Review: The Vampire Diaries

So.
So.....

So since I'm waiting for the new Twilight movie to come out, and I've seen the first season of True Blood, I decided that to get my vampire fix I would migrate over to the CW, that is, the new show called The Vampire Diaries.

The show debuted a few weeks ago and I was hooked. After the first episode I realized it was based on a popular series of books. Matt was nice enough to go out and buy them for me as a birthday present.

There are four books. Each around 250 pages. And they are terrible. TERRABULLLL! And as I sit here typing this I'm still trying to figure out why, exactly. Now, the Twilight books are no Cormac McCarthy or Toni Morrison either, but they are still monumentally entertaining. Shoot, they aren't even on the same level as Harry Potter, which by the way, I just finished Goblet of Fire, and have to say those books are just wonderful. Wonderfully imagined and wonderfully written.

Despite the awfulness of these books, or maybe because of it, they are fairly quick reads. I then look at the copyright date. 1991. In 1991, I was 14? going on 15? I don't remember. I was definitely in high school, and definitely the target market audience for these books, though I never had heard of them at the time.

We didn't hear about anything in 1991. No Internet. No Google. No cell phones. No nothing. I only heard about what I saw on TV (not much) or from my friends and relatives (even less). Bubble city, baby.

It makes me wonder if, had I read these books at that age, would I have loved them? Or thought them complete drivel? Hard to say. I do know for a fact that even if I HAD heard of them, I would of had to check them out at the library; there would be no way on earth that my mom would have bought books like that for me when I was 14. Which is funny, because there is nothing salacious in them, just very, very mild innuendo.

What is even funnier, is that because at that age I had never been exposed to this thing called "Young Adult Literature", I went from reading books like Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables, directly to Stephen King, V.C. Andrews, and Sidney Sheldon.

Basically, I jumped from 12 to 21.

I still remember the conversation I had with my mom when she caught me reading If Tomorrow Comes, by Sidney Sheldon, which definitely had its share of dirty parts. I think I was 13 at the time.

"You shouldn't be reading that."
"Huh? Why?" (yeah, I knew why...)
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because THAT is NOT an APPROPRIATE book."
"It isn't?"
"It's trashy."
"Oh," I said, knowing this was coming. But I can't help myself from asking one last question...

"Then why do YOU have it?"

Ah, the pleasures of raising a smart-ass teenager. I can't wait.