OMG. The Sweet Valley High series is coming back. Updated for today's audience, including shrinking the twins from size 6 to size 4: [link]

I gotta say, clothing sizes have changed enough from the 1980s that a perfect size 6 from 1983 probably IS a current perfect size 4, if not a perfect size 2. I am the same size in men's Levis that I wore in high school in the late 1980s, but have gone from a women's 10-sometimes-an-8 to a solid 6.

So help me god, I want to read one or two of those...I never owned SVH as a kid--it was the sort of books we read at a relative's house.

Yeah, I thought those books sucked when I was the target audience -- my best friend read them all, and I tried one or two and went back to my Agatha Christie.

I missed the SVH fad - it was well after my time.

Susan, I thought about you a little while ago - I was watching a telenovela and they introduced an English character going by "Sir John Lancaster" and the people (in what was then Nueva Espana) kept referring to him as "Sir Lancaster" ... I kept thinking of how it would probably drive you crazy.

I "auditioned" to write for one of the SVH lines once, years ago. And then the chick who was my contact quit and moved on, and I got lost in the shuffle. I had never actually read them either.

Susan, I thought about you a little while ago - I was watching a telenovela and they introduced an English character going by "Sir John Lancaster" and the people (in what was then Nueva Espana) kept referring to him as "Sir Lancaster" ... I kept thinking of how it would probably drive you crazy.

Oh, definitely!

Incidentally, I may have finally found a satisfactory page turner--I'm three chapters along in Conn Iggulden's GENGHIS: BIRTH OF AN EMPIRE, and so far it's well-written, albeit testosteroney, even for me. Ah, well. Jo Beverley has a new release coming out, so I know I'll get to read a good romance soon.

She was a poor relation governess to her cousin's spoiled brat child but made him a model child within days. The hero was a good 15 years older than her, with prematurely steel-gray hair and slate-gray eyes, and he was all crusty and masterly until won over by her spunky good nature.

Hey! Which one is it? And which publisher?

A friend of mine recently got into romances.

As I haven't read one in... years, now, I packed up ten bags of them and delivered them to her doorstep.

Hey! Which one is it? And which publisher?

A very old Signet called THE SERGEANT MAJOR'S DAUGHTER. I think the author was Sheila Walsh.

I am 99.99% certain I have read it. (First, because it sounds familiar; second, because in my early teens, I loved Sheila Walsh. I'm not sure why, now.)