Which books did you read before you were really old enough to understand them?

[PineappleSeahorse]

I was a voracious and precocious reader as a child and I became obsessed with my library’s copy of Animal Farm when I was 7. I loved it but of course I had no idea what it was really about.

I suppose that I could have made more inappropriate choices of reading material but I’m curious to know which books you read as a child that you probably shouldn’t have.

Lady Chatterley's Lover when I was about 12. My mum was fine with this, assuming that some of it would just go over my head, and she was right.

Mila 18 by Leon Uris about Jewish Resistance fighters in Warsaw during ww2. I was probably 11 or so.

The Fan Club by Irving Wallace at a similar age.

My parents thought if I could read it, then it was age appropriate. They were very wrong.

All the Judy Blume at around 10.

I still occasionally wet the bed and after an accident asked my mum if I had a wet dream!

I did not understand deenie was masturbating until much older.

I thought pubic hair said public hair.

Kafka's "The Metamorphosis".

Dennis Wheatley novels about Satanism which I read avidly when I was about 10 or 11. I didn't realise they were about communism. 🤣

Had to read Jane Eyre for my English GCSE. Most of it went over my head at 15/16 tbh

Our form teacher read Deenie to us when we were 11. All the girls in our class obviously understood the connotations of masturbation and would giggle, but I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. So I decided to go home and give it a try. I remember lying in the bath and vigorously rubbing my belly button, before deciding that I didn’t know what all the fuss was about!

Jaws. I read it when I was about 13 and had no idea what some of it was about. If you've read it, you'll know what I mean.😂

Animal farm. We read that in year five or six.
Also the first couple of Adrian mole books. I think I was eight or 9. My mum would read them to me as a bedtime story and edit out the bits about 'WDs' 😂

James Herbert and Stephen King
Riders et al Jilly Cooper
Every mills and boon on my Grandmas bookshelf
The Joy of Sex - those pencil drawings!
Forever and Is that you God it’s Me Margaret but they were tame compared

So much, so many. Was like the internet but for 11 year olds

I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the age of 9. My neighbour asked me if I understood it I said yes at the time.

God help me I read James Baldwin's "Another Country" at about 11.

There are several descriptions of gay lovemaking that are so oblique it was impossible to picture what was going on. I've never re-read it to see if it makes more sense now.

Michael Moorcock books.

Childhood's End and the Foundation series by Arthur C Clarke.

All the Shakespeare we were set at school went over my head, as did GCSE English Lit set works. Reader, I dropped English Lit and took only Lang.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem still defeats me in my forties. I can't figure the plot out.

I read Bridget Jones diary when I was about ten. That was eye opening.

'The Cruel Sea' at primary school. Mum's best friend was appalled.

Whaaaaat? Go Ask Alice was made up? I did not know that. I didn't read it at too young an age - I think I was 15 - but I was deeply moved by it and passed it on to friends to read. It was a story that really stayed with me. I suppose I should be pleased it wasn't real but knowing that really takes something away from it.

Lace was actually written for teenagers, Shirley Conran started writing a sex education book but ended up writing a novel instead. The idea that female pleasure is central to sex is woven throughout the book in a way that was new in literature.

Judy Blume wrote for exactly that age group apart from Forever which I'd say was 12+.

Edited to add - it's great her books were available if you don't know those things at 10.

I read Jaws far too young as well!! I remember the part where she's sticking to the chair because she's so aroused, I was baffled when I was a kid as that part definitely wasn't in the film 🤣

Same I thought it was based on reality too. It was convincingly written.

Ha ha, yes. The film took elements from the book only and made it about the shark. The book is about the mentality of small town America and the human condition generally. The Deep is a far better book and the film touches on some of the deeper themes at play in the story too.

A friend of mine had books in the house by DW. I remember one with shrunken heads and photos of devil worship, naked people etc. I would have been about 8 or nine.

I don't think any of it did us any real harm compared to stuff on the internet now.

@piperatthegates @SantaToSSD there's a lot of articles online about true life books that turned out to be fake. It's a fascinating read.
I read a book in the 90s that was supposedly the autobiography of an abused child. The author Armisted Maupin (Tales of the City) wrote a quote for the book cover praising the book. Then it turned out to be fake. Armisted Maupin then wrote a novel based on the concept of fake misery memoirs.

One of my children was obsessed with misery lit in her early teens. I'd have preferred her to have got into Stephen King or even Virginia Andrews. I think Constance Briscoe's saga was another that turned out to be more fantasy than autobiography.

Same here. Me and my brother were always encouraged to read from an early age and we devoured anything we could. My dad used to read a series of books about a plantation in the Deep South called Falconwood. Slaves and explicit sex were really not the sort of things I should have been reading about at 10 years old!