Ash and Kimmy grew up as book nerds, given our limited access to things like, say, television and thus the glory of Saved By the Bell and all things early 90′s cable had to offer. It’s like we missed a seminal piece of our generation’s upbringing! The shame!
The upside of this media restraint was that we fell in love with books, and have remained loyal readers of the written word on the paper page ever since. As much as we encourage, and ourselves try to lead, a greener lifestyle, we have had a hard time giving up the paper book. There’s just something so gratifying about flipping a tangible page that cannot be replicated by an iPad or Kindle. But, we do do our best to borrow from the library or purchase used books to keep our paper-page-loving impact low. It’s no surprise, then, that we adored the designs for Out of Prints T-shirts that feature the covers of some of the classic books of our youth, books that span generations and whose stories even our great-grandchildren will enjoy. And even better, the purchase of one of these shirts sends a book to a community in need. Spreading the love of reading far and wide!
ENVIABLE PERK: For each shirt Out of Print sells, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa.
These shirts aren’t crumby or phony in the least. (That would be us, channeling Holden Caulfield, but with a positive bent in our words).
GIVEAWAY ALERT: Win a T-shirt celebrating Catcher in the Rye, one of Ash and Kimmy’s favorite books from our high school years. To enter, comment on this post and tell us what book(s) had an impact on your life as a teenager. Ash was forever changed by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, while Kimmy reads Lord of the Flies every summer.
Photo: Courtesy of Out Of Print.
Available: http://www.outofprintclothing.com
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Let this oven mitt change your life in the kitchen.
I love books and can’t get enough of them. I usually don’t read a book more than once cause there are just to many books out there! I did love to read Robin Cook books, my first one was Coma when I was 10 or 11. It made me want to become a pathologist.
ambrerose at aol dot com
Romeo & Juliet
xoxoxo
To Kill a Mockingbird. No contest. I still makes me cry when I read it and my copy is worn and dog-earred like any well loved book.
I would have to say the stand. I know it isn’t a classic, but it did influence what I do today.
twoofakind12@yahoo.com
Chuck D’s A Tale of Two cities was a wonderful book. Perfect classic for a house full of four boys.
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn … probably had something to do with my growing up in Queens.
Where the Red Fern Grows. Maybe not as a teen but certainly made an impact on me when I was young!
The Lord of the Rings. And really all things Tolkien. My dad brainwashed me at a very very young age with The Hobbit and much of my high school years was wrapped in Middle Earth lore and learning Quenyan. I’m a hardcore lit nerd who likes to spend her spare time translating poetry into dead elven languages.
Thanks, dad.
Of Mice And Men was huge for me.
I am now a farmer.
I grow alfalfa, just because.
Still no rabbits though.
Though I also loved Salinger as a teen, I would definitely say Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar had the most impact on me. Something about those ethereal scenes of balmy New York City nights and Esther’s retreat into her own mind captured my teenage heart. I still read the book from time to time, even after hearing much ridicule of Plath during college. It’s one of those books that defines the feelings of growing up and struggling with identity as an artist. Though Esther and I were so different, the writing made me feel a real connection to her. Truly a beautiful piece of art.
How amazing are these shirts?!
I was going to try to be very “English Lit” major and pick something suitably hoity-toity, but I’ll be honest; Much Ado About Nothing. I saw the movie, stayed up all night reading the play, and ended up buying the complete works of Shakespeare a day or two later. I love me some Will.
I have read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings every summer since I was 10. I feel like every time I read I pick up on something new. I also continually read the Harry Potter books, no matter how many times I read them they are still good.
I read a great book in one of my Lit classes that was called Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I finished it in one sitting it was sooo good!
The book which had the most impact would be The three musketeers by Dumas. I fell in love with history and France right away ^^
I had a fascination with post-apocalyptic things, so I really liked “Alas Babylon”. However my favorite jab at the system book as a teen and college student was “A Clockwork Orange”. My favorite doomed romance was “The Great Gatsby”. Needless to say, I like books!
As a teenager I hated reading but when I became sick and had to be in a hospital for 2 months I was so incredibly bored that I ventured into the donated pile of books the hospital had received. It was a sad little pile with trashy romance novels and medical mysteries but it had one title that drew me in, ‘The Godfather.’ I had heard of the movie and knew it had blood and violence, which teenager doesn’t love that. Once I began reading I couldn’t put it down. I thank that book for opening up my world.
The book that had a biggest impact on me as a teen, and one I still happily read from time to time today, is A Wrinkle In Time.
I love HATCHET, such a great book when I was growing up!!!!
Dune :>
Actually, Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it quite a few times after I had to for school and each time is like a new experience.
I remember our school librarian reading the first chapter of The Giver by Lois Lowery to us in 4th or 5th grade. I immediately ran up to her after the library hour was over and asked if I could check it out. I just had to know what happened. Since then I have owned several copies and re-read it many, many times and now that I am a librarian myself I love knowing it is one of the most circulated books in the Children’s and Young Adult Departments. We get requests for it weekly.
Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse was pretty big for me, as was Rayuela by Julio Cortazar.
I have two – The Giver and Hamlet. The Giver was middle school, though; it taught me that to feel joy we must feel pain as well. And Hamlet…oh man, my parents got divorced when I was 16, so I was very much feeling Hamlet’s anger towards the adults in his life.
Gonna be honest here: aside from the school books I was required to read in High School, the ones I read were Christian supernatural or apocolyptic fiction (i.e. Left Behind). But after a brief obsession with fantasy (that still lingers) I was strongly influenced by Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. From there the world was open and East Of Eden taught me the beauty of redemptive narratives, One Hundred Years Of Solitude the power of multi-generation narratives, and last (but surely not least), Catcher In The Rye made me realize I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Coincidentally I just started my credential last week. Thank you J.D. Salinger (special no thanks to Tim Lahaye and Jerry. B Jenkins).
To Kill A Mockingbird…it validated my feelings about race and my relationship with my Dad. I read the book several times at age 15. Thought about it all for nearly a year. I have been at peace with ALL my relationships ever since.
I loved the Grapes of Wrath! I thought the alternating chapters of historical information with the Joad family journey was interesting and captivating. It gave a lot of insight into why our grandparents act the way they do! John Steinbeck is an awesome story teller and teaches us a lot about life, hard work, and priorities.
The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye (honest!). They made a huge impression on me. I reread them ocassionally and I still think they are fantastic. Great literature remains great no matter what age you are.
The biggest game changer for me was Gone with the Wind. Even before I was finished with it I knew it was my favorite book. I felt so many emotions while reading it that no other book had ever made me feel. I learned a lot about myself from trying to understand Scarlett. I’ve read it more times than I can count and despite it’s hefty 1,000+ pages I can easily find my favorite parts just by flipping it open. East of Eden is another one that deeply moved me. The redemptive power of that story is amazing.
1984 had such a huge impact on me when I was an early teen. I’d love to read it again now to see what I get out of it now.
I love reading, and I think as a teen Grapes of Wrath had a huge impact on me, and still love it to date!
the oath…by far my fav book ever…
This is tricky because teen years span nearly a decade! So much reading and development occurs from 13-19… I’d say in my early teens I loved “The Giver”, “Number the Stars”, “A Wrinkle in Time”, “The Lord of the Rings”, and pretty much anything historical fiction pertaining to the Revolutionary War or the Holocaust. Towards my middle teen years I was really influenced by “Catcher in the Rye”, Ayn Rand, and other such self centered angsty books. After high school came some hazy late teen years where I was reading such gems as “American Psycho”, “Giles Goat Boy” and “On the Road”. Ahh youth! To this day I most enjoy rereading the books from my early teens.
The Catcher in the Rye was my favorite book as a teen, coincidentally. I really connected with it, unlike other books that were on the required reading list. Oh, and I loved Flowers in the Attic too–totally cheesy, but I really got into VC Andrews in my teens.
Well, my list is so long…I think all Ernest Hemingway’s books and also “The Lord of the Rings”…and “The Catcher is the Rye”, of course!
Please count me in. Thanks.
avalonne83 [at] yahoo [dot] it
“The Buddenbrooks” by Thomas Mann was a book that had an impact on me. It’s the story of the downfall of a wealthy mercantile family of Lübeck over four generations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddenbrooks
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (early teens) and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (late teens). I love how Norton Juster played with language (who knew it could be that fun to learn valuable life lessons?) and Catch-22 made me realize just how absurd life can be.
There were many, but for teenage roadmarks: Moll Flanders was eye-opening; The Lord of the Rings was mesmerizing; Rice’s Vampire Chronicles seduced me; the Hitchiker’s series nearly killed me, The Last Temptation of Christ, El Hacedor, L’étranger, Siddhartha, and the Tropics of Miller got me high; the Brother’s Karamazov sunk its teeth deep into me; but it was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment that first set me on fire.
The Catcher in The Rye was huge for me in highschool. My college big one was Catch 22 which we disected in Literature class. The 70′s literature was so important for the growth of my shy little mind. Thank you.
When I was in high school, I really loved “Feeling Sorry for Celia” by Jaclyn Moriarty… it’s still my favorite book! It made me realize that sometimes change is good.
The few keys books in the teenage years were Phantom Tollbooth (so excited that someone else mentioned it!), The Source by James Michener, and Youth In Revolt (my English teacher Sophomore year was a pretty silly guy and thought this book was necessary reading for his class).
I read a lot of historical fiction as an early teen, and while no one book stuck with me, I do think they gave me a solid sense of history that boring social studies classes might not have. There’s a picture of me on the couch, in my pink velour housecoat, with a cold and a cat, at 13, reading a truly massive book titled “The Death of Attila” that probably says a lot about the person I turned into.
To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch made me want to be a lawyer when I grew up. I’m not now, but that character made me want to be!
Congrats, Molly!