14th summer of reading

the summer I was 14 my parents had a 24-ft long camper that sat in the backyard and which I moved into for a few months. officially, it was to force me to get over my fear of the dark (which was true), but for me it was a greater opportunity to have some alone time. it may seem having only a set of parents and a younger sister in a 13-room house and surrounded by several empty acres would have given one some sense of isolation, but that is to reckon without my mother whose image is the illustration to the term "helicopter parent." sparking into my teens I needed some alonetime.

what I remember best is the amount of reading I did that summer laying on the cushions in the rear of the machine. I don't think I have ever read as voluminously as I did that summer, or at least as variously. at 14 I'd graduated from action, comics-inflected novels to more adult ones, and I had a gymbag stuffed with paperbacks, most of which I'd gotten at flea markets at a nickel or a dime apiece. I pulled a book from it nearly every day, such was my rate. I don't remember all the books from that summer, but I do remember reading these:

• the harrad experiment by robert rimmer
• flashman and royal flash by george macdonald fraser
• the hot rock by donald westlake
• going all the way by dan wakefield
• the sting by robert weverka
• spock must die! by james blish
• the prisoner by thomas disch
• hell house by richard matheson
• runway zero-eight by arthur hailey
• portnoy's complaint by philip roth
• the stepford wives by ira levin
• m*a*s*h and m*a*s*h goes to maine and m*a*s*h goes to paris by richard hooker
• elephants can remember and the abc murders by agatha christie
• the reincarnation of peter proud by max ehrlich
• slaughterhouse 5 and cat's cradle and breakfast of champions by kurt vonnegut, jr.
• my darling, my hamburger by paul zindel
• rubyfruit jungle by rita mae brown
• the lord won't mind and one for the gods by gordon merrick

of all these I don't have a single copy any longer, having given them all away.