Although I read many books between 4th grade and junior high, the written record is incomplete, because I slacked off when it came to compiling my comprehensive master list. I resumed, however, in my splayed and earnest junior high cursive, writing out the titles and authors of all the teenage girl books that my friends and I were reading. As you will no doubt observe, the "mass market paperback" is well represented, but you'll also find a sprinkling of middle-brow classics.
I was better in those days than I am now at reading a number of titles by a single author. If I liked one, then I could easily remain true through half a dozen more. These days, I've grown more fickle; if I'm not totally enamoured the first time, well, it's one strike and you're out.
Way back then when the days were long, one of my reading strategies was to pick up a volume of Readers' Digest Condensed Books -- often while babysitting for sleeping children, find a story that I liked, and read it quickly to pass the time until the parents returned. Then in the following weeks, I would go to the library or the bookmobile ~ a fortnightly treat in our neighborhood! ~ and check out or request all the additional novels I could find by whatever author I had most recently discovered.
Skimpy, sketchy, and flawed though it may be, here's the list as it has been preserved:
1968 - 73
Jane Austen: Emma
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Louisa May Alcott
Little Women
Little Men
Jo's Boys
Eight Cousins
Rose in Bloom
An Old Fashioned Girl
Pearl S. Buck
The Good Earth
The New Year
Taylor Caldwell
Captains and the Kings
Dear and Glorious Physician
Great Lion of God
Prologue to Love
On Growing Up Tough
The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives (by Jess Stern)
Barbara Clayton: Decision for Sally
Lloyd C. Douglas
The Robe
The Big Fisherman
Magnificent Obsession
Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal
Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Rosamund du Jardin
Class Ring
Practically Seventeen
Senior Prom
Wait for Marcy
Dorothy Eden: Waiting for Willa
Louanne Ferris: I'm Done Crying / Lillian Roth: I'll Cry Tomorrow
[I read these two together one night]
Catherine Gaskin
Edge of Glass
Fiona
Property of a Gentleman
Rumer Godden & Lydia Halverson: The Kitchen Madonna
Arthur Hailey
Airport
Hotel St. Gregory
The Final Diagnosis
Victoria Holt
The Secret Woman
The Curse of the Kings
Kirkland Revels
The Mistress of Mellyn
The Pride of the Peacock
The Shadow of the Lynx
The Queen's Confession
Hope Dahle Jordan: Take Me to My Friend
Frances Kerns: The Stinsons
Grace Gelvin Kisinger: The New Lucinda
Irma Knott: This Thing Called Love
Janet Lambert: Forever and Ever
Katie Letcher Lyle: I Will Go Barefoot All Summer for You
Norah Lofts: How Far to Bethlehem?
James Vance Marshall: A Walk to the Hills of the Dreamtime
Melisssa Mather: One Summer In Between
Marjorie McIntyre: The River Witch
Florence Crannell Means: Reach for a Star
Iris Noble: Megan
Glendon Swarthout: Bless the Beasts and the Children
Willard Temple: Too Young To Be a Grandfather
Jean Webster
Daddy Long Legs
Dear Enemy
Phyllis A. Whitney: The Highest Dream
Ruth Wolff
A Crack in the Sidewalk
I, Keturah
Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk
. . . also loved staying up late to watch this movie in the summertime!
(song by Doris Day, Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster)
I always liked what Andrea Dworkin has to say about this novel
when she describes her favorite girlhood heroes
in The New Woman's Broken Heart:
" . . . sometime about the 6th grade I got into the heavy stuff. Scarlett O'Hara and Marjorie Morningstar. . . . Marjorie. the thrill of eating bacon for the first time. of course I had eaten bacon all my life. I just hadn't ever before known how dangerous it really was. Noel Airman. An Actor. soon he would be balding, that's how old and evil he was. danger. sex. I could feel his creepy decadence. I looked for it everywhere. I coudn't find it in the grammar school I went to. he would corrupt her. he would corrupt me. . . . I might even go to Hell. I would be an artist. I would be able to feel. I would know everything. I ignored the 2nd part of the book where she married that jerk. none of that for me. keeping kosher indeed" (1 -2 ).
