The Great Classics changed my life?
I could write all about the profound affect the great classics, modern and ancient alike, have had upon my life, my intellectual development and the way I conduct myself in society.
I could write about reading Jane Austen's Emma at the age of 16 for A levels and loving it…but I'd be lying.

I can be highbrow some of the time but no one seems to have mentioned yet the benefits - for a young girl - of reading the following authors….

Virginia Andrews - The Flowers in the Attic books
I wonder if this has ever been translated into German?

It tells the story of children being imprisoned in the attic of a house…the eldest sister and brother begin an incestuous relationship and produce their own children.

Jackie Collins - Hollywood Wives, Husbands, Lucky, etc. etc.
It's generally recognised that men tend to have a visual sexuality - they're turned on by what they see. Women tend to have an auditory one - turned on by what they hear and by extension, by what they read. I realise these are sweeping statements, blah, blah, blah….

But for me at the age of 12 or 13 Ms Collins was the first bit of smutty writing I'd come across…quite literally.

Danielle Steel -
Going Home (1973)
Passion's Promise (1976)
Now and Forever (1978)
The Promise (1978)
Season of Passion (1978)
Summer's End (1979)
To Love Again (1979)
Loving (1980)
The Ring (1980)
Palomino (1981)
Remembrance (1981)
A Perfect Stranger (1981)
Once in a Lifetime (1982)
Crossings (1982)
Thurston House (1983)
Changes (1983)
Full Circle (1983)
Love: Poems (1984)
Family Album (1985)
Secrets (1985)
Wanderlust (1986)
Fine Things (1986)
Kaleidoscope (1987)
Zoya (1988)
Star (1989)

I've stopped at the end of the 80s because by then I'd realised that her books are formulaic and happy endings don't always happen. I also finally developed my cynicism.



But just about everything I expected from a relationship was formed from these books. I was, I am an unashamed romantic. And these books fed that within me.

So why don't I read stuff like that anymore?

The same reason I don't read Enid Blyton anymore - I've grown up.

But I won't deny that they changed my life. Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Dickens and Shakespeare didn't…

Okay, I'm shallow honest.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Sun 18 May 2008, 10:51, 1 reply)

*clickity click click*
I, too am of the generation that got sex education from the pages of Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper. I too read Danielle Steel until I realised that they were beginning to bore me.

It began to dawn on me that happiness did not depend on having a man in your life (although I did have a man in my life, I wanted him there rather than needing him there. Good job too, 'cos the same man's still there!).

I still love a good romance (which rules out Mills & Boon) but as a change of pace rather than a steady diet.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Sun 18 May 2008, 17:30, closed)