I'm intrigued - I'll look into it.

The best boarding school book from recent years is actually John Green's "Looking for Alaska" which won the Printz Award for best young Adult book. Despite being marketed as "young adult," I've yet to give it to an an adult who was anything less than enthralled.

What is it about boarding school that makes any novel set there get special attention by book reviewers? Is a novel set in public school, just not glamorous enough to be considered a possible literary sensation? While Jodi Picoult may not be considered a literary writer, if she set "Nineteen Minutes" at a prep school, would it have been taken more seriously by critics?

I'm starting to wonder that the interest paid to my second book query, after the first was unsuccessful, was not so much due to the quality of my writing but the fact that the protagonist goes to boarding school, rather than mundane public schol as happened in my first. Probably not, but I can't help but wonder.

How can I be this intrigued with Headmaster? I've read far too many coming-of-age and/or boarding-school novels recently. I didn't set out to, but they're everywhere. In the last few months I've read five. FIVE.

• A Harry Potter (didn't enjoy the clunky writing).
• Catcher in the Rye (its "classic" status must be due to its shock value in the 1950s; it's sure not because of quality storytelling).
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics (clever and enjoyable, but more cerebral than gripping).
• The Wonder Spot (painfully dull, like the proverbial blunt object).
• Prep (well written but so very predictable... or is that because it was number FIVE?)

Yet you've almost convinced me that Headmaster is "different" enough to give it a try.

I think it's akin to being addicted to English "cozy" mysteries. Or Upstairs/Downstairs. The closed setting, the built-in growth in the young characters, the hierarchies that partially break down through intimacy.... I'm making excuses again. OK. OK. I hereby admit my powerlessness to resist the bildungsroman. My only hope is that it'll take the library a year to get it. Meanwhile I could read... A Separate Peace, maybe.