Looking back as a reader

I’ve been an avid, and flexible reader for as long as I can remember. Books were always my approved escape method, and before my mom died television was for Saturday morning cartoons and when I was sick, not every day. I would always read almost every thing (except in those few years between child and teen, when I swore to never grow up and read boring stuffy grown-up books when I could keep finding fabulous ones in the kid’s sections.)

The amusing rant from Justine Musk on her original take of the Sweet Valley High books (and the decision to update and re-release them) has got me thinking a lot about the books I cut my teeth on, why I liked them, and how I might react differently to them now. I never read the Sweet Valley High books, thought I had a SVH theme “journal” that was less journal and more fill in the blanks SVH trivia. But it had a magnetic flap that held it in place in a time where all the other journals had those silly little breakable locks.

I did, however fall for a few other popular series, namely the Babysitter’s Club by Ann M. Martin, and the horse inspired (did I ever mention I was horse crazy?) Saddle Club series by Bonnie Bryant and the Thoroughbred series by Joanna Campbell. The later was a favorite for longer, because the characters were typically teens and it dealt with more adult themes (like dating, and even the death of some of the characters.) I don’t know why, to this day, I was so drawn to The Babysitter’s Club books, because I wasn’t a baby sitter, and didn’t really want to be. But in reflection I’m also pretty happy with that series on an intellectual level because two of the seven or so character were non-white, and it commonly dealt with issues like divorce, remarriage, family safety and even job loss (for adults). I guess there the draw was that there were a lot of real-life issues (like one of the characters being a diabetic) that snuck in.

The Saddle Club books also features a black main character, the most horse savvy girl in the club was Carole, an Army brat. This series is laced with horse-facts and, as a girl with no actual experience riding, but big dreams that involved my own horse, I gobbled it, and any other horse-themed book I could find, up like candy. I got a good twenty or so books in before I out aged the main characters and started looking for something a little more mature (and something a little longer for my money).

That’s around the time the Thoroughbred series came out. It started with a girl my age at the time, who wasn’t perfect, but was stubborn and determined and hard working. This is also around the time I started figuring out that wishing wasn’t going to make things happen for me, and that teenage-dom was going to be a shake up. I read a good ten or so books in, then two things happened, I got tired of the main character switching all the time (I fell in love with the books over Ashleigh and identified with her, not the others, who were nice, but a new main character every 4-5 books wore on me) and also I started working at a real life barn, which was nothing at all like the racing  barn in the Thoroughbred series. In fact through my high school life I learned a lot about the horse world, even getting a job offer at Churchhill Downs late in my high school life, and I’d pretty much figured out at that point that I’d never have the money or drive to ride to compete, and I was tried of taking care of other people’s horses for them. (Ironically now I would love to take care of other people’s horses for them, because I suspect that kind of work is the only easy I’ll get to enjoy working with horses again.) It was a really adult decision for me at the time, and likewise, pretty hard, sort of like I was giving up on a dream.

In all that time where I was learning what it would take to live my biggest dream (at that time) the horse books stopped being escapsim for me, so I looked for something else. I’ve always had a real weakness for paranormal and it used to be that the only place you could find paranormal stories was in fantasy or horror. I guess it’s no surprise then, that I read a lot of both. I never liked the R.L. Stine books. They always went for that cheesy last twist and I largely found the books shallow. But I found plenty of other interesting books that flirted with the dark and scary for teens. Anyone who says Twilight is an original never read LJ Smith’s Vampire Diaries books. I was a big fan back in the day, and read all her books, from the Vampire Diaries, to The Secret Circle (about a potentially murderous coven of teen witches), Dark Visions (about modern psychics, like remote drawers, empaths and psychometrists), The Forbidden Game series (possibly one of her least popular, but it was about an elf, in the dangerous, Norse magic sense, who was stalking a human girl), and the Night World series (which mixed shifters, witches and vampires). Sadly the Night World series was post poned, with I think 4 books remaining to be completed and the author vanished into obscurity.

Other authors should take note though, LJ Smith fans were so devoted and didn’t for get her or her books. The used books trade for her books when they went out of print was insane. At one point I found the Vampire Diaries books on ebay for $50. Then, a few years ago Smith resurfaced. With the teen horror market in a different place than it was before (and her fan base still wondering what happened to those Night World Wild Powers) Smith’s books were re-edited, re-released and the Vampire Diaries sold to CW and is now a fairly popular show. I’m glad that the smith story has a happy ending, and that both the fans and authors survived those missing years.

In the same time period I read a lot. My teen years were rough and I had a book-a-day habit. I went through a vampire phase, which led me into some pretty strange places, like the Vampire Twins series, about, well, a pair of twins who discover they were genetically prone to being vampires and have to face their dark sides (in the form of their not-pleasant vampire father). As well as Caroline B. Cooney’s vampire trilogy (The Cheerleader, Return of the Vampire and The Vampire’s Promise), which is about a vampire who works out a deal with the teen girls that live in the house he haunts, to drain their classmates and give their skills and abilities to the teen girl. So the girl invariably want to be talented, popular, smart, etc and trade in their classmates to the vampire for these things. These two series showed me about the different interpretations of vampires and opened me up to other things as well, namely trying out adult books.

I remember another vampire-themed horror book that got a ton of rereads from me, about a teen girl who goes to live with her uncle who operates a creepy wax museum and lives in an apartment over it. The teen discovers the town is being plagues by a vampire killer, who it turns out is one of the teens that hangs out at the wax museum and thinks he’s becoming a real vampire. It wasn’t actually a supernatural book, but I remember it was the first place I ever hear the term deadpan being used, and I found it pretty gruesome at the time. (I cannot remember the title of the book, or the author, but I remember it had a green spine and I think there were fang marks on the cover, made by lipstick like the killer in the book was leaving on his victims.)

The thirst for more vampire books pushed me into picking up other books, like Ann Rice’s vampire series (then her Witching Hour series because I’d liked the vampire series), Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde series, SP Somtow’s Vampire Junction (and later Moon Dance, which still blows me away every time I reread it), Poppy Z. Brite’s books and eventually Laurell K Hamilton’s books (thought the vampire burn was fading then, and I was happy to see she had more than just vampires in her world).

Despite the vampire craze I had a side-love for a rather obscure teen fantasy series, The Secret of the Unicorn Queen. It mixed science and magic (and unicorns!) in way I hadn’t seen before and as a budding writer I was fascinated that it appeared to have been written by a writing group sharing the world setting and characters and doing it rather well. It also gave me a break from all the adult setting and themes (but not like adult, adult, because I was a junior in high school before I ever picked up the Anita Blake books and I’d dropped out of college and had my first child before those books devolved to where they are today.)

But the biggest influence to my reading habits, and the one that still means the most to me is Christopher Pike. With a few exceptions I sucked his books up like chocolate shakes. Pike is often compared to Stine, but they were always different. For one Pike didn’t stick to horror. The Eternal Enemy, for example deals with androids and time travel, and The Starlight Crystal is also a dark SF book. Stine had stalkers and killers, but Pike had reincarnated goddesses, witches on rampages, and then there was The Midnight Club, still one of the most heart breaking books I’ve ever read, about a group of terminally ill kids living in a hospice together who gather at midnight and tell each other stories. Cliche, maybe, but anything could, and did happen in Pike’s books so it was rather wild.

I read Pike… well I still read Pike, though most of my collection was lost in a move years ago. Some of his books are being reissued as well, though it looks like my favorites aren’t among them.

So what books meant a lot to you as a kid/teen and how did your reading tastes evolve?

ETA: It bugged me so much I had to look it up and I found the vampire/wax museum book I was looking for. It’s Vampire by Richie Tankersley Cusick.