Sunday, October 17, 2010

Zarah Gagatiga: Books I Read When I Was a Teenager

Teen Read Week begins and here's the blog's little activity to celebrate the event. From October 17 to 23, guest bloggers will be featured in the blog and their top ten readings when they were teenagers. It will definitely date us. Age and time aside, books will definitely mark a generation. Just like music, books have their beat!

Here goes!

1. S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders - discovered this one from a school mate. I loved the theme on isolation and belonging that I asked my mom to check her library for books written by the author. She was successful! She borrowed That Was Then, This Is Now, Rumble Fish and Tex.

2. Richard Peck's Close Enough To Touch - a love story about a guy coping with his girlfriend's death. Like S.E. Hinton, I searched for books by Richard Peck and enjoyed The Unfinished Portrait of Jessica and one book he wrote that deals with teen suicide. Geez, I forgot the title. Just recently, I finished Peck's Here Lies the Librarian. Fabulous!

3.Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time - my first foray into sci-fi! After L'Engle, I read Bradburry and Asimov.

4. Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes - another crisis coping themed book. Sigh. Now you have an idea how morose I was as a teen!

5. Katherin Patterson's Jacob Have I Loved - I liked this better than Bridge to Terabithia. What attracted me to the book was its cover. A girl holding a seashell. How sentimental! But the book blew my mind as I read the journey of the characters to self discovery. In the end, they grew up fine. At that point in my young adult life, I was so anxious of the future. The book gave me hope.

6. Harlequin and Mills and Boon Roamnces - Yes. I read them.

7. Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High - a teenage reader's rite of passage.

8. Erich Segal's Love Story - again, I read this novel because my classmates in high school were talking about it. So I borrowed the book from a classmate who found the copy in her aunt's old book shelf. We girls were so in love with Oliver. And by the end of the school year, we felt so confident like Jennifer, we could take on college smack in the face! Loved Segal's writing too!

9. Some required reading in college freshman that I will always remember - Paz Marquez-Benitez's Dead Stars; Lord of the Flies by William Golding; Oedipus Rex; Villa's Footnote to Youth; poems by Emily Dickenson; Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

10. Laro sa Baga as serialized in Liwayway magzine.

Watch out for more bloggers sweetening the pot of the blog's Young Adult reading and literacy carnival. Happy reading!

16 comments:

blooey said...

I just saw your list! amazing, we have two (three, if you count sweet dreams) in common!

Zarah C. Gagatiga said...

yes! i noticed that too. discovered HP when i was already a young mom :-) read HP 4 when i was pregnant with our second child. imagine that!?

Zarah C. Gagatiga said...

oh, and btw, i'm still looking for a copy of Tiger Eyes. lost mine in one of our moves. or must have lent it to a friend who forgot to give it back...

Anonymous said...

If I come across another copy of Tiger Eyes in my bargain hunts, will get it for you :)

Zarah C. Gagatiga said...

hey anonymous, please ID yourself :-)

fantaghiro23 said...

Hi, Zarah! This is a great blog activity for Teen Read Week.:) Inspired by you, I also posted my ten teen reads. And yes, it dates me.:)

Zarah C. Gagatiga said...

fantaghiro23 - sure! will do an exchange link :-)

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Buy Essays said...

Its a nice collection zarah.Thanks for sharing it with us.I would like to read all once.

Custom Term Papers said...

The mention of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders has brought back some old memories.
Nice job Zarah.

pinnacle said...

Sounds very interesting! I will check this out!

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Anonymous said...

In Dead Scared we travel to Cambridge for all the action.  I thought: secret societies, odd shenanigans amongst the stacks, that type of thing...and not to exactly spoilt it, it is both yes and no but not like you'd expect.  Ms. Bolton gives us a very creepy story to try and puzzle out, using three characters' POV - Mark Joesbury, to a lesser extent, and instead focussing mostly on Lacey and Evie's characters respectively. 

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The books you have added are really excellent and i want some of them in my personal book collection..Thanks for sharing...

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