The Horrible Dare Challenge Returns!!

It's summertime!  Time for tank tops and jorts and lemonade and truly awful reads. 

Since we are Very Smart Grown-ups now, TY and I are good at picking books we are probably going to like.  As palate-cleansers, then, and to remind ourselves how truly great great literature is (by rubbing it up against its antithesis), each summer we dare each other to read books high on the incest-and-excessive-adjective axis and low on the sense-making one.

Last year's attempt to both read the same books was a bit of a dud, because there are ONLY SO MANY THINGS you can say about Hush, Hush before you disintegrate.  Also, Shiver ended up not being that Horrible because neither of us had read it previously in order to vet its badness.  Alas.

This year I am back in my own brains, compiling a Horrible List of Horror, while TY does the same (there may be overlap, as the lists are not discussed beforehand).

You, TY, must read three of the following books, by September 21, 2011, or declare yourself NOT OF STERN ENOUGH STUFF.  Such a declaration will be accompanied by the usual finger-pointing and ridicule.

Phantom Universe - Laura Kreitzer.  There are pirates, TY.  And explosions.  And allegedly a girl starts to glow and shoot light out of herself and then is transported into the future, and I want to understand the mechanics of this.  Please read and report back.

Meridon - Philippa Gregory.  I read Wideacre ACCIDENTALLY FOR FUN one time, and then TY read The Favored Child for the first HDC, so ONE of us has to finish this trilogy.  I nominate you.

Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later - 'Francine Pascal.'  Probably one or both of us was going to read this anyway, so I'm not sure it counts.  Maybe as extra credit.

A Shore Thing - Snooki.  Please.

Daddy - Danielle Steele.  I'm going to tack this onto the end of every HDC until you read it.

Let the weeping and gnashing begin!

(As usual, anyone is welcome to play along at their own risk.)