With the dawn of a new millennium about to break, the Nineties was a strange, floating decade of positivity, hope and something called the World Wide Web. 

Books-define-2000s_Hero-Desktop_Penguin.jpg

Reading lists

Books that defined the 2000s

Funny books to read and buy for Christmas gifts

Funny books of 2024

Books guaranteed to make you laugh

An illustration of a woman walking a tightrope, with a baby to the left of her and a computer to the right

Single-Mothers-Main.jpg

Features

Dazzling, raucous, rarely alone: a history of single mums in books

Article-Card-funny-women-books.jpg

7 extremely funny books written by women

13 of Adrian Mole's most insightful observations

adrian-mole-rocket.jpg

13 Adrian Mole quotes that shaped our world view

Abridged Edition

Penguin Readers Level 3: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ (ELT Graded Reader)

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. 
 
Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. 
 
The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. 
 
The Secret Life of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾, a Level 3 Reader, is A2 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing first conditional, past continuous and present perfect simple for general experience. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages. 
 
Adrian Mole is a 13-year-old boy. Adrian writes a diary about his school, his family and, of course, love. "There's a new girl in our class . . . I think I might love her. I am 13 ¾ years old, so I'm old enough for love!" 
 
Visit the Penguin Readers website 
Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

Sue Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946. Despite not learning to read until the age of eight, leaving school at fifteen with no qualifications and having three children by the time she was in her mid-twenties, she always found time to read widely. She also wrote secretly for twenty years. After joining a writers' group at The Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, she won a Thames Television award for her first play, Womberang, and became a professional playwright and novelist. After the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, Sue continued to make the nation laugh and prick its conscience. She wrote seven further volumes of Adrian's diaries and five other popular novels - including The Queen and I, Number Ten and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year - and numerous well received plays. Sue passed away in 2014 at the age of sixty-eight. She remains widely regarded as Britain's favourite comic writer.

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
The Secret Life of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾, a Level 3 Reader, is A2 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing first conditional, past continuous and present perfect simple for general experience. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages. 
 
Adrian Mole is a 13-year-old boy. Adrian writes a diary about his school, his family and, of course, love. "There's a new girl in our class . . . I think I might love her. I am 13 ¾ years old, so I'm old enough for love!"

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ is the first book in Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny Adrian Mole series, reissued in Penguin's ORIGINALS collection of iconic teen fiction. 
 
Friday January 2nd 
 I felt rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children's home. 
 
 Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. 
 
Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared. 
 
Praise for Adrian Mole (and by extension, Sue Townsend): 
 
'I not only wept, I howled and hooted and had to get up and walk around the room and wipe my eyes so that I could go on reading' Tom Sharpe 
 
'A satire of our times. Very funny indeed' Sunday Times 
 
'We laugh both at Mole and with him. A wonderful comic read, that, like all the best comedy, says something rather meaningful' Heat 
 
----- 
 
Sue Townsend is Britain's favourite comic author. Her hugely successful novels include eight Adrian Mole books, as well as The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 55¾), Number Ten, Ghost Children, The Queen and I, Queen Camilla and The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year, all of which are highly acclaimed bestsellers. She also wrote numerous well-received plays.

Funny, moving and a poke in the eye for adult morality

Townsend [is] the absolute monarch of comic fiction

Sue Townsend is one of Britain's favourite comic authors. Her hugely successful novels include eight Adrian Mole books, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 55¾), Number Ten, Ghost Children, The Queen and I, Queen Camilla and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year, all of which are highly-acclaimed bestsellers. Sue passed away in 2014 and is survived by her husband, four children, ten grandchildren and millions of avid readers.

At thirteen years old, Adrian Mole has more than his fair share of problems - spots, ill-health, parents threatening to divorce, rejection of his poetry and much more - all recorded with brilliant humour in his diary.

Adrian Mole Book 2

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole is the second book in Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny Adrian Mole series. 
 
Sunday July 18th 
My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched. 
 
In this second instalment of teenager Adrian Mole's diaries, the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother's pregnancy. 
 
And even though at the mercy of his rampant hormones and the fickle whims of the divine Pandora, a victim of a broken home and his own tortured (though unrecognised) genius, Adrian continues valiantly to chronicle the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence. 
________ 
 
'Funny, moving and a poke in the eye for adult morality' Sunday Express 
 
'Written with great verve, and showing an uncanny understanding of the young, Sue Townsend holds the balance between innocence and precocity and the result is both hilarious and salutary' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Life's no fun for an adolescent intellectual. For the reader it's a hoot' New Statesman

Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself

One of literature's most endearing figures. Mole is an excellent guide for all of us

Adrian Mole will be remembered some day as one of England's great diarists

The funniest, most bitter-sweet book you're likely to read this year

Sunday July 18th 
 
My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched. 
 
In this second instalment of teenager Adrian Mole's diaries, the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother's pregnancy. 
 
And even though at the mercy of his rampant hormones and the fickle whims of the divine Pandora, a victim of a broken home and his own tortured (though unrecognised) genius, Adrian continues valiantly to chronicle the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence.

The Secret Diary & Growing Pains of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran 
 
'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAY 
 
FEATURED IN 'THE 100 BOOKS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' BBC ARTS 
 
The FIRST TWO BOOKS in the hilarious and iconic Adrian Mole series from comic legend Sue Townsend. 
________ 
 
Friday January 2nd 
 
I felt rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children's home. 
 
Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. 
 
Telling us candidly about his parents' marital troubles, The Dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', his love for the divine Pandora and his horror at learning of his mother's pregnancy, Adrian's painfully honest diary is a hilarious and heartfelt chronicle of misspent adolescence. 
_________ 
 
'I've never experienced a greater sense of recognition than when reading The Secret Diary' David Nicholls 
 
'Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself' The Times 
 
'Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'One of the great comic creations' Daily Mirror 
 
THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE IS NOW A MAJOR MUSICAL 
 
Features the complete texts of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.

I've never experienced a greater sense of recognition than when reading The Secret Diary

Townsend's writing is still a delight, Adrian's poetry is still dreadful, and his sense of self-importance is still hilarious

I not only wept, I howled and hooted and had to get up and walk around the room and wipe my eyes so that I could go on reading

Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it

A classic. The Adrian Mole diaries are thoroughly subversive. A true hero for our time

Adrian Mole is one of literature's great underachievers; his tragedy is that he knows it and the sadness of this undercuts the humour and makes us laugh not until, but while, it hurts

Friday January 2nd 
 
I felt rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children's home. 
 
Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

The sensational final instalment in comic legend Sue Townsend's hilarious and iconic Adrian Mole series 
 
'Effortlessly hilarious. Brilliant satire and tragedy' Times 
 
'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAY 
 
Read as Adrian continues to struggle with his love life, endures a painfully awkward school play and contemplates the unsettling prospect of applying genital poultice . . . 
__________ 
 
Sunday 1st July 
 
NO SMOKING DAY. A momentous day! Smoking in a public place or place of work is forbidden in England. Though if you are a prisoner, an MP or a member of the Royal Family you are exempt. 
 
Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter. He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter. His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty. But all is not well. 
 
The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure. The spark has fizzled out of his marriage. His mother is threatening to write her autobiography (A Girl Called Shit). And Adrian's nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent . . . 
 
This laugh-out-loud final chapter in Adrian's story will have you hooked from the first page as you discover what he gets up to next. 
__________ 
 
'A tour de force by a comic genius and if it isn't the best book published this year, I'll eat my bookshelf' Daily Mail, Books of the Year 
 
'Hilarious. Comic gold' Sunday Times 
 
'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

Sue Townsend was simply one of the funniest writes who ever wore socks, and her Adrian Mole series is a satirical gem that follows her hapless protagonist from adolescence to middle age, revealing some sharp home truths about British society in the process. At thirty-nine and a half, Adrian is convinced he's too young to have prostrate problems. He's wrong. If anyone can shake a comic first at cancer, it's Townsend.

In this book the comedy is all the sharper, and more poignant, for its melancholy contrasts, the emotional danger and the sense that time is always running out.

Sue Townsend has always had an unflinching sense of humour - the more incongruously awful the situation, the more she can make us laugh...this is a seriously lovely book.

Like Evelyn Waugh's Captain Grimes, Adrian is 'one of the immortals' and the series of his diaries the comic masterpiece of our time

This hilarious and poignant tale of Adrian Mole's early middle age reaffirms that Sue Townsend has created 'one of the great comic characters of our time'

Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter. He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter. His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty. But all is not well. 
 
The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure. The spark has fizzled out of his marriage. His mother is threatening to write her autobiography (A Girl Called Shit). And Adrian's nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent. 
 
As his troubles multiply, a drunken call to old flame Dr Pandora Braithwaite (BA, MA, PhD, MP and Junior Minister) awakens memories of what might have been and causes Adrian to wonder: is Pandora the only one who can possibly save him?

Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran 
 
'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAY 
 
The hilarious SEVENTH BOOK in Sue Townsend's bestselling series, sees Adrian fall in love, be inconvenienced by the war and face his new nemesis: a swan from the local canal . . . 
_____________ 
 
 Wednesday April 2nd 
 My birthday. 
 I am thirty-five today. I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death. 
 
 Adrian Mole is middle-aged but still scribbling. 
 
Working as a bookseller and living in Leicester's Rat Wharf; finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair; locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud; measuring his expanding bald spot; and trying to win-over the voluptuous Daisy . . . 
 
Adrian yearns for a better more meaningful world. But he's not ready to surrender his pen yet... 
______________ 
 
 'Hilarious. Deft, gleeful mockery impales modish fads, from home make-overs to new-age crazes, while fiercer irony is trained on the country's involvement with Iraq' Sunday Times 
 
 'Richly comic ... stuffed full of humour, tragedy, vanity, pathos and, very occasionally, wisdom' Guardian 
 
 'Completely hilarious, laugh-out-loud, a joy' Daily Mirror

Celebrate Adrian Mole's 50th Birthday with this new edition of the seventh book in his diaries where Adrian falls in love, is inconvenienced by the war and faces his new nemesis: a swan from the local canal

As funny as anything Townsend has written, in which the loft-dwelling Mole wrestles with credit-card debt, WMD and where to find a dentist

The funniest book of the year. I can think of no more comical read

He will be remembered some day as one of England's great diarists

Wednesday April 2nd 
 
My birthday. 
 
I am thirty-five today. I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death. 
 
Adrian Mole is middle-aged but still scribbling. Working as a bookseller and living in Leicester's Rat Wharf; finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair; locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud; measuring his expanding bald spot; and trying to win-over the voluptuous Daisy . . . Adrian yearns for a better more meaningful world. But he's not ready to surrender his pen yet . . .

Sue Townsend

Impeccable comic timing, evergreen comic writing. I had more pure reading pleasure than from any other book I read this year

Marvellous, touching and screamingly funny . . . set to become as much a cult book as The Catcher in the Rye

Adrian Mole Book 1

Friday January 2nd 
 
I felt rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children's home. 
 
Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

Sue Townsend

Praise for The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4

Impeccable comic timing, evergreen comic writing. I had more pure reading pleasure than from any other book I read this year

One of literature's most endearing figures. Mole is an excellent guide for all of us

Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it

Impeccable comic timing, evergreen comic writing. I had more pure reading pleasure than from any other book I read this year

One of literature's most endearing figures. Mole is an excellent guide for all of us

Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it

Impeccable comic timing, evergreen comic writing. I had more pure reading pleasure than from any other book I read this year

One of literature's most endearing figures. Mole is an excellent guide for all of us

Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it

Books by Sue Townsend

Series by Sue Townsend

Adrian Mole

Articles featuring Sue Townsend

Books that defined the 2000s

Books guaranteed to make you laugh

Dazzling, raucous, rarely alone: a history of single mums in books

7 extremely funny books written by women

13 Adrian Mole quotes that shaped our world view

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter