Similar to the "First Movie" thread in the Film Forum, I'd be curious to know what was the first book you read that you'd consider to be adult reading. I'm sure most of learned to read with some form of Dr. Seuss or other such first readers, but what did you read when you took that jump from from preteen or early adolecent books into the deep waters of an adult book.

For me it was Peter Benchley's Jaws. I read it the summer the movie came out. I was 10 going on 11, and my parents did not want me seeing the film (there had been a tragic drowning in our family involving my uncle a couple of years earlier, and my mom understandably could not bring herself to see Jaws). But, my parents always encouraged reading, and they would let me read the novel.
I remember it being a tough slog. I guess I'd hoped it would be wall to wall shark attacks, but there was that whole Brody, Hooper and Brody's wife triangle to muddle through. But, I did finish it, and really didn't go back to the types of books I read before.

Does reading Watership Down when I was about 11 years old count? I read it because I was a fan of the cartoon adaptation, of course, but the novel is surely a "grown up" book, yes?

There might have been even earlier books, I don't know. That's just the first example that comes to mind.

My first set of more adult-themed novels came in rapid succession.

They were:

-Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
-The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
-A variety of Sherlock Holmes short stories, by Arthur Conan Doyle
-Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
-Then a series of pulpy BattleTech and Shadowrun novels

Oh yeah, I read The Lord of the Rings when I was in Grade 6, too. I remember my dad telling me I wouldn't "get" all of it. I also remember that I was way, way ahead of the rest of my class in terms of filing book reports -- we had to do one a month, or ten for the year, and I had done nine after the first few months -- so I spent the next few months reading The Lord of the Rings and then I turned in a long-ish book report (I vaguely remember it being 11 typed pages, but I can't be sure) which got me a check-plus-plus from the teacher. (Not even a letter grade!)

I had a go at The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when I was six but did not make it through ... didn't quite have the skills yet. By second grade I was heavily into novel-length kid lit (Mrs. Frisby, et al. ... fave authors were Roald Dahl, Sid Fleischmann, Robert Lawson). Most of the novels my parents had around were of the Reader's Digest Condensed variety ... I started reading through those later in elementary school but am not quite sure that they really count. The one book they forbade me to read was Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, of which there was a shrinkwrapped copy on a top shelf in their bedroom. Why it was there I don't know. I attempted a Churchill biography they had, as well as perhaps Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago (which I still would like to read sometime) and didn't get through those either. I remember having a voracious appetite for the Guinness Book of World Records. Somewhere around age 9 or 10 I acquired a selection of Poe stories. Poe was probably the gateway into adult literature for me.


I wasn't going to count this as adult literature (it's his most kid-friendly novel), but I will if you will. I did not read another Stevenson novel until I was in college.

I remember telling a college English professor that I liked Stevenson, and he immediately inferred that I also liked Poe and Conan Doyle.

Starting at about eight-years-old, I moved from the likes of Beatrice Potter and Hardy Boys to a series of older-oriented books that usually involved a boy as the lead character:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Dolphin Island by Arthur C. Clarke
• Old Yeller by Fred Gipson (At age 9 when I saw the movie, I hated how Disney softened Yeller's demise)
• All of James Blish's Star Trek novelizations

Somewhere around 10-years-old, I read Logan's Run. While now it's pretty tame as things go for a novel targeted toward adults, there was a hefty amount of erotic and drug-oriented material for a kid that age in the early 1970s.

I wasn't either, but then I realized how mature it is in spots. It was an easy read, but I felt hair growing on my chest as I read it.

It's interesting you mentioned Poe, since I jumped to him after I got into the stuff I mentioned above. Some of his stories were the first that I didn't get as a boy.

EDIT: Took out unnecessary ironic quotes...must've been reading political forum too much.

This is a tough question, because I read a few books as a young child knowing that I would not understand them until I was an adult. A memorable example is A Wrinkle in Time. That book had a great deal to do with my decade long conversion process, as its images chased me from about 7 or 8 years of age all the way until college. It was an odd sensation at 18 hearing my 7 year old self saying through the mists of time and experience: See...I told you that you would have this all figured out when you were older. Reading it now, the book is terribly simplistic, and the conclusion is very rushed. But there is a lot to encounter in that story for a young kid.

I encountered Dandelion Wine in the same way and have read it annually since I was 10 or so. I had read pretty much every word by Ray Bradbury at that point with relative ease, but Dandelion Wine was my first encounter with total abstraction and I knew it would take me a long time to get a handle on it. I have enjoyed finding new layers in that book in consecutive readings, and the older I get, the closer in spirit I feel to its central character.

But I think the first truly adult book I read was The Sound and the Fury. At least it sparked my first realization about how serious reading could be, and how much there is at stake in what heralded authors do when they write. I had already read some Solzhenitsyn, Twain, Fitzgerald, Knowles and others of that caliber, but The Sound and the Fury seemed terribly adult, mature, and potentially hazardous.

What a great thread topic.

I recall carrying adult books around earlier but I can't recall reading them. My Uncle managed a book store so he gave me Roald Dahl but Charlie was kind of tween oriented. At least that was what I thought. I read Tolkein like others in about 6th grade. Do The Chronicles of Narnia count? I read them around the same time. I went on a Western bender of Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey after that. My Grandfathers both had western novels and I plundered the libraries.

Ray Bradbury! my cousin and I passed Bradbury back and forth the summer between 6th and 7th grade. Then I seem to recall reading a string of James Michener.

Harry or Beyonce?

Kinda obvious, but, The Bible

And then it's difficult to know wha is what side of the line. Presumably the Narnia books count as children's but wat about the versions of Robin Hood and King Arthur I read at some point in primary school? I imagine Oliver Twist counts and I remember reading that in primary school although looking back I can't really believe that I did. Perhaps I just started it?

Matt

The kid/adult lit border is smudged, so it's hard to know where any of these fall in terms of the appropriate categories, but I seem to recall a great many sports-oriented novels in fourth and fifth grade, which in turn inspired me to pen my own stories involving multi-cultural basketball teams with forwards and guards named Juan, Franz, and Pierre. Everyone eventually got along and learned valuable lessons about tolerance, and Juan scored the winning hoop in the championship game on a fabulous behind-the-back pass from Franz.

I know that I tackled Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz right around that time, and it made a huge impression. Certainly I was writing post-apocalypse short stories on the playground while my classmates were hanging on the monkey bars.

H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and The Time Machine appeared early in my life, as did the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and several Ray Bradbury novels and short story collections. I read Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but didn't like or understand them until much later. I read a bunch of Ellery Queen mysteries which were a big, adult step up from The Hardy Boys.

Perhaps the earliest of the bunch was a novel called Viking Sunset, by Henry Treece. It may be classified as children's literature. I don't know. I do know that after reading it I wanted to be a Viking very badly, and that I treasured my Viking helmet that I eventually received as a Christmas present.

Sorry this is off topic but I went through a Viking phase when I was a kid, I suppose from reading books about them but I don't remember any specific books. We even started a Viking Club in my neighborhood. At the time you could buy these Viking action figures ( although this was before the term action figure), Eric the Red, etc. And whichever action figure Viking you had that was the Viking you were. We had a lot of fun with trashcan lid shields and wooden swords. I envy your Viking helmet. Seems like I am always envious of Andy about something. ):

I don't remember reading anything adult until I was in high school. We got to choose a book to read and I picked Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It blew my mind!

I was homeschooled from 3rd grade until the end of high school, and the curriculum my mom picked was often strongly literature-based, so added to being an avid reader, I read a lot of books. I remember reading Lord of the Rings, but I don't remember when exactly I read it-- somewhere around age eleven or twelve. I think the first book I read outside of school that I remember considering an adult book was probably The Godfather. Other than that, I had already read stacks of novels like Johnny Tremain, other classics and several Frank Peretti books. The Oath was the first book to ever keep me from sleeping at night-- I think I was twelve.

Ah, this reminds me of a story. I read a lot of Hardy Boy Casefiles books when I was in middle school. If you're not familiar with them, they were grittier Hardy Boys stories aimed written from the late '80s to late '90s. People died in them, and stuff.

But I remember buying one of the books (called The Dead Season). The description on the back of the book was scary: Joe and Frank were investigating ghosts at a port-based hotel! Spectral ships! The cover had an Invisible Man-style ghost pointing a gun at the brothers. I bought it and resolved to save it until Halloween, which was a few weeks away.

I couldn't sleep at night. I kept thinking about how scary the book must be, one to elicit that sort of synopsis on the back. My wild imagination wouldn't let it rest. I shook all day on Halloween, and was terrified by the possibility of being terrified when I finally turned my dim bedside lamp on that night.

The book kinda stunk, and wasn't scary at all (the ghosts were robbers with masks!) But that was the first book that ever terrified me, even if the back cover summary did most of the work.

PS. I was torn, by the way, over whether I should tag a Hardy Boys-related spoiler.

Great thread. I can't remember a switch from kids lit to adult lit, but I did a 4th grade book report on Joyce's Ulysses.

just kidding. I recall my sixth grade teacher would not let me do a book report on "Firefox" which was better than the movie though I recall liking that one too.