Candy Gourlay, journalist and author shares her list of books she read as a teenager. Candy's debut novel, Tall Story, is a smash hit in Manila and in London. The book will soon come out in the US and I expect that Fil-American teens particularly will love it!
Candy blogs and her website is fantastic! You can read her whereabouts there and watch trailers of her book, Tall Story. If I am not mistaken, Candy is currently writing her second novel for young adults.
Below is Candy's top ten reads!
This is very revealing of one's age but here you go:
1. Prince and the Pauper by Samuel Clemens - how many times did I read this? and it was always brilliant!
2. Rich Man Poor Man by Irwin Shaw - here's where I figured out what sex was about and I remember being so appalled. I read it because of the mini series starring Nick Nolte.
3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - my role model was Jo March - read the entire series and decided I would become a novelist who lived in a house filled with little boys (I kind of fulfilled that wish).
4. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - read this because of the movie and loved it even though the language was very difficult.
5. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - read this because of a Ladybird book I read about it.
6. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - I thought I was so cool reading this. Now I totally disagree with the philosophy.
7. The Quiet American by Graham Greene - loved Graham Greene but now I would be hard pressed to recall the stories.
8. The Water Method Man by John Irving - this was so funny and so adult for innocent me.
9. The World According to Garp by John Irving - I loved this book but only in my maturity realized that it was an anti-feminist tract!
10. Nora Aunor and Other Profiles by Nick Joaquin - this made me want to become a journalist and write similar profiles.
Hey this list made me realize that teen reads are not necessarily confined to kids' books.
And yeah, ten is a very small number.
it not only reflects one's era, it also shows how far teen lit has come along since my childhood in the seventies and eighties when there were no books dedicated to young people. if i were a teen today, my list would probably include Scott Westerfeld (Uglies Trilogy), Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now), Sharon Creech (Walk Two Moons), Lous Sachar (Holes) and Carla Pacis (OCW)!
ReplyDeleteSo many of the books I read (and loved) were way over my level of understanding but I read them because they featured young protagonists ... or because I thought they made me look cool.
At the end of the day, I think they all added up to making me a better reader!
candy - generally speaking, YA Lit is quite a young genre :-) or, we only had access to YA novels in the early 80's and moving towards the 90's. if not for my mom who was a librarian at IS Manila back then, i would not have known blume, katherine patterson, s.e. hinton, richard peck, l'engle and a host of american YA writers. my british and european awakenings came in later with dickens, dahl and tolkien. gaiman, stroud and rowling are recent love affairs :-)
ReplyDeleteand your comment made me think of the YA lit scene in manila, candy!
ReplyDeleteLove reading though. Good job.
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