Dibbly awesome outfits...

To continue on the books of my youth post, one of the most influential was The Baby-Sitters Club. I bought each new book every month and every single super special and spin-off for about 6 years.

These books made me want to be a baby-sitter and wear the crazy outfits that Claudia wore and be as cool as Stacey. However, now looking back, I can see how ludicrous some of those plots are and how silly the narration was.

But still... I loved re-reading them and I was sad when I donated all my old books to Zoe for her to enjoy. However, I am glad they get a 2nd home.

When we were in SF last winter, I found these awesome BSC comics! They were awesome and they follow word-by-word the dialogue and draw everything exactly as Ann M. Martin described.

I also found these hysterical blogs...

For awesome recaps of all the crazy outfits Claudia wore - what claudia wore

For snarky reviews of BSC books (and their companion series) - BSC Headquarters

I stayed up way too late reading both of them and remembering Claudia's outfits and the random storylines. The clothing descriptions were some of the best parts of the series!

Re-reviewing the books of my youth

I love to read. I read all sorts of books - chick lit, classics, sci fi, mysteries, everything.

As a kid I was even a junior volunteer at the library every summer from when I was 8 to 13 and I would help out once a week, with stamping more due date cards to sorting books to shelving books in the children's section.

The shelving task often took me the longest 'cause I'd get distracted by the books and start reading them while shelving. I used to read while in the bathtub and under the covers with a flashlight.

Now that our younger cousins are of the YT/YA age, Steve and I spent several holidays getting them our favorite books of our youth. I don't know how much they liked getting books every Christmas, but we loved buying them for them.

I love reading Jezebel everyday (their tagline is "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion. Without Airbrushing."), but my favorite feature they have every Friday is Fine Lines. It's a weekly review of books from our youth, so lots of Lois Duncan, Cynthia Voight, Katherine Patterson, etc.

I love how she quote sections of the books that stuck with her and caused her to think about life in a different way. It's such a nice rehash of our youth. I'm glad to see I've read about half to two-thirds of those books that have been reviewed.

What's great about these reviews is that they aren't negative, they're wonderfully nostalgic. They talk about why those books resonated with the young teen in us and why we remember them so vividly.