What are you currently reading?

[Gurn Blanston]

I'm curious, dear GMGers.

If you had to choose the book of fiction that impact you the most (1) in your childhood, and (2) as a teenager: what would those works be?

Mine are:

1) As a child (around 9 or 10 y.o.): The Duel (Joseph Conrad) and The Call of the Wild (Jack London)

2) As a teenager (around 16 y.o.): Demian by Hermann Hess.

This is one of those questions which illuminates the adult with the light of his childhood. At first blush, I don't suppose mine choices are credible, but upon reflection they are me as an adult:

When I was 7, my parents bought me a set of encyclopedias. Knowing no better, I read them (all 18 volumes) from cover to cover as though they were a large novel. Several times.

When I was a freshman in high school, I was browsing the school library and diacovered a very old set of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and I so admired the way Doyle drew out Holmes' linear and analytic thought processes that I made an effort to pattern my own after them. Whether I was successful or not is open for debate. However, I have become, as an adult, a very linear and analytic thinker, so either I already was or else the self-training worked to some extent. 

[North Star]

Early childhood & teenage: Rowling's Potter series
Teenage: Tolkien
Very late teens: Camus' Plague, The Stranger, The Fall

[Ken B]

Hmmm.
About 10, And then there were none by Agatha Christie
About 16. Harder to say. Probably The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. That or Anna Karenina.

[Ken B]

For me
1) My mother made sure I read heavily as a child, with the result that no book stands out in my mind above the rest.  As a preteen, I remember two books by Thomas Costain, The Silver Chalice and The Tontine, Desiree by Anne Marie Selinko, and The Roman by Mika Waltari (although Wikipedia's description of the latter does not match my faint memories of the story).  These all happened to be books my mother owned.
2)As a high school student,  The Lord of the Rings and Will Durant's Story of Philosophy
And to add one more level
3)In college,  Jane Austen and  Homer in Lattimore's translation, and Ariosto.

Costain is from my home town.

I may be one of the few here who failed to finish TLOTR.

[Karl Henning]

Costain is from my home town.

I may be one of the few here who failed to finish TLOTR.

There are a couple of chapters which even I find it a chore to make my way through . . . .

[Ken B]

There are a couple of chapters which even I find it a chore to make my way through . . . .

I remember giving up on the word Lo! somewhere deep in an orc battle.

[kishnevi]

I remember giving up on the word Lo! somewhere deep in an orc battle.

If it was the final battle before the Black Gate...I fully understand why.  That LO! is the low point of the book.  JRR was bad at battle scenes.  And you can not skip it, since that is the chapter which describes Sauron's fall.

[Karl Henning]

Men of the West! Who brought the Captain Morgan?

[Ken B]

If it was the final battle before the Black Gate...I fully understand why.  That LO! is the low point of the book.  JRR was bad at battle scenes.  And you can not skip it, since that is the chapter which describes Sauron's fall.

I believe it was. It was deep in third volume.

[Drasko]

I'm curious, dear GMGers.

If you had to choose the book of fiction that impact you the most (1) in your childhood, and (2) as a teenager: what would those works be?

Mine are:

1) As a child (around 9 or 10 y.o.): The Duel (Joseph Conrad) and The Call of the Wild (Jack London)

2) As a teenager (around 16 y.o.): Demian by Hermann Hess.

1) A novel by Yugoslavian writer Branko Ćopić titled Magareće godine (Donkey Years) dealing with adventures and pains of growing up of bunch of boys at a boarding school. Wonderfully warm and funny. Of wider known titles definitely Stevenson's Treasure Island and Salgari's The Black Corsair.

2) Probably Hesse for me as well: Der Steppenwolf. Also, around that time, but I'm not quite sure if I was still in my teens, I first read Borges' Ficciones. That was huge, completely changed my perception of art.

[NikF]

If I go back to before nine or ten I can recall reading 'Hurrah for the Circus' by Enid Blyton. It made me want to run away and join the circus. And frankly, sometimes I still do.

[Florestan]

As a child (7-12) my daily literary meals consisted of Romanian and international folktales, Charles Perrault, The Grimm Brothers, Wilhelm Hauff, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Paul Feval, Fenimore Cooper, R. L. Stevenson. Eugene Sue and so on. Also, one brick of a book, an encyclopedic dictionary (quite similar an experience to that of Gurn). Nothing groundshattering or transcendental, but I owe to them a lifelong passion for literature in all its forms, and also a deep interest in history, geography and linguistics.

While in my teens the first literary shock was discovering the poems of Poe (and his prose) and Baudelaire in excellent Romanian translation. I was instantly hooked and poetry has been one of my favorite genres ever since.

The second shock came in my late teens when I read Pascal´s Meditations, which lead me to The Bible, and then to a book written by a Romanian Jew who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy while he was imprisoned during the Communist regime for the capital crime of having read Emil Cioran. I didn´t consider myself an atheist even before reading these three books, but they positively turned me to Christianity.

So, these are the books which heavily influenced me in childhood and teenage.

[North Star]

Also, one brick of a book, an encyclopedic dictionary (quite similar an experience to that of Gurn). Nothing groundshattering or transcendental, but I owe to them a lifelong passion for literature in all its forms, and also a deep interest in history, geography and linguistics.

While in my teens the first literary shock was discovering the poems of Poe (and his prose) and Baudelaire in excellent Romanian translation. I was instantly hooked and poetry has been one of my favorite genres ever since.

Encyclopedias were important in my childhood as well. I knew all of the history taught in elementary school beforehand.
Poe was important in my teens as well, I don't remember exactly when, but I got first a translated edition of his stories and poems, and a couple of months later the Penguin complete tales & poems. Still haven't read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, though.

[Florestan]

Encyclopedias were important in my childhood as well. I knew all of the history taught in elementary school beforehand.

History, yes --- and geography, too. As a child, I spent hours studying maps, a pleasure which I still experience. Give me a world atlas and lock me in an empty room --- you won´t hear from me for days! 

Poe was important in my teens as well, I don't remember exactly when, but I got first a translated edition of his stories and poems, and a couple of months later the Penguin complete tales & poems. Still haven't read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, though.

I discovered Poe in an excellently translated Romanian two-volume edition of his works from my parents´ library. The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Gold Bug and The Fall of the House of Usher were instant hits for me. I was in high school and fortunate enough to have a few colleagues interested in literature, so we established something of a Poe club. 

[North Star]

History, yes --- and geography, too. As a child, I spent hours studying maps, a pleasure which I still experience. Give me a world atlas and lock me in an empty room --- you won´t hear from me for days! 

Oh yes, I too spent countless hours looking at maps.

I discovered Poe in an excellently translated Romanian two-volume edition of his works from my parents´ library. The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Gold Bug and The Fall of the House of Usher were instant hits for me. I was in high school and fortunate enough to have a few colleagues interested in literature, so we established something of a Poe club.

I didn't have any 'colleagues' in high school that were at all interested in literature, let alone visual arts (I started to get into visual arts later myself too, though, last year of sr. high) or classical music.

[vandermolen]

'Buddhist Boot Camp'

[Karl Henning]

Encyclopedias were important in my childhood as well. I knew all of the history taught in elementary school beforehand.
Poe was important in my teens as well, I don't remember exactly when, but I got first a translated edition of his stories and poems, and a couple of months later the Penguin complete tales & poems.

Well, we really were separated at birth 

Although I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

[Karl Henning]

And Andrei, too.

[North Star]

Well, we really were separated at birth 

Although I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

The separation was very thorough, in time and place.

[Karl Henning]

Aliens were probably involved.