Among other things, a defense of Gossip Girl.

From Salon:

"Gossip Girl" and its sisters seem to be filling out the time-honored "brain candy" category. Less pure but more readable than the Sweet Valley High novels of my youth, they're far cleaner than the vampirism of Anne Rice or the incest of V.C. Andrews. If those books didn't warp the kids who read them, I don't think we have to worry about the impact that "Gossip Girl" paperbacks are going to have on a generation that, it's worth remembering, spent their youth in midnight lines, waiting to get their paws on 800-page tomes about wizardry. Anyone who presumes that "Gossip Girl" is opening their wide eyes to the mercenary capitalism of high school has clearly never considered the differences between Cleansweep and Nimbus2000 broomsticks.

Good Friday reading.  ("Tiara Girls"?  Sometimes I am so glad we don't have cable.)