Shortly after the death of horror writer James Herbert, Hari Kunzru wrote about a terrifying encounter with his novel The Dark at the age of 11 – an age which seems lamblike in tenderness, at least to parents and guardians, but one at which a lot of bookish kids make first forays into the forbidden.
I too plunged into horror at 11; browsing my fiercely academic and accomplished grandmother's bookshelves during a visit to her home in Durban, I happened across Dolores Claiborne. After three nights' listening for the vreeee of mosquitoes while sweatily devouring dustbunnies, dead husbands and domestic violence, I was hooked on Stephen King. On the same visit and in the same place, I found Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, which, alas, mysteriously disappeared from my bedside table before I learned the outcome of the narrator's libidinous quest.
I believe there are four crucial ages, or milestones, for a reader. If 11 often marks the onset of reading puberty, when kids seek out a sprinkling of sex and grue to spice up the wholesome pabulum of children's books, a sort of existential literary crisis occurs at about 15. At this age, habitual readers suddenly come over all intellectual and anguished – a bookish mid-teen is likely to burn through the complete Hardy or Dickens from a standing start, or saturate him/herself in the melancholy of the canonical Russians. Life is fraught with tragedy, love will end in tears, and reading is serious stuff which should impress the commuters on your train or bus to school, if not the boy or girl you have your eye on. (Will the inexorable rise of the e-reader, and the fact that most of these heavyweights are free via Project Gutenberg, lessen or increase this urge to blazon your intellectual colours? Maybe there'll be a retro revolution, and being publicly seen with the biggest, oldest, heaviest possible book will mark out the tortured anti-hipsters in future, making it easier for the lions to pick them off.)
The first of the seminal reading ages, of course, is the floor-tipping, giddily joyous moment at which you become a free and fluent reader, hunched over books of your own choosing and unleashed from the strictures of learn-to-read schemes. The age at which this happens varies considerably from child to child, but perhaps averages at about seven or eight – then voracious consumption of obsession-pandering series about ponies, spies, scientific trivia or ballet is likely to ensue, alongside a cheerfully eclectic "give it a go" mentality that might see Enid Blyton swapped for Daniel Defoe or an Usborne history encyclopedia, depending on the mood of the day.
The last age, which I attained, possibly a bit late, in my mid-20s, has much in common with the first. It comes when you no longer read to impress – when you've left set texts and duty-books behind, and achieved perfect, unembarrassed enjoyment, reading what you want to when you want to, and for your own reasons alone. I used to feel great glumness at the prospect of the Booker shortlist, which I never read in full and seldom wanted to read in part. But formerly I felt duty bound to have a go, out of a vague sense that it would be improving, and also to forestall questions from kind but slight acquaintances who assumed I'd have assimilated the whole list at top speed and have well-formed opinions of each title. (Cue the twin detestable options of blagging or a shamefaced, wrongfooting confession of ignorance.) Now I declare cheerfully that I haven't read any of them, but that I've been totally blown away by a glorious YA fantasy about feminist vampires in space, and sing its praises until my interlocutor glazes over. I am invited to fewer parties, but at least I have more time to lie Snoopy-like upon the sofa, reading the books I want to read, when I want to read them.
Do these seminal ages of reading ring true to you? Have I missed any out, or did these watershed moments happen for you at very different ages? And what was your ponderous mid-teen reading choice?
