John Green: I devoured the Sweet Valley High books as a child
US author John Green tells The Guardian's books section which titles shaped him, from 1980s series aimed at girls to Toni Morrison and Kurt Vonnegut.
American author John Green, a writer of young adult fiction, has described the books that influenced him and what he is reading now in a question-and-answer feature for the books section of the British newspaper The Guardian.
Childhood and youth
Green recalls learning to read with dull stories about a girl called Jane going up a hill. His first thrilling reading experiences, though, came from series such as The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High. He knew that in the 1980s these books were seen as meant for girls, but he read them avidly anyway. As a child he also loved survival stories, especially Gary Paulsen's novel The Island.
At 16 he read Toni Morrison for the first time: The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon. In his words, Morrison showed him that books could transform a reader. Kurt Vonnegut's humanism shaped his values, while Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh made him want to write.
Books he returns to
At high school Green found Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, annoying. Years later the book shattered him. He recently reread Lily King's Heart the Lover and enjoyed it more the second time. He did not read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice until adulthood. He has no wish to return to Ayn Rand, whose thin plots, he says, reinforce flawed ideas about how people cooperate.
What he reads now
Green is currently reading How to Build a Universe by astrophysicist Katie Mack. For comfort, he turns to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, a novel about US politics and the South, but above all about the relentless march of time.
