When I think of adolescent reading, I remember lying around on a lazy hazy late summer day and devouring something I shouldn’t have, like Sybil, by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Talk about wrecking the mood. This was the era of fascination with the adult world – after all isn’t adolescence about opening that door to an alter universe, like the one in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?
Now, that the door was opened the truth came crashing in: the world could be a terrible place, unleashing brutal behaviors at the family, community, and national level.
Thank goodness for the school reading list, which at least prepared me, in an age-appropriate way, for what was to come. There’s one, which I refer to regularly, which was the official transition to a lifetime of reading: Mr. Shapiro’s Most Excellent Eighth Grade English:
Welcome to the Monkey House (Kurt Vonnegut)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
I have thought about these multi-genre books repeatedly and remember most of them, each of which was life-changing in its own way. I’ve even incorporated two of them into my own fiction, an example, if there ever was one, of “to be a better writer you need to be a better reader.”