Futuretrack 5, by Robert Westall
Fuck me, when I got my hands on that book at the tender age of 13, I was hooked. Boy leaves school with top marks, gets abducted by country-running scientists, escapes, drops into seedy council-estate dominated by dole-revenue-earning Games, legs it to Middle Class England and tries to invoke an entire inter-class war to bring down the system.

The furtive wanks in the bathroom over the meagre sex scenes catered for my developing pubescent lust; the subtle balance between pampered protected England and the fenced-off drug-addled Zones made me question my middle-class childhood, and the Futuretrack 5, a lethal race among social rejects on crudely-made bikes fuelled my passion for engineering. Wrapped together in a well-paced, imaginative, unnervingly realistic (to a child, anyway) tome topped it off. I became a reading addict, and devoured Westall's entire catalogue as well as many other authors, and went on to study Literature at university.

With my first pay packet, I ordered on Amazon a reprint of that book that my brother dropped into the toilet when I lent it to him to wank over the rude bits too. Filthy cunt spunked all over the pages, I bet, and had to dispose of the evidence.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 15 May 2008, 16:02, 2 replies)

The Cats of Seroster
is also an awesome read

I bought it for my no-Godson because he has the same name as the title character and I thought it might do him good
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 15 May 2008, 18:30, closed)

that's a fucking good'un as well. I bought my copy in a Brussels flea market for about 10p, and I've still got it somewhere.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 15 May 2008, 18:57, closed)