallery to look at one last photo he’s sure I’ll particularly enjoy, is nothing if not a man of surprises.

How long have you been taking photos and when did you start taking it seriously?

You know, I don’t know, a long time. I started because of touring, constantly being in situations where it’s like … you know, I get to see some things that most people don’t, I think it’s fair to say, or from a view that they might not ever have. And just for myself, some of what I saw was just so beautiful. I like cameras anyway, and I was playing around for a long, long, long time. If you really want to know how long, it goes all the way back to the ’70s. I did a tour where I had 60 monitors in 12 stacks of five that I was running these customized videotapes on that I had made through customized video cameras. It was very high contrast. That’s when I started.

So is it –

Let’s see, ’78, ’79, ’80 … that’s 20, 22, plus 6  28 years, playing around.

It sounds like the technology really drives your interest. Is that true?

Well, the technology’s really great fun because it opens certain doors to ways of doing things or seeing things, or if you saw it and couldn’t get it before, the new technology might make it so you could get it, whatever “it” might be, you know? And to this day, a lot of things I use are customized. I do that in everything.

Do you use different cameras for different situations?

Yes, if you have two different cameras looking at the same thing, you get two different results. It’s kind of amazing. I’m very much in love with a particular lens on a Contax camera. It’s a perfect wide-angle lens. It’s just like a piece of jewelry; you could wear it as a ring. It’s so beautiful, the engineering, everything about it is just so … Looking through the viewfinder for me is like being in a movie theater. That’s what I like about it.

It’s interesting —

It’s not the same as real life. At all.

It does –

It’s very much a director editing a movie. And in digital as the bit rate, the megabytes and all this, goes up, you can start really looking at it as a movie director going through this material and isolating it through cropping.

Are there –

I’m following the technology as more things become available. I really am a big fan of digital in audio as well as optics.

Are there —

I mean, I wished for certain things in a camera and what I was wishing for turned out to be digital. I was trying to do all kinds of things in analog that in digital just come with it.

So you were able to have kind of a breakthrough?

I’m not one of those people mourning the loss of film or tape. Believe me. Things are just different. I understand the love of it. I also think that’s that and that was that a long time ago. This is just the beginning of the whole … It’s the equivalent of the invention of the airplane.

What made you —

I mean, if you still want to take a bicycle, that’s OK. Some people always love that. But I mean, it’s apples and oranges. There’s always going to be people saying, that’s not as good as this: Vinyl isn’t as good as CD; CD is clearer than vinyl. Whatever suits your purposes, you could go back and forth. They’re not exclusionary.

What about —

But when I sat around, I said, “Geez, I wish …” And that wish was digital. I just didn’t know it at the time.

The beauty of the photos is so striking. They’re much less gritty than I would have expected. And I wonder –

[Reaching out and giving my hand a favorable pat] That was the idea, literally, behind all of this [gesturing to proofs of photos on the walls]. I was following this beauty, this overwhelming beauty that you see in New York, and I wanted to get the light, whatever it takes. These are all digital. There were certain things I could do with film and with digital I couldn’t even come close, and then it started getting better. And aha! It was just exactly the same thing as in sound: When it first started, it was like, oh my God, these CDs are the worst-sounding, and they were. And then, depending on what you play it back on, there’s amazing stuff on some CDs. It depends on how it was mastered, a whole tech thing, but the point is they don’t have to sound like shit. And meanwhile in this area I had a goal, which was a filmic one. There were these things I wished I could do, and lo and behold, the technology moved along. And I said, wow, with natural light in New York, it’d be amazing if I could only get that down — I mean, for me to look at.

So when you took them you didn’t have any eye toward showing them publicly?

No, I mean, I’ve been doing these things for a long time for myself to look at.

They seem very personal. Are they? I mean, a lot of them were taken from your apartment –

Wait a minute. This constant thing about taking them from the apartment, where did that come from? Who told you that?

It’s in the press release and on your Web site.

It’s on the press release.

I think so.

Well, if you look at a lot of this stuff, there’s no way it could be from the apartment. [Under his breath] It’s insane.

Obviously, some of them aren’t. There are a few that I noticed were.

A couple are.

So that’s inaccurate?

Well, it’s not the whole story. I mean, my God.

Maybe people just like to imagine you in your apartment with your camera. There’s some kind of intimacy there that captures people’s imagination. It’s a nice idea, you reaching over –

The thing is because it’s natural light, there’s only this little bit of time, because it’s always shifting. You know that. But the minute it hits, you can tell. Anyone who plays with a camera knows …

When the moment is …

Oh. It’s clear as a bell. You would have to be retarded and blind to miss it. And it’s for X amount of time, or the sun can go behind a cloud and that’s it. So you’d better have something with you.

Are there emotions you feel you can capture with a camera that you can’t capture –

[Yelling to gallery owner, very irritated] Kasher!

Where are the titles? You know, I’d like to show her the titles we ended up with.

[A list of titles -- "Topple," "The Past," "Roil Sky" -- is proffered.]

I had a question about the titles, actually. What made you decide to give them titles? At some point, you said that you did not want to give your photographs titles because you felt as if they should speak for themselves without words.

I did and then I saw a lot of photos by other people. [Loudly, as a cellphone rings in the adjacent room] That’s not me.

Me neither.

You know, “Untitled 1, 2, 3.” And I thought, I write lyrics, I ought to be able to write a title that would help the person looking at it know what I had in mind without defining it by saying “Pear tree in Cuba,” you know? “Dimwit in a Car Wash.” I ought to be able to — yes, no? Do you know what I mean?

Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

So there’s a whole string of them.

There was one photo that I had an association with that your title indicated that you had a different association with –

I hope you’re not going to ask me to explain a title.

No, I’m not asking you to explain a title.

P.R. handler (entering): You have 10 minutes.

Reed: Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. I like her.

P.R. handler (retreating, chastened): OK, well, if he likes you …

Reed (pointedly): I hope she doesn’t turn on me in a minute.

I’m not planning to. So I wondered if there was something you’re able to communicate emotionally through images that you’re not able to communicate through music or your lyrics?

You know, I really think it’s the same in the end. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t thought about that. Sitting and looking at something and sitting and hearing something are two different things, but in the end it’s the same. It just makes you think what a remarkable thing a human being is to even be able to do this. But it’s not just being able to hear and see, it’s being able to differentiate something that’s maybe not very special or unusual — and then something extraordinary, sonically or optically, and capture the energy of that, either through some form of optical recording or audio recording. And then, of course, if you get into trying to combine the two, that’s a whole other experience, and if you put dialogue to it, you could end up with something called a movie or an installation. But just any of those things by themselves …

You know, I watched Warhol for a long time, and he was no slouch verbally. I’ve known a lot of people who claimed to be writers. It’s odd that Warhol, who, you know, people seemed to think of as some kind of idiot savant or something — aside from the fact that now what he did is being appreciated, of course not while he was alive. I mean, look at what’s happening with the painting now — but some of what he said, for a person who supposedly wasn’t so articulate, there are sayings of his that are now part of the language, probably in the dictionary somewhere. Everybody’ll be famous for 15 minutes. Who said that? Warhol said that. No slouch he. And I was watching him like a hawk, really paying attention to what he was doing.

And then Billy Linich, Billy Name, the photographer there, the incredible high-contrast photos he was doing. That’s what gave me the idea to bring in a video camera and have it modified so it would do that. And then I was off and running.

Has your work with the camera informed your music? Is there anything you’ve picked up conceptually and then taken back to your music?

No, it’s been the other way. All the experience from audio, because it came first.

What is it about New York –

You know, if the sun was an oboe, what would you do?

Is that –

No, no. I was just making a funny little haiku. That was just a little joke. Well, it’s a half-joke. Because how would you hear it?

[Gesturing to a photo] I mean look at the light there. And the title of that is “Jackhammer.”

To come up with a title, you looked at an image and then free-associated what it evoked for you?

What is it about? What’s the title that could evoke the picture and not define it in a negative way? This sounds so pretentious. Talking about visuals is really …

It can be hard –

So if I come across as pretentious it’s because I was trying to answer a question.

It’s like trying to talk about music — you sound like an idiot. I can just see, “You sound like an idiot, Lou, there are other people that can articulate fine.”

It’s –

It’s like there [gesturing toward a photo of a building brilliantly lit by the sun], I mean that building is burning, and it’s called sunburn, because it’s the sun hitting it, it’s not … I just kept looking at that day after day, trying to get it, and I did get it.

Do you feel triumphant when you’re able to capture those things?

I feel relieved.

Does it feel like a burden until you’re able to do it?

Not a burden, just … how do you do that? How do I do that?

So it’s like it’s a problem to be solved?

It’s … it didn’t burn enough, it’s not burning the way it really burns, it looks flat, the color’s not right. What’s off? And if you don’t figure that out, it’s gone forever. And that’s it. You can just say to someone, well, I saw this amazing building with light. Too bad you weren’t there.

Right –

But see, this is my way. I was there. And you could kind of be there now. This is what I saw that was so beautiful about New York, this city. And it’s all about light.

And movement, no?

Well, yeah. Sure. I mean, that light’s moving.

And color. Those are the three elements that seem to jump out.

[Pointing to a photo of a series of red-tinted moons] That’s the eclipse, the blood-moon eclipse that we had [in October 2004], remember?

Yeah.

It happens only once every few years. I was up on the roof with a tripod and the camera trying to get that thing as it’s moving quickly. I mean, I tried as hard as I could. And now that really is gone. That particular eclipse. That color of the moon. This isn’t a Photoshop lesson. Anyone could go take a picture of the moon and go color it in. That’s not what I’m doing.

It sounds a little bit like it’s about capturing time for you –

They have movement and certain feelings to them. They’re just so beautiful. I love having a double moon. I love that. Because we don’t, but now we do. Or at least, I made a double moon. And I keep reading about Saturn and its double moons, and I thought, wow, well wouldn’t it be great if we had a double moon? So I made a double moon. Not in Photoshop. I didn’t draw it in.

What about –

But it’s supposed to be pretty.

Is photography more solitary than music? Music is such a collaborative form. It’s not just your thing. There are other people who are –

Well, this is not just my thing either. There are the people who are showing me the lenses and how you do this and how you do that and what you do when that happens. And then there’s the printer, and so much goes into the printing, it’s beyond. It’s like the mixing of an album; I’m used to all this. In the studio, though, it starts with the song, and only one guy wrote the song, and everybody else can join in under the directions of that person to perform the song. I always try to work with people whose work I like in the first place. I’m not trying to change anyone. They can fit into this. But somebody had to write the song; in that case, it was me. And somebody had to take the picture, and that was also me. But I couldn’t print it. I’m there whispering in their ear, but I mean, my God, what they can do with what you bring to the dance. And then look at where that dance can go, and the collaboration between you and the printer, you and the developer, you and the mixer. I’m very used to that kind of collaboration. And I probably as well as anyone on earth knows if that collaboration is not equal and wonderful, doom, heartbreak lie ahead.

[Laugh]

I’m serious.

I’m sure. It’s a very small room that you have to share with people.

It’s not only that, it’s like if you have a bad editor, it’ll be a nightmare for you to look at this, for you and for me, if I read these things.

If you have a bad editor, they could take the punch line of a joke out because they don’t get the joke. That’s what I mean. What can you do to someone who does that except to get as far away as possible. Because obviously there’s nothing you can talk about. You can’t explain this, you can’t explain that. It just won’t happen. Better to move to a mountaintop so you can get away.

OK. One last question.

I have so many questions we haven’t gotten to, it’s hard to choose just one, but you’re about to go perform at the winter Olympics –

Have you looked at that plane that’s in there?

Well, then let’s talk about that. There’s a sense of beauty in these photos but in many of them there’s a sense of foreboding as well –

Well, you know, before if you had a picture of a plane in the sky it’s one thing. Now if you see a picture and there’s a helicopter there, it means something else.

Did 9/11 change –

I don’t talk about it. I’m just mentioning it in passing regarding this. I was here for 9/11 so I don’t like to talk about it.

I was here too. I understand. I won’t ask you about it.

Thank you. Some people don’t understand, the ones who weren’t here. They think, oh, tell us about it, as if you’re talking about a night at the deli.

I wasn’t actually going to ask you about it. I was going to ask you about something related.

OK. So anyway …

You’re about to go on a tour of Europe. First the Winter Olympics and then Europe –

Look at that red in there. Can you believe, the red?

The colors are tremendous. It is interesting to see your take on the things that we look at every day.

Well, that’s the thing, because you can slow time down for a minute. That sounds funny, slow time down for a minute. But you can stop it kind of. Because it’s always passing. If you could just stop it for a second and look at that. I mean, anyone walking down the West Side — there’s a park there now — can see this. It’s just there, every night, every morning. Nothing to do with us.

What do you want people to take away from this exhibit?

I don’t expect anything. But I think these things are fascinating and beautiful and available to anybody. And I think beautiful things make us feel good. So that’s what I want, if I had anything to say about things, which I don’t. I only have something to say about the way the pictures turned out.

But as unpalatable as the fictional Homar would be as a real live person, he’s an absolutely delicious character, making a series of hilariously nearsighted (and outright bad) decisions to propel himself through this far-fetched (and downright funny) narrative.

Each wacky, action-packed chapter of “Busy Monsters” is an installment in the serialized memoirs Charles publishes in his weekly magazine column; he periodically pauses in the midst of his adventures to hammer out another segment on deadline “for my slave-driving editor.” Amusingly, the people Charles meets in each chapter have all read his preceding serialized installments — and have opinions on Charles’ story and style that may echo the reader’s own thoughts and responses. “I have a nagging suspicion that only about forty percent of what you write is true,” one character tells Charles upon meeting him. “I also think your people all speak alike.”

It’s a clever device, and less gimmicky than you might think, in part because Giraldi, who teaches writing at Boston University and is a fiction editor at the literary magazine AGNI, seems completely in control. The voice he has given Charles is singular and arresting; it’s flowery but a bit thorny, too — occasionally overwhelming like a heavy perfume — and filled with quirky turns of phrase, unexpected literary and cultural allusions, self-aware asides, and highfalutin word choices that would make Roget swell with pride.

The plot, too, is an exciting yet masterfully managed hodgepodge. “Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man,” the book begins. A different author might try to stretch the suspense stirred by that opening setup into an entire novel; Giraldi settles that plot point in the first chapter and then takes us all sorts of other surprising places.

One moment Charlie is drunk with love and breaking into a Virginia state trooper’s home with blood on his mind and “a killer’s knife tucked into my boot,” the next he’s mad with heartbreak, firing a borrowed rifle at the hull of a squid hunter’s ship. The latter escapade lands him in a pleasant Maine jail, where he enjoys gourmet prison food and shares a cell with a computer geek interested in the Loch Ness monster. And then he’s off to Washington state on a misguided mission to impress his far-flung former fiancée by bagging Bigfoot, accompanying a man whose business card reads “ROMP: I BRING IT BACK DEAD.”

Let us pause here for a description of Romp, courtesy of Charles’ friend Groot: “Hunter. Scholar. Priest. Negro. Prophet. Man of jazz and all items sacrosanct. Shaves with obsidian. Has razzle and the necessary dazzle to mix it with. Also copulated with Florence Ballard [of the singing group the Supremes] in 1974.”

Giraldi’s characters are all similarly kooky and compelling. We meet people like Sandy McDougal, Charles’s wall-eyed ex-girlfriend, who has traded academia for alien abduction and taken up with a pint-size Filipino flim-flam man; Morris Hammerstein, an enlightened Jewish astronomer and family man who ends up boxing an angry lesbian (stereotypes are self-consciously abundant in Charles’ narratives) in his backyard; and Richie Lombardo, a famous body builder with a couple of Ivy League-educated Asian call girls named Mimi from Madam Chung’s House of Superior Entertainment going at it near the basement barbells in his luxe New Jersey manse.

After all his randy and reckless romps hither and thither, by the time Charles finally, in the story’s finale, makes a decent decision — “People? This is how I develop here, people: by taking charge of this situation in a sensible fashion, by choosing order over chaos, by pushing instead of being pulled. I am asserting my will,” he tells a passel of characters urging a more dramatic and dangerous choice — readers may be ready to see him go. The same cannot be said of this entertaining debut’s author. Having invited him in, we’ll want to see Giraldi stick around awhile.

Tyler dodged the question, but the answer may well be “no.” In his wildly galloping memoir (not to be confused with Aerosmith’s 2003 exercise in group autobiography, “Walk This Way”), the man who has long fired up the blue-jean-wearing masses with songs including “Dream On,” “Sweet Emotion,” “Walk This Way” and “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” singing and strutting his way into rock ‘n’ roll history, seems to have left no story untold, no score unsettled, no secret unrevealed.

He rips into venal ex-managers and jealous ex-wives. (No fan of lawyers or monogamy he.) He goes into detail about the drugs he’s done (he seems to have done them all, fondly describing where and how he did them and with whom and how they affected him) and the women he’s done (ditto). He describes long-standing grievances with fellow band members (he and guitarist Joe Perry weren’t called the “Toxic Twins” for nothing: “JOE’S A CREEP — I’M AN ASSHOLE,” he writes emphatically) and even goes so far as to reveal their relative endowments.

While the book is unapologetically profane, inarguably self-serving and at times ragingly uncontrolled (like a memoir amped up on speed), it’s also bracingly honest, frequently funny (as “Idol” watchers and Aerosmith fans know, Tyler has a way with a clever turn of phrase) and admirably human. Tyler’s now 63 and a grandpa. He’s gotten clean (several times), had children by three different women (two of whom he’d married), broken up and gotten back together with his band (who knows how many times?), and has finally made peace with many of his demons: the drug addictions, the romantic betrayals, the parenting failures, the ego-driven battles with band mates.

“I may be a monster,” he writes, in apparent hope that the reader might see “the more spiritual side of me” beneath the bad boy stereotype, “but I’m a sensitive monster.”

Ultimately, Tyler seems torn between the urge to preserve his carefully cultivated rock star pose and the desire to drop the mask. “It’s hard to tell who I am by the trail left by my musical career,” he writes. “I am the Demon of Screamin’, the dude that looks like a lady, the rag doll that married Lucy in the Sky. But I’m also something more than the rock ‘n’ roll junky whore who got his foot inside the door.”

Beneath Tyler’s sex-and-drugs-and-rock-’n'-roll tough talk and raging narcissism — Tyler calls it LSD: Lead Singer Disorder — there’s a surprising self-awareness, a capacity for empathy, an ability to connect. That’s a big part of what has attracted all those fans and all those women — and now, one imagines, all those readers.

And now for our list:

“Frog and Toad Are Friends” by Arnold Lobel (Ages 4-8)

The thing about Lobel’s Frog and Toad — see also the equally wonderful “Days With Frog and Toad,” “Frog and Toad All Year” and “Frog and Toad Together” — is that, despite the whole amphibian thing, they’re so damn human. Toad is crabby, self-doubting and, let’s face it, somewhat prone to depression. Frog has a sunny, can-do disposition. And they may be an odd couple, of the Oscar and Felix variety, but they are also kind, supportive, considerate, loving friends. And though these stories are, of course, beloved by children of both sexes, the way these two very different fellows take care of each other — and delight in each other’s company — seems like a particularly valuable example for young boys.

“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney (Ages 9-12)

Kinney’s “Wimpy Kid” series may not be writing at its finest, but it has struck a major chord with boys, capturing the attention of even the most reluctant readers. Described as “a novel in cartoons” — with lots of drawn illustrations, a lined-paper format and a font that looks like handwriting — it has an undeniable charm, evoking the misery that is middle school in spare, deft strokes. Its beleaguered narrator, Greg Heffley, isn’t the most sympathetic character, selling out his best friend Rowley when the occasion suits him, but he has a keen eye for demoralizing details. Like the cheese that lies rotting and repulsive on his school blacktop, spawning the terrors of “Cheese Touch.” “It’s basically like the Cooties,” Greg explains. “If you get the Cheese Touch, you’re stuck with it until you pass it on to someone else. The only way to protect yourself from the Cheese Touch is to cross your fingers.” If that doesn’t take you right back to middle school, well, you’re luckier than some of us.

“Danny the Champion of the World” by Roald Dahl (Ages 9-12)

If there is a more moving depiction of the relationship between a son and his father in all of literature than the one in this rollicking adventure tale, we’d sure like to know about it. “It is impossible to tell you how much I loved my father,” Dahl’s narrator, Danny, tells us. “When he was sitting close to me on my bunk I would reach out and slide my hand into his, and then he would fold his long fingers around my fist, holding it tight.” But Danny’s love for his dad — a filling station owner and widower who is raising his only child in a gypsy caravan — is apparent in every line, every moment of this story. Danny’s dad, he tells us, is an “eye-smiler,” whose eyes flash and twinkle when he is amused, but who never much moves his mouth. “I was glad my father was an eye-smiler,” Danny writes, “because it is impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren’t feeling twinkly yourself.” This gentle, funny, genuinely wonderful book will leave boys (and their parents) eye-smiling and deliciously amused.

“The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan (Ages 9-12)

Start your son on this first book in Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and watch him read away his summer. When we first meet Percy, he just seems like a troubled kid on the verge of getting kicked out of yet another school. In fact, he’s gone through six schools in six years: Bad things just seem to keep happening to him. It isn’t long before Percy (short for Perseus), and we, learn that those strange things he thinks he’s been hallucinating are actually real. Mythological monsters and gods — satyrs, minotaurs, centaurs — really are populating his life and he himself is a half-blood: His father, whom he never knew and had been told had been “lost at sea,” is, in fact, Poseidon. This popular series is a great read for any myth-minded kid who cut his teeth on “D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.” Come to think of it, it’s a great read for any kid. Come to think of it again, it’s just a great read.

“The Giver” by Lois Lowry (Young Adult)

This book about a futuristic world that initially seems utopian (no crime, no poverty, no illness, abundantly good manners), but, as it turns out, is less than ideal (no color, no music, no sunshine), is creepy yet altogether compelling. As it begins, 11-year-old Jonas is apprehensively anticipating his Ceremony of Twelve, when he will receive his adult Assignment from the Committee of Elders. Will he be a Nurturer or a judge, like the parents who are raising him? Will be a Caretaker of the Old, like his friend Fiona? But Jonas does not receive a conventional assignment: He is selected to become the community’s next Receiver of Memory, tasked absorbing the collective recollection of pain and pleasure, which the community has long since eschewed in pursuit of comfort, stability and Sameness. Jonas meets daily with the previous Receiver, now the Giver, and learns to appreciate a world with choice and compassion — and love.

“Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” by Kevin Henkes (Ages 4-8)

Plenty of people have other favorites by Henkes — “Chrysanthemum,” “Owen,” “Sheila Rae, the Brave,” “Chester’s Way.” But “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” stands out for its emotional nuance. Lilly, a young mouse who wears fabulous red cowboy boots, adores her teacher, Mr. Slinger. One day, Lilly brings her new purse to school, and is seriously excited to show it to the class. Asked to wait, she can’t quite manage to restrain herself, repeatedly interrupting the class to show off her new treasure. When Mr. Slinger takes the purse away until the end of the school day, Lilly, infuriated, gets revenge by drawing a mean picture of him and slipping it into his bag. Then, on the way home, she finds that Mr. Slinger has written her a sweet note, “Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better.” Lilly is filled with sickening regret. But she apologizes and is forgiven and, best of all, manages to forgive herself. Mr. Slinger’s words, and Lilly’s acceptance of herself — on good days and bad — are lessons that any fabulous little girl (or grown woman) who occasionally struggles to control her impulses can take to heart.

“Eloise” by Kay Thompson, Drawings by Hilary Knight (Ages 7 and up)

There’s a reason this book about a 6-year-old girl making all manner of mischief in New York’s Plaza Hotel, originally published in 1955, is beloved by girls and women everywhere. Actually, there are myriad reasons, Knight’s breathtakingly elegant, deliciously expressive illustrations significantly among them. But mostly, it’s Eloise herself — that never-bored, perpetually inventive little girl, who orders everything from room service with a definitive “and charge it please, Thank you very much,” torments her tutor, adores her nanny, misses her absent mom (though she’d never say so), braids her pet turtle Skipperdee’s ears first thing each morning (“Otherwise he gets cross and develops a rash”), and generally spends her days, well, pretty much as she pleases. She’s a far cry from the overscheduled, helicopter-parented children of today.

“Ramona the Pest” by Beverly Cleary (Ages 7-12)

There are those who would make a strong case that Barbara Park’s more recent Junie B. Jones series is the better girl-starring series for this age group. Then there are those who remember devouring Cleary’s books by the pile when they themselves were around 7. Those people will point to the books’ enduring popularity, and the fact that the adventures (er … misadventures) of the irrepressible Romana can still deeply absorb girls — and yes, boys, too — just transitioning to chapter books, and make them laugh and laugh. If Ramona is a pest, she’s a pest many children can truly relate to.

“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott (Ages 9-12)

Ah, the March sisters — coltish tomboy Jo; frail, sweet Beth; beautiful, practical Meg; pampered, artistic Amy — living in genteel poverty with their mother, Marmee, in their New England home and struggling to make the best of things while their father is away, fighting in the Civil War. As wonderfully warm and endearingly romantic as you may remember them to be, the stories that make up the novel are surprisingly insightful, fresh and modern. It’s a book worth returning to, if you haven’t picked it up since childhood, and a lovely book for girls in the midst of their own.

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume (Ages 9-12)

For many girls and young women, this book pretty much wraps up their preteen years: the angst over their changing bodies (or bodies that aren’t changing fast enough), the confusion over fitting in socially and staking a claim to their own beliefs, the deep desire to know right now what life will bring them at its own pace. Blume’s protagonist, 11-year-old Margaret, whose family moves to the New Jersey suburbs from New York City when she’s on the brink of sixth grade — that universally difficult year — contends with all of this, chatting with God in her bed at night though she has been raised in a non-religious home. Grown-ups who read this book years or even decades ago (it was initially released in 1970) can probably conjure images of first bras and first periods. And while they may recall how personal and real the book felt, they may have forgotten how funny it is, too.

——————

Is your favorite book sorely lacking from this list? Let’s face it, any list of five great books for girls is, by definition, woefully inadequate. Where, you might ask, looking over this handful of literary selections, is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden”? Or Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”? Or L.M. Mongtomery’s “Anne of Green Gables”? Or Astrid Lindren’s “Pippi Longstocking”? Or Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time”? Or Alice, or Madeline, or Coraline? Or, frankly, a host of other long-loved favorites?

If your most treasured read hasn’t been included here, don’t shake your fist in the air and curse the gods at the injustice of it all: Blog about your own summer reading suggestions for kids on Open Salon (make sure to explain what makes them so great). Don’t forget to tag your post “Building a bookworm.” We’ll be cross-posting your submissions on Salon in the coming weeks.

Karim’s story, told in diary format, is compelling; his voice makes the book a standout. Working to improve his grasp of American idiom, Karim carries a voice recorder everywhere so that, later, he can look up expressions he doesn’t know. “This will help me to study the American voices I hear and to transmit their conversations without error,” he tells his teenage seatmate on the flight over the Atlantic. Karim also notes that the journal will help him to remember. “I have a robust memory for some details, but it is complex to continue acquiring data and archive them all,” he observes, “and even now I am forgetting some older memories, as if my brain is a hard drive and time is a magnet.”

The reader comes to share Karim’s fascination with language, and to be thoroughly charmed by his “Karim-esque” phrasing — as well as his perspective on American culture. Who could resist rooting for a character who finds inspiration in Jackson Pollock’s paintings and Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, and who describes a cloying Christmas movie as “unrealistic and false although it still made me feel slightly enhanced”? Wayne has given us a character to adore and a book that leaves us feeling, as Karim might say, greatly enhanced.