Don Quixote in 3rd grade. My parents were of the belief that if I understood the words and looked up the ones I didn’t know, then I could understand the book.
Books don’t work that way.
I got some of it, but a lot simply went over my head (it didn’t help that my dad had not read the book, only seen the musical and kept saying “have you gotten to the part where _________” about things that do not happen in the actual book). But even without that distraction, there are themes and ideas that are simply over the head of your average 8-year-old.
Oh man, you too? Isn’t that the book where a woman is getting raped every night by her husband, who tears off her nightgown, so she starts buying increasingly heavier and better-constructed nightgowns? I have only the vaguest recollection. I remember asking my mom what a “cat o’ nine tails” was and having her ask me what in the world I was reading. (I lied.) I think I was like 8 years old.
I was reading everything I could find, always, but there was just ONE book that…well…
I read Peter Straub’s “Shadowlands” in 6th grade. As far as I remember, it’s very different from any of his other stuff. Anyway, it must have been near the end of the school year, because I have very clear memories of finishing it, then burying it at the bottom of my locker…literally putting everything I could on top of it…and when school let out for summer, I left it there on purpose so the janitors would burn it. I remember thinking I shouldn’t just throw it away, cause somebody else might pick it up and read it. <Apparantly I didn’t think janitors like to read or something>
Read it again a few years later, and it’s still just as fascinating and freaky, though I am less likely to symbolically bury the book.
I really wish he wrote more even close to that, but I haven’t found anything like it.
I’ve heard many adults process it the same way.
As to The Godfather, I don’t recall the bridesmaid with the size problem, but the passage about the bride’s ‘insides feeling like spaghetti for a week’ left an odd impression for a while…
I went to a Catholic school, and they did a pretty good job policing the library for questionable content (that’s what public libraries are for), but they did overlook a book called For Those About To Die about the Roman gladiators. They missed it because it was a weird combination of historical textbook and near porno-lit. If you just skimmed it, you might have found one of the history textbook passages and thought it was OK. Large swathes of were lurid details of the goings on at a games. Probably relatively tame now, compared to other things, but still not ideal material for a 5th grader. I would bet the “historical” part of it is now largely discredited as well, since it seemed to be impossibly detailed regarding conversations, names, and other details.
My grandmother had Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of Horses by Jane Auel, I’d say I had figured out where they were and started reading them on the sly at about 12 or so. Of course, by the time I had read them for real, I had already read the sex scenes LOL.
I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 10 (after being taken to see the Bakshi film version in 1978). Much of it went over my head–I did better when I read it for the second time when I was 12.
I read my Mom’s copy of The Clan of the Cave Bear when I was 11 years old. I like the premise of the book, but the graphic sexual descriptions were way too much for me at that age. The sequel, The Valley of Horses, was worse.
ETA: I see I’m not the only one who mentioned The Clan of the Cave Bear.
Hey, someone else remembers that. It wasn’t that interesting to me. I don’t think I quite got the point.
No, my trauma comes from something much more true to life. Lord of the Flies. Third or fourth grade. My mom bought it for me, because it was educational.
I read The Hobbit in 6th grade. I didn’t really have much books before then so the teacher just gave me a random book from his desk. This book singlehandedly stoked my love of reading.
I know a lot of people will say that The Hobbit is a children’s book, but until then the hardest thing I really read was Dr. Seuss. This was a huge step up for me.
Well, I started reading The Hobbit and the Tarzan books in the first grade, but that does not seem to be the direction the thread is going.
I read the Clan of the Cave Bear at 11. My mother did not want me to read the Valley of Horses or the Mammoth Hunters, but I “borrowed” them and read the good parts anyway. Of course those became irrelevant when I found a copy of Delta of Venus by Anais Nin the next year.
My grandfather was a James Bond fan, so I read all of those (the Ian Fleming originals) at an early age.
And I used to read all the science fiction and fantasy books I could find. I picked up the John Norman Gor books because I figured they would be like John Carter of Mars. I found they were only average as SF pulps and wasn’t really interested in Norman’s sub/dom fetish.
The first book I can remember reading for the sex scenes was a book called The Millionaires by Herbert Kastle. It was a heist thriller about a gang that robbed a millionaires’ resort and it had some pretty hardcore sex scenes in it.
I remember some of us passing around an increasingly sweat-stained and dog-eared copy of The Insiders by Rosemary Rogers. That must have been around the 6th or 7th grade. Today I remember none of it except endless, wall-to-wall sex.
Similarly, the book that went around when I was in ninth grade was called “My First 500.” A total porn novel. The main character assigned numbers to the men she had sex with and letters to the women. By the time I got the book, it had been broken in half. Probably the main character was too, by that time. 500? Mon dieu!
I read Roots in the sixth grade and loved it (that’s when the miniseries was aired). I was a little astonished, however, by the vivid and lengthy description of the initial rape of Kizzy.
