The Pants

After months of jokes and threats to rent the movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants", I finally checked out the book on CD from the library. And I loved it! (Oh sure, now you think I'm a goodie two shoes since I don't like Sarah Silverman, but I do like the pants. Well maybe I am. I was in the Brownies. And I made a damn cute Brownie, if I do say so myself. Sure, I looked like a tiny UPS man, but it was better than those horrible kelly green Girl Scout uniforms. Am I right?)

Anyway, the book is about four friends and the summer they spend apart, and the magical pants they share that keep them together. (God, I know, it sounds hokey, but trust me.) There are four main characters, Tibby, Bridgett, Carmen and Lena. They are all about 15 years old. Each of them goes away for the summer, except Tibby, who stays behind in Maryland and works at Wahlman's. Bridgett goes to soccer camp, Carmen goes to visit her Dad in South Carolina and Lena goes to Greece to spend the summer with her grandparents.

The deal with the pants is that Carmen bought them at a thrift store. All the girls try them on one day and look fantastic in them (desipite their different shapes and sizes), so they conclude that the pants are magic. They decide to share the pants over the summer and give each girl a turn with them before mailing them to the next girl.

I liked this story because it was simple and not a chick lit book like "The Devil Wears Prada" or something where the main character is a ravishing beauty and lives in New York (they always live in New York) and has a great boyfriend, but a dragon boss at work, blah, blah, blah. "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" is about teenagers and their lives and the everyday things that happen that can be amazing and poignant.

So give it a listen (or a read). It's refreshing when something actually lives up to its hype.