The first one I remember is my mother's copy of Jungle Tales of Tarzan, a collection of short stories about the adolescent Tarzan. I was nine, and we were spending the summer at my grandparent's house in Florida while my grandfather was dying of cancer. I found it on the shelf and just started reading it. In the next few years, I collected all the Tarzan books in the Ballantine paperback editions. That was back when a kid could send two quarters to the publisher and get a book a back in return. I don't have any of them left except the first one which I haven't looked at since elementary school.

Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow (Impressive that I can remember the author as well, and visualize the cover as well.) I was amazed to learn that the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, existed somewhere other than the Wondeful World of Disney. To this day, it is a treasured piece of trivia knowledge, that indigo is the blue color obtained from plants grown in the South for that purpose that I gained from this historical fiction novel. Hmmm, maybe this is why good historical fiction is one of my favorite genres and the revolution my favorite part of American History. I've never made that connection before.

The first grown-up book I tried to read was Gregory "Pappy" Boyington's Baa Baa Black Sheep which I checked out because I thought it was a book for kids. I realized my error when I had to keep calling out to my mother, "What does this spell?" She caught on, too, when I spelt out l-a-t-r-i-n-e. She didn't take the book away from me, but I gave up about a quarter into it because the hi-jinx of an army airman was beyond the ken of an eight-year-old girl.

Hmmm, the first adult book I completed...well, I guess it depends upon whether The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered adult. I figured it had a kid for the main character so it was meant for kids. I was eight, almost nine, when I read it in the back seat of our family station wagon as we went across country on our family's annual get-to-know-America excursion. I'm hazy about where we went, but I clearly remember getting acquainted with Huck and Jim. I regaled the rest of the family with edifying segments: "Moses and the Bullrushers," the hairball oracle, the "quicksilver loaf," and the antics of the Duke and the Dauphin.

Yes, Huckleberry Finn remains one of my all-time favorite books.

I remember being short of reading material on a family holiday and trying to read a book my sister had called Scaramouche. I didn't get very far into it, but I think I did go back and read it later.
My first adult book would have been an Agatha Christie, but I can't remember which.

My library allowed us to begin using the Adult Room when we turned fourteen. My first book I borrowed was an Agatha Christie but I don't remember which one. Borrowing from the Adult Room for the first time was one of the best days of my life.

gbg

A very boring family vacation visiting cousins in Ohio when I was eight and hadn't learned yet to travel with my own books, I picked a copy of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud off their shelves and read it through. I remember thinking it was pretty obvious stuff and didn't understand what the hoopla was about. Of course, by the time I read it, Freudian thinking was well embedded in our cultural thinking. Did I really understand it? I thought I did at the time, but when a girlfriend explained sex to me three or four years later, I didn't believe a word she said, so I guess not.

I'm Jungian these days.

Our library made us wait till we were 15 to get into the adult section. Fortunately my big sis had no problem with me reading her books. I remember an anthology of poetry that included Chaucer to modern, and thought it great fun to try to figure out the old english. I was an odd child.

I didn't 'read' this per se, but I remember spending hours looking at History of ARt by Jansen. Little did I know I'd be spending hours studying it about 10 years later...:)

She also had Little Women, Jane Eyre, Good Earth, and Kim. Not sure which was the first, but they were all well worn out by the time I got to go to the adult section all by my lonesome.

Kim btw is the only one of that list that is still a fav, mainly because reading it as an adult gave me much more pleasure than any other book from childhood.

Hmmm....I know I read The World of Susie Wong by flashlight under the bedcovers. I also think Gone With The Wind was right up there-can't remember which was first. I was 12.
Veronicae-I fondly remember Gwen Bristow's books. I loved them but was a bit older you must be a young thing!

My first naughty adult book was when I was eleven. I somehow got someone to check out Valley of the Dolls for me. I remember hiding it under the bed, and reading it in secret. Didn't understand most of it, but there were some interesting, um, lessons there. And my secret wasn't one for long. My dad passed by my room and said, Oh, I've been wanting to read that, let me know when you are finished. Um, right dad (as I turned beat red)

I dunno, thinking about it - was Little Women and Jo's Boys written for kids or adults? I keep thinking the are for kids, but for some reason I consider them adult reads.

Heh! Cindy that's funny about you and Valley of the Dolls. I was already in high school when it came out, but all the girls and women I knew so feverishly read and talked about VotD that it looms all out of proportion to the quality of Susann's writing and the story being told. Books just don't seem to have the same shock value anymore.

Well, now that naughty adult books have been mentioned, my first was Peyton Place. I think I was ten or eleven. I couldn't quite make out what all the fuss was about. Why did Constance MacKenzie pretend that Allison's father had died during the war? What exactly did Selena's awful stepfather do to her? The doctor did something good/bad to help Selena, but what was it? I was so full of questions that I drove my mother batty. She told me to listen to her, my grandmother, and my aunts discuss the book while they were in the kitchen and I was sitting around the corner in the living room with my big ears. I got the lowdown on many a juicy book by listening to those women that way!

My 1st grown-up book and naughty book were the same one! My father got the Reader's Digest condensed books. I read some of them publicly and that was okay. I was supposed to tell him which ones I want to read. There were actually 4 or 5 condensations in each volume. Well I learned pretty quickly that some of those stories were pretty adult. I remember one was something like That Hamilton Woman and was pretty juicy. And there was one about Andrew Jackson's wife. But the one I really liked was The Egyptian. It had EVERYTHING. Exotic locations and time frame, sexand lots of it, weird death practices, an exciting rise from poverty to fame and wealth. I wanted the whole juicy book but knew my father would not want me to be reading it. So I waited. Think I was in about 6th grade. ( My mother didn't read any books, just newspapers and magazines.She knew she was supposed to encourage reading in her kids but she really resented my reading. I did everything I could to find time for books.)

We were allowed our adult library card when we finished eighth grade. I was at the library the day after 8th grade graduation to check out the whole book. I remember the librarian asking me some questions about it, but she let me take it. I smuggled it in to my room and was enthralled.
I read it again in my 20s and enjoyed it again, but it wasn't quite as thrilling! I meant to read it again when I went to Egypt 5 years ago but I got sidetracked by more serious literature. I just looked it up on Amazon and it sounds like it's still enthralling readers. I may have to give it another read.

Actually my 1st grownup book was the Bible! I would skim through my missal during mass looking for interesting stories in the Old Testament epistles! Susannah and the elders was there, Esther, and David and Bathsheba. Then when I was up in my room doing homework, actually escaping from housework, I was the oldest of 6, I would start with those citations in the Bible and then look for more good stories. I read pretty much all of Genesis and then wandered around looking for the good parts. I never bothered with the New Testament, I already knew it was boring.

My first grown-up book was John Steinbeck's The Red Pony. I remember particularly because it was the first book I had ever read in which a character cursed. The ranch hand said "Jesus Christ!"

Those of you who were allowed into the adult section of your libary were lucky. My mother repeatedly had to write notes to the librarians stating that I could take out any book I wanted, and I still had trouble with librarians who would refuse to check out a book they thought inappropriate (always a historical novel). And it wasn't new staff; those librarians had been there since God was a boy.

There are two that I remember. Knock on Any Door by Willard Motley; about "Pretty Boy" Romano, a Chicagoland Juvenile Del. "Live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse."

The other was "Forever Amber" Those were both big sellers at the time. I think I had to sneak them in the house.

I remember borrowing them both from a little lending library in a store on the way to school. I think it cost 5¢ a day.

These posts are jogging my memory - my first real adult book with real adult issues (not romance) was Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath. I was 12,13. I remember at one point coming to dinner in tears. My dad asked me what I was reading. He took the book from me and asked me to wait a few days. I did, and finished it. What a powerful jolt to my sense of the world. By that time I'd read plenty of books about people in poor or bad situations. But this was the first time that it seemed so real. I knew those characters, still do.

Once I started going to the branch library (as opposed to the big main with their big rules) I could check out anything I wanted without question (it helped that the head librarian was the librarian I knew as a child!). But in HS, there were books kept behind a gate. The only ones allowed to check them out were AP English students. They must have thought I read a book a day - I was checking them out for my non AP friends to read!

I know I read several adult books at a tender age because my parents had lots of books in the basement study. I would sneak down and grab one when their attention was directed elsewhere. The one that made the biggest impression on me, though, was Gone With the Wind, which I read over Thanksgiving break when I was in 5th grade. Oh, the tears, the tears I shed over all of Scarlett's misfortunes. Interestingly enough, I've never read it again. I did read the sequel written by Alexandria Ripley, which was horrid.

Not counting the 'children's classics' as books such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Sawyer etc are called in the UK, my first 'grown up' book was Island Magic by Elizabeth Goudge. Set in the Channel Isles (where EG's family came from) in the late Victorian era it was the story of family life, the odd ship wreck and a very little romance.
I must be years older than most of you because I remember no 'naughty books' being available. Lady Chatterley had yet to hit the shelves and books of unrequited passion and purple prose held little interest for me.
I don't remember our local library having an age rule before you could use the adult section, and the school library was out-of-bounds to everyone under 16 years.
But then it only contained encyclopedias and general works of non-fiction and a few 'lives of the saints'; reading for pleasure was not encouraged by the nuns.

When I was 12 or so I was reading all Gwen Bristow's books and loving them. I reread a few many years later and couldn't quite believe how enthralled I had been!
But one day my mother and the mother of my best friend were talking about books and how they didn't want us to read Judy Blume's new book "Forever". But I told her I had just bought it, read it and my best friend was in the bedroom currently reading it!
And that was that.

I could not have been more than 8 or 9 when I grabbed the heavy tome "Gone with the Wind" off my father's bookshelves in his den and settled down with it. I was captivated by the description of Scarlett, but a lot of it went way over my head. I recall turning down pages I wanted to return to later on.... I don't think my parents ever caught on to my sneaky readings, but we did go see the film together, when I was very young. Of course, I grew up in Atlanta, where all this was legend.

Interesting someone mentioned "Peyton Place." That was considered oh-so-shocking, in my youth, and again, I don't think I quite got the full drift of the plot details....

I can't remember what my first grown-up book was, but my first naughty grown-up book was Tobacco Road,which I've mentioned here before. My mother said later she didn't know whether to let me go on with it or ask me to wait awhile, but she decided it would be worse to stop me. The naughtiness went over my head and all I took away from it was the terrible poverty.

I was a reader from before the time I got to school. My parents did not have to do much work to encourage me to read. They also watched Star Trek religiously. My first imitation of a sound as a baby was the red alert. My first books geared towards adults would definitely be Star Trek books. I saved my allowance and was buying books in the 3rd and 4th grade. Mom wanted me to read more and gave me the classics (Jane Eyre, etc).

The first adult book that I fell in love with was Anne McCaffrey's Moretta, which I grabbed from one of dad's shelves of books in 6th grade. I've read it many a times since and still cry at the end. I've read the entire series of Dragonrider books over and over again.

When I was in the 5th grade I went into the Jr High section to take out a Sue Barton "nurse" book...and wasn't allowed to. From that point on, there was a letter from my Mom in my file that I could take out any book I wanted to. It was fun to have the desk clerk tell me I couldn't have a book, and then politely tell them to check my file.

I read Hawaii in sophmore year of HS, because the teacher challenged us that we could get an A+ on that month's book report (due a short time later) if we read it. Piece of cake...one weekend...book read. He told me he didn't think anyone in our class would do it.

>Oh, the tears, the tears I shed over all of Scarlett's misfortunes

Whats funny is reading it much much later and actually gloating over some of those misfortunes (well, just a little)

Yes, I admit that now, as an adult, every time I see the movie I can't help but think she deserved many of those misfortunes. The one that produced the most tears when I read the book was what happened to poor little Bonnie (was that her name?) in her fall from the pony. *sob* I don't cry much over anything anymore and I seldom shed tears, but I must confess that I teared up at the end of The Book Thief this afternoon.