I read everything I could get my hands on when I was a kid. My teachers could be like "That's an awful big book for your age." So? I remember I was telling my best friend in 4th grade about this book I was reading and I said there was a word I didn't know in it and had to look it up. The word, ironically enough, was "sophisticated." She said "If you don't know the word you probably shouldn't be reading that book."

Huh? That's how you learn.

Telling me a book was too old for me, was pretty much striking a guarantee that I would read it.

When I was in 5th grade, somebody got a copy of "Forever" by Judy Blume. It was passed around on the playground. The teenagers in that book actually had SEX!

Sizzling hot stuff right there.

kath ralph and michael? In the fifth grade? Who says public schools don't provide and education!

V.C. Andrews was the steamy-sex-scene author that routinely got passed around my sixth grade class. Although as I checked Wikipedia trying to remember the titles, I learned that most of "her" books were actually ghostwritten after her death.

Me too! Although I cropped that because I don't know what age that is, and I suspect we were older.

A friend and I were discussing a book with some sex in it when I was 13. We thought it was "a bit pervy" (I didn't learn not to associate perversity and perverts with straightforward sex until I was 16). Another friend scoffed at us and claimed to have something really pervy for us to read. She did. It was James Herbert's The Fog. Funnily enough, although it was gory and featured detailed acts of sexual misconduct it's only because of that conversation that I remember the book at all. Whereas the fear and distress I felt reading about the bomb falling on London at the beginning of The Rats is still something I can access. I actually felt dirty after reading it.

Here's some reading lists for ya:

http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklis...klistsbook.cfm (outstanding books for the college bound)

immerse yourself in historical fiction from Amazon

lists, lists, and more lists of classics, western AND eastern

someone's list of best novels

A while back I remember reading an alternative recommended reading list for secondary school aged children (11-16). It suggested that rather than press the classics on reluctant readers, the most important thing was simply to get them to read. It changed my views - to those I've espoused earlier in the thread in fact.

One of the authors recommended for boys was Guy N Smith. I bought one of his books from the charity bookshop to see if I agreed. I did! Giant mutant crabs, bloody deaths (but only from mankind's enemy) exy-sexy and cliffhanging chapter endings.

I wish I could find the original recommendation - it was really good reading!

We took this approach with my stepdaughter, who by her own proclamation "hated reading" long before she was ever required to read anything by anyone... but we were forced to compromise to the point of manga (graphic novels.) It was all she would read for years, but we figured it was better than nothing. She has just this year finally started to voluntarily branch out into books without pictures, which we were very happy about.

My ex only read comics until we got together.
I didn't push him to read - it seemed odd to me but I bit my tongue. He had simply never been around anyone who read for pleasure til he met me.

The first time we went away together he was surprised to find me laughing out loud over a book - to the extent that I had to put it down. He went from getting me to read parts out loud, to wanting to read it himself.

He was never as much of a book lover as me, but he certainly had wider tastes than when we met. As did I - I treasured the comics I collected during that time.

Lil Lookout hates to read if someone is making him to the point he'll pretend he can't. BUT he'll read (at least try) to read anything he finds just sitting around. He loves going to Barnes and Noble with me. We grab Starbucks and he'll read stacks of soccer magazines. He won't read books there but he always picks out two to buy. I inevitably find them in his bed the next morning.

I really didn't have much problem. Stephenson's characters tend to be pretty well differentiated. I read Magician by Raymond Feist (the first thing I've read by him, and the first he'd written) a couple weeks ago, and it started pushing my limit on remembering characters because so many of them were incredibly similar: What's the difference between Meecham and Martin before the last quarter of the book? Nothing.

Book 3 is a more dynamic read. Few letters, more action, lots of plot lines tied up.

I have 2 librarian friends on different coasts who claim that children's literature was not boy-friendly. Creepy, yucky things will thrill them and the thinking is, if that's what it takes to get them going, buy those books. Girls did not have the same need because they read for the story. Libraries are working harder to fill their stacks for both boys and girls now and more authors are scribbling for a specific market.

Cool. thanks PW

I don't remember if I paid that much attention to our summer reading list, we didn't start that until high school. I read a lot, but I used to be pretty obstinate about required reading. Hated Lord of the Flies, it was the required summer book for Sophomore English, I read it the day before the test. Which the teacher pushed back a week because none of the class had read it yet. Junior year Their Eyes Were Watching God was required, I'd read it and loved it already and immensely enjoyed re-reading it and discussing it in class. Thats all I really remember about summer reads.