Books that Influenced Our Teenage Years

I know what some of you would be thinking when you saw the title of this posting. Yawn yawn boring ... right? Not necessarily so, I hope.

Whether we realise or not, books (and magazines) had a huge impact on our knowledge in the pre-Internet world of the 70's. While some were fortunate to be exposed to the literary classics (Dickens, Hemingway, Conan Doyle, Twain, Bronte sisters, you know) from a young age, a lot more boys took pleasure in reading stories of war, adventure and drama. Think of the authors you read in those days, and the names of Alistair Maclean, Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie and Harold Robbins are likely to feature.

I might be generalising a bit, but I reckon I'm not far from the truth in saying that most of our female counterparts also enjoyed their romance novels (Mills and Boon?).

And mind you, I deliberately used the word "influenced" in the title of this post. This is because it's a neutral word as the impact of books could be positive or not so positive (depending on how you look at it :-) in developing the adolescent mind.

In those days, we had several main sources of books.

Many of us were members of the Sarawak State Library, and may have got started on reading there. Of course, those chaps who are really honest would probably admit that their real reasons for frequenting the National Library had as much to do with engaging the girls as enhancing their grammar. Our own St Joe Library also had a decent fiction section, although the focus was more on examination-related texts and references.

Some were fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy some books from the bookstores in Kuching - in those days Kwong Hwa, Sky, KK Abdul Majid, Rex and Wahid (?) were the popular ones carrying a wider selection of English language books, magazines and comics.

In those days we tended to borrow books from each other a lot more. Some teachers also used to encourage us to bring books we liked to school on certain days, so that we could talk about them and often swap with each other.

And of course, boys being boys, there would be some "highly popular" books being passed around, away from the teacher's eyes, usually covered in thick wrapping, to be read only in toilets or behind locked doors. Anyone remember some of those titles? Ah well, we were all Asian teenagers and I'd guess that much of what we learnt about the "birds and the bees" came not from the lips of our parents, but from such popular references, augmented by the bragging of some of our more advanced formmates. :-)
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Well boys & girls, share your memories of books that influenced YOU in those carefree days of the 70s ...
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