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1.
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Gladiators.
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2.
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Pi Beta Alpha was THE sorority (Jess became president),
and Phi Epsilon THE fraternity. (What high school had
sororities and fraternities? How could these ones be
THE ones on campus if there weren’t any others…
at least none others that We-the-Readers ever hear about?)
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3.
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Guido’s.
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4.
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Lisette’s.
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5.
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The hot, rich son of the new family who moved to SVH;
his father had made a fortune in computers, his mother
was a former model, and his sister, Regina, was deaf.
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6.
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The blond and handsome football quarterback.
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7.
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The hot, blonde, wild chick who was the lead singer
for the local band The Droids.
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8.
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Root beer.
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9.
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Thirty-seven. As in “I’ve told her four hundred
and thirty-seven times” or “I’m in two
hundred and thirty-seven kinds of trouble.”
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10.
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Gold lavalieres that the twins’ parents bought
them for their sixteenth birthday.
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I’ll admit it… I was addicted to Sweet Valley High.
I was already a Sweet Dreams-guzzling bookworm in seventh
grade, so when a friend had a copy of the SVH #2, Secrets
, with her in Choir class, I devoured it before the end of
the day. She lent me SVH #3 and #4 before I made the pilgrimage
to the local mall’s B. Dalton for copies of my own…
as well as the just-released #5. From that spring day in 1983,
for the next TEN YEARS, I made that monthly trip to the bookstore
(they came out for the first few years on the 15th
of every month, remember?) to spend my $1.25 (then $1.75…
and then $2.25… $2.75, and so on…) and find out
the latest in Sweet Valley. Even when I was in high school,
and kept my stash of paperbacks hidden in boxes under my bed,
and would have DIED if anyone had suspected I read them, I
still haunted the bookstore on Release Day and went home immediately
to draw a hot bath and suck down the latest eye-rollingly
appalling SVH installment in under an hour.
Oh my…. |
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By the early- to mid-1990s, I was working at The Bookstore
and I could get my copies for free, thanks to the stripping-of-monthly-paperback-inventory
practices. Heck, I could even use the store’s computer
to find out titles THREE MONTHS IN ADVANCE. Yeah, well into
my 20s, I was still reading SVH paperbacks. Imagine my excitement
when I got the advanced releases of the new Sweet Valley University
books.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t LIKE the SVH books.
I HATED them. I LOVED hating them! From the start, I loved
hating them! In fact, near the end of eighth grade, after
getting pissed at the latest Unrealities in Wakefieldland,
I said to myself “Even *I* could write better than that!”…
and thus began my own fiction-writing.
But I still couldn’t stop reading those dumb books.
I mean, I had to find out what stupid thing would happen next!
I often wondered how and when the series would finally end,
and once outlined a kind of “special edition” (before
any of the Special Editions had been published) called “Class
Reunion” that would see what happened to everyone five
years later. My mind was like a steel trap with Sweet Valley
Lore, and I bristled at every inconsistency (like in one book
Todd mentions his sister, in another his brother, and then
ultimately, he’s an only child. Or even with Jessica
herself… at first she’s evil and manipulative and
“bad”… then she’s not mean so much as
she is immature… then she’s really nice deep down
but pretty flighty and boy-crazy… then she’s downright
snobbish and conceited again. GET IT STRAIGHT!)… even
when I hated myself for noticing and caring. Ashamed, I tuned
in once when the SVH TV series started airing… but even
I couldn’t stomach that one! We ordered the SVH soundtrack
tape at the Bookstore, though, and laughed ourselves silly
over “Lotion (Jessica’s Theme)” Huh? Not to
mention “Walk right down any crowded hallway, you’ll
see there’s a beauty standing/Is she really everywhere
or A REFLECTION!?” *HOWL!*
Some years back, I finally decided to accept my Dorkiness
whole-heartedly instead of hiding my light under a bushel.
Barbies. Little House on the Prairie. Legos. Mrtha Stywrrt.
And yeah, my collection of Teen Poo books. With the whole-hearted
inclusion of CLOSE TO TWO HUNDRED assorted Sweet Valley paperbacks.
They’re all on display in the Playroom, and I’ve
noticed that more than one visitor gushes in embarrassed glee
“Ohmigawd, I read those too! Do you remember ____?”
Around SVH #115, I kinda fell out of the habit. I was busy
with school, for one thing. Mostly I just got sick of the
near-death experiences, the tragic love triangles, the schemes,
the hijinx, the incestuous inter-group hook-ups, the pathetic
treatment of “issues.” And, of course, HOW MANY
TIMES CAN TODD AND ELIZABETH BREAK UP AND GET BACK TOGETHER?!
Ahem. So, anyway, there’s some “new” SVH stuff
that’s escaped me. For example, I don’t know and
don’t care who Devon Whitelaw is. I don’t know when
Maria, the PC African-American character and former child
actress, showed up at Sweet Valley. I skipped most of the
“Sagas” after the Wakefield ones.
But I’m getting off-track….
Recently, I looked up “Sweet Valley High” at Google
on a whim… and discovered there’s hardly anything
out there about it. The occasional TV show fan-page, but not
much else. Heck, even the Sweet
Valley High website is deader’n Dwanollah.com’s
been of late! So why not Blather about it and give those kids
from Sweet Valley the attention they deserve?
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