Being at my parents’ house has always come with the added bonus of finding one of my old Sweet Valley High books somewhere (if I wanted to brave the basement I would probably go down there and unearth the whole collection) and getting to read it for probably the twentieth time. Yes, I am 32 years old and have long outgrown the sugar-sweet lives of the Wakefield twins and the trials of their classmates–but the truth be known, I found Sweet Valley High utterly ridiculous even when I was the same age as the characters. Still, I bought every book up until I think around #70 (there were eventually 150+ books in the series) and it was too embarrassing to go into a bookstore and buy a Sweet Valley High book because I was getting too old. Now the question may be why was I reading this drivel if I thought it was drivel, even as a teenager with thoughts vastly lacking in intellect–and the answer is simply that I loved the Sweet Valley universe in all its ludicrousness and especially every completely unbelievable, stereotyped character. It was hilarious! When I wanted serious I read serious–but when I wanted to lose myself lying out by the pool, let my brain go mushy and forget that I had a care in the world–well, I read Sweet Valley High. I couldn’t relate to the characters at all–every one of them was some form of imagined teen perfection even in their imperfection (i.e., naturally the rich kids were asshole snobs and the poor kids had unappreciated talents and hearts of gold), but I did adore laughing at how totally lame, trite and scripted it all was. So I still love reading my old Sweet Valley High books for all the reasons I loved reading them 15-20 years ago–they are still every bit as silly and unrealistic as they always were, and that makes me laugh.