Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Author profile

born

The United States

gender

female

website

http://www.catherinemurdock.com

genre

Literature & Fiction, Young Adult

About this author

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I grew up in small-town Connecticut, on a tiny farm with honeybees, two adventurous goats, and a mess of Christmas trees. My sister claims we didn’t have a television, but we did, sometimes – only it was ancient, received exactly two channels, and had to be turned off after 45 minutes to cool down or else the screen would go all fuzzy. Watching (or rather, “watching”) Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was quite the experience, because it’s hard to tell a flock of vicious crows from a field of very active static; this might be why I still can’t stand horror movies, to this day.

My sister Liz, who is now a Very Famous Writer with a large stack of books, was my primary companion, even though she was extremely cautious – she wouldn’t even try to jump...more I grew up in small-town Connecticut, on a tiny farm with honeybees, two adventurous goats, and a mess of Christmas trees. My sister claims we didn’t have a television, but we did, sometimes – only it was ancient, received exactly two channels, and had to be turned off after 45 minutes to cool down or else the screen would go all fuzzy. Watching (or rather, “watching”) Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was quite the experience, because it’s hard to tell a flock of vicious crows from a field of very active static; this might be why I still can’t stand horror movies, to this day.

My sister Liz, who is now a Very Famous Writer with a large stack of books, was my primary companion, even though she was extremely cautious – she wouldn’t even try to jump off the garage roof, which involved crouching right at the edge for ten minutes working up your nerve, and then checking each time you landed to see if you’d broken anything – and she learned early on that losing at games was easier in the long run than putting up with me losing. Now, of course, she travels all over the world collecting stories and diseases, while I stay at home scowling over paint chips, and losing on purpose to my kids. So the cycle continues. (Read an New York Times article by Catherine and Liz.)

People sometimes ask if I played football in high school: no. I ran cross country and track, badly, but I have absolutely no skill whatsoever with ball or team sports. Plus my high school didn’t even have a football team. Instead, I was part of the art clique – taking extra art classes, spending my study halls and lunch periods working on my latest still life. (Please tell me this was not a unique experience.) I didn’t do much writing – my sister was the anointed writer – but I read my little eyeballs out. I was the queen of our library’s YA section.

In college I studied architectural history. The formal name was “Growth and Structure of Cities Program,” but for me, it was all about buildings. I’ve always been fascinated with the built environment – how spaces fit together, how streets work, how they read. And curiously (Warning: Life Lesson approaching), it’s paid off in the oddest ways. For example, several of us in our neighborhood recently got quite upset about a enormous building going in across the street, and while everyone agreed that they didn’t like the way it looked, I was the one who stood up at public meetings and used words like entablature and cornice line and fenestration – all this architectural jargon I’d learned back at Bryn Mawr – and sounded like I knew what I was talking about. And because of that, the building ended up getting redesigned, and – in my humble opinion – now will look much more attractive and appropriate, which is nice because I’ll be looking at it for the rest of my life. So don’t be afraid to study what you love, because you do not know now, and you may not know for twenty years, how amazingly it will pay off. But it will. (less)

combine editions
Books by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Average rating: 3.79 · 20,274 ratings · 3,381 reviews · 6 distinct works

	Dairy Queen (Dairy Queen, #1) 3.81 avg rating — 8,266 ratings — published 2006 — 15 editions	My rating:
	Princess Ben 3.66 avg rating — 5,450 ratings — published 2008 — 11 editions	My rating:
	The Off Season (Dairy Queen, #2) 3.93 avg rating — 3,765 ratings — published 2007 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Front and Center (Dairy Queen, #3) 3.98 avg rating — 2,327 ratings — published 2009 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Wisdom's Kiss 3.05 avg rating — 518 ratings — published 2011 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 3.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:

More books by Catherine Gilbert Murdock…

Series by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Dairy Queen (3 books)
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

3.87 avg rating — 14,347 ratings

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Quotes by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Dairy Queen

tags: relationships , talking

503 people liked it

“Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Princess Ben

tags: advice , happily-ever-after , humor , marriage

52 people liked it

“With that, I hurled the slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshaling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor - challenging indeed with one shoe - and around the corner. I lay awake for hours. The prince had no right, not one, to indict me so, and if I had held the slightest hope of the book's assistance, I would have climbed at once to my wizard room for a spell with which to punish him. Death, perhaps, or humiliation. A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian's dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Princess Ben

tags: humor

39 people liked it

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Polls

What randomly selected book would you like to read in June?

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

50 votes, 40.0%

StarCrossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce

16 votes, 12.8%

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

12 votes, 9.6%

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

12 votes, 9.6%

Madapple by Christina Meldrum

10 votes, 8.0%

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith Cynthia Leitich Smith

8 votes, 6.4%

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

8 votes, 6.4%

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

4 votes, 3.2%

No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman

3 votes, 2.4%

Fire from the Rock by Sharon M. Draper

2 votes, 1.6%

125 total votes

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