Top five teenage books of all time

[Bink]

Here's mine:

Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding [cheating by doing two]
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Julia Strachey, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Funny how many of these are American, whereas our children's books (on the other thread) are very Brit-centric.

(Otherwise, I've got a bet on how many times the Brontes come up.)

I couldn't limit myself sufficiently to join in the other thread. But this one:

Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Malorie Blackman: Noughts and Crosses
Ursula le Guin: A Wizard of Earthsea
Lynne Reid Banks: The L-shaped Room
John Wyndham: The Chrysalids

Crikey? This is hard isn't it? Choosing just 5. I'd like to put Hardy in there, but I didn't actually read any Hardy when I was a teenager.

At 12 I read Lord of the Rings, clearly remember as was very impressed by self re reading something that went past 1000 pages. (Please note that LOTR is not a list entry for this thread. Thank you) Otherwise still on the kind of things on the other thread.

The rest of my first list were around age 14 - my all-girls' school joined up with the boys' bit and suddenly the suggested reading lists were transformed - included Raymond Chandler, etc.

From 15 I was being pretendo-Russian, hence Gorky etc. And I did read masses of Hardy.

I did not/do not get
Catcher in the Rye or
I Capture the Castle.

My Head Teacher raved incessantly about the former, and my church youth group leader about the latter. I dutifully read them, but didn't 'get' them at all.

the nose! the government inspector!

i am getting a bit carried away here. but i was much more able to cope with heavy thoughtful writing as a youth, mainly because i didnt have anything else to do. and i left school at 16 so no exam baggage.

I don't think I read Hardy until university Roisin, but he strikes you as the sort of author a teenager OUGHT to like.

Without reading the others

Amityville horror George e Jones
The Rats James Herbert
The Betsy Harold Robbins
The Ring Danielle Steel
Flowers in the Attic Virginia Andrews
The Exorcist frank someone I think.

The 'l' shaped room was fab.

Oh dear, now I am thinking about the "shoulder season" between children's fiction and teenage fiction: ie, what was I reading at about 12/13?

Mistress Masham's Repose - language is really quite genuinely Swiftianly dense, so tricky any earlier
T H White, The Once and Future King
LOTR
M R James's ghost stories (I shouldn't have been allowed those, they're life-changing)
endless endless Armada collections of ghost stories

As a teenager -
"Tess Of The D'Urbervilles" - makes me want to vomit now
"Jude The Obscure" - ditto - makes me want to vomit AND shake somebody
"Forever" - Judy Bloom - we passed it around secretly - re-read it recently and can't really undertsnad what we all made such a fuss about
"Pride And Prejudice" - fab book but the teacher was rubbish - in a way that was good as it meant I got to discover it all for myself
"The Lord Of The Rings"

Teenage books-
The Northern Lights trilogy
The "Mortal Engines" series - Philip Reeve
The "Tales Of the Otori" series - Leanne Hearne
The Georgia Nicholson diaries - especially the first one - to be read in private in order to avoid embarrassing outbursts of snorting! Too too funny.
Can't think of 5th at the moment but I'm sure it will come to me later.

The "oh dear" in my last post below was about how I am in danger of spending hours here now. So will say Night night and revisit this tomorrow.

A Kind of Loving - Stan Barstow
Lshaped room - Lynne Reid Banks
Room at the Top - John Braine.

ucm, the rats... some of that was set quite near where i lived, the THRILL of it.

and pan horror stories

except, just have to say - H Rider Haggard, Allan Quatermain

Oh god yes - re A Kind of Loving - Kes (Barry Hines) and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

good night, really

sweet valley high

those gorgeous twins those perfect size 6 figures...
true role models for the modern girl

DON'T fishie, the pan book of horror stories with the claw coming out of the gravestone on the cover positively thrilled me to the point that when the wind blew our loft hatch open, I would scream hysterically and have to sleep with Mum. She would wonder why and then have a go at my Dad for leaving them in the bookcase in the hallway alongside the Betsy, Lonely Woman and all of that Harold Robbins old crap.

And for us Irish convent girls - The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien.

Ira Levin "Rosemary's baby" (think I was 12 when I read it though)
Katherine Mansfield, exp something childish
the catcher in the rye
madame bovary
Elsa Morante "la storia"

Also when I lived in London, the story by James Herbert 'Domain' really scared me.