This is basically the best website ever. Oh, I have such fond memories of trashy trashy Sweet Valley books with its improbably blond, gorgeous, All-American twin heroines Elizabeth and Jessica.
For someone like me, a 14-yr-old immigrant lost in a strange world, their delightfully at-home world with everything resolved at the end of each book, was heaven.
The first book I ever read in English was a Sweet Valley twins one (where the twins have to dogsit but try to go to a concert instead and learn a Valuable Lesson (tm)). The second one was Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, so I had...eclectic tastes even then.
Anyway, I used to devour Sweet Valley High books as a young teen. I'd return from the library with arms laden with their deliciously trashy paperback goodness. I mean, how could I not love a book about a beautiful deaf girl who melted jerky rich boy only to die of cocaine overdose? Or the one where a football player went blind and ended up dating a mousy girl? Or the one where a psycho wanted to kill one of the twins and take her place? I am firmly convinced these books are what primed me for kdrama love. :)
Ah, nostalgia.