All covers from Goodreads. Clockwise: 1, 2, 3

Diving into Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret for this summer's #BlumeAlong really brought me back to my childhood reading days. I've been devouring books since I was a wee thing, and it was a lot of fun to go back to an old favorite—one I undoubtedly read and re-read until the spine cracked and pages crinkled—and see what I did and didn't remember about it. For one thing, I didn't remember the book being quite so much about religion, despite the whole "God being in the title" thing. It tickled me because, in retrospect, Margaret and I had a lot in common: Jewish father, Catholic mother, parents who were areligious and grandparents trying to convert us one way or the other.

The readalong got me thinking about what other books I loved as a kid and the memories I have of them (and the things I forgot).

The Pendragon Cycle by D.J. McHale

While everyone else was reading Artemis Fowl, I was flying through the Pendragon cycle. I think of this series as little Shaina's introduction to, and reason for loving, science fiction. Bobby Pendragon was a normal kid living in suburban New York before his Uncle Press showed up to tell him he's a Traveler (a cross between a time-traveler and parallel-universe-jumper) and that he's the only one who can save all that's known from the evil Saint Dane.

Of my three selections, I have the most vivid memories of this one: Bobby jetskiing through Cloral, eating French fries in early twentieth-century New York, and exploring Lifelight in Veelox. My memories of the later books are much hazier, and I know for a fact that I never read the final book in the series. After all that investment!

The Gossip Girl Series by Cecily von Ziegesar

Oh, the Gossip Girl series. I know that we shouldn't be ashamed of what we read, and I'm not exactly... but, well, almost. For those who never read the books or watched the TV series, Gossip Girl follows the antics of the (way, way) upper-class students of Constance Billard School for Girls in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, all of it recorded by an anonymous blogger known only as Gossip Girl.

These people were unlike anyone I knew in real life, and I couldn't help but be suckered in by their expensive and ridiculous drama. I'm wondering if Crazy Rich Asians might be a good pick if I ever feel the itch for this type of book again.

Anything by Sarah Dessen