When I first started reading adult books around the age of 12, it was like unleashing a monster. Suddenly I was able to go round this whole new part of the library and try whole genres at random. I was able to read adult books with some mildly racy passages for the first time, perhaps a bed scene or the depiction in words of naked flesh. Nobody ever got killed in children's books either. I initially read lots of detective novels by authors like Agatha Christie, a few basic thrillers, the odd Western. It was not unusual for me to rattle off ten books all by the same person over the course of six months. One by one I got tired of the repetitive nature of these fairly simple books and my tastes gradually evolved into the preferences of my early adult years.
But it's that early process I want to recapture. I want to read at least one of every type of book, in part to see what I have might have overlooked between the ages of 12 and 15, but secondly to re-experience that initial euphoria at having the whole adult library at my fingertips after having being constrained for what seemed so long by the children's' books I had outgrown.
May it soon begin.....
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