Grown-up 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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

*Charles

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.

I think there were actually quite a lot of "crossover" novels watermeadow.
They may not have been "teen problems " and drugs but they were others.
May have been late 60s but there was Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books and Alan Garner’s novels such as Elidor or The Owl Service.

Then there are the well known books which were probably written for adults (as teenagers didn't seem to exist till after WWII) - books by Lewis Carroll, Francis Hodgson Burnett, and Edith Nesbit for example.

Oldnproud, very likely they were by M R James - his are seriously scary! IIRC one of his, ‘The Mezzotint’, was a BBC Christmas TV offering a year or so ago - and very well done it was, too.

Agatha Christie when 9 or so.
I can still remember those Pan and Fontana covers. They take me right back to my childhood.

John Wyndham’The Chrysalids’ aged 12.

I read my parents Nevil Shute books from about the age of 10

Georgette Heyers and the complete Jalna, family saga by Mazo de la Roche.
Aged 14 or so and babysitting, read bits of Lady Chatterley’s Lover hidden under a cushion.

I have no idea what the book was called, but it was a collection of (adult) ghost stories.
At the time, I was about 12/13, and I borrowed it from the library. It was a dark late-autumn evening, and I started reading it as I walked the mile home, half of which was along isolated country roads. By the time I got home, I was absolutely terrified!

When I was a child I was a pretty indiscriminate reader, unless it involved romance, which I thought was boring. My reading was never restricted in any way and I used to read lots of things I really didn't fully understand in the News of the World and Reveille at a very young age.
At about age ten or eleven I read all the Biggles books (godfather's bookcase). I then started on John Wyndham and eventually Alastair McLean. Dennis Wheatley sneaked in there at some point too. I do remember Harold Robbins books being passed around the girls at school. I was never a fan of the books we "had" to read at school. Books for me were to be enjoyed, not studied and dissected. As for poetry I just didn't get it and just wanted the author to get to the point....and quickly. It was only many, many years later when I read Wilfred Owen, one of the war poets, that I could appreciate the power of some poetry.

We all seem to have read many of the same books when we were young.
What we didn’t have was Young Adult books which came later, full, like older kids’ TV, of poverty, prejudice, pregnant or drug-taking teenagers, abuse, crime and misery. I’m told that the current ones are even worse. I loved Dickens but his presentation of social problems was pure fiction, not realism.

Jane Ayre when I was 10, then a Thomas Hardy a term from II at Grammar school
A naughty older cousin let me read Lady Chaterleys lover while staying in her house.
I was supposed to read "Ulysses" by James Joyce and "Women in Love", by D H Lawrence as we were studying other books by them for A level but my father wouldn't let me. He did lend me his copy of "Andocles and the Lion".
I also remember Peyton Place going home in a different satchel every night. There was a series on the TV at the time.

Blondiescot

I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't read what would be called 'grown-up books'. As an only child, I was an avid reader anyway. I read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit etc at a very young age and I distinctly remember working my way through a set of encyclopaedia in the spare room.

The New Book of Knowledge, my parents bought the set for me when I passed the scholarship. I loved dipping into them.

I loved The Hobbit but got bogged down halfway through the trilogy in a boring battle and have never finished it.

Witzend

The Whiteoaks of Jalna series was another when I was still pre teen. All borrowed from relatives IIRC.

I didn't find those until I was an adult and they helped me through a rather uncomfortable pregnancy! 🙂

I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't read what would be called 'grown-up books'. As an only child, I was an avid reader anyway. I read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit etc at a very young age and I distinctly remember working my way through a set of encyclopaedia in the spare room.