Teenage Reading Record(2)

Another couple of of pages from my teenage reading notes. (For the first part see here).

There's only one date on this - summer '84 - and I can clearly remember reading at least one of these books (The Mind of Mr J G Reeder) in gaps while I revised for my O levels that summer.


I can see that I was still reading some of the books on the list that my English teacher handed out (The Man Who Was Thursday, The Picture of Dorian Grey, the Maupassant short stories). I had just found my way into Dickens, with A Tale of Two Cities and Pickwick Papers). I was at a low point in reading Hardy, with Jude the Obscure which is just so miserable - I had enjoyed Under Greenwood Tree far more.

I can remember buying one of the books on this list - we went away for a family holiday, just me and my parents, staying at Lancaster University in the student accommodation (a tower block in the middle of their campus). It didn't occur to me at the time but it must have been an economical holiday. Anyway, I found the university bookshop and that's where I bought A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters. It proved a delightful book, despite the preposterous comparison on the cover to The Name of Rose (which I don't think I'd read then anyway). That was a great series and several years later I actually wrote to Peters asking about a detail of the history - and she replied to me - the first time, I think, I'd had any contact with an author. (While we were staying in Lancaster there was a mild earthquake in England - which I somehow missed, despite the fact we were 10 stories up).

I don't know what I was doing reading The Conquest of Gaul, really I don't. It was nothing to do with the having read the Shakespeare play and wasn't actually doing Latin. (Our French teacher tried to get a few of us to do Latin as an extra thing at lunchtime and we might have managed one term or so but it fizzled out and probably a good thing - it would have been far too much).

Another book in here that dates the selection is Another Heart and Other Pulses by Michael Foot, which was essentially his account of the 1983 General Election in which he'd been the leader of Labour Party and which was disastrous for them. (Anyone who things 2015 was a catastrophe for Labour literally wasn't born) and the Duncan Campbell: this was the age of CND, nuclear nightmares and paranoia. (When, in my English Language O level the previous summer, we were prompted to write a story by photo of people who'd got out of their cars to look at something in the sky, I of course imagined apocalypse and annihilation).

I'm struck now by how mixed this selection of books is. There are classics, non-fiction, humour (the Miles Kington), 20th century staples like Mary Renault, science fiction, horror, muscular and faintly dodgy English pulpy stuff like Dornford Yates (if you were publishing a new edition of that now I bet you'd have to introduce some of it very carefully...)

No sign of me settling down and reading particular things, I'm hopping around and trying this and that. Well done 16 year old me.

Teenage Reading Record(1)

Through various house moves and clearouts I have thrown away most of the school exercise books I ever had, but I still have a few, including this one. It was an English Lit. book when I was in my 5th year (5JM means 5th year, and my form tutor was Miss J Moss) of secondary school. I think this is now called year 11(?) (I was in a group that did English Language O level in 4th year - a year early - then Literature the following year, doing the course in one year instead of two. The others hated us for being swots...)

I'm finding it interesting going through this, trying to remember what I read and why, and I thought I'd share it here.

As well as using this for essays and written work (the first item is dates 6/2/84 and sets out work to be completed on Henry IV Part One - including a list of insults in the play!) I began recording the books I'd read. I think we must have been asked to do this, there's no way that I would have written something in a school book that hadn't bee sanctioned by the teacher - I wasn't that sort of child!

Anyway, I carried on using it for that purpose for years after, at least until 1992 (the last date, although the list of books read goes on for some time after that). I think I may have got less meticulous about writing them all down towards the end, and then I stopped, and didn't really start tracking my reading again till I began Amazon reviewing around 2000 (but it was several years till I began reviewing everything).

I thought it might be interesting to look at what I was reading 33 years ago.

Here are the first two pages

Given that the dates start in September 83, I think I've started by going back and listing books I'd previously read - supporting this, I'm sure some of these books were on a reading list given to us earlier by our then English teacher, Mrs Allinson. Our Man in Havana and White Gold Wielder were on that list. (In passing it only struck me later that she must have been something of a SFF fan, recommending Stephen Donaldson, as well as Asimov (I, Robot - although that's not on here).

The marginal note on the second page - "Xmas '83" - reminds me of what seems in memory of days and days spent eating chocolate oranges and reading through the books I'd been given, many of them I think off that same list (although the ones I remember most clearly, the John Buchan Richard Hannay books, aren't there, so perhaps that was '82 not '83...)

There are other books on here I found for myself: the Father Brown stories, Hornblower. I had already discovered Orwell (which is why by this stage I was reading his biography) and at the same time PG Wodehouse. I think that I, Claudius was on that reading list (I wish I could find it!) as was The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Pincher Martin was in the school library and I was encouraged to read that by one of the teachers who helped with the library - I have to say this is the first time I can remember I had that "there's ten hours of my life I'll never get back" feeling. I was probably too young for it, but it put me off Golding for life (I wasn't really impressed by Lord of the Flies either, but it was at least more readable).

Don Camillo was on TV around that time in a BBC adaptation, which is why I read that. What is Dungeons and Dragons? speaks for itself and all the Shakespeare was, I think, an attempt to put the play we were studying in context (I don't think I got too much out of it: it wasn't really meant to be read, was it, but performed?)