27 may 2011
Young Adult
I never read fiction written for teenagers when I was that age. I just read real books. Kafka or Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut. When I was slightly younger Ray Bradbury. My daughter is having me read The Hunger Games. It's probably better than the kind of things we had available to us back in the day, but I am still glad I read the real stuff.
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When I was 13, my father informed me that the world was divided in two: those who thought that Stendhal's "Rojo y Negro" was the best book ever written, and those who thought that the title went to "La Cartuja de Parma". I read both, and to my father's disappointment, I chose "Rojo y Negro". That got me into the habit of reading long novels: summers were reserved for 19th century writers whose novels were over 400 pages. Those range from Tolstoy to Dumas, I was always very eclectic.
At the same time, I discovered S.E Hinton's books. I was hooked. I read all of them, and then saw the movies. I also read the books published by Alfaguara in its "Serie Naranja".
So I guess you can say I had both experiences.
There was certainly a gap for me, when I could read easily and widely but was not ready for (what I too think of as) real books. I filled it with pulp, e.g. Ian Fleming and various SF, lots of it much worse than Bradbury. I was looking into Tolkien recently, and wishing that I had read LotR in this period, when I would have had the patience required for his windy prose.
And there's another category, of books adults take seriously but expect adolescents to identify with. I think it was in this spirit that we were assigned The Lord of the Flies, like The Catcher in the Rye. Neither left a mark.
I did read LOTR, Salinger, and Lord of the Flies, all that kind of thing, before I graduated to Saul Bellow. I like Salinger's stories better than Catcher in the Rye. I would read every story in the New Yorker back when that meant something.
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