Jessica and Elizabeth = awesome:
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I was so excited every time I found a new book at the library that I hadn't read. Following along on the adventures of Jessica, Elizabeth, Todd, Enid, Lila, Bruce Patman...etc was fun. I knew at the time I was reading them that they were a bit silly and dramatic beyond words, but I liked them. I could suspend disbelief for a while. Plus they taught me things like to not do cocaine, date rape is bad, and that's it's totally reasonable to expect that you will fall passionately in love at least 15 times during high school.
I read these books longer than you might think. I'm not entirely sure when I stopped reading them, but it was definitely well into high school. I always knew they weren't exactly paragons of literature and hid my love of Sweet Valley books from my friends. I even did a book report on one in grade 6 and then pretended I thought the book was stupid when really I loved it. Oh me...
The book in question:
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Anyway, I had forgotten about them for a while, but this past summer my sister and I started reading them again and they are the most hilarious, ridiculous, bizarre books ever and I still love them, but in a different way. I love them partly because they remind me of my childhood, also just because they are so insane and crazy that it's hilarious. Jessica is clearly a sociopath, Elizabeth is annoying, and the story lines are INSANE.
Here's a pretty good example of the ridiculousness:
At prom Jessica is worried that Elizabeth (you know, her twin and best friend) will get to be prom queen so she spikes her sister's drink. Elizabeth then goes driving (because she is somehow unaware that she is super drunk) with Jessica's boyfriend, gets in an accident and kills Jessica's boyfriend. Jessica then blames Elizabeth for killing her boyfriend and proceeds to date Elizabeth's boyfriend in revenge, even though the boyfriend still likes Elizabeth. I think the story is resolved when an evil twin tries to kill Elizabeth.
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All is forgiven and the twins are still best friends. I have no clue how these two are possibly friends after all the stuff Jessica does.
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Apparently I'm not the only Sweet Valley fan out there and the books are slowly being updated for the Gossip Girl generation. I'm not really a fan of this in general because I think people should develop new ideas and not just remake old books. Recently I was browsing through one of the new books and was horrified to discover that the twins have shrunk! For those of you who don't know (although I be shocked if anyone who was not a Sweet Valley fan has gotten this far), pretty much every single book begins with the narrator announcing that Jessica and Elizabeth have matching gold lavalieres and perfect size six bodies. In the new books, they're now size fours, because I guess a size 6 is just way too big now and not perfect enough. What a great message to send to young girls.
Anyhow, while writing this post I've just discovered that a new Sweet Valley book is being published and it features the twins ten years later (they're probably perfect size 0s now).
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I'm so excited.
What are your favourite "embarrassing" books to read? Any other Sweet Valley fans out there?
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