Grown-up books

*Charles

I've just remembered reading my mother's copy of Valley of the dolls at about age 11 and that the first book I never finished reading was Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I just decided it wasn't something that I was enjoying.

We had to read Pilgrims Progress during the last year at junior school. We all hated it! How ridiculous to get 11yr olds to read that!

PinkCosmos

My parents weren't big readers. The only books we had were a collection of Chares Dickens books with fake leather covers.

I used to enjoy reading. I had my own books and visited the library every week.

The only time I saw my mum read was on holiday though. One year she was reading what turned out to be a non fiction guide to 'loving'. I can't remember the title now but it was quite tame and didn't have sex in the title.

I 'borrowed' it from her bedroom drawer when we got home and read it from cover to cover. It was very informative and not sleazy. I wish I could remember the title. It had a yellow cover.

There was a book called The Sensuous Couple that I recall having a yellow cover - late 60s, I think?

The Science of Life and Pageant of the Century before 11. I sneaked my parents' copy of Lady C later which they hid in a closet.

I also went from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie around age 12. My first was Appointment with Death, set in Jordan which is still a favourite and I’ve read it several times since.
I also found in our house a book of short stories by Somerset Maugham which I absolutely loved - set in very glamorous places. My favourite was ‘The Three Fat ladies of Antibes’ about three socialites who all go on a diet together and fall out as they get so bad tempered. I hardly ever read short stories now, though.

Nyman1962 - I don't think 'The Sensuous Couple' was the title. It was something along those lines though. I will post if I remember it. It would have been the late 1960s.

I was around 11/12 when my mum bought me Peyton place for christmas one year,I am sure she cant have watched the TV programme,she wasnt a reader,although my dad used to tead in his younger years.

My friends parents had an old medical dictionary that was well thumbed by our 10 year old selves,her parents where at work all day,we amused our selves sniggering at over large ruptures the size of gym balls,and terminology for treatment of ailments with male appendages

I remember reading Dennis Wheatley
The Haunting of Toby Jugg, To the Devil a Daughter. That one really spooked me as I fainted in church once and the heroine in that book did also
We were given books to read at grammar school one I remember was a biography of Father Huddleston. And of course we had our O level book, Jane Eyre and we read more of the Brontes. I also read Georgette Heyer.

Anya Seaton novels, Agatha Christie, and Dad’s Readers
Digest books.

I went to Sunday school 2 or 3 times every week when aged 5-16 but never really 'read' the Bible. 65 years later I'm reading it now and enjoying it and surprised to find it very relevant to modern day.

The Jalna series by Mazo de la Roche, all borrowed from the adult library.

Thomas Hardy , The Mayor of Caster Bridge, then all his other novel as well as Dickens, My father had leather bound copies of all the classic books.

My grandparents had a wonderful collection of books, including Britannica which I loved. They had all the classics so I grew up on Dickens, Austen and Shakespeare. Dracula was also a favorite book of mine which I read at age 11. I also got into Sf through reading Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series and HG Wells.

Our (quite small) local branch library was opposite my secondary school so I joined at 11. There was never any question of needing an "adult" ticket as I soon became friendly with the lady who ran it. I was the only member of my family who was an avid reader. That probably had some bearing on my going into librarianship at 16.

We were allowed to choose our own school prizes from a local bookstore, I chose a couple of Jalna books, but it was decided they weren’t appropriate for a school prize.

Casino Royale wow was it the first James Bond? I think I was about 12 and I didn't tell my parents I had read it. So sexy, has influenced me ever since 😍 I'm going to be 78 next month

I read my first ‘grown up’ novel when I was ten. It was ‘Wuthering Heights’ and although some of the darker themes escaped me then, I loved it. In fact it has remained my favourite novel ever since and I re read it most years. Being 66 now, that’s a lot of times and I can recite swathes of it from memory! As a child I read voraciously and loved all kinds of mythology, Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Celtic. Some had pretty adult themes, I suppose! I remember ‘borrowing’ my mother’s Francoise Sagan books, ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ etc around that time and feeling very grown up and sophisticated although I found them a little dull. I also read a few of her Jean Plaidy and Anya Seaton historical novels which piqued my interest for more so I started delving into non fiction books of that sort, a passion that has stayed with me ever since.

I only learned about "proper" books through school. My father's literary aspirations didn't stretch much further than Dick Francis. My DM was better educated, but she only read murder mysteries from the library.

I was given classics like Jane Eyre and Villette by godparents and neighbours at the age of about 9 or 10 which I still have and have even read in the meantime.

I regret not having read more while I was at school but I'm not sure I would really have appreciated them properly.

I have come to love Dickens, Swift, Austen, Defoe, Stevenson etc and am grateful that their collected works are available for almost nothing as e-books and I can dip into them at any time.

annifrance

We had to read Pilgrims Progress during the last year at junior school. We all hated it! How ridiculous to get 11yr olds to read that!

When my daughter was about 8 or 9, a Sunday School teacher was reading Pilgrim's Progress to the children, in instalments, but unfortunately left the area before finishing it.
My daughter really wanted to know what happened and I got a children's version for her to read herself.

annifrance

We had to read Pilgrims Progress during the last year at junior school. We all hated it! How ridiculous to get 11yr olds to read that!

When my daughter was about 8 or 9, a Sunday School teacher was reading Pilgrim's Progress to the children, in instalments, but unfortunately left the area before finishing it.
My daughter really wanted to know what happened and I got a children's version (simplified but not too much) for her to read herself.

Sorry that came up twice 🤷

I started to read adult books when I was around thirteen. The original series of All Creatures Great and Small began at about that time so I read James Herriot’s books one by one. I discovered Miss Read around the same time. Agatha Christie and Joy Adamson (Born Free) followed. By this time, there were some books being written for teenagers but they were more for reluctant readers so their aim failed spectacularly as readers like me would not be seen dead reading them and their intended reluctant reader audience mostly didn’t read them anyway. Teenagers these days have a plethora of books aimed at their age group to choose from. I have always been a big reader but not so much classics. When l was a younger teenager my dad kept telling me that I “should” be reading Dickens - which, of course, had the effect of putting me off Dickens altogether. It took me years to get back to reading his books. I tend to prefer film versions of the classics as I don’t like long, verbose passages of description - sacrilege l know. I have always read poetry for pleasure, though. I like plot driven novels, even when they are considered “literary.”

My parents didn't own many books although my mother borrowed books from the local library. One that they did own was a collection of ghost stories by M R James and The Mezzotint scared me rigid. I remember buying a beautiful copy of Pride and Prejudice bound in the softest leather at a jumble sale, and my disappointment on reading it to find that it was a two volume edition so that it ended in the middle of the story. The book that made the strongest impression on me was Hatter's Castle by A J Cronin which I read as a 10 year old. I put off rereading it until recently because I feared that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered but how wrong I was. It is a powerful and thought provoking tale about male dominance. I also loved , the Berry books by Dornford Yates then, but wouldn't even look at them now.

At either 10 or 11 I read The Hobbit for an inter-school reading quiz - I loved the book but as usual my memory let me down for the quiz and I couldn't remember which hobbit was which 😕 Lord of the Rings came a year or two later. By 12 or 13 I was reading my DM's library books as well as my own each week - I don't remember what they were, probably light fiction, except for Georgette Heyer which I loved and still reread now and then. Mr DF introduced me to autobiographies and classics a little later. I never really enjoyed most classics though until I was in my twenties.

My friend lent me Jane Eyre when I was about 11. My mother was in a book club and I read some of the monthly selections she received, I remember The Darling Buds Of May being one. There was also a James Bond novel which didn’t appeal to me, A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch and Room At The Top by John Braine. After I left school at 16 I joined the library getting an adult membership, my choices were random but I remember enjoying The Haunting Of Toby Jugg and A Clockwork Orange which I thought was amazing. My mother had lots of Jean Plaidy books which I liked reading and also several by Susan Howatch which were good, especially The Wheel,Of Fortune.