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Favorite Books from your childhood.

Once I learned to read my grandfather would pick up Hardy Boys books for me. When I was around eight he gave me a copy of "The Red Badge of Courage" and told me I should read it. No more Hardy Boys after that.

Still love to read a good novel. Trying to stop myself from buying any more books for at least a year as I have around 60 books on my bookshelf I have not gotten to yet. Hoping I can knock off 30-40 books this year.
 
nortac:
Hmmm...I remember reading this book series somewhere around 6-8yrs. I would eagerly await on the mail for the next book but before Mom would order the next book...I'd would have to 'prove' I read it (Mom was skilled...I got 'grilled' on every books narrative /
etc...sigh).
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And anything by;

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Also...I can't leave out anything by Richard Scarry.

And I remember reading this book somewhere around 10-11yrs (would read again).

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The Martian Chronicles (and other books), by Ray Bradbury I think I read in my teens.

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"[Reading] a book is a device to ignite the imagination". Alan Bennett
Only discovered the whole Beatrix Potter canon as an adult reading to my kids. I knew of Peter as a child, but only Peter. I used to call my youngest girl Hunka Munka just because I loved the sound of that name.
 

Messygoon

Abandoned By Gypsies.
My earliest memories of a book was our family's Childcraft set. In 1946, Dad left the Navy, married mom, and started a family in Springfield, Missouri. The set was likely purchased when my sister was born in 1947. I was an "oops baby," born 16 years later, so by that time the set was a dated hand-me-down. But I loved it... best described as an encyclopedia set for very young children. Although now long gone, every so often I'll stumble across one and lose myself in its pages.


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luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
My earliest memories of a book was our family's Childcraft set. In 1946, Dad left the Navy, married mom, and started a family in Springfield, Missouri. The set was likely purchased when my sister was born in 1947. I was an "oops baby," born 16 years later, so by that time the set was a dated hand-me-down. But I loved it... best described as an encyclopedia set for very young children. Although now long gone, every so often I'll stumble across one and lose myself in its pages.


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I remember a beat up set of Golden Book Encyclopedias that I spent hours and hours reading and re-reading.

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I was an avid reader as a kid, mostly SciFi, but had interest in some other genres as well.

In no particular order:

Ringworld Series, Larry Niven
Robot Series, Isaac Asimov
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Lucifer's Hammer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey
Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
 
Childhood would be The Wind in the Willows, I still have 1970 edition so I would have been 10 when I first read it, then The Hobbit and LOTR. Then I discovered Fleming and read all the Bond books, and at 13 I joined the army cadets and was introduced to Sven Hassel. Around that time I found a couple of books by Robert van Gulik, Judge Dee's Chinese murder mysteries and have since got the complete series, all with gruesome details of the capital punishments inflicted on the guilty, wonderful for a teenager!
 
My childhood house was swimming in books. Both parents and my older sister ware voracious readers, and I followed along. On one set of shelves were the hardback series: all Sherlock Holmes, All poe, all Bret Harte (!), and 24 volumes of red-bound Mark Twain. I remember none of the classic children's books, except Winnie the Pooh, but I can remember tons of Mark Twain. I read Huckleberry Finn way too young, but I loved it then and I still do. Hemingway was sort of right.
 
This was one of mine, couldn’t search for it since I didn’t remember the title. One day it showed up on a cart at the bookshop I managed.
 

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Childhood would be The Wind in the Willows, I still have 1970 edition so I would have been 10 when I first read it, then The Hobbit and LOTR. Then I discovered Fleming and read all the Bond books, and at 13 I joined the army cadets and was introduced to Sven Hassel. Around that time I found a couple of books by Robert van Gulik, Judge Dee's Chinese murder mysteries and have since got the complete series, all with gruesome details of the capital punishments inflicted on the guilty, wonderful for a teenager!
My mom had all the Signet Bond paperbacks and I started reading them in Junior High School in the mid 1970's. They were pretty racy for that era.
 
I remember a book titled The Duchess Bakes a Cake, written and illustrated by Virginia Kahl, that my mother would read to me and my younger sister. It involved figures depicted in a slightly medieval way. And the story involved a cake that the duchess was baking that rose out of control until it reached to the clouds. To fix the situation, everyone in the castle had to eat it! At the start of the story, all the figures were very lean, like in Gothic manuscripts, but after eating all the cake, everyone was fat and bloated at the end. They seemed happy about it all the same. Another book I liked at the time was Janson's History of Art that used to lay on our coffee table. Still couldn't read myself, but it was great looking at all the pictures from other time periods.

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luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Man, I haven’t seen those in 55+ years- instant memories!
My recollection is that it was about 1969, so I'm thinking it was probably the 1957 edition rather than the 1968 edition.
I see they have several sets of the 1957 edition on ebay as buy it now for about 25 bucks.
 
Great topic...! When I was a kid it was all sports, all the time! That said, I also enjoyed Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and
Treasure Island immensely. But my favorites were sports books aimed at young readers. In particular the series by Duane Decker about the mythical Blue Sox Major League Baseball team were my favorites. He wrote several titles about each of the
different members of this team that was always fighting it out with the "Clippers" (who bore a startling resemblance to the
New York Yankees!) for first place.

Some books might focus on a young rookie who struggled to win a starting position against
an aging established star. In others, the hero was a hard working every day player who had to fight for his job against a brash, cocky rookie phenom who had captured the hearts of the fickle fans. Each story was compelling (at least to me as a kid!), and of course, the right guy always won the job in the end to help his team find success. I still own about a half dozen of these books, and have loaned them to two grandsons with one more coming along.
 
“Old Bill the Whooping Crane” by Joseph Wharton Lippincott. One of a series of books about different animals. “The Wahoo Bobcat” was another one. Loved them as a kid and would like to find one and try it again as an old guy.
 
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