What books do you cringe at having loved? Nadia Chaudhury collects the teen-age literary crushes of 30 popular writers.
The feelings are so strong and obsessive. The books seem smart, sophisticated, cool; the characters in them say and do such great things, they seem like guides sent to teach you how to be that way too. But then the crush goes, and the object of one’s former affection becomes an embarrassment—or at least the memory of you quoting them so seriously does.
It’s heartwarming to realize that no matter how cheesy Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms books are, they insulated me from Ayn Rand at a most vulnerable age.