Tonight’s work read was a book for teens that horrified me with how shallow it was. It made me fear for the souls of young readers until I reminded myself that I read the Sweet Valley High series up through something like number 60 and I turned out okay. I mean, I am looking forward to reading War and Peace so they must not have damaged me too badly. It used to drive my dad crazy to see me with those books, though. He called them “popcorn reading.” But I could not be stopped, not when it came to Elizabeth and Jessica and Lila Fowler and all the gang. Plus, the one where the girl dropped dead from doing cocaine once totally kept me off the drugs.
Bratz, on the other hand, are pure evil. I’d like to burn the Bratz factory down.
I think the mindless pulp that sustained me started with the Bobbsey Twins. Where Mom found those, I don’t know, and why she brought them home I still wonder. Well, mindless, family-safe, shallow but moral stories. About as well written as ‘See Dick run.’
After a couple of T. Lobsang Rampa’s ‘Saffron Robe’ and other Tibetan monk books, though, I got caught up in Doc Savage. And I read a bunch of those.
I think I read some Bobbsey Twins when I was younger, but they weren’t my favorite-
I stumbled over a Bobbsey Twins book again last spring. It was painful – the prose style reminded me of the turn-of-the-century books like ‘Battleship Boys’, only written for young people. Like parents should be reading these stories to their 4-7 year old children. Let’s see, there were Freddie and Flossie, the younger twins, and Bert and Nan, the older twins. Happy Hollisters books were more enjoyable to read, at least for me.