The Works of V.C. Andrews

[MrsOldManBalls]

The library called today to tell my 15 year old that the copy of FITA she placed on hold is now in. I think she ran all the way there to get it!
Poor kid, she doesn't stand a chance. She'll be hooked along with the rest of us.

[ladymadonna]

It's a rite of passage MrsOldManBalls. It's like going through your Pink Floyd phase or your American Pie phase.

She'll get hooked and read up until they started doing the stupid chapter book stuff, where the author made a book for each of the four girls and then brought them together as some sort of dysfunctional club. Then, she'll be ready for Kierkegaard.

[phenobarbara]

My Sweet Audrina was my favorite back in the day

Mine too. Our school library had one copy of it and I think I checked it out 100 times. Naturally, I'd skip right to the dirty parts. Good times.

[Ripley]

My Sweet Audrina is sitting on our library's book sale shelf right now. In hardcover. It's taking all of my will not to run out and shell out the dollar to buy it.

[Auroranorth]

The last time I got into a VC Andrews thread I felt compelled to reread the FitA series and, let me tell you, going up to the librarian and having to ask out loud for them to hold If There Be Thorns is humiliating and I'm not going through that again.

Batmom, if your library has an online catalog, you can place holds over the internet and be spared the Walk of Shame. Anyway, I was a public library librarian for a while and trust me, we’ve seen worse.

My Sweet Audrina was my favorite back in the day (I shudder to think that I once had a literary crush on Arden, damn I had bad taste in men), but every time I get the urge to re-read it, I just tell myself that some things are better left in the past. At the time, I totally understood Cathy, Ruby, Heaven, Dawn and Audrina. Now? I would probably be horrified at what I had been allowed to read.

Heh. My parents quit trying to censor my reading in junior high, and I, too, read some pretty dreadful stuff (Harlequins by the armload, Rosemary Rogers.) We all survive it, though.

I read the Doll series, but it was so confusing that what I took away was that everyone slept with everyone else and there was incest in every volume. I don't think my parents were aware of this, or these would never have made it through the door (I borrowed copies from a friend- I did guess that if my mom saw them on my shelf she'd freak.)

I never read the books, but I am amazed that in the past 30 years of school libraries being the center ring for every culture war slap fight in this country, VC Andrews has totally slipped under the radar of those who wish to protect us from JK Rowling, Judy Blume, and Darwin.

Word.

(Hail Dwanollah)

[heavenleigh2001]

I was bored and I started reading the thrid book in the Ruby series. I was so young the first time I read it, I thought it was so great.
But now I just reliaze the Ruby was a selfish bitch. She always keep going on about how bad her twin sister was.

She marries her half brother and the whole time she's going on how about she can't deal with this secret. And then she sleeps with Beau. They find out that Gisselle is sick and dieing. So Beau comes up with the dumbest idea ever created, and says that Ruby should become Gisslle. And the dumb bitch acutally goes through with it.
And throughout the books Ruby is always going on about how you shouldn't keep secrets. I wish she had fallen in the swamps

What in the world made me read these books when I was younger? I guess I was just a twit back then. Why is it all the heroines in the books fall in love with an idoit?

[carrier76]

The Ruby series...hilarious. I like how they kept throwing the random French/Cajun phrases in there. The "Let the good times roll" phrase was particularly annoying. Does anyone really say that?

The Ruby series gave me an impromptu education about New Orleans. I had hoped to tour the Garden District when I was there last summer, but I never got a chance. I wish I had tried harder.

[dwanollah]

And all anyone eats in New Orleans is jambalaya and etoufee' and po'boys. Rich or poor, it's all the same.

Last time I was in NO, me and The Husband-Type Man went to Arnaud's, one of the oldest restaurants in the city. Imagine my glee-followed-immediately-by-chagrin when, upon re-reading some VC, I discovered that this was where Ruby went on her first date with Beau.

[Deleted]

And the stupid ghostwriter (Andrew Niederman) can't even get the Garden District right! "Big estates set in huge tracts of land...uh, no dumbass, actually they're huge mansions, yeah, but they're all very close together. Say what you will about her, Anne Rice got the descriptions right.

Oh, and jambalaya is a creole dish, right? Hardly Cajun. Then it goes on how Grandmere Catherine made a green gumbo with only veggies for Lent.

Okay, they're Catholic, which means no meat on fridays. BUT....they could have SHRIMP gumbo. FISH is allowed, moron. Then there was the thing about Paul's sister Jeanne whose fiance is so uber-Catholic he won't let her use birth control other than the Rhythem Method (aka Vatican Roulette)...but they get married at Ruby's estate. I was always told that in the Catholic church, a wedding MUST take place inside a church-no exceptions. Was I wrong?

Gabrielle annoyed me even more. "Oh, this guy is MARRIED, but he loves me, he does!" What the FUCK is wrong with you, you dumb snatch!

Okay, I'm done.

[Deleted]

Check it out-there's gonna be a Rain miniseries.

Dammit, Rain sucked.