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 was a soppy girl - loved Mill On The Floss, blubbed at the end.

16-18 like Peter Duck - Sartre, Zola, Simone de Beauvoir (though ashamed to say only because I was influenced by the pop stars of the time - I liked David Sylvian so went through the intellectual French literature phase! Don't think today's pop stars read anything more highbrow than Heat magazine!)

Younger teens - wanted to read Judy Blume and other typical teenage stuff - English teacher kept pushing the heavy historical stuff at me (once picked a book at school about teenage pregnancy 'cos I thought it looked like a good read, only to be told "that's not for your sort - the implication being that the top 2 sets would be too smart to be up the duff so couldn't read about it!)

Lynne Reid Banks - One More River - must re-read it to see if it's any good, was about a girl on a kibbutz befriending an Arab boy.

Mid-teens: Flowers in the Attic/The Omen/James Herbert/Stephen King - Woolworths was the great purveyor of horror trash fiction for teens!

Roisin - didn't get very far with Catcher In The Rye, really thought I Capture The Castle was a pile of poo - am I missing something? The characters just irritated me.

Of Mice & Men - have never read, DD1 (14) is struggling through it but doesn't like it - can anyone enlighten me on the key points as to why it's so good? I intend to read it but she really needs to be getting on with it now.

This is making me want to read instead of spending time on here...

The Gossip Girl series or that of Louise Rennison. Errr, Robert Muchamore series of young teens ...

When I was a teenager I read all sorts of stuff...

Cancer Ward
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
Papillon
Brave New World
Supernature (you know - the one about the pyramids being built by aliens!)

All the ones I'd never heard of by George Orwell...
The road to Wigan Pier
Keep the aspidistra flying
Down & out in Paris and London
A clergyman's daughter
Coming up for air

When I was a teenager I read all sorts of stuff...

Cancer Ward
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
Papillon
Brave New World
Supernature (you know - the one about the pyramids being built by aliens!)

All the ones I'd never heard of by George Orwell...
The road to Wigan Pier
Keep the aspidistra flying
Down & out in Paris and London
A clergyman's daughter
Coming up for air

Oh yes George Orwell, me too, esp Down and Out.

Laurie Lee, too - Cider with Rosie. Though it was my brother who read that one over & over.

I asked dh yesterday about his teenage reading (thought we should have another perspective) - he really outdoes us all in ponciness. He said: Herodotus, Josephus and Gombrich on Art. Though admitted to The Glass Bead Game too.

I think most boys of my generation read Kinflicks - remember that one?

Another "shoulder season" offering - those Erich von Daniken books about alien visitations in prehistory. Chariots of the Gods, you know the ones. Just right for a 12/13 year old, I think.

have i said marilyn french the womens room

i now rake around in second hand book shops and buy the books i loved and make my kids read them,most recently the s.e hintons,anyone else read them?

this is all terribly high brow

i was far better read as a teenager than a i am now, but all the same, you guys are nuts!

good call re I Am David - off to Ebay it now.

Never heard of L Shaped Room, that too will be bought before the end of the night given the amount of you who've mentioned it.

I think the main thing about about being a bookish teenager is the sheer breadth of stuff you read. i'm nowhere near that open minded nowdays.

RosaLux - great call re How I Live Now. I've read that twice in last six months and both times it's blown my mind. can't persuade anyone else to read it tho

I almost exclusively read teen fic nowadays and have become a huge Melvin Burgess fan.

Ahhh.... virginia andrews, it was just so dirty. and wrong. and so damn readable. and then you'd read some milan kundera followed by your mum's dick francis. then back to angela brazil. all in a week

maybe i just had more time on my hands then

Tyaca - that is so true about the mix of stuff from mindless drivel to incredibly intellectual that you would read in the course of a week.
Mind you I'm still a bit like that now. Nothing like a Georgette Heyer when you're feeling a bit sniffly.

I need somebody to persuade me re How I Live Now - I was lent it by someone who raved about it and I couldn't quite see why. Seemed like a version of those 70s apocalyptic sci-fi things that were televised on Sunday teatimes (like the one where the machines took over the world) with a bit more of a contemporary hint re the relationship. So, persuade me please?

oh no bink!

but you're not the first person i know who's been left a bit cold by the book. one friend on mine, rather bizarrley, said she'd never thought about the consequnces of war like that??!! she then went off to re-read carrie's war.

i guess what i loved about it was its sense of power and orginiality. plus i found it a great page turner, finished it off at 4am on a work day

Her second book. Just In Case, is ace too. really clever, kind of catcher in the rye in a very very surreal way.

you read it RosaLux?

Bink- did you find that book about the Russian family? I have been remembering on and off for years. I think the title might have had Steppe in it.

Yes - there's a jumping-about-in-joy post from me somewhere below - and you're right: it's called The Endless Steppe

Thank you! Can't see the post though...

Who is it by?

I read everything by Gavin Maxwell as a teen.Especially The House of Elrig.

The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig? She is still alive, I discovered the other day.

Kathy really? Did she write anything else?

I was saying elsewhere - I think on the parallel children's books thread - that I realise I specially like "one-off" books (eg Phantom Tolbooth, Land of Green Ginger). Endless Steppe is necessarily one-off, as you couldn't match an experience like that ... but I would be interested to know whether she wrote otherwise.

15 years ago I went to a seminar (in the States) being given by the man who wrote Maus & a lot of the audience were holocaust survivors. Was a sobering gathering.

I loved The Endless Steppe and read it many times, but well before teenage years. Definitely a children's book I think.

Here you are Bink. I haven't read any other the others, though.

Amazing book. So much of it shockingly memorable.

It was a Puffin Plus, which IIRC meant older children/early teens in practice.

Absolutely. Hence why I found it by googling "lilac"

Other bits I don't want to quote

Cant believe no-ones mentioned Jilly Cooper yet. My mum started me on the 'name' ones, Bella and Imogen and so on when I was abut 12/13 and I read and re read Rivals etc about a hundred times.

Things I loved when a teenager:

"To kill a mockingbird"
"Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"
Jane Austen (can I have her as a job-lot?)
"The shrimp and the anemone" - by L P Hartley

I was also very worthy and read through lots of Hardy, Eliot, Dickens and Russian authors.

At about 14 I read a lot of Judith Krantz ("Scruples", "Princess Daisy"). I found it very educational .