Your Favorite Books of Teen Age Years.

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

Due to the rousing success of " Your favorite books of Childhood." Thread, I thought it wise to start up this thread.

Here are a few of mine:Many were required reading.

The Outsiders -S.E. Hinton
Catcher in the Rye
Seperate Piece/Peace (It’s been awhile)
The Elfstone/Wishsong/Sword of Shannara Series.- Terry Brooks
Guiness Book of World Records
Ripley’s Believe it or Not

And the catagory that would have probably labled me as a future High School Assassin is:
Blood Letters and Bad Men - Jay Robert Nash ( A chronilogical history of robbers, rapists, theives, rustlers, gangsters from about 1800 - to mid 1970’s. I loved this book.

More Later.

#2

It was called How To Get a Teenage Boy and What To Do with Him When you Get Him by Ellen Goodman. She must’ve been embarrassed by it,its not listed anywhere. I loved it. p.s.I never found out! :slight_smile:

#3

Shirley, I loved that Nash book, too!

Since I was a teen in the 1970s, I’ll be the first to mention the Big Three: Vonnegut, Hesse, and Brautigan.

I think kids are still reading the first two, but Richard Brautigan’s fallen out of favor.
And I’m not really surprised. I picked up my old copies of the novel IN WATERMELON SUGAR and the potry collection THE PILL VERSUS THE SPRINGHILL MINING DISASTER recently…looked through them, and wondered “My god, WHAT was I thinking?”

Should mention Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, too.

Uke

#4

The Stand, other King
Lord of the Flies
Crime and Punishment
Coma
The Source
The Outsiders was good
White Mountains Trilogy

#5

My favorite teenage books? Umm; Dickens, Jane Austen, Booth Tarkington.

. . . Then again, those were NEW when I was a teenager . . .

#6

Again, most everything posted to date. Also:

The Chocolate War - Robt Cormier

I tore through everything Paul Zindel wrote, and as a teen I discovered Shel Silverstein, and never regretted it for a moment.

And yeah, Bloodletters and Badmen, I have a copy of that and I still find myself leafing through it from time to time.

Waste
Flick Lives!

#7

I used to really like David Eddings. My copies of the Belgariad and the Malloreon are all creased and wrinkled because I read them so many times.

#8

Catcher in the Rye
The Stranger Beside Me (a boook about Ted Bundy)
Helter Skelter (about the Manson murders)
Go Rin No Sho (The book of five rings)
The Monkeywrench Gang

Magnificent to behold - Greatly to be praised.

#9

Stranger in a Strange Land

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Dharma Bums. (Actually, everything by Kerouac; I even read The Town and the City twice, and no, I DON’T know what I was thinking.)

Catch-22

Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger (even better than Catcher.

Pretty much the complete works of John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut.

No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jim Morrison’s biography. (I think I also read his two books of poetry. Yeesh!)

Positively Main Street. (Totally self-indulgent, sophomoric book about the author’s trip to Bob Dylan’s hometown.)

I’d better stop, as I’m getting completely depressed about my lack of taste.

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”

  • Bill Watterson
#10

I also thoroughly enjoyed Paul Zindel (two titles come to mind : “My darling, my hamburger” and “Pardon me, you’re stepping on my eyeball”.) How can one resist? :smiley:

Other faves :
Can you sue your parents for malpractice? (Paula Danziger)
Everything written by S.E. Hinton
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! - M.E. Kerr

I’m sure I’ll think of others later!

Sex appeal – Give generously

#11

If it’s any comfort, I have one of those poetry books! I agree with most of the above (especially Uke, who may be the man of my dreams…) and have to add Asimov, Heinlein and Zelazny, along with many other science fiction authors. I also have (still) the poerty & lyrics of Lou Reed.

It’s Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now

#12

Must add the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.

-Melin

#13

Hmm, Flora…Dickens, Austen…no Bronte? (Charlotte, or course) Jane Eyre and Villette laid the foundation for practically my entire vocabulary.

Also as a teenager I read just about everything by Evelyn Waugh…when they made the TV series of Brideshead, I was in heaven. To this day, I have never seen a more perfectly cast and acted adaptation.

#14

As a teenager I was obsessed with anything by Piers Anthony.

He writes fantasy…I lived in one.

#15

I began my obssesive intrest in Mark Twain back then

YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA!

#16

Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni novels
Agent of Change and Conflict of Honor, Steve Miller & Sharon Lee
Thieves World and sequels by various people
The books of th True Game, Sheri S. Tepper
Sherlock Holmes novels
Fletch and Flynn novels by Gregory McDonald
The books of Isle by Nancy Springer
Anne McCaffrey, Robert Heinlein, Richard Asprin, Alan Dean Foster, Christopher Stasheff, John deChancie, Louis L’Amour, Douglas Adams
Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony
Here Be Demons (I forget the author)
Make Way for Dragons (ditto)
Terry Brooks Magic Kingdom novels
The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley (most Robin Hood books, but this one was my favorite)
The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, also by Robin McKinley
The Last of the Mohicans
Pride and Prejudice
And Then There Were None
The Grapes of Wrath

That’s all I can think of right now. Did I mention I love the book threads?

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#17

I didn’t really start reading books properly until I was 16. And The Belgariad stood out as the best I’d ever read at the time.

It’s still one of my favourites - David Eddings hasn’t even come close to being as good again.

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#18

I tended to read by author rather than title during those years. I’d find one I liked, then read everything they’d written. Off the top of my head:

Desmond Bagley
Alistair McLean
Barbara Michaels & Elizabeth Peters (the same person)
David Eddings
Anne McCaffery
Julie Smith
Hickman & Weis
Piers Anthony
J.R.R. Tolkien
Paul Zindel
Roald Dahl (the other nastier stuff)
S.E. Hinton
Barbara Hambley

~If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.~

#19

Forever by Judy Blume was required sneak-reading for every teenage girl in my school (it had sex in it)!

I never read Brautigan as a teenager, but I’ve read the crap out of him recently. My husband turned me on to him. Genius.

#20

Might be delving too far back into pre-teen years but Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” is a favorite.

By the way one of the funnest things you can do as an adult is to go back and re-read a favorite novel from your formative years. Try it, it’s a real treat!

“My hovercraft is full of eels.”