I was at the Blickling Hall Rare Book Fair today and - blesséd be the hairy red arse of the god of all things cool - found me one of the original pre-publication bootleg copies of the daily Bible of my teenage years, Dylan's Tarantula.
Rubber stamped and mimeographed and rusty-stapled and cool as fuck.
So now that I'm happy, let me know what was the book that ruled your teenaged years back in the days when we knew nuthin' about nuthin'?
12 comments:
Dive, you're too cool for me.
I was just picking up on Shakespeare when I was 13, because Zeferelli's version of R&J came out that year and I was the same age as the star. Wow! It was so beautiful, it made me believe I could say those words, act in those plays. And I did. I never got to play Juliet, though.
Yet you still might, Petrea.
Ryoko as Juliet would make an awesome anime.
I was at the age when James Joyce, William Burroughs and the Beat poets were having a major effect (I still love them). Dylan was sitting alone with his typewriter in tour hotels in 1966 trying to write like them and the result was a kind of "lite" version, perfect for teens.
I wore out several copies of the little paperback, carrying it around in my back pocket every day. To find one of the bootlegs is awesome. Now I just need one of the pink cover, spider print LA copies to complete the set.
On a related note, has anyone spotted which book my current sidebar quote is from?
Get it right and I'll give you a new one to guess.
My books were what you call non book D ones like What Katie did next, and Little Women… I was always reading, but will have to put thinking cap on to remember what I read. It was a long time ago! I am as you know re reading some proper books now ! ha ha
I read you and Phil …Cat in the Hat books! and odd things like Beatrix Potter maybe that is why your taste is so varied…
What Katie Did Next and Little Women are not non-books; they're the real thing. It's those acres of pastel-spined paperbacks ("Ooh, today I'll read a lilac-spined one, then maybe a pink one") that are non-books (and Z-list celeb biogs and TV tie-ins … blech).
Yes, I know you're reading real books now; maybe you should give Little Women another go, too.
Thanks to you I have the complete Cat In The Hat books and all the Beatrix Potters upstairs. They're still fun to dip into.
Alifan, you might like "American Bloomsbury" by Susan Cheever. It's a very readable history of the Alcotts and their neighbors in their life around Walden Pond.
Dive, I'll watch for that pink Dylan.
Thanks, Petrea. I'll also pass my copy of Walden on to mum as I'm sure she's not read it yet.
Confession: I haven't read Walden either. But I read Louisa May Alcott and was surprised to learn about the literary community she lived in.
"Waiting for Godiva"
When I was 13, I picked up whatever interested me. I liked history books out of the city library's old stacks. I pored over old magazines that had been bound into huge volumes. I don't recall my parents ever controlling what I read - either they chose to not make an issue out of my selections, or they didn't know. Probably the latter. Anyway, one book I definitely remember was "Lolita." Of course, I didn't understand that it was about a pedophile who was involved with a girl about my own age. And then there was "Gone With the Wind" Yes, I drooled over Rhett Butler, but I've always thought of Scarlett as a woman who used/manipulated the social restrictions placed on women at the time to provide for her family.
Wow, that's a find! N remembers that one.
I didn't have one book in particular -- like others, I read whatever I came across that interested me. I did read a lot of mystery novels; I enjoyed trying to figure out "whodunit".
Petrea, if you ignore all the folk who read way too much into Walden it's actually a really nice read.
I'll check out American Bloomsbury.
I'd not come across Waiting for Godiva before, Speedway. Another one for the list.
Ah … "Lolita: light of my life; fire of my loins" … one of my favourite first lines ever. The most shocking thing I found reading that in my teens was how beautifully written it was. I've been a Nabokov fan ever since.
I never read Gone With The Wind; the movie is a pretty hard act to follow.
Yay, Ms.M. I had a feeling N would be way ahead of me.
I must confess to a similar yen for the classic whodunits.
Your instincts about "Gone With the Wind" are good, Dive. Mitchell was a tad wordy. There are things missing from the movie, which is fine when the book goes on and on and on.
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