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    Popular: A Memoir | Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek
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    Popular: A Memoir | Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek
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    Popular: A Memoir | Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek
    Audiobook6 hours

    Popular: A Memoir | Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek

    Written by Maya Van Wagenen

    Narrated by Amber Faith and Lee Adams

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A touchingly honest, candidly hysterical memoir from breakout teen author Maya Van Wagenen

    Stuck at the bottom of the social ladder at "pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren't paid to be here," Maya Van Wagenen decided to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell. Can curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help Maya on her quest to be popular?

    The real-life results are painful, funny, and include a wonderful and unexpected surprise—meeting and befriending Betty Cornell herself. Told with humor and grace, Maya's journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9780698157927
    Unavailable
    Popular: A Memoir | Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek

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    Reviews for Popular

    4/5

    119 ratings18 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I love you Maya! And the world is surely at her feet. She's been offered a movie deal and man, I hope fame and fortune don't ruin this sweet, sweet girl. So positive, offering real-life examples of how to get out there and be a good person. Have Maya's book in every school so the sweet, shy, good-hearted kids can find ways to make friends and share their positive energy!
    • 4/5
      So impressed by this young author. I think that all Middle school girls should read this book! Maya Van Wagenen is wise beyond her years.
    • 5/5
      It was heart warming, funny, and relevant to how I felt as a teen.
    • 2/5
      Initially I really liked the author's voice and thought she was funny and charming. And although it has a somewhat positive message at the end of the story, it spends so, so, so, so, SO much time reinforcing the idea that a girl's value is in her appearance that it just bummed me out. Granted, this was a memoir by a teenage girl. Almost more of a journal or diary. Real life rarely has movie-quality moments of clarity or a happy ending but it still just didn't seem to share anything new.
    • 5/5
      teen/adult memoir/middle school survival. 8th grader Maya carries out the steps in a 1950s guide to teenage popularity (including the part about wearing girdles and shining shoes), working her way up to doing the unthinkable: sitting at all of the various table cliques in the lunchroom, including the jocks, the uber popular crowd, and the gangsters. Inspirational to anyone needing help fitting in/making friends (basically everyone) as well as to aspiring young writers.

      This book is also extremely well written and edited, so it's all-around terrific.
    • 4/5
      As with many others, I thought Popular was, at first, a fiction book. Imagine my surprise when I learned a 14-year-old girl wrote it! The concept is fun and inventive--I just wish Maya would have put a more modern spin on the etiquette and beauty tips in her guide.
    • 5/5
      I loved everything about this book, it was adorable, heartfelt, inventive, and daring. I can't believe fifteen year old Maya von Wagenen has already achieved more in her life than I have. Kudos to her! I wish I had been as brilliant as her to come up with this awesome social experiment!When Maya was eleven and starting the eighth grade, her father rediscovered an old thrift shop gem, "Betty Cornell's Teenage Popularity Guide," an awesome guide to amazingness from the fifties. Instead of scoffing at the outdated ideas and old trends, Maya's mother challenged her to live the book and live out the ideals, diets, fashions, and manners from that era for an entire year. Painfully shy and at the bottom of the social scale Maya decided to give it a shot. The result of her year long social experiment is this awesome memoir that reads like a personal diary. In it Maya shares, pictures, tips, drawings, musings from life, school, and church and observations about how kids from her school are handling her changes. It's awesome book and it's amazing how many of the tips and lessons from Betty Cornell's book still hold true. Sixty years later those words help change a shy awkward girl into a confident, outgoing, and happy girl. A definite must read!!!! It's funny, emotional, awkward, and honest. Great for mother daughter book clubs, bookworms, fifties fashionistas, and more. LOVED it!!!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book and read through it quickly. It's so honest and charming. I would recommend it to everyone. Maya has a talent for writing and is very brave. I couldn't do half of the things she pushed herself to do now let alone when I was 13. I can't wait to see what else she does and I recommend getting this for young women in your life especially.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. I tend to like memoirs so it isn't surprising. Toss in that fact that it refers to a vintage book written about social advice and I was sold. Maya is a good writer for one so young. I'd love to meet her or then woman whose book affected her so greatly, Betty Cornell. I hope some of our kids will read Maya's book.
    • 5/5
      Popular, a memoir by Maya Van Wagenen is a funny, refreshing delight!I'll be honest. I didn't even look at the title, beyond, Popular. When I started the book, I thought, "How clever! She's pretending this really happened. I like it when people pull this off convincingly." Then, the photos began. "Hmmm," I thought, "Well, I wonder where they got the girl to volunteer to have her photo in a book." Slowly, I figured out, "Oh! This is real." That's when I re-read the title. Perhaps my observation skills need some honing. Maya Van Wagenen (seriously, who would have thought it was a real name?) lives in Brownsville, Texas and decides she will follow the 1951 book Betty Cornell's Teenage Popularity Guide by Betty Cornell after her father gives it to her when cleaning out his stuff. Maya's mom contributes by suggesting Maya try the book out as an experiment and write about it. Each month Maya takes on a new part of the book for her eighth grade year. By the end of the year, Maya will be popular. From eating to girdles to talking to everyone, Maya completely changes her outlook on life and learns the truth about being popular, which is an ephemeral concept. Maya has a great sense of humor that she can capture in writing; bear in mind, she is currently 16 years old! This is a memoir of a CURRENT TEENAGER that is laugh out loud funny. I especially like her family; they are a close family and support her in this strange endeavor. I should reveal that I love etiquette books although I fail to follow their advice. Therefore, this book really resonated with me. Maya captures a border town quite well. I highly recommend this novel.
    • 3/5
      Our author tells of middle school social experiment she conducted in order to become popular. She follows everything a 1950's book tells her to do in order to be popular in the 2000's. Her parents struggle with money but are very supportive. Her mom searches thrift shops to get her just what she needs to follow the book. The family includes an autistic sister whom they are especially kind to. She realizes that the experiment is working when she discovers that she is getting noticed and setting trends - goth girls start wearing pearls for example.
    • 3/5
      A lovely, funny book by a remarkable young writer. Maya conducts an experiment, taking the advice of a 1950s Guide to Popularity. she records the changes she makes, her feelings about them and the reactions of her peers. This is a book is about being that awkward teenager on the outside but also at the heart of a loving, supportive, eccentric family. While she shows great descriptive powers, insight and humour, she somehow manages to retain an authentic, very likeable tone throughout.
    • 3/5
      When I first heard the premise of this book--middle-schooler picks up 1950s guide to becoming popular and decides to follow it to see if she can boost her own popularity--I assumed it was fiction. But it's the "true" account of the year now-15-year-old Maya Van Wagenen spent following the the advice from Betty Cornell's _Teen-Age Popularity Guide_. Van Wagenen's father had picked up the book in a thrift store as a joke years earlier, and was about to throw it out when Maya rescued it; Maya's mom made the suggestion that she follow the suggestions in chapter by chapter, a month at a time, and journal about her experiences. The book isn't the uncut footage from Maya's journal, but rather, selections interspersed with excerpts from Cornell's original text and Maya's more contemporary interpretations of her tips. And this is where I feel kind of torn about _Popular_: I'm always glad to see a young-adult text that's actually written by a young adult, since there are so very few. And Maya's voice is definitely in here, though the manuscript feels very heavily edited. And it's hard not to feel like Maya was kind of manipulated: her parents urge her not to tell anyone what she's doing, framing it as a "social experiment," and at times encourage her to follow even Cornell's most dated or strange tips, such as using Vaseline instead of eyeshadow. And the poor girl is forced to wear a girdle, because Cornell's book insists that all young ladies should. At points I felt really uncomfortable, wondering whose idea this really was. Isn't 8th grade hard enough without wearing stockings, a hat, and gloves to church? And without having to lie to your best friend about why you're doing all of these things you've never done before? The secrecy and the lack of flexibility involved in the "experiment" kind of sleeved me out a little bit. But the most difficult challenges, interestingly, turn out to have nothing to do with makeup or wardrobe, but with human interactions. Late in the year, Maya takes up Cornell's challenge to be friendly to everyone, which Maya carries out by sitting at every table, with every clique in her middle-school lunchroom. This would be daunting in pretty much any context, but the students in Maya's Brownsville, Texas school are regularly hauled out of class to be inspected by drug-sniffing dogs, and some of the "cliques" are actual gangs. Maya bravely sits with all of them, even when they ignore her, and discovers that middle-school social hierarchies both more powerful and less intimidating than they appear to be.To me, that was the strongest part of the book, and the part that makes reading the whole thing worthwhile.
    • 3/5
      What is popularity? How do you achieve it? Can anyone become popular?Following the advice laid out by teen model, Betty Cornell, in her 1951 _Teenage Popularity Guide_ (ISBN:978-0-525-42747-6), 8th grade student Maya Van Wagenen chronicles her year climbing the social ladder by stepping outside (way outside) of her comfort zone. A sweetly written book, carrying a positive and timely message, _Popular_ will appeal to middle and early high school students. Awards: YALSA Award For Excellence In Nonfiction Finalist
    • 4/5
      Recently there has been much discussion online on the topic of adults reading young adult books, specifically as to whether or not grownups should be embarrassed for indulging in escapism rather than “great adult literature.” I just finished a work of YA nonfiction called “Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek,” by Maya Van Wagenen. The resident teen at our house dismissed what she’s seen of this book as “outdated” ( three or four years being outdated for her), but in all honesty, Van Wagenen has chosen a topic which seems to resonate across generations.Maya Van Wagenen was a geeky thirteen-year-old middle-schooler in Texas, at the bottom of social food chain at her school. ““Most of my sixth & seventh grade (years) was just keeping my head down. I didn’t want to bring attention to myself because I had always been bullied,” she has said. The summer before eighth grade, Maya came across the book Betty Cornell’s Teen-Age Popularity Guide, published in the 1950s by former teen model Betty Cornell. As she became more absorbed in reading, her mother suggested the idea for a “ grand project:” Try to follow the book’s ideas for the next school year, and journal the results.With sixty years between Cornell’s book and Maya’s experiment, not all of the popularity guide’s were particularly helpful. Girdles, for instance. But Maya persisted, and with each new success, no matter how small, she gained enough confidence to continue. Eventually, she reaches the pinnacle of her experiment: she decides to sit, uninvited, with a different social group at lunch every day. Her discovery of how everyone was, from her outcast group to the “Football Faction,” helped her create a new definition of popularity, based on kindness, inclusion, and acceptance. This bit of wisdom alone is something we all could learn from.So what’s next for Maya? Her family has moved from Texas to Georgia; her movie rights for her book have been purchased by Dreamworks; and her first novel is due in a few years. I look forward to seeing what will come next for this gifted young author.
    • 1/5
      1.5 stars.

      Reviewing and rating this book was complicated, because there are many things that the main character does that I don't like and even found absurd. It would not be a problem if she were just a character, but she's a real person.

      I'll start by saying that I didn't like this book. That it was short and really fast to read was the only reason why I finished it.

      First of all, I found the title misleading. There's nothing that suggests that this girl is a geek. I was disappointed, as the geek part was what made me want to read this book. The Spanish title, Como me convertí en popular (How I became popular) is much more accurate. The author may be a geek, but there's nothing in the book that even implies it. Maybe her (or her school's) deffinition of geek is very different to mine.

      The concept of this book is interesting, but I was a bit surprised by how innocent and naïve Maya was. Yes, she is thirteen and in some cases it's very obvious how young she is. For example, when she tries to reach out to others to convince them to go to a school event with her instead of skipping it because they don't have a date, she forgets that being a good friend also means respecting that not everybody likes the same things. She definitely shows that she's young when she keeps bugging them to say yes and doesn't take into account that not having a date may not be the reason why they don't want to go. Even if it is, they're free to choose not to go. However, there are other things that she does that seemed too naïve for thirteen, especially for someone who defines herself as a social outcast at the bottom of the popularity list. She takes fashion advice from a book written in the 1950s and wonders why people stare and laugh. The general ideas, such as showering/bathing regularly, ironing your clothes and wearing something nice to work are timeless, but she wears the exact clothes that the book suggests. I couldn't believe that she wondered why people were laughing. When I started this book, I thought that she was going to adapt the 1950s information to the 21st century, but she follows everything as it is in the book.

      I liked how she realises at the end that all the people in her school have much more in common than they think. This was probably the only message in the book that I liked. I strongly disagree with most of what this book suggests. I'm not familiar with the US school system and my school was very different from Maya's, but the idea that thirteen year olds should wear make-up is ridiculous to me. There are a few other things that didn't make sense to me and made me wonder if someone more familiar with her culture and life style would have liked this book more. Maya's family doesn't have enough money to buy new clothes, so they get them in second hand shops, but it's implied that they eat dessert (and not of the fruit variety) and crisps-like snacks very often.

      There's one thing I wondered that was never answered in the book. Her parents seem to be nice, so why don't they tell her how absurd some of the items in Cornell's book are? Can't they predict the result of some parts of her experiment? Also, there's a moment when her father (or her mother, I can't remember which one it was) tells her to keep everything a secret. It sounds a bit odd without further explanation and it made me wonder how much of her real diary was edited or how much of what was happening was never in her diary. Also, everything sounded just too nice and I never got the impression that she was an outcast. She has a few friends and the worst that she got were a few sarcastic (somewhat hurful at most) comments from her class mates.
    • 4/5
      At first glance, it is easy to be mistaken about the contents of this book. A shallow young girl who just wants to be popular? Who wants to read about that? Luckily this book is so much more than that.Popular is the memoir, yes I said memoir, of then-13-year-old Maya Van Wagenen, who finds a copy of Betty Cornell's Teen-Age Guide to Popularity from the 1950s in her father's study and decides to embark on a year-long social experiment where she follows the advice of Betty Cornell, teen model in the 1950s. This includes dramatically changing the way she walks, the way she dresses (the addition of a girdle!), experimenting with her hair and slowly drawing herself out of her shell to widen her circle of friends, something she never thought she would be able to do.Maya's voice is fresh and honest, and it is heartwarming to read her journey as she learns what is most important on her quest for popularity. Her whole world opens up in an entirely different way when she steps out of her comfort zone and not only does she learn about herself, she also learns about her classmates and that, social ranking or not, they are really all the same. I admire Maya's bravery and I enjoyed the writing, and I look forward to what she does next.A few quotes that stood out to me:I'd always thought they were mean and judgmental, but I guess I was the one judging before I really got to know them.Why is everyone so scared of one another? 
    • 3/5
      I liked Maya's style of writing and thought she was a pretty talented and ambitious young woman. I related with her story quite a lot. The part where she writes on the bathroom wall, "remember the girl in pearls" I thought was a little self-absorbed though. Sure she made outcasts feel more involved and worked hard at getting to know all kinds of people and that is definitely brave. It's just her friend wrote, "So and So BFFE" and she writes, "Remember ME"…it kind of put me off. I feel bad though, Maya is young and I know she didn't mean it like that and I am possibly thinking out of line but still. The things Maya did do was ambitious and inspiring and I thought it was very neat that a 13 year old would be thinking of a writing career already. Her relationship with her writing teacher was also very special and I really liked her family dynamic. I was definitely not as brave as her when I was 13! All in all it was an entertaining read and I look forward to reading more from Ms. Van Wagenen