teen reading

We had friends over for brunch today, and two of them exchanged a book. One explained, "We're trading books that we were reading when we were 15," they saw my raised eyebrows and added, "oh, Cheryl, you should totally join in."

So now I have been wracking my brain, casting my mind waaay back (20 years!!). What was I reading in grade 10? I know in class I was reading Inherit the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird. (I enjoyed both, and even ended up taking on the part of Henry Drummond in a performance of a scene from the Inherit the Wind.)

In the spring of grade 10, I started work in the public library as a page. I tried to remember how that influenced my reading. I remember reading the first page of Judy Blume's adult novel, Wifey with eyes very wide (it opens with the protagonist witnessing a stranger flashing her and I believe masturbating outside her house) and the same year I read chunks of Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. Of course neither of those books were read in full -- just the juicy bits -- and I'm certain neither represents what I was reading that year. I remember branching into non-fiction (biographies mostly); my parents' bookshelves (filled with fantasy and sci-fi); and reading a lot of books about the process of memory (I raided the shelves at the university library).

But in the end, the book exchange is about teen fiction. I considered Paula Danziger (I was bummed when searching for her bio found she had died last year) -- I remember reading the Divorce Express and the Pistachio Prescription; and Paul Zindel -- The Pigman and Pardon Me You're Stepping on My Eyeball; but then again I may have read those 2 or 3 years earlier after devouring everything Judy Blume had written. I am certain I read The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend which was published in 1984. I also read Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck; I had been on a bit of a horror/occult kick which included Peck, Lois Duncan (Stranger With My Face; Killing Mr. Griffin) and my first forray into Stephen King via his short story collections, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew.