I am NOT too old for this

I spent the weekend in a frenzy of nostalgia, rereading some YA novels I picked up at the library. I just grabbed a few by some familiar authors and sped through 5 books in two days. They were:

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? by Paula Danziger

Both were published in the mid ‘70s and chronicled the adventures of a young teenage girl growing up in a dysfunctional family. The fathers in the books are pissed when the girls start learning New Ideas and their mothers support them. They see it as an affront to their masculinity and position in the family, which was an already outdated mindset when I first read these books in the early ‘80s. Or maybe my family was extremely progressive in this respect and I didn’t know any differently. My parents did always tell me that I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up. Because I was a stubborn and contrary child, I told them I wanted to be a daddy.

Gallows Hill, The Twisted Window and They Never Came Home by Lois Duncan

Lois Duncan’s stuff is preteen horror/thriller starring some kickass girls. Gallows Hill is my favorite of these three, but They Never Came Home was published in 1969 and refers to marijuana as “happy grass,” so you can see how I’m torn. Anyway, Duncan is totally the gateway author to Christopher Pike and RL Stine (Fear Street, not Goosebumps. Screw Goosebumps.). Pretty soon you’re reading Stephen King and Clive Barker when you’re ten and scarring yourself for life. Seriously, King is, well, the king of traumatizing sex scenes. Am I the only one disturbed by That Part in It? You know, toward the end? They did not include that in the movie.