Reading a recent review of a new biography of Somerset Maugham reminded me of reading and loving his novels as a teenager. "Of Human Bondage." "The Moon and Sixpence." "Cakes and Ale." "The Razor's Edge." The novels were powerful and psychologically intriguing, and gave me the feeling of having a window into "real life." Thinking about these novels reminded me of the strange hodgepodge of books I read as a young teenager. I would follow up reading a children's mystery with an adult mystery with a bestseller with a nineteenth century novel, all jumbled together. For example, here is a small sampling of the books I read when I was about fourteen (taken from my ongoing "books read" list, kept from the age of ten; see my 1/24/10 and 1/25/10 posts for more about that list):
-Penny Allen and the Mystery of the Hidden Treasure
-The Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie
-Death Be Not Proud, by John Gunther
-Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens
-Anthem, by Ayn Rand (!)
-Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
-Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier
-Perry Mason and the Case of the Amorous Aunt (!), by Erle Stanley Gardner
-The Ugly American, by Lederer and Burdick
-Danny Orlis, Big Brother
-Maigret Has Scruples, by Simenon
-Babbit, by Sinclair Lewis
-The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky
I hardly think that at age fourteen I understood, beyond the plot, much about some of these books, especially "The Brothers Karamazov"! But I could feel that novel's power, its intimations of the complicated depths of human character and of what life could bring. And always, with all the sometimes indiscriminate reading, I was taking in the world, savoring all the experiences, sensing the vastness and complexity and possibility of life. I instinctively knew that books were my portal into that vastness.
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