When I was around 8 or 9, we had no television. I loved browsing the adult books in my father's study. I discovered Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" and tried to devour it. I had, needless to say, many unanswered questions. I don't think my parents ever found me out. (As an aside, I grew up in Mitchell's city of Atlanta, and reading this was de rigeur by all literate adults....)

Too funny, what a great thread! My "way too young" is The Thorn Birds at 12. Whoa... what an education! When I think about my daughter and that I was only four years older than she is right now when I read that book, I shiver.

OT - I just read Slammerkin and I think I may still be too young for parts of that one!

PAM

I remember finding and reading all of my sister's bodice ripper romances (Rosemary Rogers et al) starting around age 12 or 13. Putting them on the top shelf of her closet didn't thwart me at all. In retrospect, I now wish I had read more classic and YA fiction at that age.

When I was 12 I was alone in my parent's friend's apartment for about a half an hour. She was a nurse,had to go out on an emergency something or other and I was waiting to answer a phone call she was expecting. Well,I went into her bookcase and hauled out a nursing book with graphic pictures. Yikes..... Had to turn the book upside down because I didn't know what I was seeing.

My experience was like mWoods. My dad was a surgeon. There were lots of copies of Annals of Surgery around the house. I had figured out which ones had interesting pictures in them. I knew what diseased "privates" looked like before I knew how healthy ones did!

Pam (formerly emiceekayeewhy)

I read Psycho when I was 11 or 12. I also got into some porn books at a friend's home at that age. Fortunately there were no pictures, but plenty of graphic language I didn't understand much of.

I remember reading 'Angelique' by Serganne Golon when I was in my early teens - at the time it was very risque for me!

Jane
UK

I was in the pre-teen years and I would be dumped at a beauty shop to get my hair trimmed or maybe a perm. All they had to read were the True Confession and other mags that were the romance stories of the day. Lots and lots of passionate embraces, hot, burning kisses and deep moans. It gave me a distorted idea of what dating was all about. I suppose that they would be considered tame by today's standards, but then, they were really HOT stuff.

Jane,

I had to laugh when I read your post. I read Angelique at about the same age, and boy did I think I was mature for doing so!

I read Tobacco Road at about age 12. My mother said later she didn't know whether to stop me or let me go on. Fortunately she didn't say anything, and the risque parts went right over my head. All that impressed me was the abject poverty.

I read Sir James Frazer's 'The Golden Bough' when I was 14 -all of it. GB was probably the most inclusive non-fic. collection of [amongst many other topics] sexual customs amongst primative peoples - well before Kinsey. It's such a serious book my parents didn't have a clue. Not much help to a teenager in 1950s Britain though:-D

Jane & Rouan - please remind me what Angelique is about. The name rings the faintest bell. I have a feeling my best friend read it when we were at school together, and recommended it to me, but I can't recall whether I did read it or not.

I remember rifling through my mother's dresser drawers and finding illustrated porno. It said "illustrated from life." My response to it was "I never saw anything like that in Life magazine!" W-A-A-Y too young!

Anyanka, Angelique was a nubile Gallic female who romped through the Court of Louis XIV with much bosom heaving, decolletage ripping, languorous looks and heavy sighs.
As a teenager it was a most instructional way to learn French history.

Very mild by today's standards.

When I was ten year old, I was bedridden at the hospital in order to have an operation. In the same room with me, there was a boy a bit older than me, thirteen or fourteen more or less. He would read a cartoon about a thief called Diabolik (I don't know if it's known in North America)it was a cartoon for a teen ager and adults audience . Anyway, my roommate would lend me the cartoons and I liked them but I was scared to be seize with my hand in the jam-jar; instead when my mother spotted the cartoons on the my roommate's bedtable, she said "wow they are terrific, You like them, don't you Massimo" I was taken aback and I'm still are

About the same time I was reading The Godfather and Valley of the Dolls I found an old book about pregnancy and childbirth, which I poured over for an entire summer. Much of this, whether fiction or nonfiction, went right over my head. My mother told me recently that she was concerned but knew that forbidding me to read these books or showing any disapproval would only make me want to read them more, and would make me look for the naughty bits that I was unaware of at that tender age. She was so right about this!

There's that feeling that we all read these books at an age where "it went over our heads?" I have always wondered if it was a good thing to be exposed to sexual situations BEFORE we could be physically excited about such things. Did it make us less curious or even disinterested? I can remember when schoolmates were snickering and giggling about kissin' and huggin' and it bored me. After all, I had read about adults doing that sort of thing.

The World of Susie Wong which my mom had "hidden" in a basement cupboard. I think I was 11 or 12?

When I was twelve or so, I had a friend of the same age who read Danielle Steele books. At the time, I thought the more pages a book had, the more "literary" it was. Hee hee. I read about five or so. I wonder what the librarians thought of me when I checked them out.

BTW, I don't much care for bodice rippers these days.

i read "'salem's lot" when i was 11.

One day when I was about 12, my mother was headed for the supermarket when she saw me examining the bookshelves in the living room. I was an avid reader. She saw me pull out something called "Bwana Junction"--not sure of spelling--and said, "Put that back and don't read it." Well, needless to say that was all I needed. I read it bit by bit as she did errands over the next few weeks. By today's standards, it was a very mild bodice-ripper but it certainly startled me at that young age.

OMG!!! I just remembered when I got caught read Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" while in ninth grade algebra class. I was 14 and extremely interested. Not in algebra -- in the book! I actually flunked algebra and had to take it again in summer school.

I remember a reference to incandescent ovaries. How strange.

Pam #5

Read James Joyce's Ulysees when I was eleven. Ploughed through it looking for sexy bits 'cause it was banned in Australia for a long time. Couldn't understand a word of it so gave up long before I got to Molly's soliloquy. Years later I discovered what I'd missed.
Turned to Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre which thankfully was more accessible. Still wasn't too sure of all the physical permutations involved but imagination counts for a lot when you're that young. Guess I was a little immature for those books but did me no lasting damage - I think. Larry

Larry - my parents had a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover which just fell open at the "interesting" parts....which made it easier. (I'd have been about fourteen, I guess...) I'm surprised your copy of Ulysses didn't do the same....!!!

I don't think I've actually ever read the whole of LCL....

Existentialism at 14. Teenage angst may eventually drive one toward existentialism, but it really is not healthy for a young mind to be fed existentialism without the guiding hand of a balanced mind.

As to the sexual stuff, when one reads the back of the cereal box when desparate, one doesn't ignore Dad's magazines stacked on the side shelf above Mom's Elinor Glyn novels. I still shudder to recall telling Mom and her best friend a joke my 11 year old self didn't understand but knew contained a play on words.

Paperback re-release of the steamy 20's novel The Sheik, complete with Valentino photo on the cover. Typical line: "I want you now, now you mad fool!" Completely warped my 11-year-old preception of what romance was really like for several years....

I agree Paula Rosefolly. I was sadly disappointed when the earth didn't move during my first kiss. And teenage boys just seemed so lacking...

Hiya Martin. Haven't been around for a while so belated congrats on England winning the cricket.
Yep read LCL a few years later precisely for the same reason - it had been banned for years. Led me to a lifelong appreciation for Lawrence. Reputed sexy bits drew me to read many great writers as a teenager - eg Lolita, Tropic of Cancer to name but a few. If only Dickens or Austen had developed a rep for lubricious content I might heve developed an appreciation for them at an early age as well. Larry

I found my mother's Anais Nin book when I was 13 or 14; quite graphic. At the same age, a friend and I also found her father's Playboy stash and would "read the articles" while seated in said father's Corvette parked in the garage where the magazines were stored.

I'm vastly enjoying the posts on this thread, but my favourite so far has to be Larry ploughing through 'Ulysses' in search of the naughty bits! That's dedication for you.

Does anyone besides me remember sitting on the back pew in church with other preteens, snickering over the naughty bits in The Song of Solomon in the Bible?

Well Anyanka there's no dedication on earth equal to that of a hormonally driven teenage boy in his quest for "naughty bits" - either imaginatively or physically. Come to think of it that dedication lasts a lifetime.
I was a bookish lad and naturally turned to the pages of "literature" for info on this strangely insistent urge. Such innocent times. Larry

Well, Larry, where else were we supposed to turn to? I have no idea what my parents were thinking, but they sure weren't forthcoming and openminded when it came to sexual information. THe more secretive the adults were, the more the mystery, the more the mystery, the more determined my friends and I were to find out every possible detail. Heck, I read Fanny Hill when I was 13 and learned what a prostitute was. I read a lot of garbage novels. No lasting harm. *g
We've been matter-of-fact and open with both our kids about sex since they were in kindergarten. I don't see them searching and diving into what Great-Aunt Maggie would call "those naughty books" like I did. But it could be they are blasted by the media and are much more blase about the topic than we ever were.

Coffee, Tea or Me? about stewardesses. I think I was around 11, and a few months afterwards the family flew on our first "plane" vacation-I could barely look at the attendants-wondering if any of them had gotten up to the antics described in the book. (I seem to remember cola taken in a VERY unusual way as emergency birth control...)

Hi Janalyn. I guess the times are more open but unless there's been an evolutionary mutation in the hormones of teenagers in the forty years since I wandered that uncharted land I can't see they'd be any less fascinated by sexual matters than we were. I'm sure my dear old mum had no idea of my literary excursions into the "world of passion" any more than most parents these days are aware of their teenagers' adventures with videos, DVD's and of course the dreaded Iniernet.No doubt we were probably more innocent/ignorant/repressed/misinformed than today's youngsters. Whether that makes any difference to the intensity of their interest in matters sexual I doubt. But then who am I to judge - no teenage children and so far past my own teens it's but a misty memory. Larry

I think teens just have more resources now. As kids we may have sneaked off to read "good parts" in novels or home medical texts, but our kids don't have to do that. Whether as parents we have chosen to be frank, discrete, or secretive about such matters, they have seen lots of sex in movies and on TV, not to mention the internet. Speaking of the internet, you don't have to be searching for pornography. Not only do we all get email promising to improve bits of anatomy we may or may not possess, but you can stumble across the most amazing information completely by accident. I remember composing an email to send to one of my sisters with links to pictures of each of the roses I had just planted in my garden. I was a bit startled when I looked up the climbing rose "Yellow Rain" and came across a site that was not at all horticultural. I'm sure every teenager has had many similar moments. They may be no wiser than we were at their ages, but they are certainly more worldly.

LOL! When my son was in Gr.2 he had to do a school project on beavers. So we sat down together at the computer so I could show him how to google online. Omigod! He had never seen his mother moving so fast, blocking the screen with her body and closing screens. We went to the library afterwards and took some books out from the childrens' section.

Slightly off-topic, but there is a quite serious attempt to create a ".xxx" domain for porn sites. Given that the sites are always going to be out there and there is always going to be demand, why not do so? It would make it so much easier to block the sites, too, for those who want to stop their kids from seeing them. I can only see gain for the porn industry, it's customers AND people who don't want to have anything to do with porn. Everyone wins!

It really rather annoys me that there are a couple of countries (and perhaps not the ones you might expect!) who are being obstructive about it.

I took my teenage daughter to see Ryan's Daughter not knowing much about it. Afterwards, I thought to myself that she would go to her wedding night more knowledgeable than I was no matter the verbal communication between us.

I read Women's Room when I was 13 or 14, my mother had taken it out of the library and as was my habit I was reading all of her books after I had finished mine. She didn't want me to read it, and would hide it, and I would turn her room upside down looking for it when I would get back from school and she was still at work.

I went through all those historical bodice rippers, Angelique, Barbara Cartland, when I was in my teens, and that was a good thing, because I never needed to read them again. Better than to discover them at 25 and be stuck on that for 5 years.

I used to read Bible comic books, and it took me a very long time to understand why Joe was considered such a good man for marrying Mary. I didn't understand that people would implicitely assume Mary had loose morals.

I didn't think I was, but the children's librarian at the library in the town in which I lived, though I was. Having read the Illustrated Classics version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," I thought it was in the children's library, only to find out it was in the adult library, and I was too young to check it out.

Fear of Flying and Valley of the Dolls at around age 12. I can't even remember where I got them, since I know they weren't on my parent's reading list.