I liked it.

Presents a very one-sided negative view of religion, both in the depiction of the Bible-thumping, witch-hunting fundamentalists and in the overblown and misleading historical account of the Church's dealings with Galileo. The book appears to conflate these two into one big bunch of bad guys, with no balance.

this book was amazing it is a good book for girls!

#40RereadsBefore40 Book 10

E.L. Konigsburg was a talented writer with some very strange books to her name. I'm a big fan from the perspective of someone who appreciates good, clever writing, but as a kid I was bewildered, and as a parent, I am wary.

T-BACKS, T-SHIRTS, COAT AND SUIT was published in 1993 when I was in 5th or 6th grade. I owned a paperback copy back then, but when the public library in my hometown discarded the hardcover a few years ago, I snatched it up at their bookstore and now it's in in our home library.

The only thing I remembered about the book going into this re-read was the ending, which made it sort of an interesting reading experience. The story is about Chloe, who goes to stay with her aunt, Bernadette, who drives a food truck. Some of her rival food truck drivers start wearing revealing T-backs to work, but though Bernadette supports their right to wear what they please, she refuses to wear one herself for reasons she won't explain. (Her eventual explanation is what I remembered from reading this as a kid, and it was so memorable precisely because it was too subtle and I didn't understand it.)

The story explores questions surrounding the limits of free expression and the dangers of compelled speech, which is good, but there was a weird anti-religious undercurrent running through a lot of it, and I wished we could have explored this topic without glorifying immodest clothing.

I gave the book 4 stars for my own enjoyment of Konigsburg's writing, but I'm not going to be offering it to my kids anytime soon. Other Konigsburg titles, yes, but this one... we can hold off.

I didn't find E.L. Konigsburg until adulthood, and have since read nearly all her books. Her characters in her books are always funny and smart and figuring out something about the world or themselves. This book is no exception. It's on my book shelf as one to return to.

reread 9/10

I've had this since 6th grade and just now finished it. Eh.

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If you're going to read Konigsburg, I recommend Silent to the Bone or one of her Newbery list novels instead of this one. Maybe it was too subtle for me, but I found T-backs to be rather boring and pointless. The writing itself was good, and the plot had potential, but I was surprised when the book ended because it hadn't gotten anywhere yet.

Not nearly as great as Konigsburg's others but not a total waste of time.

Only read because I have fond memories of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and I needed a break from Nazi nonfiction, and I’m not above reading some children’s literature, but…man, was this a weird book.

this was a strange one.

"Chloe read smiles the way some people read tea leaves or tarot cards. The most important thing she watched for was how it grew. Slow and twitchy were the two basic styles. Female salesclerks and office receptionists had twitchy smiles for twelve-year-old females. Dental hygienists, wonderful slow smiles; fast-food waiters, twitchy; actors playing fast-food waiters on TV, slow. Anchorpersons, two basic smiles: twitchy-twitchy when they were talking to each other and slow-twitchy when they were delivering animal stories." "Twitchy" is just such a great way to describe disingenuous smiles. The actor distinction and hyphenated anchorperson descriptions are just so funny because they are so apt.

"Chloe thought she would drown in her own sweat. It poured from her brow, from under her arms and belt, and from behind her knees. Tears blinded her eyes as she chopped the onions. Lot's wife was not as salty as she was. Neither was the Atlantic nor the Pacific. Between the sweat and the tears, she was being pickled in her very own brine." I know moments when I am saltier than Lot's wife and the ocean, but I have never thought of myself as pickled. Perhaps now I will - at least when I get back to the East Coast.

"The air was so humid that the backyard felt as if God had turned on a giant vaporizer for a world full of asthma sufferers. Everything was plumped out. Leaves that looked ordinary in Ridgewood looked as if they had silicone implants here." Oh, Florida. Land of both succulent plants and succulent silicone.

"Zack and Wanda, Tyler and Velma had not been company. They had been an invasion." Whew. I have had a few dinner party invasions myself. They most certainly are not company, but their armory is usually not tangible.

"Friday: Lionel, the one male driver-server on Talleyrand, showed up in a T-back. Lionel said, 'Equal's equal, and fair's fair.' The women shoved folded paper money into the strap of Lionel's T-back, and didn't ask for change. Chloe noticed that the men were not shoving dollar bills into the straps of the women's T-backs. She thought, if equal were really equal, they would." This exemplifies Konigsburg's subtle social insights. Why is one so much more socially acceptable than the other?