What were you reading in the late 90s

I loved Michelle Magorian, Goodnight Mr Tom is the famous one but my absolute favourite is Back Home, have you read that?

I was mainly reading Marian Keyes and Jane Green for fun, to counteract the Balzac, Kafka etc I was reading for my course. Also Margaret Atwood books.

Earlier in the nineties it was Sweet Valley High, Flowers in the Attic, Judy Blume and I also liked Michelle Magorian, the Trebizon books and Rumer Godden. The Outsiders was my favourite school novel.

has anyone mentioned Paula Danziger and Betsy Byars - maybe that was more late 80s/ early 90s?

I was aged 11-21 then and worked in a library from 16 so had first dibs on all the new releases 😁.

I loved:-

Emma Blair
Dean Koontz
Lynda La Plante
Josephine Cox
Lesley Pearse (maybe later than 90's?)
Elvi Rhodes
Iain Rankin
John Grisham
Madeleine Brent (no one seems to remember her* (really a him with a pen name)
Virginia Andrews that wrote the Flowers in the attic series plus all her (literal) ghost writer books. Nothing like child abuse and incest to send you off into a peaceful sleep aged 14!

Oh, and in my younger teens, maybe aged around 13-15 I read 100's of Mills & Boon, no Sweet Valley High for me 😆.

I remember Maeve Binchy was really popular with our readers but I think they were too posh for me at the time, really must try her again.

Marian Keyes.

Anne Rice, Christopher Pike, Fiona Walker, Stephen King, but I also loved classics like Pride and Prejuduce, Wuthering Heights etc.

Virginia Andrew and Jackie Collins. They are not the same when read years later

Well I was a teenager in the 70s. In the 90s I was 40 with two toddlers so it was light reading and not much of it.
Lee Childs
Maeve Binchy
Robert Ludlam
John Grisham
P.D. James

Judy Blume early teens
Irvine Welsh
Thomas Hardy - Judy The Obscure made a big impression the rest are a blur
Well Of Loneliness
The Bell Jar
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Kestrel For A Knave
Stephen King
Beryl Bainbridge

Some plays I think, I recall I liked Educating Rita by Willy Russell and read most of Joe Orton's

Someone I knew used to pass on Mills and Boons and they were easy reads.

Music books and biographies- Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin.
NME and Melody Maker magazines

Patti Smith's poems

Bitch by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Life and Loves of a She Devil by Fay Weldon

True Crime books

Judy Blume
Joan Bauer
Vivian Vande Velde
Joan Aiken
Tamora Pierce
Madeline L'Engle
Patricia C. Wrede
...just realised that's a lot of ladies! Clearly a golden age. So I'll also add Lloyd Alexander.

Bridget jones
miriam keynes
jane green

Yes to Flowers in the attic!
Tuppence to cross the Mersey & the others in the series
Bill Bryson… every single one over and over!!
Bridget Jones Diary
Mcarthys bar
Around Ireland with a fridge was another cracker of a joyful read!

I was doing my DPhil and have a book diary that started in the mid 90s so I can look up what I was reading. A lot of South American literature (esp. Garcia Marquez, and Vargas Llosa), Peter Carey. Very few women whereas now I read very few men, I keep meaning to plot my male:female reading over the years.

Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City

In the late ‘90s I was in my late 20s, and my job entailed flying long haul several times a month. It was pre iPad obviously, and while in flight entertainment was pretty good in the cabins I flew in, I soon exhausted the films for that month / quarter. My airport routine always involved a trip to WH Smith for the 2 or 3 novels for £x. £10 I think, but it was a long time ago. Generally easy to read moderately cheerful fiction, with Marian Keyes featuring heavily. Novels and and magazines, and no, of course I never took any magazines from the lounge ;)

I did used to buy Conde Nast traveller when it came out, and any other travel magazine that caught my eye so that I could dream about where I might be going on arrival in Malaysia / Hong Kong / Japan or wherever, and not the soulless airport/taxi/hotel/office reality. For the longer trips they also gave me inspiration for things to do in the evenings / weekends or other down time. Whilst my laptop did have Netscape (remember that) and access to the web, and travel sites were some of the first to develop, you couldn’t beat the glossy (heavily edited…) pictures and narrative to give you ideas :)

Ooh I read all those flowers in the attic books too. There was another series called Heaven, maybe that’s the one you’re thinking of. And a really weird one called My Sweet Audrina.

What a load of rubbish they were but I loved them!

Allan Ahlberg
Shirley Hughes
JK Rowling

3 children under 6

Babysitters Club
Sweet Valley High
Sweet Dreams
Jackie Collins

I loved White Oleander so much. I got it free with a copy of Cosmo I think.

Adrian Mole
Fantasy- Terry Goodkind and comic fantasy by James Bibby
Doctor Who novels, which is strange because I've never watched it
Jilly Cooper's Riders series
Jackie Collins
Rumer Godden (still one of my favourite authors)

Sue Townsend
Douglas Adams
Seems like everyone at our school was reading "Daddy's Girl" by Janet Inglis.

Anything I could get my hands on! Mostly second hand from the book shop under South Harrow station. I remember when Harry Potter came out, and everybody reading it on the tube.

Lots of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, lots of 20th Century classic, plus some Nancy Friday for good measure, now I’m trying to force myself through The Great Alone for book club and losing the will to finish it!

I was reading Bret Eastern Ellis, Irvine Welsh and a lot of thins I can’t remember

White Oleander by Janet Fitch.

It was brilliant