The Vinyl Princess

I know it's only about mid-year, but the Vinyl Princess is, hands-down, the best book I've read in 2010. I love everything about it: the characters, the setting, the countless musical references, and most importantly, the subject of vinyl and vinyl culture, and how it needs to be preserved. If we don't, we won't meet people like Allie, our protagonist, who knows everything you could ever want to know about music, looks like, according to her, "the child of Sid Vicious," and considers her thousands of LP's a modest collection- can we really afford to lose awesome people like this? My favorite thing about this book was the characters. Heavy readers of YA chick-lit will recognize the character archetypes: the sharp, witty protagonist, the lovable (if, at times, ditzy) best friend, the guy who isn't what he seems, and the guy who has been there all along. But they aren't flat stereotypes- Prinz's characters are all painted wonderfully, with their own unique and engaging personalities. And side characters aren't cast aside and treated as plot devices, either, with each one carefully crafted- even the ones that don't do or say much speak volumes about Allie and her world. I also loved the setting of Prinz's novel, Telegraph Avenue. Full of more hippies, "bridge-and-tunnel shoppers", and other unconventional populace than you've ever laid eyes on, Telegraph Avenue is a great reflection of the book overall: quirky, funny, and full of surprises. But my very favorite thing about this book is the way music plays such a big part in it. Good music, too: Just flipping through this book, there's references to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Avett Brothers to the Beatles and Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen and the Velvet Underground and... *takes a breath* Well, you get the point. Allie basically has the best taste in music ever. If you're an "audiophile", too, you might see references that remind you of an old favorite, and if you're don't know much about music, this book is practically a field guide to records. Overall, in The Vinyl Princess, we find a funny, true voice that needs to be heard, one speaking out for indie record store culture and for the preservation of vinyl in general. Not only that, but it teaches our generation, living in the age of digital downloading, to love vinyl again. There book shows the beauty of the physical involvement in putting on a record, examining it breathlessly for scratches, and enjoying it like the girl on the cover: the waves of nostalgia, the familiarity of the crackling on a well-worn record. And there's something for everyone in this book: romance, music, fashion, drama, and a little bit of crime mystery, too. Read this book in your attic on an old bean bag chair with a stack of carefully selected records, and enjoy.

Name one sixteen year old in real life that doesn't own an ipod, zune, or any device that can download music? Allie is just crazy, unique and awesome that she live in this modern digital age. Record store business calls her a throwback, audiophile or a record geek. She is a girl who collects LP is practically a walking music encyclopedia and just the unique type of character that I am looking for. Did I say that I think she is awesome? She lives in Berkley with her mom, a housemate named Suki who she refer to as the ghost, since they rarely see her and a cat named Pierre that acts that he's too cool for them. Allie is Happily employed in a independent music store in Telegraph Avenue named Bob & Bob's (Amoeba music in real life?) who mainly sells collectible vinyls. Talk about feeding the addiction right? She's perfect for that place. It was written that she own 900 LPs and can recite all the Beatles songs by album, in grade school she does not know the national anthem nor the Pledge of Allegiance but can chronologically name the Rolling Stones album, she can talk about everything and anything about music for 14 hours straight, and she shares her passion by writing about it on her blog, thus the title of our book, The Vinyl Princess. Other than that, Allie is like every other teenager. She struggles to keep up with th real world. Her parents are divorce. Her mom is on the dating pool and her dad lives with a person named Kee Kee who listens to Dave Matthews Band and she is soon to have a half-sibling. There was no hate in all this. She and her parents are cool with the situation that they are in. Which is part of the book that I like a lot. This particular summer seems to be the most memorable one for Allie. There were two boys, a series of robberies in the area of her work, her best friend Kit got boy issues and her self esteem is flactuating to a level that she's talking about nip tucking, her mother is on a current haunt for companionship, and later she was faced to make tough decisions and was forced to step out of her comfort zone. I was scared to read this, afraid that I wouldn't like it. Since it is a YA I was holding my breath because maybe, just maybe the word Vinyl on the cover was just a front and that maybe when I actually get down on reading it I'd read referemces of Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte, Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne, etc... and I would completely flip out. Not that there's anything wrong with them but their music is just not my type. So no offense to those who love them. I was also blown away by the cover and because Yvonne Prinz wrote it, she is possibly the coolest chick in the world because of the whole Amoeba music, I love that place, I can live there, my second choice after the bookstore. Lol. So I was relieved when I saw mentions of Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Billy Bragg, John Doe, Avette Brothers, Johnny Cash, Crowded House, The Kinks, Iggy Pop, etc... I love the book, the word indie and hip is written all over it. I actuall

How does a self-proclaimed music geek with encyclopedic knowledge of vinyl's history survive in an MP3 obsessed, Billboard Top 40 world? If you're sixteen-year-old Allie, you spend every free moment "practically running" Bob & Bob's Records, comb the flea markets of Berkeley for classic LPs, while composing articles for your blog and zine. Not that any of this means Allie's without a life - thank you very much. She spends plenty of time patronizing the bohemian eateries and coffeehouses populating downtown San Francisco, hanging with best friend and vintage fashion maven Kit, and keeping an eye on her scatterbrained mother as she reenters the dating scene. Should Allie let her mother's personality-transplant-for-a-boyfriend, or twenty-something stepmother Kee-Kee's pregnancy, send her into a tailspin? Of course not! Who cares if Bob & Bob's owner keeps threatening to sell the store? He's been saying that for years. And why worry too much about a series of robberies plaguing businesses along Telegraph Avenue? With regulars like Allie keeping their eyes peeled for anyone suspicious, the police will catch the thieves sooner or later. So what if Allie hasn't found a boyfriend of her own? Sure, she's got her eye on the mystery hottie "M" who's recently become a customer, but it's not like she expects to stumble across her musical soul mate at work...right? I *LOVED* this book with a blinding passion! Everything from Allie herself, to her eccentric family and kooky coworkers, the descriptions of food, the plethora of music history and the way Yvonne Prinz infuses the city of San Francisco with so much life and vivacity, it becomes a character in and of itself. Even though I'm an iPod devotee, I got a kick out of Allie's references to MP3s and downloading as "the end of civilization as we know it." THE VINYL PRINCESS is hip, blunt, quirky, and just plain fabulous - if books were people, I'd marry this one. Seriously guys, this is one you shouldn't miss. Reviewed by: Cat

The Vinyl Princess is perfect. Main character Allie lives her life loving music, her job selling vinyl and her friends and family, basically she's awesome and I want to be her friend. The book was realistic but in the way that everyone in the book was cooler than me and I only wish I was that awesome. From Allie's extensive knowledge of music to her best friend Kit's fashion know-how I bow down to these people and am extremely jealous of them. While the characters were great the overall atmosphere of the book was rocking as well, it gave off a bit of an Empire Records vibe for me, independent record store with a bunch of musicheads and freaks running around humor etc. There was also a bit of a mystery (that I solved just before Allie) involving a string of robberies in town and a bit of romance. Basically The Vinyl Princess is a very well rounded story with music holding the whole thing together. Another awesome thing about the book I really appreciated was that the Vinyl Princess zine is real, I actually have a copy and I believe the blog is real as well! I love when an author takes the time to make the book come to life and doesn't just use something for the book but takes the time to make it real for the readers. That gets a major thumbs up from me. Overall a great young adult book for teens and music lovers alike!

Armed with wry and delicious cynicism, a deep and bottomless emotional sensitivity and more musical smarts than a multi-degreed musicologist, Allie--Yvonne Prinz's record store-working main character of her new book The Vinyl Princess--is the coolest narrator of any book in recent memory. Gainfully employed at Bob & Bob Records in Berkeley, the street smart sixteen-year-old lives to hover a needle over the rotating black body of a well-chosen piece of vinyl and lower it into the groove. She's an L.P. purist, a throwback, a vinyl-only girl walking lonely through a digital age. In a time where music is flashed back and forth from email to iPod to hard drive, Allie reminds us of the days when the listener was involved with the physicality of music; the days of making a mix in real time or tilting a piece of vinyl up to the light, holding your breath and hoping not to find a scratch. Although Allie's records are in fine, well-kept shape, the real scratches in her life come from other areas. She lives with her divorced mother, who studies Russian poetry and dabbles in disastrous computer dating; her realtor dad is remarried to a snooty new wife with a seemingly limitless trust fund and her best friend Kit is beset by boyfriend-in-a-band problems. To make matters worse, Allie's mom rents a room to a mysterious exchange student who seems to be in secret league with their cat; the object of her affection may or may not be as shady as he seems and her love of music aside, Allie knows retail is retail and work is work and the two may very well be cramping her style. "Don't get me wrong," she says, "I'm well aware that most girls my age wouldn't be relishing the idea of spending the summer in a musty record store. Certainly this isn't the most happening environment for a girl in the prime of her adolescence." Whether it's the colorful cast of record store employees, the resident Telegraph Avenue oddballs who parade around in old wedding dresses, or the quivering clientele who approach the record store intelligentsia trembling and witless, Prinz knows how to populate a book. Even the folks who don't say much speak volumes. For example, the macabre backroom-processing Aidan, Allie tells us: "...takes misanthropy to a whole new level...He's tall and whisper thin with a sort of bloodless look to him. He disappears into his environment like a chameleon. It seems that his only desire in life is not to be noticed." Assuming the identity of The Vinyl Princess, Allie begins to blog about vintage vinyl and as the book progresses, so does her fanbase. As she blogs away about everyone from David Bowie to Randy Newman, the vinyl junkies of the world begin to marshal together and suddenly Allie has a viable audience. She also has an audience of potential boyfriends. One follows her around with homemade mixes and arcane minutia about bands, while the other looks like he's in a band although he never really talks about music very much at all. When a string of robberi