what books did you love as a teenger?

[Blandmum]

A Tree grows in Brooklyn
To Kill a Mockingbird

Brideshead Revisited - weirdly, I loved it.
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. I do think it's a bit of tosh now but at the time it seemed so glamorous.

Dean R Koontz

sweet valley high came out when i was 12/13
later i loved stephen king etc

but also
to kill a mocking bird
the great gatsby

I became obsessed with Herman Hesse as a teenager - all that philosophical angst - as well as Sartre etc....pretentious really! I also liked the good old classics though like 1984 and Jane Eyre. Loved Catcher in the Rye, a must for any teenager IMO.
Also loved To kill a mockingbird and teach it regularly.....yr 10s love it.

Judy Blume here too.
Nancy Drew in my early teens, then Virginia Andrews etc later on!
Danielle Steele too! There goes my street cred, right out the window.

oh yes the great gatsby!!!! wonderful.

also loved 1984

and weird sci-fi books (hate them now)

Oh and SVH as well

sweet valley high & sweet valley university

Judy Bloom

Point Horror series

:)

to kill a mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye
Tad Williams fantasy books
and loads more I just can't remember now!

I loved To Kill a Mocking Bird too and 1984 and Thorn Birds when I was having a break from being pretentious

I started off with Judy Blume then moved onto Christopher Pike - he was cool! Then Robert Cormier, which was a bit over my head sometimes but the English teacher that I had a mad crush on was dead impressed with me as he read Robert Cormier too so I pretended to love it through the final year of his class!!

Sweet Valley High
Agatha Christie

To Kill A Mockingbird was a fav of mine for years as well. I still love the name Jem!

and Dill....

oooo i loved those point horror books cant remember the authors now but i thought they were great!!!!!!

can remember reading and rereading all the V series books - what a load of rubbish!

I also loved To Kill A Mockingbird/Great Gatsby but we did them to death at school.

Jane Gardam especially Bilgewater

OMG, A tree grows in Brooklyn. Haven't thought about that book for years, but it was like a right of passage. Loved it.
Flambards trilogy & the extra one
Wuthering Heights - thought it was sooo gothic
All the Tom Sharpe books - used to nearly PMSL
Princess Daisy & the other Judith Kranz novels. We used to pass them around & sneak them in & out of school. Didn't even really understand them, but they just seemed so sophisticated & naughty.
Katherine by Anya Seton
The Sci-Fi stuff by Patrick Moore - no idea why now!

I loved the Adrian Mole books but the other one that sticks out is To Kill a Mockingbird.

Cynthia Voight "A Solitary Blue"
Lynne Reid Banks "L Shaped Room"

Jilly Cooper for me too MT. Discovered her when I was about 12 or 13 and read everything-- all her collections of Sunday Times stuff as well as all the novels.

I went on to do an English Degree blah blah blah but I actually still think Jilly's great, and is certainly one of the reasons I'm a romance writer myself.

My mum used to be a bit sneery about me liking her (first picked them up on holiday with my stepmum- oops) but after all the Contemporary Lit crit and Beowulf and all the rest of it, it's actually those early romance novels that had the most impact on my career...