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What Was Your Favorite Book As a Teenager?

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First off, if you haven’t already entered the THE SECRET YEAR Teen Diary Contest Extravaganza, please do so in the official contest thread! The contest will be open until 4 PM Pacific time today, so best get diarying.

Tomorrow THE SECRET YEAR will be published, and it will soon, dare I predict, become a favorite for many teens out there. And since we have both teens and former teens alike here on the blog: what was/is your favorite book as a teenager?

And by popular demand, a bonus question for the former teens: what was the worst outfit/hairstyle you wore as a teenager? Bonus points for a link to a photo.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Other Lisa says

    First off, many many congratulations to Jennifer for THE SECRET YEAR! I am really looking forward to reading it!

    Re: books…how sad is it that I really don't remember? I mean, I'm not that old. But I think high school was not a big reading time for me. Elementary school and junior high, on the other hand…

    Fashion…er, well, if you've seen FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH or DAZED AND CONFUSED, you'll have an idea. Think pukka shells…

  3. Anonymous says

    Favorite books through teens:
    A Separate Peace
    The Catcher in the Rye
    Johnny Got His Gun
    plus: everything Agatha Christie and Rex Stout had written by then

    Haircut was a (girly) version of a Beatles haircut because I wore a newsgirl hat and had thick hair that I thought looked super cool under that hat.

    jjshannon

  4. Glamour177 says

    Really? No one wants to fess up to being too busy sneaking out of the house to read a book? No? Oh, maybe that's what I have yet to be published (wah wah).

    Let me go a little younger then and say that I couldn't get enough of The Sweet Valley High series as a tween. Loved the drama! It was 90210 before 90210 actually existed.

  5. Jeffrey says

    I forgot another high school favorite, Amphigorey by Edward Gorey.

    Which reminds me of a limerick we used to say in high school (or some of us anyway)…

    Willie with a thirst for gore
    Nailed his sister to the door
    Mother said with humor quaint
    "Stop it, Wil, you'll mar the paint!"

  8. Anonymous says

    I hate to admit this (and I am glad this will be from anonymous) but

    I read The Sweet Valley Twin Books…all of them, I think. Haha. I didn't mature into real literature until adult hood as I was a gymnast and didn't have a lot of time to spend on reading.

  9. Nick says

    Oh and even though I'm not a former teen:

    My hair was always buzzed in elementary school, the summer between sixth and seventh grades I started growing out my hair. Never got it cut once. By July '05, I had a mass of curly hair that literally looked like someone ripped a small brown bush out of the front garden and slapped it on my head. And I continued to allow my hair to go uncut until November '06. So, yeah. Glad I outgrew that phase (no pun intended).

  11. abc says

    Predictably, Franny and Zooey. I kinda loved Zooey.

    For style, I was a sort of hippie/mod mashup wannabe. This was small city in the late eighties/early nineties (class of 92'). I was too cool for perms and mullets. For some reason I owned a pair of fake John Lennon glasses. And I was all about statement t-shirts (Save the Whales! End Apartheid!). I think a bowl cut and plaid sounds precious!

  14. Amanda Plavich says

    My favorite book as a teen was probably Harry Potter or In Cold Blood. Yeah, totally different, I know.

    And I'll play with the bonus. I didn't really have an awful, awful hairstyle in high school (unless you count the rockin' wispies), but I did wear the same pair of Adidas sandals every day…even in winter. True story.

    And I posted 15 year old me on my blog with full on braces, zits, wispy bangs and blue mascara. I was so cool. 😛

    https://www.amandaplavich.com

    Sorry, no flannel. 😉

  15. K. M. Walton says

    Forever by Judy Blume

    That book was so naughty at that time that I had to get our housekeeper to buy it for me and sneak it in. For real. And I read it by flashlight under my covers at the tender age of thirteen.

  16. Valerie Keiser Norris says

    Island of the Blue Dolphins. I wanted to be shipwrecked. I was a teen in the late 60s/early 70s, and my wildest outfit was a pair of stars and stripes hotpants with (I swear to God) matching kneesocks. My fashion sense isn't much better today.

  25. Just Another Sarah says

    Almost everything–and I still read it all. Harry Potter, Wrinkle in Time, Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Beauty by Robin McKinley, Ella Enchanted…oh, the Patricia C. Wrede Dragons series…Little House on the Prairie…anything by O. Henry; many short stories…Isaac Asimov's Norby series…and gosh, I really enjoyed Heart of Darkness when we read it in high school. So. Just about everything.

  26. Hannah Jenny says

    My favorite book, starting before I was a teenager and lasting through to present day, is, was, and shall be THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

    My most unusual fashion choice: a jester hat. Was I a jokester? Was I outgoing? Did I like drawing attention to myself? No, no and no. You tell me why!!

  28. Adam Heine says

    Favorite book: Lord of the Rings (or really just the Fellowship of the Ring and the Frodo/Sam halves of Two Towers and Return of the King; I didn't care about the rest until college).

    Most regrettable hairstyle: Mullet (thank God, I have no picture).

  29. Beth Terrell says

    Oh, there are so many!
    The Lord of the Rings, The Outsiders, A Separate Peace, Bless the Beasts and the Children, Mary Stewart's Arthur/Merlin series, To Sir With Love, A Wrinkle in Time, Watership Down.

    Yes, and all the Anne of Greann Gables books and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys. Though I wasn't a teenager yet when I first read those, I read them over and over for years.

  30. Naya says

    I believe it was called Challenger… it was a nonfiction book about the astronauts who died in the Challenger explosion. For some reason that event really shook me to the core (probably because at the time I wanted to be an astronaut).

    I was sure to be at the first shuttle launch of Discovery since the Challenger accident, though. That was amazing.

    The only think I can remember that I wore that I think was stupid was those leg warmers… what was it about those things???

  33. wendy says

    Favourite book as a teenager…due to the pressure of school examinations, and therefore time constraints, I don't think I read much. After I left school my eyes were ruined for awhile and it was painful to read. I remember Anne of Green Gables made an unforgettable impression, but that might be going back to childhood. Oh, yes, I remember I picked up one of my grandmother's books and read avidly – first romance ever – The Sultan's Slave. It wasn't YA, but it definitely appealed to my romantic side.

  34. Demosthenes says

    Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

    Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

    Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

    Early teens – A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle

    Late teens – Neuromancer by William Gibson

  35. alybee says

    Reading this list is making me feel old. Anything remotely YA I read in Jr. High (The Outsiders, Go Ask Alice). And there wasn't a lot of current stuff in my local library so I spent time reading mostly classics. But loved To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and My Antonia by Willa Cather and anything by Ray Bradbury.

  40. J. M. Hunter says

    I cannot believe I left off Sweet Valley High. I read every single one of those suckers and LOVED every one of them. I am not too cool to admit that.

    I forgot to describe the outfits that accompanied the pictures I included in my first post, so here they are:
    Early 90s – baggy NKOTB t-shirt, stirrup leggings, Converse high tops, combo belt/tank top/miniskirt/headband from Modules worn as an Obi, scrunchi, denim jacket with buttons that said twee things like "Party On, Wayne!" and "SYKE!". Tightrolling ran rampant. Makeup was pink and blue and stashed in a Kaboodle. My hair was body waved with bangs that defied gravity (curl 1 piece up, curl 1 piece down, tease, tease, tease). My Aqua Net can and I contributed to 89% of global warming.

    Mid 90s – There are the best of times, and there are the worst of times, and then there are the times when you think it is a great idea to wear high-waisted, tapered jeans with a plaid flannel shirt tucked in tight with a brown braided belt and some brown Docs. The mid-90s were those kind of times. I wore my dad's old ripped up Levi's and lots of flannel button up shirts over babydoll dresses. My hair was a pixie cut.

    Late 90s – I was some kind of pseudo hippie and wore lots of corderoy and band t-shirts and long, flowy dresses with floppy hats. The amount of hemp I wore may have been illegal. I don't have any pictures from this phase because I think I might have been shunning technology or something. But probably I just lost my camera.

  46. Courtney says

    Harry Potter series for life!

    But my all time favorite book then, now and forevermore is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (I adore the whole series, but Outlander in particular).

  49. T.M. Lunsford says

    Any book by Meg Cabot was/still is my favorite, although Avalon High might win as the overall favorite. I'm only 2 years removed from being a teenager, so they still hold a special place in my heart.

  50. :)Ash says

    To Kill a Mockingbird. It's the reason I went to law school.

    1984. Brave New World. The Handmaid's Tale. (See a theme?)

    Frankenstein (will always be one of my favorite books of all time).

    Anything at all by Jerry Spinelli. Okay, so a lot of his stuff is MG, but he rocks. I love Spinelli.