Grown-up books

I was given Pride and Prejudice was I was thirteen by a much loved aunt, and although I found it a bit slow I read it and came to love it.

Before that I had read any Georgette Hayer I could get my hands on, practically every one of my father's Donford Yates' and Agatha Christie's , but gave up on Buchanan and Walsh.

I don't think my parents really made a distinction between adult and teenage books. If they considered a book risky in the sexual sense it wasn't likely to remain on their shelves.

My parents went on a rare ( annual ) shopping trip to Newcastle when I was 10 ( Grandma would only babysit us once a year !)
They bought me a small hardback copy of Nathaniel Hawthornes " Tanglewood Tales " in a beautiful dust cover.
I adored both the writing and the book itself.
It remains on my bookshelf, one of my most precious possessions , 56 years later.

Agatha Christie
George Simeons Maigret
Sherlock Holmes
Daphne du Maurier

And I'm still reading them now along with modern detectives/thrillers etc

Oh yes - Born Free and Tanglewood Tales.

The Jalna series. I also enjoyed Dennis Wheatley and Daphne du Maurier.

Like someone else up post I had read more or less everything there was I wanted to read at our children’s library by the time I was 11 but was too young for the adult library. So I raided my step father’s reading matter and (unbeknownst to him) I read The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley. I was shocked at the time but now it seems like complete tosh. After that I read 79 Park Avenue by Harold Robbins ….. 😵‍💫

The first book I read by myself in English was The Wind in the Willows. I was 7.

lixy

My G'ma had a bookcase full of penguin paperbacks and I read the lot over the years when we visited.
Started with Agatha Christie and have enjoyed crime fiction ever since.

Same here! I loved the illustrations on the covers of the 1950s / 60s Christies

I vividly remember reading The Female Eunuch when I was 13

Several others have mentioned Dennis Wheatly,I remember reading all of his books,I was probably mid teens at that point,I useď to read Agatha Christie, does any one remember the Miss Silver mysteries,similar to Agatha Christie,by Patricia Wentworth.
I read for escapism,I would love to say that I read all the classics.I did read Dickens,and RL stevenson,Robinson Crusoe etc as a 9,10 year old,even read the bible,I was given for my 10th birthday.
I am more than happy with my Crime and psychological thrillers,these days.

Oh yes musicgirl you’ve reminded me of the Miss Read books. I loved them - warm and cosy.

A book about a dog called “Tatterdemalion”, read over and over again. I wish I had a copy now. “The Herries Chronicles”: without much understanding, my mother wanted to know why I asked her the meaning of “clandestine”. “And Quiet flows the Don” again without much understanding but I hated children’s books and ended up teaching literature.

Ooh, My Cousin Rachel; it was my aunty's library book and I loved it - so much so that I took it to school and read it under the bench in a rather boring Friday afternoon Biology lesson! I was 13..

Lady Chatterley's Lover that I found on my Grandma's bedside cabinet!!! I was about 14 years old

Oh Theexwife….I hope you’ve given it a second chance …black comedy at its best. I think about it every time I push the vacuum cleaner ( one with tubes!)

I was a late starter and caught up at 15 when I read The Carpetbaggers.

Marydoll

Lathyrus

Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn.

All sneaked from my mothers bookshelves.

And Wuthering Heights. Couldn’t make head not tail of the plot and who was who.

Me too! I loved them.

And me!!! Loved Daphne Du Maurier and Rebecca has been a lifelong favourite.

Dennis Wheatley for me too
Then I bought a huge tome
The works of William Shakespeare
Loved it
Then lots of books on Ancient Egypt & archeology I wanted to be an archiologist But my parents thought it wasn’t a career for a girl. !!

Archeologist

Agatha Christie was my own choice, the John Wyndam books and Thomas Hardy, the school's. I had a very high reading age for my years and some of the books I read didn't compute on a deeper emotional level but I enjoyed reading them.

Oh dear ! Lady Chatterleys Lover. Passed around our class and hidden from the nuns in my desk ! I was 13.

Loved The Day of The Triffids. Wrote about it for my Higher English!

My late grandfather's medical book. I would have been about 10. It definitely wasn't my granny's as she was illiterate and could only write her name

Probably 39 Steps we had to read for school, After that it was Agatha Christie.

I got a detention for reading ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ in a French lesson aged 14!

Emmanuelle which we covered in brown paper at school