now, tastes more like real life

I really admire the determination that this girl has... She is reading all 160 or so Babysitters' Club books over again. (Or some for the first time I imagine.) On one hand I'm like... you've been doing this since 2005! You have read nothing else for two and a half years! On the other hand, I'm like... you are AWESOME and I want to be friends with you. The excerpts she pulls out describing the "cool" outfits that Stacy and Claudia wear are pretty much to die for:

• Stacey dresses up to pick Laine up at the airport train station [Oops. Thanks for the correction...I think I've been in the Midwest too long]: "a purple shirtwaist top over flowered leggings, my cowboy boots...a purple hair ornament made from shoelaces, and long dangly silver earrings." [Sounds like the outfit on the cover of Mary Anne's Makeover. Wild!]


• But Laine out-fashions her: "She was hard to miss, considering she was wearing a jean coat with a fur collar (I sincerely hoped the fur was fake), black capri pants edged with lace, very chic black ankle boots, and on her head, a brilliant red oversized beret." [There are a lot of outfits in this book! Fuckin' sweet!]

One of the most tragic days of recent memory was when I went to the library to reread some old BSC books and found that they were gone. I'm sure Patty, the children's librarian at the Whittwood Branch Library, couldn't wait until that series was finished and she could sneak them out into the dumpster, but I really, really wanted to re-read book #4 where Mary Anne ends up babysitting the girl who gets a crazy fever, and she has to be independent and grow into herself.

(Side note: I feel about Mary Anne cutting her hair in later books the way the rest of America felt about Felicity. It just wasn't the same anymore for me once she had that awful bowl cut look.)

(Second side note: I actually REMEMBERED accurately without checking Amazon that my favorite book was #4. I shit you not.)

The Baby-sitters Club was truly awful. Each book started with a full on chapter describing each character in massive detail in the worst tell-not-show way. But it has such a firm place in every woman's memory if they are under the age of like 28. (See also: The Baby-sitters' Little Sister, Sweet Valley Twins - NOT High, that was for sluts - and Sweet Valley Kids.) When I was in the Columbia Publishing Course we met Ann M. Martin's editor and as soon as we found out she was responsible for the series, we pounced on her and all told her who was our favorite and how we remembered X and Y about the books. My clearest memory is when Janine, Claudia's bossy smart older sister, comes up to their room and critiques their spelling/punctuation of Baby-sitters. She debates whether or not they need an apostrophe at the end of "Baby-sitters." At another point she criticizes someone for saying "Hopefully" instead of "It is to be hoped." These are, swear to God, my clearest memories of the books apart from Book #4 and vague memories of a haunted house involving Dawn (the hippie blonde California vegetarian girl) and the one where Mary Anne gets a boyfriend (Logan, he was a hottie).

I think I've got a problem. I really, really want to re-read or at least buy some of these books. For posterity, you know?