I need to start this post with a caveat. I haven’t read any of these books in years, some up to 16 years ago. This is based on my memories and impressions of these books, and why/how they impacted on my life. Unless I re-read them, I can’t actually tell you if they were any good as I was rather indiscriminating in my tastes as a teenager. I just read what I could get my grubby little hands on in the local and school library and on rare trips to the ‘big towns’ nearby. By it’s nature, this post is going to bring up memories of childhood etc. which I will include, it might give a context for why these books made an impact.
So, in chronological order the books that made an impression on me as a “young adult” (maybe 10 to 15 years old):
“The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett
I read this book over a single sitting a very long time ago. I would have been 11 or 12 (unless my memory is really faulty). I only recently re-found this book on a blog1 as for the longest time I couldn’t remember what it was called, or who it was by. Part of the reason it stuck in my head was that it were the complicated relationships and the sex scenes. I was only 12 after all. And, although I was to, a limited extent, aware of all the mechanics of sex (thanks to the nuns at St. Joseph’s Primary School, which is a story all of it’s own) sex in my head was this sort of mechanical thing that involved digrams of your innards. And my idea, or rather experience of relationships, was of kissing a red-headed boy in the school shed - With witnesses no less! Sneaking off for a rather innocent snog somehow turned into a spectacle. It is no wonder I never really got into that whole dating thing until after highschool. Scarred for life. But again, not really relevant. Anyway, I was pretty naive. I can’t quite recall if I was aware of what rape was before I read that book. I must have been, I think I was. I certainly was afterwards. Though, I can’t think of a better way of learning about it then a woman who doesn’t let rape stop her from living. I think at that time of life, that was a role model I really needed. And even though all of the other characters are somewhat vague to me all this time later, she isn’t.
“The Narnia Chronicles” by CS Lewis
This is one of those complicated ones: As an adult, I don’t like these books, I think my ideology gets in the way. But as a child, I lapped them up. All of the obvious allegory that irritates me as an adult, didn’t as a child. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t aware of it, but that it fitted my world view. I was at that time going to a Catholic primary school, and went to church (Anglican) and Sunday School most weeks and believed in a god and although of the tropes that went with it (including Catholic guilt with no way to absolve it). What mattered to me was that whole thing about another world you could get to through a cupboard or gate. And that whole: “The Last Battle”, the world within world within world, was just trippy.
“The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkien
I think I read this when I was in grade eight. I was very proud of myself. That is what I remember: being proud of myself for reading “The Hobbit” while the other girls were reading girlie novels, or not reading at all. Might have been the seed of elitist attitude right there.
“The Dark is Rising” by Susan Cooper
“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle
I am going to lump these two books in together, for although I can’t remember much of the details, they did have a great impact on me. I can recall being absolutely enthralled by them. These two series are on a list of books I must read again. I can’t remember if I was in grade six, seven or eight at the time. But it was just when I was starting to read voraciously. It was also a time when life suddenly got very, very complicated: apart from puberty, which is messy enough on its own, I had started at three different schools in two years, moved interstate, had been sent to boarding school (grade eight) and was just simply miserable. Books like these got me through that time. They were also a stepping stone between “kiddie” books and adult books. Although I doubt I would have called them “young adult” novels, a term that really pissed me off at that age (Don’t know why, it just did).
EDIT (added later that night)
- Pern and other science fiction novels by Anne McCaffrey: I used to love these as a teenager, but can’t really remember any of them as none of them made a lasting impact. The exception was “Restoree”. I think I stopped reading Pern novels in late high school.
- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: I should state outright: I preferred the movies. When reading the books, I skipped that whole part with the singing couple (Tom Bombadil?) in the woods. Mostly I found it unmemorable except for the barrow scene and the trip through the Mines of Moria. Enjoyable. But forgettable.
And here ends my nostalgic tripping. Part Two will be the formative books in my later teens, to adult years.
- Unfortunately I can’t remember which blog. Found it: I Hope I Didn’t Just Give Away the Ending - I really did run around with glee when I recognised the book [↩]
