Well, we Mucky Bookers are ridiculously excited about this month’s read. Judy Blume’s Forever is an icon of our teenage years – either by whispered reputation, or via the dog-eared copy passed around the classroom, which mysteriously fell open at the dirty bits.
Forever is the story of Katherine and Michael, a teenage couple whose romance leads to the loss of Katherine’s virginity. Written for young adults in 1975, it caused a minor scandal, and is the mother (grandmother?) of today’s sex-positive teen reads.
For many of us, Forever was our first introduction into the world of mucky books, devoured with a mixture of delight and incredulity that such issues could be marketed to us. What will we think of it now, returning as adults?
This month’s Mucky Book Club will take place on Thursday 28th July 2011:
– live at The Ship, Wandsworth at 7pm
– on Twitter from 7.30pm under the hashtag #muckybooks
If you can’t make it on 28th, don’t despair – read along anyway, and add your comments to the bottom of this post!
The Mucky Book Club is open to anyone who would like to take part. If you’d like to join our mailing list (so that we can send updates to you via email), please use the form below.
It was only part of a book. At school, we ound half of “Never Love a Stranger” by Harold Robbins. We were all about 13 and used to read out bits of it to each other by the tennis courts. You could tell we were reading it from the screams of laughter!
My first “Mucky Book” was Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel. I was 11 and I picked it up in the spare room at my cousin’s house. I had almost finished it before my mum noticed and as she hadn’t ready it she let me finish. When she read it some months later she asked if I had understood it. I muttered something about Stocks and Shares and she let it drop!
Congrats Rhian, you’re our winner! Hurrah! I will send you an email to get your address xx
When I was 13 my mum bought me a copy of The Horse Whisperer for Christmas ;)
As I recall, the first ‘mucky’ book I read was Little Birds by Anais Nin, loaned to me by my mother, who prided herself on being very progressive and open-minded about sex (and literature!). I was probably around 14 or 15. I also recall being very titillated by The Picador Book of Erotic Verse, also my mother’s, which contained such classics as Eskimo Nell and John Donne’s super-sexy To His Coy Mistress.
mine was accidental: somehow hardcore lesbian space porn got onto the science-fiction shelf at our junior school library… ooops! I only got to read about 12 pages before I thought, ‘eh? something a bit odd here’. Librarian got a bollocking I remember though!
Deenie, also by Judy Blume, though at the time I had no idea what she meant by her “special place” (I was very, very young).
But the first book where I knew what the hell was going on was, oddly, “Memoirs of an Invisible Man” when I was about 13. That’s some weird kink right there.
Forever was my first mucky book! I remember being horrified & thrilled in equal measure. It just seemed all very… odd. I couldn’t believe that it was true. I can remember every detail and even 20yrs later I giggle when I meet someone called Ralph. I used to read the “good bits” out loud to my friends, to appalled shrieks. I hope kids still do this today, it seems so inoccent now. Good times!
This was my first, too! And Kirsty, I so agree about the meeting anybody called Ralph thing…still makes me snigger!