Nastalgia

[Nathan]

What I want to know is...

What are your earliest memories of reading? Not books that were read to you as a child, but the first books you yourself ever read. No picture books or comics. All the pages covered by nothing but words...adventures.

Give me the first three...or more if you'd like. smile.gif Here are mine.

Encyclopedia Brown--all of them. That kid was clever! smile.gif

Where the Red Fern Grows--I still sob like a baby. :( (Ol' Yeller followed shortly after. Another sad one. :()

The Mouse and the Motorcycle and its sequels. Written by Beverly Cleary, I just loved the adventures of that little mouse and his toy bike...pbbbb pbbbb pbbbbb vrrrooooom! :D

[Ema]

Ahh classic Nathan! Where the Red Fern Grows was my favorite! Not sure if it was the first, I grew up reading.. but what I remember off-hand...

All of the Oz books by Frank L. Baum (remembered his first name..lol)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (still have the book too!)

And one that I got from Mom.. Hawaii by James Michener. Yes I know.. HUGE book for a little kid.. but what can I say? I would read whatever books Mom got through reading herself.

Of course thats not including all of the books read in school for book reports etc., these were books I read for myself among many, many others.

EDIT: Argh... typo demon! :)

EDIT2: Fixed Baum's name.

<FONT COLOR="#660000" SIZE="1">[ 08-06-2001 04:47 AM: Message edited 2 times, lastly by Ema ]</font>

[Nathan]

Oh yeah! I didn't think of that!

Leave out the book report books too. They weren't near as much fun to read when you were forced! :D

[Ema]

Heh heh, you know, surprisingly, I did very well with Book Reports, loved doing them and got good marks I might add! :-D And no.. I have no idea how many of them I did! :-Þ

[Goth Girl]

This is embarrassing.... I was brought up on Enid Blyton... which probably explains a lot about me...!

[The Bloody Lady]

Goth

ur not alone, i was brought up on Enid Blytons Mallory Towers!

and the famous five stories too!

the first horror story i read was for children called The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively

[Jason of Khem]

3 cheers for Enid Blyton, the Grand English Dame of kiddy fiction.
The first books I read were her Famous Five and Secret Seven stories.

Jason

[SpOOkshow]

Enid Blyton !

Famous Five and Secret Seven books !
The stuff of childhood for sure.

Then I started reading Dr. Who books...which perhaps explains a lot...

smile.gif

[Jason of Khem]

Alongside the stories of Enid Blyton, my other childhood favourites were by Roald Dahl - The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Danny, the Champion of the World, James and the Giant Peach.

[Lagula Longarm]

It would be true to say that in my youth I partied hard and this has resulted, in my in-ability to remember last week, let alone thirty odd years ago :eek:
So I'm not sure what I read.
I can remember the first author, who's books I started to collect(at this time I had not come across Brians work) He was James Herbert, and the first book of his I read was the Rats, followed by Domain & the Lair in the Rat Trilogy smile.gif

[Nathan]

How about the Dune books, Deano? Surely if you read Herbert, you read those...? I was a teenager before I could get that heavy... smile.gif

Anyone ever read C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia? My dad started reading them to me when I was about eight and I took over at about ten. I remember being totally enthralled with that world...

[Lady Rissa]

Hello fellow Lumlians, I am so glad to be apart of this message board.
In answer to your question Nathan, I read all of the Naria books by C.S. Lewis. I also read Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Alfred Hitchcock presents The Three Investigators. I had such a crush on Jupiter Jones, (even though he was a fictional character)

[Lagula Longarm]

Why Hello and welcome to Lady Rissa, welcome to the site.
And for the benifit of us Brits, where the hell is Carmel ME.. :D

[Lady Rissa]

Well Deano, thanks for welcoming me in. Carmel is located in the sate of Maine in the USA, looking at the map, the upper right hand corner near Canada. Located in around the middle of Maine, I am surrounded by pretty much nothing. My local library doesn't even carry Brian's books (gasp), I have to order them from the local bookstore.

[Lady Anne]

I remember reading The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, etc. but the first book I really remember reading was one my father asked me to read. It was "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee".

<FONT COLOR="#660000" SIZE="1">[ 08-14-2001 12:20 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Lady Anne ]</font>

[Lady Marie]

We Have Always Lived In The Castle and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

The Witch Of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Classics: Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, Mark Twain, and Poe.

<FONT COLOR="#660000" SIZE="1">[ 08-14-2001 12:46 AM: Message edited 2 times, lastly by Lady Marie ]</font>

[Storm]

Great thread ;)
Bringing back all sorts of memories!!
I too read a lot of Famous Five, and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was definately in there somewhere. I seem to remeber reading a Judy Blume (Superfudge) book at a pretty early age, but that was at school (did I really admit that redface.gif ). Dr Zeuss was in there somewhere too.
I think the first horror I read though was IT.

[Vavara the Hag]

Funnily enough,my earliest memory of reading was Enid Blyton too smile.gif

The Faraway Tree was the first,then the Famous Five/Secret Seven and then as I got older I progressed on to the St Clare's and Mallory Towers books.

And the scariest thing is,now I'm reading The Faraway Tree to my own kid..


Jen

[Goth Girl]

LOL! So glad I'm not alone in the Blyton thing!

Does anyone remember the kids TV show they made of the Famous Five... late 70s, maybe early 80s? Dreadful!!

[SpOOkshow]

Yeah GG !

I can remember being really excited that the TV companies were making a Famous Five telly series. I remember it well. I seem to think I quite enjoyed it. smile.gif

If you're really, really unlucky, I could probably remember (and sing) the words to the theme tune....

smile.gif

[Jason of Khem]

Goth / Spook

Do you mean this ;)
http://www.thefamous5.co.uk/1978.htm

I'm off now to roll up my trousers above the knees, dig out my snake belt and go looking in caves for smugglers.

[SpOOkshow]

Jason !

Your mention of 'Snake Belts' has just about finished me off for the night! :D

When I was young...they were so cool !

smile.gif

[Vavara the Hag]

Hmmmmmm,Jason, something tells me the sight of your hairy legs coming at them would be enuff to send the scariest of smugglers scuttling back to their boat without their smuggledy stuff :D

And not to go off topic...does anyone remember Roald Dahl's "Georges Marvellous Medicine?"


Jen

[Storm]

Yeah Vavara I remember that one, I think at the time I was going to attepmt something simular!!! Thankfully my young mind was changed redface.gif

Also The Twits was one of my favourites and I seem to remember reading a book called The Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles, but not sure if that was by R D or not :confused:

[Vavara the Hag]

Storm,
That book was actually by Julie Andrews Edwards who is also responsible for "Dumpy" the dump truck stories. smile.gif


Jen

[Psykhopaf]

Thankfully i missed Enid Bylton....

I remember reading Ronald Dahl... The Witches.

Jack and Jill when I was a tiny creechur ;)

[VonDarkmoor]

for me it was:

earliest books:

enid blyton: the wishing chair books

the faraway tree, (cant recall the author perhaps it was enid blyton aswell).

i read lord of the rings when i was 10 years old. Hobbit when i was 8.

moved on to the dune series when i was 13. Got too much into D&D from then onwards. lovecraft when i was 15.


although saying that i was an avid fan of the famous five etc. type books read all of those. Im still scared of a book called razor rock, that i read in infant school... smile.gif

[JB_Lestat]

My first three were Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the damned........ what can I say, warped childhood?!?!? But that was b-4 I met my God of novelists.........Mr. Brian Lumley!!!!!!!!! My favorite book of all time would have to be Tale of the Body Theif...(sorry Brian!) :rolleyes:

<FONT COLOR="#660000" SIZE="1">[ 08-20-2001 10:51 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by JB_Lestat_69 ]</font>

[Lady Rissa]

JB_Lestat
Anne Rice's vampire books, that explains your screen name. I too read Anne Rice, I love "The Witching Hour", I must have read it atleast 30 times. Anne's vampires were too romantic for me, I have always thought of vampires as the Master has portrayed them, although not as colorful as he has described them. If you ask me, Anne Rice's vampires die way too easily for the undead. One thing I like about both authors is the way they mix the history of thier characters with our history. (Thibor's war adventures, the trials of witches in Europe).
Stephen King is also a very talented writer too. Bag of Bones, if you haven't already read it, do, it is really good.
For Koontz type stories, I suggest John Saul. Although most of his books deal with children, they are still pretty good. If you haven't read any of his books, try "The God Project" or "Second Child"
Ok, Lumley, Rice, King, Koontz and Saul. Now you all know what are on my bookselves. smile.gif

[Storm]

Iwaz channel surfing this past weekend and came across a WB movie called The Iron Giant!!
I'm not sure if it's based on the book, but I seem to remember reading a book when I was V young called The Iron Man. Anybody else remeber that one?