My blogging twin Lauren over at Bookmark Lit has a wonderful feature called The Nostalgia Project, where she rereads past favorites and talks about how she views them now vs. when she originally read them and recaps her rereading experience of certain books as an adult. When I was recently unpacking my books into my new bookshelves and tweeted that I would love to do a re-read of my A-List novels, Lauren was 100% on board to revisit our high school reading days and suggested her Nostalgia Project Feature as the perfect way to showcase our reread. (Also, the gorgeous graphics are 100% her doing!)
My expectations for the reread were pretty high in a sense- I remember loving these more than the Gossip Girl novels, since I could relate to their West Coast setting much better than New York (which I’ve never been to). I remembered racing through them when I was younger and I felt confident that they’d be just as quick, easy, and fun reads now that I was older (despite probably having some early to mid-2000s outdated references, especially in regards to clothes, makeup, pop culture, etc.) I was really excited to revisit a series that I had loved so much in the past, back when the selection of YA books available was much, much more limited.
Honestly I feel like I actually remembered quite a bit from this series, especially from the first 4-6 books. I remembered all of the character names and broader plot points, especially revolving the on and off again romances that all of the girls go through. I found that this didn’t hinder my enjoyment of rereading the books, because I didn’t remember all of the fun little details, and the further into the series I got the less and less I remembered so they almost read like new books. I remembered that Sam was probably my favorite character, that Anna was the “perfect” well bred protagonist, that Dee has some psychological issues, and that Cammie was supposed to function as an antagonist but got her own rather serious story arc. I also remember a fair bit of name dropping of actually celebrities, restaurants, clubs, etc. so I was excited to see how those references stood the test of time!
1) Reread all ten of the ORIGINAL A-List novels
2) Round up my thoughts with mini reviews and rank the books in order of how much I enjoyed them
3) Compare my ratings from my original read of them 10+ years ago to how I’d rate them now.
4) Consider the implications of my current age, culture when the books were released vs. today, etc. (I borrowed this goal from Lauren’s original Nostalgia Project post because it’s such a good idea!)
This is such a fun project idea! I’d love to do this for series like The Lunar Chronicles and Narnia in a few years.
I hope you have fun rereading your books!
Thank you, Lenna! I really enjoyed it, I’m hoping I can do a series reread every year to add some more variety to my reading 🙂
Yay! I’m so excited to see the rest of your feels on the series. This was so fun to work on 🙂
It was!!! I think we should make this an annual thing every summer! 😀
That’s an interesting idea! Hmm, I wonder if I should do the same with Harry Potter, it’s been a while since I read Philosopher’s Stone!
Harry Potter is ALWAYS good for a reread, especially in the winter! I used to reread them religiously every other year, but I think my last HP reread was in 2013.
I love this challenge! This is so fun. I’d never heard of these books before, but they do sound like fun. 🙂
Thank you, Krysti! I’ve had a lot of fun doing this challenge with Lauren, I’d love to continue doing it every summer with some older series!
I love re-reading books. I’ve never read these but I might give them a try!
If you don’t mind some of the outdated references, they’re really fun and quick to read!
How fun! I actually just reviewed a book that I first read in my high school years today. It’s fun to reminisce!
It really is fun! It’s interesting to see how the books age to- some references I still remember, but I wonder if I read them again in another 10 years how many of them will feel irrelevant!
Great idea! I love nostalgia in all forms ha ha but especially books! And it is fun to see how they hold up on a re- read. Good luck with this, sounds fun!
Thanks! Honestly I had so much fun doing this that I’d love to continue the project but with other books. It’s so interesting to see how they hold up over the test of time!
[…] I’m teaming up with Lauren from Bookmark Lit to reread the A-List series as part of her Nostalgia Project Feature. Check out my intro post here! […]
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