What were you reading in the late 90s

[Vladandnikki]

Not so much a what we're reading more a what were you reading in your teens. Because I loved the Riders series of books by Samantha Alexander (not the Jilly Cooper novel) and I don't think I have ever met anyone else that read them.

In the late 90s I was reading the Scarpetta books, Kate Atkinson I think, unless she was a bit later, a lot of Douglas Coupland. I was born in 1975 though so if you want what I was reading in my teens - Gone With The Wind, The Secret History, Stephen King, a lot of Anne McCaffrey, and a shed load of sci fi.

Anne Rice and Harry Potter

Stephen King
Richard Laymon
Dean Koontz
Christopher Pike

Douglas Coupand
Richard Yates
Haruki Murakami
Kathy Acker

Catherine Cookson
Danielle Steel
Jackie Collins
Shirley Conran

Harry Potter! I borrowed them from my younger sibling. I would have be late teens then, when I was younger I loved Sweet Valley, Point Horror etc.

Bridget Jones Diary
Loved Jane Green too.

And Catch 22, so many times!!

Bridget Jones
Trainspotting
Marian Keyes
Jane Green
Iain Banks

Flowers in the attic and the many sequels. I spent the entire summer holiday after GCSEs finished reading these. This was late nineties. There was another series by the same author that I was really into around then that was about orphans that I read that summer too. Shortly after that it was Harry Potter.
Early nineties for me would have been all the sweet valley high books.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch.

It was brilliant

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

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!

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.

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

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)

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

Babysitters Club
Sweet Valley High
Sweet Dreams
Jackie Collins

Allan Ahlberg
Shirley Hughes
JK Rowling

3 children under 6

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!

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 :)

Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City

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.

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!

Bridget jones
miriam keynes
jane green

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.

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