first post

Posted by: fshk on: June 22, 2008

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I’ve been spending a lot of time re-living my tween years via books and music. For example, I recently came across Roxette’s greatest hits. Ah, yes. That’s right. When I was 11 or 12, I spent a week one summer learning a dance routine to “The Look” to be performed at the big Camp Show. I’m sure my fellow campers were wearing a lot of neon and sequins. It was that age. At the time, I had graduated from The Baby-Sitter’s Club and had moved on to Sweet Valley High, RL Stine, and Christpher Pike for my literary pursuits.

So there are a bunch of sites on the web dedicated to BSC and SVH and all those books I read when I was young and impressionable. I was thinking that I had a box of those old books just lying around, and it might be worth reading them again. I’ve learned from reading recaps in places like 1bruce1 that the books are not really like I remember them being. A lot more soapy and ridiculous. And, from the other side of puberty, I can say that they warped my expectations of what high school would be like.

And, you know, they’re of an age. The SVH books are getting reissued, but how can they be the same? They conformed to certain expectations, you know? I thought as a kid that when I got to high school, I’d have bleached-blonde feathered hair, because that’s what all my baby-sitters had, and that’s how I picture Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. (I had mostly straight brown hair as a 14-year-old. Very disappointing.)

Anyway, I digress. I was thinking about lugging out that old box of books, and then I thought, “Why stop there?” I love so much bad literature. Predictable thrillers, bodice-ripping historical fiction, category romance, even the occasional vampire novel: I eat that stuff for breakfast. So this blog is my labor of love to that end.

Yeah, we mock, but we love this stuff, too, enough to read it more than once and then sit here and ponder and analyze and explicate.

I hope you enjoy!