a little help?

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I'm 16, and I basically want some direction in my reading. At the moment I have just finished Saturday by Ian Mcewan, and am half way through D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. I also like Will Self, enjoyed Down and Out in Paris and London and am trying out William Blake. Any suggestions at all?

― Chloe M, Friday, 25 March 2005 14:01 (twenty years ago)

you should read something by EDITH WARTON because that is what i am goign to read next.

― HIP p-p-priest, Friday, 25 March 2005 14:47 (twenty years ago)

I think most countries have a law requiring 16 year olds to read Catcher In The Rye.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 25 March 2005 15:33 (twenty years ago)

but i want her to read EDITH WHARTON so we can have ourselves a race.

― HIP HIP HIP HIP (priest), Friday, 25 March 2005 15:43 (twenty years ago)

You say you want some direction. At this stage of the game (age 16) you have the whole library to play in. There are tens of thousands of excellent books - whole worlds to choose from. It might be a bit frustrating to wander in a dozen directions, bumping randomly off the furniture, but it might be better than confining yourself to some small corner of the room this early in the game.

My advice would be to eschew direction for now. Give yourself permission to read widely. Mix it up between more modern stuff and classics. You appear headed for college. There will be more than enough direction imposed on you there - plenty too much direction.

If you are going to learn to shape your own thinking about the world and seize the direction of your life, this is a great time to collect a heap of miscellaneous raw materials to draw on. Build your own playground. You've got time.

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 25 March 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

By 16 I wish I would have read

Franny & Zooey--JD Salinger
Gravity's Rainbow--Thomas Pynchon
The Mill on the Floss--George Eliot
Henderson, the Rain King--Saul Bellow
any Anais Nin
The Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Madame Bovary--Gustave Flaubert
Legend--David Gemmell
The End of the Road--John Barth
A Room with a View--EM Forster
Wuthering Heights--Emily Bronte
Tom Jones--Henry Fielding
Don Juan--Lord Byron
Illuminatus!--Robert Anton Wilson
The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker
60 Stories--Donald Barthelme
Anti-Oedipus--Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari
A Farewell to Arms--Ernest Hemingway
The Brothers Karamazov--Fyodor Dostoyevsky
the Moviegoer--Walker Percy
The Collected Stories of Anton Chekhov
On the Road--Jack Kerouac
Steppenwolf--Herman Hesse
In Search of Lost Time--Marcel Proust
The Iliad--Homer
Cities of the Red Night--William Burroughs
The Wizard of Oz--L. Frank Baum

I could go on, but that should keep you busy for a few weeks. Happy reading!

― Mayor Maynot, Friday, 25 March 2005 16:46 (twenty years ago)

Gravity's Rainbow--Thomas Pynchon

roffle!

Illuminatus!--Robert Anton Wilson

absolutely

― W i l l (common_person), Friday, 25 March 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

I read Illuminatus! when I was 12, and I tell you, that has made all the difference.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 March 2005 20:19 (twenty years ago)

Aimless OTM again.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 25 March 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

Oh, yeah, I meant to add that. Ken OTM re Aimless OTM.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 March 2005 23:19 (twenty years ago)

[A beatific smile o'erspreads Aimless's craggy, gap-toothed visage as he murmurs over and over:] Aimless OTM... Aimless OTM.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 26 March 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

At 16 I was all about Jane Eyre and the Thomas Hardy books. Also, the short stories of Shirley Jackson (if they haven't already been assigned). Also, everything on Mayor Maynot's list. If you liked Ian McEwan, you might try some AL Kennedy or David Mitchell for more contemporary writing. Oh, at 16 I also discovered the worlds of John Banville, and I still love him to this day.

― Jessa (Jessa), Saturday, 26 March 2005 15:18 (twenty years ago)

Biggles!

― JDSalinger, Saturday, 26 March 2005 20:31 (twenty years ago)

Also, start reading poetry, if you don't already.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 March 2005 00:51 (twenty years ago)

Oh, you said you were reading Blake. That's a good start!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 March 2005 03:20 (twenty years ago)

Try any of the books in Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart Cycle. I read all of them when I was sixteen, and they were phenomenal.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Sunday, 27 March 2005 08:06 (twenty years ago)

There's a teenage cannon, isn't there? I would add Brave New World to the list.

― Madchen (Madchen), Sunday, 27 March 2005 10:11 (twenty years ago)

thanks for all these suggestions, I especially like the obscurities you've all mentioned. re. aimless I didn't mean to restrict myself, its just I wanted some thoughts from people with more knowledge than myself, like I was thinking of Byron but had no idea where to start, but now will try Don Juan. I know what you mena though, will keep as open-minded as poss.

― Chloe M, Sunday, 27 March 2005 14:07 (twenty years ago)

With the possible exception of Robert Anton Wilson, this is a ll a bit proper-literature, isn't it? I'm not claiming I was doing so out of any PoMo breadth of tastes or anything like that, as SF was all I read then, but I loved Philip K. Dick at this age, for instance, and still do. I also unreservedly recommend China Mieville, Sam Delany, M. John Harrison, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Lawrence Block. Oh, and younger stuff, since there is an Earthsea adaptation on in an hour, so LeGuin's books in that series, Pullman's His Dark Materials, anything by Alan Garner.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 27 March 2005 14:20 (twenty years ago)

Don Juan is fun, at least for a while. Don't get worried if you start to get bored with it a few books in, just put it down.

Go to the library and pick an interesting looking book from each hundred of the Dewey decimal system. You know, one book from the 000s, one from the 100s, one from the 200s. The 400s are a bit odd but there are some books in there that aren't foreign language instruction books...

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 March 2005 18:33 (twenty years ago)

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