Five Books I Was Obsessed with When I Was 18

When I was 18, I had this weird thing called, "I have no friends, but I have a ton of books, so I guess I'm good..." And in reality, we call that being a nerd. To break it down, I used to read and eat cheese in great amounts—so, not so much different to today, then.

To make things more interesting, some of the coursework projects I had to do for literature included choosing your own books, and forming your own questions in order to answer in essay format, with citations. I was very excited for this, because I didn't have to just study what everyone else was studying, and got to read and study my own books.

What actually happened, though, is this:

My teacher asked us all to prepare a powerpoint presentation of the different viable questions we could answer, on around three or four sets of up to five different books. So, just to run through that again—We had to make a presentation of three or four different questions that each contained a comparison between a maximum of five different books. This is where my problem lay.

My problem was that I had so many more ideas than just three or four questions. I had a ton of things I wanted to try, and see if they worked. I ended up giving the presentation and may have accidentally included 10 questions instead of three or four. My teacher then proceeded to call the library to see if I could move in (obviously as a joke, but really, guys).

I ended up choosing for my first essay some Philippa Gregory books, and you can view the little story about that in this article here. After that, I proceeded to let myself go wild and choose all the books I was absolutely obsessed with throughout the ages of 17 to 18, and so, just for you (if you care), here they are:

5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

One of the texts that was on the syllabus when I was at school was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I proceeded to read it, but we never actually got around to studying it at school, at least not in Year 10 or 11. I then moved schools for Year 12 and 13, and only then did we study it. I think our teacher gave us a choice between Jane Eyre and another book, and then Jane won because the other book was pretty irrelevant. I went through reading Jane Eyre and to be honest, I really didn't start off liking it because I thought the whole red room was a bit cliché. As I really got into it though, I became more and more obsessed, and drawn to characters like Helen Burns, and Rochester, and Bertha Mason, and Grace Poole, and all of them...

4. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood is one of those books I read a long while ago. When I was 18, I became obsessed with true crime, and every single time this obsession comes back around, I find myself re-reading In Cold Blood before I move on to anything else. In Cold Blood really set the bar, and with that I made sure that I had a good grounding for true crime. I also learnt a lot about America in that time from that book; it seemed so much more real than any fiction novel of course, but it was still written with the same emotional power.

3. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

I first read this book shortly after it was released in 2012, so I was 16. I then read it again when I was 18, and suddenly became even more obsessed with it than I already was. The story is beautiful, the characters are incredible, and the way the story is told is just breathtaking. I was really into the language use, descriptions and implications that were littered around the book to show the state of various emotions, and learnt a lot about creative writing and implicit/explicit statements from it. The book won a lot of awards as well (just in case you need some solid evidence that it is good). I hope you read it and enjoy it, because it is one of the most beautiful books ever written.

2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Hamlet is probably one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, and one of the most famous plays in human history. I first read it when I was around 14 or 15, and from then on I really quite enjoyed it. But, as I was also reading a bunch of transgressive pieces from the 70s and 80s, I was also wondering how the character of Hamlet could relate to these other protagonists. Hamlet is constantly relevant, and for my Shakespearean question in the first year of my A Levels, I looked at obsession, detachment, and family politics on the Renaissance Stage. One of the plays I looked at was Hamlet, the others were The Taming of the Shrew, The Jew of Malta, and Tis Pity She's A Whore (including a number of other, minor plays).

1. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

I was so damn obsessed with this book at school that I actually got everyone else in my Language class to read it as well. I thought that it was one of the greatest books ever written (and I still do). As much as I love exuberant and over-the-top language that we find in novels from the 19th century, I do appreciate when novelists are able to create the same tense scenery, with as little effort into language as possible. It is more about their choice of words. If you wanna learn more about my love for Bret Easton Ellis novels, then check this out here:

https://vocal.media/geeks/bret-easton-ellis-the-top-5-works