There was nothing better than daydreaming of a life in Stoneybrook, Connecticut with the girls of The Baby-Sitters Club, or wishing I had a twin sister to walk the halls of Sweet Valley High with. And, I’ll admit that while my nose was buried in the worn pages of girly tween books, the world was being introduced to a young wizard who was slowly taking the world by storm.
I’m embarrassed to admit that Harry Potter was more than a decade old before I became privy to his existence, and two decades old before I took the leap into the wizardly world of Hogwarts. Put your daggers down people, I finally joined the craze, but not before falling victim to a number of other books that sucked me in.
Grab a glass of wine, sit down, and let’s see if I can dig up some memories of the past as I work my way through some of my favorite books and series as a tween, teen, and adult. Aside from the aforementioned Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High, I often picked up one of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and eventually fell victim to the anonymously written Go Ask Alice which was a far cry from the books I’d been reading, and quite possibly the first book that made me yearn for more in the stories I so often devoured.
The good ‘ole days faded. I grew up, and went from tween to teen to young adult in the blink of an eye. Cell phones took the world by storm, Myspace was making its debut, and my reading tastes began to change. I don’t know exactly when the change occurred, and there may have been a small gap in time where I * Gasp * quit reading, but don’t worry, I picked the habit up again pretty quickly with the release of one popular book.
Twilight.