On What Books Make You Cringe To Remember?
I'm mostly with Maureen Corrigan here. I went straight from Enid Blyton (doesn't count - I was a wee kid) to Arthur Ransome and then Tolkien. I used to be slightly embarassed about the Ransome phase but my opinion of him as a children's writer has gone up as I've learned more about him. I still admire Tolkien, and although I have read a zillion other authors I don't think I've ever had any more "crushes".
True, I admit, I did have a von Daniken phase, but I like to think of it as the educational equivalent of juvenile chickenpox - an unpleasant memory, but with beneficial long-term effects.
Posted on April 10, 2012 at 8:01 am
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On Understatement: "The Harry Potter books are not rebellious."
Doesn't sound like any 16 year old I ever met, either when I was 16 or in the many years since. I think there was one guy in school who read Camus, but the likelihood of him getting laid, behind the bike sheds or anywhere else, was pretty slender. If anybody _was_ getting laid at my school, and frankly I doubt it, I suspect it wasn't on the back of their literary tastes.