Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

So how big of a nerd am I? Pretty big, my teenage friends. Pretty damn big (well, maybe not this big). So big that when my brand spanking new copies of the revised-and-updated-for-the- ipod-generation Sweet Valley High volumes 1 & 2 came from the publisher (yeah, sometimes it’s kinda cool being an unpaid teen book blogger—you do get some freebies), the first thing I did was run right over to my living room bookshelf and pull down my copies of the original versions, circa 1983 to compare. Yes, dear readers, I am the proud owner of the first 100 original SVH paperbacks, collected through the years from friends and second hand bookstores. When I was in 7th grade, my best friend Amy H. had the whole series sitting pretty on her white painted bookshelf in her huge canopied bed-bedroom, and to exorcise my adolescent envy of that unbroken line of perfect paperbacks (Amy was VERY neat), I was determined to hunt down my own set. Were they completely unrealistic and unapologetically soap opera-ish? Absolutely, but there was just something so reassuring about those perfectly turned out teenage sisters, their wholesome school and agreeable family—Elizabeth was good and Jessica was bad, and you could take that to the bank. Plus, you have to remember, this was 1983. YA literature was in a rut. There weren’t a million and one chick lit series to choose from like there are now. It felt like me and my friends graduated right from Beverly Cleary to Danielle Steel and V.C. Andrews. So, what’s the verdict on the new girls? Well, from just a casual perusal, SVH appears to be just as cheesy and squeaky clean as I remember. Now sixteen year old California twins Jessica and Elizabeth have cell phones, drive a red Jeep Wrangler instead of a Fiat, and Elizabeth maintains a blog as well as writing for SVH’s website. But Elizabeth is still pining for captain of the basketball team Todd Wilkins, and Jessica is still chasing anything in pants. Of course, nothing too sexy ever happens in Sweet Valley. In Double Love, when Jessica accidentally gets in over her pretty little head with SVH dropout Rick Andover, a notorious playa, the cops conveniently show up before Jessica’s virtue is threatened. I know, too tame for you, right? But if your little sister keeps stealing your Gossip Girl books and she’s already read all of the Clique, throw these shiny new paperbacks her way. They oughta hold her—at least until the next Clique comes out. And who knows? Maybe she’ll grow to love good old Jessica, Elizabeth, Enid, Todd, Bruce, and the rest of SVH gang as much as me and my Gen-X compatriots did. Now that you’ve traveled down nostalgia lane with me, I’d love it if you would post YOUR memories of your fav series from when you were a kid.

High school sophomore Frankie’s tired of being her blustery dad’s baby bunny and playing sweet lil’ sib to her cool big sis Zada. She’s given the opportunity to prove that she’s more than just a pretty face and a smokin’ pair of legs when she discovers the existence of a boys-only secret society at her older-than-Moses private school. A secret society that her v. popular, v. cute upperclass boyfriend Matthew just happens to be a member of. But Matthew doesn’t know that she knows he belongs to it, and the longer Frankie waits for him to tell her, the more she begins to doubt his feelings for her—if he likes her so much, then why doesn’t he trust her with his deepest, darkest secret? Meanwhile, she’s decided to teach Matthew & crew a little lesson by secretly infiltrating their “Loyal Order of the Bassett Hounds” via email and pretending to be head ‘dawg’ Alessandro “Alpha” Tesorieri, Matthew’s best friend. Alpha’s too embarrassed to admit to the rest of the hounds that he’s not the one perpetrating the amazing pranks that are growing from Frankie’s fertile mind, and also pretty pissed that he can’t figure out who the mystery prankster is. So, who will crack first–Alpha, Frankie, or Matthew? And what will the fallout be when one of them decides to come clean? This rollicking good read, which breaks the mold on the so-called “chick lit.” genre with its crackerjack plot and refreshingly smart heroine, references all sorts of interesting trivial doodads you’re gonna wanna look up, like panopticons, P.G. Wodehouse, and “neglected positives.” It’s also by the ever-inventive E. Lockhart, who just gets better with each book. This one will easily make my top ten of the year, if not one of my favorites of ALL TIME, so go out and get it already, will ya? And don’t blame me if it’s already sold out!

Whatever you do, don’t call them “vampires.” Why, they’re nothing like those cartoon-ish pasty-faced blood-suckers who hiss and turn into bats. Cole and his crew may be immortal and allergic to sunlight, but that’s about all they share in common with the murderous undead who haunt every strip mall multiplex screen. Instead, they call themselves “hemovores,” blood-eaters who got that way from a “smart virus” that rewired their systems to crave hemoglobin instead of hamburgers. Quiet and subtle, hemovores revere the humans they feed on, realizing that they would soon die without their life-giving blood. Now Cole, who after centuries still hasn’t fully adjusted to the hemovore life himself, must teach newly turned Gordon how to get around after dark. The best place to do that is the open road, where a new town every night guarantees that no one notices if a feed goes wrong. Except Gordon’s not exactly the most cooperative student. And, despite the decades under his belt, Cole is hardly a patient teacher. So when these two take a road trip together along with Cole’s wise-cracking friend Sandor, nothing goes as planned, and before long these hemovores are on the run—from each other. A moody and broody look at what it means to live (and drive) forever, this is the perfect choice for that next long car trip with your parents that feels ENDLESS. Pulling up to a library or bookstore near you May 2008.

Twenty-two year old scullery maid Anne Green is NOT having a very good day. First, she was hung by the neck after being found guilty of a crime she didn’t commit. Then, she wakes up in total darkness, not being able to move or speak, and realizes that instead of standing at the pearly gates, she is actually STILL ALIVE IN HER COFFIN! Worse yet, just on the other side of the rough wooden planks, doctors are deciding which of her lovely limbs they’re going to carve up first in the name of science. See, Anne’s body has been requested for dissection by the good physicians of Oxford University, and her parents are too poor to demand it back. So unless Anne finds her voice, and soon, she’s going to go all to pieces—literally! Based on the true story of a young woman in 1650 England who survived the hangman’s noose, this enormously hip historical fiction by Brit author Mary Hooper is written in chapters that alternate between Anne’s increasingly anxious voice as she recounts the events that led to her almost-end, and the room outside her coffin, where a young medical student begins to notice signs of life in Anne’s ice-cold corpse. Utterly-un-put-down-able, you will find yourself frantically reading ahead to see if Anne lived through the noose just to fall prey to the doctors’ scalpels. If you’ll pardon the pun, it’s a ripping good read!