I mean, there’s the novelty of HBO and Cinemax, Leonardo DiCaprio being way passe, Doc Martens, and Mia’s devotion to Greenpeace. So Mia, and the novel in general, are utter products of the nineties. I think this is extremely true, and it’s especially true for 2000, since 9/11 neatly severed the aughts in two the next year. I’m in the middle of watching a brief documentary on eighties fashion, and in it, the talking heads argue that the first year of a decade is basically the culmination of the previous decade. Mia, of course, doesn’t find Grandmere cool at all, although she begrudgingly respects her at points. This is a woman who has a signature drink. Perhaps it’s because I want to be the kind of old woman who can get away with the stuff Grandmere can get away with, but I love her she’d be hell to live with, of course, but this is a woman who will rip up your homework if she doesn’t like it, beats up creeps on the street, and teaches her dog manners. Think Miranda Priestley (speaking of Hathaway), but French and tenured. The image of The Princess Diaries that pervades pop culture, or at least the ocean of pop culture in my head, involves San Francisco and Julie Andrews, so it’s a bit of a shock to return to the first book and realize that not only is it set in New York, but Grandmere is definitely not Julie Andrews. How can Mia survive her first year of high school while learning to be a princess from her formidable Grandmere? But leave it to Mia’s dad to add one more: since he’s the prince of Genovia and can’t have any more children, Mia is the only heir to the Genovian throne. Despite her determination to do high school right (shared by her best friend Lilly Moscovitz), there’s already a couple strikes against her: her height, her hair, and the fact that her mom is dating her Algebra teacher. The Princess Diaries follows Mia Thermopolis, a fourteen-year-old living in Greenwich Village with her painter mother at the turn of the millennium. My allegiances! They are being tested!) In any case, I did have and read the first one or two books in the series, but they didn’t make much of an impact, which made it a perfect candidate for an audiobook for me. (In researching this post, I just learned that Liv Tyler was up for the role of Mia. I liked it, as it involved Julie Andrews, San Francisco (I spent a lot of my single-digit years a few towns down), and Anne Hathaway, who, although I did not know it, was probably a factor in my thing for tall dark femmes.

It was one of those live-action Disney movies that peppered my childhood, since grasping the concept of network television would take another five years. The Princess Diaries movie came out when I was ten, and I remember watching it.

The princess diaries book 1 audiobook