What kind of books did you read when you were a kid?

[Bright Moments]

doc savage!

[Jazzmoose]

doc savage!

Man, I remember spending quite a bit of time with those at one point! One word of advice: if you decide to revisit the series, just grab two of them. One to enjoy, and one to let you know that one was enough...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

A multi-volume adult-level (i.e. akin to the prose of Time magazine but without Time's quirks of style) history of the U.S. Navy in WWII, "Battle Report," which I read over and over with deep fascination -- much of my early success in school, such as it was, was thanks to the level of general verbal facility that reading this book to pieces gave me.

You've reminded me that I read a lot of WWII stories - mostly about prisoner of war experiences - "The Colditz story"; "Boldness be my friend"; "Soochow the Marine"; "Bridge over the River Kwai" and so on.

Also, in a similar vein, there was "A Stone for Danny Fisher," a surprisingly good early semi-autobiographical novel by Harold Robbins about growing up poor in a rough New York City neighborhood.

I always thought that was the best Robbins book I'd read. It was the source of "King Creole".

MG

[JohnS]

Biggles, now wonderfully non-pc.

Also enjoyed Swallows and Amazons.

[BillF]

BillF's mention of Violet Elizabeth Bott made me think about this while I was out having a cough and drag.

I read mostly schoolboy stories - "Teddy Lester's schooldays"; the Just William books by Richmal Crompton; Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Famous five books. Then I graduated to "Tom Brown's schooldays"; "Treasure Island"; "20,000 leagues under the sea" and similar stuff. (But I really couldn't get into "Rob Roy", which put me off Scott forever.) Then I read books about explorers and was keen on polar expedition books and books about faraway places.

What I had NO interest in (until I became a father) was books about anthropomorphic animals, or kids with strange powers. So "Wind in the willows", the Beatrix Potter books and the Pooh books, or "Peter Pan" and so on were really off the agenda. I just wanted to read books about ordinary kids.

MG

Very similar experience to yours, MG. As a very small child Rupert Bear, later Just William and Enid Blyton, still later Biggles. Pointers to present taste for science fiction: Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth at 11, Superman and Captain Marvel comics at 12 or 13, The Time Machine at 16.

[Niko]

But I had graduated to adult books by the time I was 9, The Hobbit was one of the first I read. Within a couple years I became a huge fan of horror novels and spent most of the early 80's reading anything put out by Stephen King, Peter Straub, Whitley Streiber, etc.

will never forget an "incident" in sixth grade when i was helping to sort the class library and some kid said "the hobbit..., shouldn't we be over books like that for several years now?"... i had put it there and it's still one of my two desert island books... never liked enid blyton that much though i must have read a dozen or two of those anyway; i read lots of jules verne, dumas, treasure island... i also read many history books (like a 600 page biography of talleyrand - would never feel like reading a book like that nowadays) when i was thirteen or fourteen i discovered paul auster and read most of his books that were available at the time, kerouac came a little later, when i was seventeen i read most of joerg fauser's books, the only post-war german author i ever read more than 200 pages of, at nineteen i read the first joseph roth novel and since i've mostly been reading and re-reading his books... but i do hope that my interest in reading will come back some time ...

[king ubu]

I guess I got started early... read stuff like Mahfouz (is that the correct spelling used in English?) or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Kafka (The Process, stories), Cesare Pavese (the Torino novels), can't remember it all. At 20 I started my studies, one my minors being German literature, so I got to read plenty of books... Goethe (Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, a most fascinating book, and of course lots of plays and some poetry), Schiller (reading his dramas in connection with some of his essays like "Über das Erhabene" is highly enlightening), Lessing, Karl Philipp Moritz ("Anton Reiser", one of my favourite books ever... some day I'd love to read some of his esthetics stuff, too), Kleist, Hölderlin (poetry, but also "Hyperion"), Nietzsche, Jean Paul, Stifter, then the favourite era of mine, fin de siècle and the early modernists, Schnitzler (anything, his youth diary, his plays, his novels - forget about Kubrick's film, read the book, it's much, much deeper and more manifold as well of couse), Hofmannsthal, then Kafka again, and lots of poetry by the likes of Heym, Trakl, Benn and all the expressionists, Musil, Thomas Mann (his "Doktor Faustus" is one of the greatest books in my, ahem, book... I had to fight with and against it, but I could still not put it away, utterly fascinating), Rilke... then post-war stuff, Arno Schmidt (an on-going fascination!), Koeppen, many Austrians including Bernhard, Jelinek, Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do), Kraus...

ok, most of this I got into maybe from about the age of 15 or 16 or so, so not really as a "kid", but ey, I couldn't remember what I read as an actual kid, mostly specialised books for kids and stuff, books about animals and volcanos and all that crap... and I did read Frisch early on, still need to get into Durrenmatt, only know a little bit of his ouvre.

[Niko]

Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do)

my dad said reading this book made you an intellectual (he never read it, don't think he planned, too (although he no doubt was an intellectual)... i've been stuck somewhere around page 700 for several years now (but it's excellent))

[Tom Storer]

As a kid, I just read whatever I could get my hands on. I didn't read Tom Swift or Hardy Boys type stuff, though, it seemed stodgy and old-fashioned. I was fond of biographies of famous people written for children. Around age 10, I guess, I realized that the "Young Adult" section of the library had more interesting books than the "Children" section. I would trawl through it and pick out fiction based on the "blurb + first three pages" test that has been my lifelong method of choosing something new to read. When I was 13 I read all of Steinbeck, one after the other, after my 8th-grade English teacher assigned "The Red Pony." My mother was a big mystery fan so I read those, too, including countless Ed McBain novels with titles like "Axe" and "Shotgun," referring to murder methods. I recall reading an awful lot of Kurt Vonnegut, too. This was in the 70's. Also "The Godfather," and "Catch 22." Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep" made a big impression on me, so did Claude Brown's "Manchild in the Promised Land." Now that I think of it, my reading material was either library books culled in a non-methodical way or stuff my parents happened to have around the house.

Newspapers and magazines were also important. Communal reading of the Sunday New York Times, with everyone passing each other different sections, was a ritual in place since earliest childhood and I grew into it. My parents got New York magazine, the New Yorker, Time, Life, the local Gannett daily paper, Ms. Magazine, etc. etc. My brother and I also got Mad Magazine, Cracked, floods of comic books, Science Weekly. When bored, pick up the nearest printed matter... a maxim I have lived by.

As a senior in high school I read "Swann's Way" and that really threw me for a loop. It was completely foreign--turn-of-the-century bourgeois France was really very far from my experience of life--and yet the way it was written was instantly congenial to me. Although difficult, it felt natural.

I still read in random patterns. Classics, modern, high-, low- or middle-brow, historical, potboiler, pornographic, mainstream literary, experimental... whatever I find myself wandering toward.

[king ubu]

Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do)

my dad said reading this book made you an intellectual (he never read it, don't think he planned, too (although he no doubt was an intellectual)... i've been stuck somewhere around page 700 for several years now (but it's excellent))

hey, but you're not 30 yet - it's supposed to be the ideal books for people at the age of 30, because there's that passage where Ulrich asks himself how he had turned into the person he was... without remembering any decisive or important decisions he made... I'll have to read it next year, shall suit me perfectly well then

[Niko]

Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do)

my dad said reading this book made you an intellectual (he never read it, don't think he planned, too (although he no doubt was an intellectual)... i've been stuck somewhere around page 700 for several years now (but it's excellent))

hey, but you're not 30 yet - it's supposed to be the ideal books for people at the age of 30, because there's that passage where Ulrich asks himself how he had turned into the person he was... without remembering any decisive or important decisions he made... I'll have to read it next year, shall suit me perfectly well then

well, only last week i asked my girlfriend "we must have grown up some time in the last one and a half year?" and she agreed, also, i started finding white hairs a few weeks ago... maybe it's time to start reading again (though admittedly i don't know what type of person i am, maybe i should really wait another year or two)

Edited December 3, 2008 by Niko

[king ubu]

One other thing I read rather early was both Rimbaud's poetry as well as Baudelaire's "Fleurs du mal" (both in bi-lingual editions... luckily we still learn *some modest* bit of French at school) - yet I never got into Verlaine to this day (I never tried in the past 10 years though...).

Also I read lots of Dada stuff early on (15, 16), poems by Ball, Arp, Huelsenbeck, Tzara etc. etc., Serner's "Die Tigerin", Ball's fascinating diary, all those manifestos, as well as plenty of secondary literature.

Then something else I got into early on was Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance - I remember reading a whole lot of his "Jesse B. Simple" columns, I think it was a book collecting those, as well as a novel and some poems, then Carl Van Vechten's weird "Nigger Heaven", Ralph Waldo Ellison's great "The Invisible Man", and lots of poems (in the great Norton Anthology of African-American Literature).

Then some of the Beats - Kerouac, Ginsberg, also Burroughs... I was bored most often in English classes at school (but since it's not my mothertongue, I wouldn't get a dispense...), so I started reading english literature on my own.

Sorry for the name-dropping, but ey, it's great being reminded of all this great books and poems! It's been a long time that I enjoyed some novels just for the fun of it. In recent years I was mostly concentrating on reading historical books and articles connected in some way or another to my studies (i.e. Italian renaissance and moreso the history of renaissance history, particularly centred around Hans Baron... I once did a thread about this).

[ghost of miles]

From first through fourth grade I read quite a bit of the Hardy Boys and another boys'-adventure series, Don Sturdy (my grandfather, who was a book dealer and collector, had nearly all of the series). Around fifth grade I got hooked on Jeanne Craighead George, esp. MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, which inspired me to try running away to Canada to live off the land when I was 12 (never got there--I was caught by the police in Cheboygan, Michigan). By age 12 I was reading all of the S.E. Hinton novels... I guess I wouldn't say that I was particularly advanced in my fiction reading until I got to high school, but I was reading Doonesbury, Time, and a lot of political stuff by age 11 or 12... Jack Newfield's RFK bio had a big influence on me, as did James Michener's Kent State book and Malcolm X's autobiography. I think the first "adult" story that really registered with me was Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River."

Great story about Ellison, Larry. Artists love it when somebody picks up on something that everybody else seems to have missed.

EDIT: another author who registered with me around 6th or 7th grade was Robert Cormier (THE CHOCOLATE WAR, I AM THE CHEESE, etc.). Man, what a dark world view... young-adult lit in the 70s was actually pretty good (Paul Zindel was another fave among my grade-school circle).

Edited December 3, 2008 by ghost of miles

[mikelz777]

I'm defining "kid" as pre-school through about 5th grade.

Of course, Dr. Suess was a favorite and I'm certain I've read almost every single one several times. I enjoyed Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins (and related characters) books as well as several others of hers. I have fond memories of and enjoyed several of Robert McCloskey's books.' ("Make Way For Ducklings", "Homer Price", "Blueberries For Sal") Jean Craighead George's "My Side Of The Mountain" made a huge impression on me and totally captured my imagination. I enjoyed the mystery/thriller series "The Three Investigators" written by various authors. I also really enjoyed John Christopher's science-fiction trilogy, "The City of Gold and Lead", "The White Mountains", and "The Pool of Fire".

I've been a life-long reader and just can't fathom when someone doesn't enjoy reading. (It's as unfathomable as a co-worker I once knew who didn't enjoy music. She and her husband drove form Minnesota to Montana and back without listening to music on the radio.) I think giving a child the joy of reading is one of the greatest gifts you can give them. My wife and I read our children books from the time they were tiny infants and both are avid readers today.

[Larry Kart]

Great story about Ellison, Larry. Artists love it when somebody picks up on something that everybody else seems to have missed.

I told that story in a rather self-serving way, but the main point should have been that I innocently (not through any wisdom or cleverness) found much of the book funny at age 12 or so, and that Ellison meant those passages to be funny.

[Niko]

Malcolm X's autobiography.

read that one too, as well as a book witrh his speeches around 8th grade and was highly impressed...

[BruceH]

Dr. Seuss! A real biggie in the earliest years, particularly Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories which I can still remember having read to me before I could read. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish was the first book that I recall being able to read all to myself. But I also remember all through elementary school being fascinated by science FACT books. From both the school and town library I would check out anything that had the words "science," "space," and "astronomy" in the titles, and books on oceanography, particularly as it related to whales and sharks. Time/Life books were great. (I also recall that in first grade I couldn't read these books too well, but I kept trying.)

Glad someone mentioned Dick Francis. I went on a Francis reading jag in 9th or 10th grade when my uncle lent me Flying Finish. During one summer vacation I read all the books he had out from the library (this was the mid-seventies, so that amounted to 13 or 14 books I think.) That pretty much burned me out on him.

I also recall trying to read the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and found them too old fashioned and stodgy, same as Tom. I also got the feeling that was stuff which some adults THOUGHT I should be reading, but I just couldn't get with that program.

[Jazzmoose]

Around fifth grade I got hooked on Jeanne Craighead George, esp. MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, which inspired me to try running away to Canada to live off the land when I was 12 (never got there--I was caught by the police in Cheboygan, Michigan).

Wow! You actually took off? I have to admit I never got past the planning stage after reading that book.

[Jazzmoose]

I also recall trying to read the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and found them too old fashioned and stodgy, same as Tom. I also got the feeling that was stuff which some adults THOUGHT I should be reading, but I just couldn't get with that program.

I got the same feeling, except it felt more like a reprint of what some adult thought my father should have been reading at my age. There was some definite mold on those two series...

[porcy62]

Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do)

my dad said reading this book made you an intellectual (he never read it, don't think he planned, too (although he no doubt was an intellectual)... i've been stuck somewhere around page 700 for several years now (but it's excellent))

Your dad were right...and wrong, one of 'my' book, like lot of great literature, (Conrad, Dostojevski, etc,) one probably would needs a life for studying stuff like Wittgentstein, Schoenberg, Freud and Einstein's theory to fully understand Musil, but it's an enjoyable reading anyway.

About my readings, I started with Stevenson, Steinbeck, Salinger, plus Emilio Salgari (Did you english speaking guy hear of 'Sandokan'?).

I had plenty of books in the house, so I just picked the ones I was interested since I was 10 y/o, basically 'adult' books.

Edited December 3, 2008 by porcy62

[Niko]

Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do)

my dad said reading this book made you an intellectual (he never read it, don't think he planned, too (although he no doubt was an intellectual)... i've been stuck somewhere around page 700 for several years now (but it's excellent))

Your dad were right...and wrong, one of 'my' book, like lot of great literature, (Conrad, Dostojevski, etc,) one probably would needs a life for studying stuff like Wittgentstein, Schoenberg, Freud and Einstein's theory to fully understand Musil, but it's an enjoyable reading anyway.

think i know to some extent what you mean - reading it was much "smoother" than i had expected and it doesn't cost much effort to have a great time with the book - and still it is evident most of the time that one could go into much more detail and understand it all much better...

[porcy62]

Musil (never read "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" so far, but will do)

my dad said reading this book made you an intellectual (he never read it, don't think he planned, too (although he no doubt was an intellectual)... i've been stuck somewhere around page 700 for several years now (but it's excellent))

hey, but you're not 30 yet - it's supposed to be the ideal books for people at the age of 30, because there's that passage where Ulrich asks himself how he had turned into the person he was... without remembering any decisive or important decisions he made... I'll have to read it next year, shall suit me perfectly well then

Another reading for your 30's.

Das dreißigste Jahr - Ingeborg Bachmann

[Brownian Motion]

I liked biographies of famous people--almost all of them Americans as I remember--written for children. I read the Hardy Boys, and my sister's Nancy Drew books. When I was ten or eleven I started reading adventure books, titles like "Alone" by Richard Byrd, "Kon-Tiki" and "Aku Aku" by Thor Heyerdahl, the Bounty Trilogy, and "Wind, Sand, and Stars" by Saint-Exupery. I liked books about natural history. I read girly mags when I could get them. When I was twelve I fell in love with science fiction for about six months. First book about jazz I ever read was "Dinosaurs in the Morning" by Whitney Balliett, which was also my first hardback book purchase. My favorite novel from high school was James Jones' "From Here to Eternity".

Edited December 3, 2008 by Brownian Motion

[carnivore]

As a small child my all time favorite was E. Nesbit. I also liked Arthur Ransome, and the 'William' books but hated Enid Blyton.

I have searched high and low for a copy of a book that totally enthralled me at about age 6. It was one of those hard covered editions from the early 20th century with the colored Arthur Rackham style illustrations protected by semi-transparent covering pages and was, to the best of my memory called 'Pinky and the Whale' - Pinky - a young lad has many adventures while sailing to exotic places in a rococo Victorian gazebo lashed to the back of a tame whale. Pinky was accompanied, I seem to remember by a cat and a monkey. Some of the illustrations showed warships with the kind of outward curving bows that were a feature of pre WWI battleships. No idea who the author was.

By twelve I'd moved on to James T. Farrell, John dos Passos and James Hadley Chase.

[A Lark Ascending]

All manner of Brit-kiddy things like 'The Famous Five' and 'Jennings and Derbyshire'. I recall going through a series by someone like Geoffrey Trease (Not the more famous Henry) who followed a family through various periods of history. I still remember the volume on the Russian Revolution.

Growing up on RAF camps (Royal Air Force, nor Red Army Faction) with a Spitfire at the gate, I gobbled up WWII air stories - fighter pilot memoirs etc. Still like to read those now - nothing like a Spitfire to get the tear ducts welling.

I think my shift to 'grown up' fiction began with John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids' (I read all the rest straight afterwards) at about 14, then the Ian Fleming Bond novels. I can recall the shock when I went into Newquay library one day and was told I was banned from the children's section because I was 14!!!!!

The arty-farty literature didn't start until I got hooked on Orwell when doing my 'O' Levels. I then spent a few years reading what teachers and professors told me I was supposed to like before having the confidence to read what took my fancy in my early 20s.

Prefer to read contemporary fiction with a good story (rather than contemporary fiction that 'pushes the boundaries of literature'), thoughtful thrillers, musical biographies/histories and oodles of history books these days.