Don't worry. Those gangly things who smell weird and never talk to you that live in your house are actually reading books (not just blogs and texts and IMs!) Teenagers, as we know, do nothing but think about Gossip Girl all day long (if I, at 25, am an example of your typical teenager), whether it be the teen soap on the CW or the books. Yes, books! There have been 5.6 million copies of the 12-installment series sold to our braced-teeth gnashing youth, only 30,000 of which featured the television show's cast on the cover. They don't care if it's just a book! What little grownups. But, um, they're not little old people:

But sales of the audio book versions of the first and second book (also read by Ms. Ricci) in the series have been consistently moribund, even in the wake of the hit TV series: for the five years since being released, they have sold fewer than 1,000 copies yearly, according to BookScan. "The teen and the late-teen market has been a really tough market for us," said Anthony Goff, publisher of Hachette Audio and Digital Media.

Right. Probably because they don't spend too much time driving around and around the parking lot at Cherry & Webb looking for a spot. This is from a Times story from yesterday about the DVD packaging of the show's first season. Included in the disc's special features is an abridged reading of the first book by the actress Christina Ricci. So that way, the kids can listen to an actress reading a book on their television. I'm not sure what point any of this proves except that Gossip Girl comes back two weeks from today. BANGO!