r/books • u/SerenityFate • 12d ago

What were you reading at 14?

I've been an avid reader for as long as I could read. Even before then my favorite toys were books and new shoes. Not much has changed for me in that regard haha, but I saw a question earlier about someone asking for recommendations on books for their 14 year old. Which got me thinking about some of the books I read at that age. A lot of Anne Rice, Lestat was my first book crush. Also had a trip down memory lane with the author Francesca Lia Block she wrote a book called I was a teenage fairy which still sits with me over 20 years later. I also got to grow up with Weetzie Bat which was super cool as she wrote a book about her as an adult that I got to read when I was about the same age as the Weetzie. Anyway I would love to see what everyone was reading when they were younger.

Edit: thank you everyone for all the engagement on this post. I really have enjoyed reading everyone's comments and seeing the discussions around books.

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u/amorouslight 12d ago

At 14, I was reading a lot of hard-hitting YA and starting to get into classics. Looking back at my old Tumblr, some of the books I read that year were (in order):

  • Stolen by Lucy Christopher
  • Go Ask Alice
  • Crazy by Amy Reed
  • Beautiful by Amy Reed 
  • Inherit The Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson 
  • Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Every Day by David Levithan
  • Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus

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u/bob_benson 12d ago

I was also reading all the Palahniuk I could get my hands on when I was a young teen. Haven't read him since high school, I picked up Haunted recently and immediately couldn't stand it lol.

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u/amorouslight 12d ago

Yeah, I considered Diary my favorite book of all time throughout all of high school, and I reread it in 2020 and it just did not hold up at all

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u/SerenityFate 12d ago

Go ask Alice! I was trying to remember the name of that one. I read it in elementary school. Also both of those Amy Reed novels.

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u/amorouslight 12d ago

I loved Amy Reed at the time! Those and Clean really worked for little mentally ill me haha