The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is what novels are then I want to be a novelist.
I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school.
As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like Wallace Stegner up in Northern California, and all the political New Journalism stuff, the Boys on the Bus dudes and Ken Kesey.
When I was a teenager, I read a lot of Poe.
When I was in the YA age range myself, I didn't feel like there were a lot of books for me.
When I was a teenager, what I most wanted to read were fantasy novels. Not Tolkien and Malory, but sword-and-sorcery pulp. I craved glowy blue magic, chainmail bikinis, dragons with unpronounceable names.
Teenagers are the greatest readers in the world - honest, unsnobby and loyal
I've been reading Tanith Lee since I was a teenager, beginning with 'The Birthgrave' and 'The Storm Lord.' Only recently did I discover, to my delight, how many more of her books I've yet to read.
When I was 16, the first book I ever actually purchased with my own money, in fact, and had read on my own time was 'Hunt for Red October' by Tom Clancy.
I don't see a day when teenagers don't read. They are very enthusiastic. That is so inspiring to me.
'Lord of the Flies' is one of my favorite books. That was a big influence on me as a teenager; I still read it every couple of years.
Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.
I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties, and his voice spoke directly to me. Nietzsche is such a superb literary artist.
I read mostly science-fiction and fantasy when I was a teenager, and I was always drawn to stories where the characters had telepathic powers.
