Take Me Back to My Youth! Or the L.J. Smith Reading Challenge

When I was but a mere young one, a friend gave me this book:



And it changed my life. I'm not kidding. This book Changed.My.Life.

I credit this book (and series) for my life-long love affair with vampires and fascination with the paranormal. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I read everything I could by L.J. Smith, and I loved it all. And then I became an older high schooler and thought I was too old for YA fiction and started reading classics and literature and stuff. (I'm not kidding, I was the biggest book snob!! Well, except for a little bit of Elizabeth George and Anne Rice)

And I traded in my L.J. Smith books. And then HORROR! They went out of print!!! They were selling for like 50 dollars a piece on eBay! And she disappeared off the face of the earth! So in some ways, I think I owe Stephenie Meyer and the success of the Twilight series for getting my L.J. Smith books back in print, so I could buy them all again (except still waiting on a few series!)

Why am I telling you all of this? Because on September 10th the CW is premiering...get this....The Vampire Diaries TV show!!! I am beside myself with mad excitement and anticipation!!! I have seen the pilot and the cast at Comic-Con and it is VERY promising! I loved it! (even though I seemed to be sitting amongst a bunch of guys who were just there for the Myth Busters panel)

Let's get something out of the way first, though. The Vampire Diaries is NOT Twilight. It's better. It's not a Twilight rip-off. It came first. Okay.

So to get everyone else all excited about the show and watching faithfully and keeping it on the air for many years, I present you with this:




Oops! I mean, I present to you the L.J. Smith Reading Challenge: Phase 1. The first phase will be reading the Vampire Diaries. This phase will last for a year, and then we will move onto another series. I like to keep things simple and manageable for those of us who have already signed up for fourteen thousand challenges comprised of 87,000 books, or for those of you who might join in that don't read that many books in a year, and the very thought makes you want to run and hide! I really really hope that many people will join in the challenge. Have you already read the Vampire Diaries? No problem! Reread them!

Here's how it will work:
I'm going to put a Mister Linky at the end of this post. All you have to do is put your blog's url in the Mister Linky indicating that you are signing up. If you don't have a blog, just put your name!

The challenge will begin September 1st. I will post another Mister Linky that day where you can put links to your reviews. The challenge will last one year. I think there will be some prizes along the road, we'll see.

Every Friday, after the Vampire Diaries has aired, I will post a recap. If enough people express interest in doing the same, I will add a Mister Linky to those posts as well so we can all read each other's opinions and theories. It will be fantastic.

Button Contest
As you can see, I don't have a button for the challenge. So if anyone has mad crazy design skills and wants to design one this weekend, I'll post any submissions on Tuesday with a poll for voting. I will buy the winning designer the first omnibus in the Vampire Diaries series! Just send our submissions to mypalamyATgmailDOTcom

Here are the books in the series:
The Awakening
The Struggle
The Fury
Dark Reunion
And the ongoing story in
The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall

So here are all the details again since this is the world's longest Introduction to a Challenge Post:
What are we reading? L.J. Smith's The Vampire Diaries!
What are we watching? The Vampire Diaries on the CW!
When do we start? September 1st!
When do we have to finish? August 31st, 2010
Who's that guy in the photo? Lenore's celebrity love match Ian Somerhalder who plays Damon in the Vampire Diaries!

Sign Mister Linky! Tell your friends! Let's get excited! Vamps! Ian! Books! The CW! Woo!