Before I continue with what I read over the course of my high school years, I have a puzzle I’ve never figured out, and probably never will. So the librarian at the Cottage Grove Library was “Miss Clark,” a stick-thin woman who I thought of as “elderly,” but who was probably in her 50s, maybe early 60s. A number of years later, she retired and was replaced by her daughter, also, “Miss Clark.” OK, so if the first librarian had a daughter, why was she “MISS Clark”? Today, I wouldn’t think much about it, but this was the early 1960s!

As I headed into my mid-teens, I had read all of the Harold Robbins and Victoria Holt books I could find, so it was time to focus on more “mature” reading. During the summer between 8th and 9th grades, I picked pole beans for school clothes money and read Gone With the Wind while “laying out” in the backyard (slathered in baby oil, natch). It was tough going, mainly because the edition I was reading had double-column text, but I struggled through, immersing myself in Civil War times with Scarlett and the gang.

Other books I remember reading during my teen years included I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which I loved because it was set in a crumbling manor and involved family drama; Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk (a few years ago I loved Ann Hood’s Morningstar, a nostalgic look at her growing years, reading many of the same books I did); That Man Cartwright by Ann Fairbairn (if you can’t guess, I loved thick books); and the scariest novel ever written (in my opinion), The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

But there are three books that left an impression on me, two of which are because of the circumstances surrounding the setting, and the third, well, you’ll find out…

The first is Hotel by Arthur Hailey. I believe Hailey was one of the first authors to do what is now called “immersion journalism,” where extensive time is spent in a facility and then writing about it (think Nickel and Dimed). In 1964, he spent two months living at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans and then wrote a novel based on the lodging’s inner workings.

Anyway, I was about 15 years old and alone at home on a Saturday night, and I decided to try a bit of clandestine drinking from my parents’ alcohol stash. Well, to quote a book title by David Foster Wallace, that was “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Not only was it difficult to read while the words swam across the page, but I also passed out (I wasn’t much for holding my booze and still aren’t). Anyway, once I got over my hangover the next day, I finished the book and thoroughly enjoyed it, which led to my continued fascination with books by “industry insiders.” (And no, my parents never found out.)

My second memorable reading experience didn’t involve drinking, but it still left a scar. I was “hired” (aka coerced) to babysit for a couple who were going out with my parents, so I had to do it in their motel room. OK, so the good news is that I remembered to bring a book, The Hurricane Years by Cameron Hawley, but the bad news is that I only had 45 pages left and overestimated how long it would take to finish it. So that meant I had to spend a couple of hours before everyone returned, with nothing to read, and the TV off, lest I wake the kids. It. Was. Torture. To this day, I probably go overboard with how many books I keep in the car (plus two Kindles), lest I get stuck again with nothing to read.

My third memorable reading experience involved my continued interest in reading about the “birds and the bees.” One day, I was heading home from school and stopped at the corner store. I was buying Buddig cold cuts when my eyes were drawn to a yellow cover on the paperback rack, and I heard the angels sing. Since all of my sex ed had come from novels, David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, a compendium of “expert” information, was something I just had to get my hands on. So after handing over $1.25 from my hard-earned waitress tips, I took it home in a brown paper bag and stuck it under my mattress. At this point in my teen years, I was not only attending high school classes in the morning, but then driving to Eugene for a few community college classes, returning to Cottage Grove for my waitressing shift at Pep’s Drive-In, plus trying to see my boyfriend; however, I managed to read a few pages now and then to complete my education. (Yes, it later became controversial over some of the misconceptions and views. For more information, read this article.)

Next post, I’ll cover how I learned to love (some) assigned reading and discovered more trashy magazines.

If you missed my earlier reading history posts, you can find them by scrolling a few posts down.