Musing Mondays (November 4)

Hosted by Should Be Reading
Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…• Describe one of your reading habits.

• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).

• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!

• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.

• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!

• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

My life in books (part iv)

So I went off to secondary school and quickly realised that it was nothing like Malory Towers by Enid Blyton

(I don’t know who came up with the new covers for these but I for one am not impressed)

Our school didn’t give out reading lists so I continued with my trips to the local library picking up whatever took my fancy until gradually I moved out of the children’s corner to the adult books. There was little in the way of young adult fiction around at that time that I was aware of, although the local newsagents had one series I used to save my pocket money for… Sweet Dreams starting with P.S. I love you by Barbara Conklin (this was especially useful as I could write it on the hand even and pretend it was to remind me even though it was coincidently the initials of Patrick Sanderson!)

These books were published from 1981 to 1986.
Each teen novel dealt with usual high school drama and romance; first dates, first love, conflicts, etc Wikapedia

We also had a highly informal version of a book club while I was at school. This book club introduced me to all the ‘rude bits’ in books. Of course we needed to read an awful lot of books to find the best bits. Highlighted in my mind of a day sat on ‘the field’ reading together from The Rats by James Herbert, is the reason why I am not a fan of horror books!

At a similar time we read Lace by Shirley Conran with one poor mother’s books being passed around six girls discussing with a passion our English Lit teacher would have been proud of, if only it had been a different book. This piece of education also led our biology teacher to believe we were really interested in how genetics works and how eye colour is inherited.  I had to have a quick laugh to myself as there are no pictures left of the copy we read and the wording on the latest copy is so apt!

In my last year of school the period of the bonkbuster really came of age with my favourite Riders by Jilly Cooper

Set not far, but in a totally different world, to where we lived this book was well worth every penny I spent on it! This was far too good to have to wait a week to read the next part and I remember holing myself up in my room doing my ‘homework’ before generously handing my copy onto another girl to fall in love with Jake Lovell.

I have searched my memory banks in vain to see if there was any books that shaped my teenage years in a more meaningful way than the above selection would suggest. Sadly and ashamedly I come to the  conclusion that apart from some excellent titles I read as part of my education, my personal reading choices went somewhat awry at this stage in my life!