Intellectual teenagers?

I sometimes think I am one of the only teenagers that enjoys reading and learning. Is there anyone else out there that I can share ideas with and get good book recommendations?

:D

I have always been an avid reader and seeker of knowledge, and this was especially disconcerting in high school when all anyone does is watch television and only read books for class, if even then. If there were those around who did read books, most of them read science fiction and the like. Reading is one of the best things in life. It's good you know that fact.

I don't know how old you are but I see you liked Of Mice and Men. If you like Steinbeck, you might like Jack London. I recommend you pick up The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories.

Also, I discovered the great Hermann Hesse at 14, and he remains my favorite writer. Check out Siddhartha. It's a quick read.

There's always Edgar Allan Poe or H.P Lovecraft if you like horror and imagination.

Some other books I'd urge you to read are Johnny Got His Gun, To Kill a Mockingbird, Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, Lonesome Cities, and A Coney Island of the Mind.

I knew there are some there although not how active they are, so I searched groups for 'teenage'

http://www.librarything.com/search_groups.php?searchbox=teenage

and for 'teen'

http://www.librarything.com/search_groups.php?searchbox=teen

You might take a look to see whether there are any kindred spirits.

Have fun,

Robert

And since you're old enough to talk like an adult, you're welcome to hang out here with us "grownups" though many of us are doing terribly intellectual (NOT!) things like chaining song lyrics together for fun.

You haven't yet posted enough yet for us to really know your interests and tastes. What are you thinking about these days? One of the things I began doing as a teenager was picking random topics to learn more about, and focus some of my reading that way. Since that part of my reading was self-assigned, I could read as long as I cared about a topic and then shift on to the next one.

I agree with you 1>. I find myself in the same situation. I am 20 and very few people around me want to read. Even fewer have actually read the books I enjoy. I find myself talking more with my professors than my peers. But, there are a few of us "intellectual teens" out there.

A few of the books I am still glad I read as a teenager (I read plenty of less serious stuff too, and I'm in favor of reading light things as well as things to improve the mind.) What follows is not necessarily "great literature" because my tastes never ran that way. These are just books I am glad I read because they helped give me background for life and thinking. And books I wish I could convince more teenagers to read.

Almost anything by James Michener but the ones that were important for me were

The Source -- pretty magnificent as a way to get your feet wet in the history of Judaism

Hawaii -- same thing for Hawaii.

Almost anything by Chaim Potok but particularly

The Chosen -- introduction to Hassidic Judaism but it's more than that.

My Name is Asher Lev

Kim by Rudyard Kipling. This may be part of what gave me a love for India that has recently blossomed into something of an obsession.

Siddhartha --already mentioned by others, but I'll add my "amen."

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone--a great introduction to Michelangelo and to the art of the Renaisance.

The King Must Die by Mary Renault

I read a lot of science fiction, and plenty of people hate the genre. But of what I read, Dune by Frank Herbert and of the Heinlein books, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Double Star built some of who I am. If I were growing up today, I would say, Orson Scott Card's first Ender's Game series, the one that continues with Speaker for the Dead and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.

I think it's stunning that no one told me to read Rabindranath Tagore when I was younger. His short stories tend to be on the depressing side. My preference is a short book of poems, Gitanjali.

Thank you all for the suggestions!

Nick-I'm the same way...I'm quiet in all of my classes but I talk to my teachers a lot more than my classmates.

Also, I hate how a lot of popular "teen books" are all about sex and such things. Petropolis is a book I decided to quit reading today. It was disgusting the things that were in it. I got halfway through the book before I gave up.

I love Mary Renault's books, but my very favorite title is Mask of Apollo.

Backstage ancient Greek theater, historic personages (Plato, Dion, cameo by Alexander the Great), travel, mystic connections with the god Apollo - everything I love.

By the way, under LibraryThing's strict Terms of Service, each and every member has experience as a teenager. It just gets hard to remember, along with everything else.

I'm with RRHowell, I read a lot of science fiction. Heinlein, but also Asimov, especially the Foundation series.

I enjoyed Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe, and went on to read his other three big books.

I'm about to be 19, and I've been reading since I was tiny. I'll read pretty much anything I can get my hands on, but lately I've been into graphic novels... Looking at your library, you seem to prefer nonfiction/memoir kinds of things? I recommend The Professor and the Madman and A Severe Mercy, nonfiction and memoir respectively.

> boston22110

MSGS# 1 & 7:

You're surely not wholly alone; but, in our time, you may be part of what has every indication of being an "endangered species," though perhaps less rare than you suppose. It's very important, then, that you try to persevere through this cultural drought--now generations-long--in which we live.

And, please note:

While you remain "quiet" in your classroom, you leave those others-- who, like you, may think they are alone in the interests which they may share with you--ignorant of the fact that, contrary to their impressions, there is, in fact, another --right in the same classroom!--who, just as they do, thinks and cares very much about life, about literature and about the profoundly important matters in which the two so wonderfully intersect.

By risking the act of speaking out and revealing your own inner feelings and thoughts --those things about which you care most and most passionately-- you open up (in addition to the danger of being misunderstood or treated as though you think you may be very special when in fact you recognize that your special qualities are, while perhaps quite unusual in this time of deadening superficiality so trafficked in by television and other mass-media, still not such as to make you completely beyond the reach of your peers for commonly-felt needs and interests) the possibility of a discovery of the very sort of sister/brother soul you'd find kindred, nourishing and exciting.

Even so--- even in speaking up more in class and among your peers outside of class ---what you're seeking is not just rather hard for any teen-ager to find, it's something of a challenge for "fully-grown" "adults" to find in our time; it's also something that is very slippery--something which, the more one tries to fasten one's grip upon it, the more it seems to elude capture. What can one do, then? For starters, you can find some further solace in reading even more and in taking your favored writers as guides to other writers---those who in turn inspired them---to whose work you could turn to read next.

Eventually, when you find others with whom you can share your senses of the contemporary world and its delights and difficulties, the reading you'll have done will provide you with a wealth of common knowledge and understanding --the same things which will help the peers you'd like to discover discover you.

PS: An internet blog, discussion site, etc.---contrary to what may be widely believed---is not, by far, necessarily the place, let alone the best place, where these sought-for discoveries are most likely to be made. It's more likely that your hoped-for soul-mates will be found at school, in the library, park, café terrace-table to your left or right, the movie-theatre waiting line, museum or even "bookstore". PPS: If you live in Boston, you've at least got a fairly rich ground of culturally-lively places on which to do your hunting, right?

Oh, I wish I would have been more interested in reading and education in my teen years. As a child I loved to read, and I loved school...but I kind of lost my way by the time I got to high school. My grades were still decent, usually around a 2.8-3.2 GPA, but I was capable of so much more. I was just lazy and stupid and wanted to sit around and play video games all day. Unfortunately that mentality is far too common. I think many of those "young and stupid" kids will eventually realize what's important and start bettering themselves, but a lot of times it's too little, too late.

Fortunately after high school I began reading again, but all I can think of now is all those years of reading I missed out on. :(

Another post-script, this (excerpt) is re-posted here from the forum Boston22110 started with good reason at " http://www.librarything.com/groups/societyofintelligent "

Boston22110,

This, your critic, now takes himself to task; or, rather, my 'inner critic,' (a.k.a. conscience) which always gets the last word with me, has not left me much peace since what I wrote. And so I'm back to recognize some of the faults in they way I approached your enquiry.

My intentions were the best but the delivery wasn't what it should or could have been. You deserved and still deserve better, I think, than what I offered above.

You were right, I think, to pose your question here. Surely you have peers and companions in your intellectual interests and this site ought to be a good place to find some of them for discussion and debate. If only I were still among your age cohort! But since I'm not, I fall outside the profile of those with whom you're interested in finding some common interests.

And, to my relief, I find that you've listened to your own good sense and done exactly what I was coming around to suggesting: namely, starting up a group such as this one.

Now, maybe your elders will be inspired by your example. And until something like a "Society of not-so-young-people" takes root, I'm sorely tempted to bring my still-very-much-alive inner youth to your group and at least, drink from these waters.

Among the many things that our contemporary society so badly needs is a renaissance of what you seek and hope to find---a renewed and openly claimed interest in the life of the mind by the ordinary man and woman rather than the academic or other specialist in arts and sciences....

I'm afraid things don't improve with age, boston22110. I'm in my fifties and still often wonder if I'm the only one who reads anything other than the most shallow chick lit. Of all my friends and relations I can only think of two who love their books as much as I do. I know I'm not alone in this as I've heard the same complaint from many an LTer but that's the great thing about this site - we've all found a bunch of kindred souls. And ditto what RRHowell said - age isn't an issue here; yes, we have our share of people (who I sincerely hope are still in their teens) whose posts consist entirely of things like "Luv 2 reed. Edward rocks." but, on the whole, you should have no trouble in finding others of all ages who share your passion. Hope you have fun here.

Not to get you down, but I'm 22 now and I feel more isolated as a serious reader now than I did in high school. I was lucky in high school because I had many friends who loved to read and it was not considered weird in my high school to love to read. But now most of my friends are now busy with school, jobs, families, etc. and seem to read less than they did. My problem was and is the "learning" part of reading. I enjoy non-fiction and always have and even my best friends always found that strange.

It's certainly true that you read less at certain points in your life (especially, in my experience, when you have young children) but if you are keen enough, you never give it up completely. There are still a lot of things you can do with a book in your hand (make up your own jokes there) and the people who claim they 'just don't have time to read any more' aren't taking the obsession seriously enough.

> 14 (yes!),

> 15 & 16 :

In #14 there's the important observation that, as much as simply "reading" ---the meaning of which is changing and shall 'change' (degrade) still more as societies 'modernize' their 'reading' habits---it's very much a matter of what one reads. On this, this thread's founder, Boston22110, (who has perhaps now left it for better climes), points up her interest in discussing " shar(ing) ideas ... and get(ting) good book recommendations" because, what's not stated but is there by implication, is the fact that, (edited) although lots of people today are busy doing what they call reading (edited) much of their absorbing interest in reading can look very much like an almost desperate effort to keep themselves distracted from what would otherwise be terribly pressing moral and intellectual issues of life--inluding a person's defining sense of self, of place and of larger purpose in life; and these latter are precisely the matters which a typical tennager, just because he or she is at that stage of life, can hardly escape or ignore since they are elements of adult identity which one must construct for himself.

To be at the advent of constructing one's adult self means the important task of discovering and figuring out much about the world about one, how and why it is as it is and what this means for one's self, one's friends and family and one's own society. All of that has become so much more difficult as the world itself changes shape with ever-quickening pace. We, who went through this process (if we did) decades (or more) ago, are obliged now to recognize that the challenges youth face today in figuring 'themselves (and their world) out' and doing the vital work of constructing their adult selves are dizzyingly more difficult.

An elder who might argue, "I learned to roller-skate, so they can as well, right?" should bear in mind that "they" are trying to learn to roller-skate not on the relatively smoother, flater surface we had but, rather, on a careening speed-boat shifting and bobbing on a rough surface at very high speed.

Hey B-2, want to make a friend? Go up to your Lit/English teacher sometime after class and tell him/her your problem. Just say the same thing you said at the start of this thread.

You might just be talking to someone who had the same problem as a teen. They may be able tp point you in the direction of like minded students. They may simply let you know that when you get to college you are going to be up to your neck with fellow students who want to fight about literature

Remember though that to many people their reading is personal and something that they hold very close. They don't want to stick it out there and have it maligned.

You have to prove to fellow readers that you really do value writing and want to learn from them and aren't going to disparage their choice of writers or topics.