The Books We Passed Around
A few weeks ago, The Atlantic had an article about Judy Blume’s Forever, and how kids secretly passed certain books around. It was easy to get Forever at our library, and all of Judy Blume’s books, but the ones that we passed around were V.C. Andrews — The Flowers in the Attic series and then the Heaven books.
The passing of the books was almost more important than reading the books themselves. I loved that everyone entered the trading path. Most of the people who passed along the next book to me were not even my friends. They just knew how powerful it was to keep the story moving from kid to kid, all of us devouring complete trash.
The only thing I didn’t get to do was start one of the chains. I tried when a new book came out. We were in the grocery store, and the new book was right by the cash register. I casually told my mum that I thought I should get it, and she just replied, “Do you?” I had to report that I was not successful the next day on the playground, but luckily, enough other kids had gotten copies and started them through the underground book exchange.
Many years ago, the same thing happened with Vox by Nicholson Baker. Everyone was reading it on my college campus, and when people finished, they would hand off their copy to another person. Someone dropped their copy in my lap when I was sitting on Library Mall — no words, just gave me the book. I passed along that copy to someone else after finishing it in one night. I ended up buying myself a copy to keep with the black cover, which I liked more than the pink cover I got in the exchange.
This is kind of lost now with digital books. Passing along the story becomes more piracy than an underground book exchange, which makes me sad. Because there was really nothing better than reading a book you sensed you weren’t old enough to have yet.
6 comments
We just took our mom’s books. That’s how I ended up with Flowers in the Attic and my friend got The Happy Hooker.
Goodness, this takes me back. I didn’t have the underground book exchange, but I did devour A LOT of VC Andrews in high school. One of my English teachers was horrified (understandable I guess), and my parents never censored my books. I don’t think they even knew the content of those books. I was always reading one…I guess we had an unspoken don’t ask, don’t tell policy, and I am grateful. I think reading about trauma is easier to digest than images and video. You can pause, go slowly, create your own images, etc. I wonder about the effects of current media consumption. Also…free little libraries are a great way of spreading good (and controversial) books! I know I browse any I come across and add to them.
I noped out of all of those, although my first high school roommate was into VC Andrews and Anne Rice and Anne Rice’s soft porn under another name, and that Arthurian legends series with all the rape and incest. Not for me. The 90s just had so much written sexual violence against women.
But I did trade a lot of fantasy– Martha Wells (pre-murderbot), Weiss and Hickman, Wheel of Time (not my favorite, but went down easy), funny Ace paperbacks like Robert Asprin or Craig Shaw Gardner, and so on. So I guess there was that. I still do recommend things that are available at libraries and friends recommend them to me, so that’s sort of like sharing paper books.
I was never a “pass it on” person. I didn’t (and still don’t) even like LENDING my books, because so often they never came back to me. I just have bought at least half a dozen copies of Gone With the Wind over the years to replace the ones that were never returned…! I never did read V.C. Andrews, but I do remember lots of people around me reading “Flowers in the Attic” when it first came out. And my girlfriend insisted I had to read “The Sword of Shannara” by Terry Brooks. I think I did eventually wade my way through it, but I remember absolutely nothing about it. Fantasy has never really interested me, and I think it might stem back to that one! lol
I liked keeping my books when I was younger. Then it got too hard to move them and I was forced to slowly start getting rid of them. Now with ebooks I can keep them again. I did occasionally lend books but it drove me crazy to not get them back.
Also can you believe we read all the VC Andrew’s stuff? Holy crap that was some mature content for a teen.
Ah! I missed replying to this post and had to go find it. In 6th grade Judy Blume’s Forever made the rounds until the teacher spotted it and gave us a big lecture on reading sexual content we weren’t ready for. But, we still passed around so-called “naughty” books. I wasn’t allowed to read any romances but had a friend whose older sister passed her Harlequins and other bodice-ripper-y books, until one got discovered in my pool bag (“Rebel’s Desire,” a revolutionary war romance) and my mom freaked out. I guess it didn’t matter that there was ZERO sex until page 200 something, so you really had to be invested in the story if that was what you were after.
Now I pass lots of twisty murdery books around school (to other teachers and staff) and have a bit of a lending library in my classroom. I still love a paper book more than anything, in part because you can pass them around and they never need charging, ha.