I have also read enema instructions, automotive manuals, cereal boxes and lots of bad books.

I do think the MSDS are the most boring, though.

Also, I love Cherry Ames!

Actually, if you enjoyed them, then no reason you should be embarrassed, right?

That's the thing, though. I was remembering the halcyon days of youth before I learned there were books for girls and books for boys. Back then, I'd read anything. I had no prejudices. I didn't know what I was "supposed" to read or like. I sort of miss it.

That's the thing, though. I was remembering the halcyon days of youth before I learned there were books for girls and books for boys.

Ahh... I get you. Recalling those days, I didn't even realize there were such things as books for grownups and books for kids. It didn't seem at all odd to me to be reading The Thorn Birds when I was ten. It was just an interesting story. Ditto for The Last Convertible, which remains one of my favorite books.

I only figured it out after those books were taken away in classes.

Barb is me! Or I am Barb! Whichever, it's a good thing.

Now I sort of want to read The Thorn Birds again.

I had a collection of Thurber stories taken away in 5th grade. Thurber? How is that a bad thing for readers of any age?

I am Barb and Amy, too!

I think I still have my mom's paperback copy of The Thorn Birds, which I purloined when I moved out for good, although it probably migrated onto my own bookshelves in my bedroom long before that.

My mom had a bunch of books that had the plot or subplot of a Catholic priest in a forbidden love with some woman (Thy Brother's Keeper was another, IIRC), and now that I'm an adult I can't help wondering if she had a crush on my childhood parish's auxilliary priest -- young, handsome, energetic -- your basic Father What-A-Waste. My Brownie troop loved him because we had meetings in the basement of the rectory and in the winter he'd hide behind the bushes as we left and start snowball fights with us.

Anyway, my mom was very involved in parish council and was a lay reader and communion hander-outer (I *so* can't remember what the term is -- bad [lapsed] Catholic! no wafer!), and so she was at the church a lot. And I remember after he was assigned to another parish, one Sunday he said Mass at wherever it was that was broadcast on TV, and Mom made us watch.

And then all the books about the forbidden love, and I really really hope it was just a crush thing, not actual priestly sex, because I NEVER WANT TO KNOW. Eeek.

I am all of you guys too! Although my mother recently said she thought she should have been supervising my reading more closely, as she is just now, in retirement, getting to books I read off her shelves! But it didn't harm me any, really. I am hardly promiscious because I read Erica Jong when I was too young.

Yeah never got the difference between adult and kids books either until... I picked up Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh" because Shaw recommended it in one of his prefaces. Not suitable for an eleven year old.

One of my then teachers spotted it, and told me that if I wanted to read trash that was OK, but I should not bring that sort of garbage to school. I think rage at the stupidity of this got me to finish the whole thing which I otherwise would have put down by page twenty out of boredom. Don't know if I would enjoy it more with an adult sensibility. I suspect not.

I just finished Ellen Klages' The Green Glass Sea just now. Have we talked about this book?

Because it was wonderful. Won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historic Fiction last year, if that means anything.

It's about two young girls whose parents work on the Manhattan Project, and what it was like to live in Los Alamos from 1943-45. One of them is a real social outcast, and it's forthright about the kind of pain that causes, without being too emo. I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it highly.