Sunday, October 17, 2010

School Librarian In Action Reminds Us Of Teen Read Week

I received this private message from School Librarian In Action regarding Teen Read Week:

Hi all!

It's Teen Read Week on 17-23 October and I'm celebrating the event via blogging the Top Ten Books I Read When I Was a Teenager. This is an invitation for your participation as guest blogger in this blogging carnival on young adult literature and reading through my library blog. You may post your list in your blog too should you wish to participate then we can exchange links :-)

So, if you're game, all you need to do is list ten books you favored reading when you were a teen (13-18 years old). You can send your list to me via zarah.gagatiga(at)gmail(dot)com. Your list can include a note or two on why you liked the book, or some side stories or context on your millieu at the time you read the book.

You can view my link here.

My response to her got out of hand, which is typical of me when talking about books I've read and enjoyed:

Hi, Zarah.

My list, in no particular order:

1. D'Aulaire's and Edith Hamilton's Greek Myths, and D'Aulaire's Norse myths
2. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
3. The Prydain Chronicles by Alexander
4. The Narnian Chronicles by Lewis
5. The Earthsea Tales by Le Guin
6. Agatha Christie mysteries
7. The Time Quintet by L'Engle (actually, there were only the first three when I was between 13 and 18)
8. Stephen King horror tales of this era (Carrie, Night Shift, Christine, Salem's Lot, The Stand, Pet Sematary, Cujo, The Shining)
9. Edgar Allan Poe's stories
10. Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes
11. Roald Dahl's books (The Charlies books, Fantastic Mr. Fox, James and the Giant Peach, Danny, Champion of the World, etc.)
12. H.P. Lovecraft's The Lurking Fear and Other Stories
13. Various short stories by Asimov, Dick, Clarke
14. The short stories of Hemingway and Faulkner
15. Doyle's Holmes stories
16. Howard's Conan stories

Ay! I went over 10! Sorry! Actually, I could go on, but I'd better stop here. I'll blog and link up to your post. TY!

Hehe, look at that list...I'm such a nerd.

And if you want to know how I fell into reading, click here, which will lead you to a link to a contest I joined recently; comment #33 is mine. I wrote it in white heat when I saw the call for submissions for this contest, so you might say this is quite the honest reflection on how I became the heavy, and nerdy, reader that I am. :D

But did that stop me? Noooo, because a few moments later, I had to send Zarah this:

Argh, sorry, I need to add some more to the list! I feel like it's unfair of me to my memory of reading these books if I don't!

17. Watership Down by Adams
18. Dune by Herbert
19. Tolstoy's short stories
20. Chekhov's short stories

Ayan. An even 20. Puwede ko pang dagdagan, pero tama na. I'll stop here. Hehe. Sorry again, and TY!

And boy, could I go on. There are the various retellings of the King Arthur stories; Moorcock's Elric series; Cleary's many, many books on American life from the perspective of the young; many, many Newbery's, like those by Snyder, Konigsburg, Fleischman, Fox, McKinley, to name just five; Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White; and I still don't know why, but the librarians suggested even books for girls to me, which I read anyway, such as those by Blume (of course, they weren't as well-remembered as the others).

These are the books read by someone from my generation. I'd be very interested to hear about the books younger readers have read, remembered, and loved, when they were 13-18 years old. Maybe those readers and bloggers I mentioned in these posts (Filipino Book Bloggers 1, 2, 3, 4) would care to share? Leave a comment here, please! Thanks!

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