rachelmanija | Childhood nostalgia poll

I was obsessed with James Herriott from about age nine on, and ended up working in a veterinary hospital in high school as a result. I got to observe surgeries and everything. But it eventually convinced me that I liked the narrative of medicine better than the practice of medicine.

Edward Eager!

And because of him I read some E. Nesbit, although not enough to consider myself any kind of authority (mostly the Psammead series).

Look, cheap copies on Amazon! CAT IN THE MIRROR (Laurel-Leaf Library)

WOW.

"How much is twice as much as never having to learn fractions?"

---L.

I remember the early Star Wars books. I read the hell out of Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye (not to mention his novelization of the movie) and Brian Daley's Han Solo books. I read Splinter more recently, and unfortunately it had decayed somewhat in the meantime (though I could see why I enjoyed it when I was nine or so).

Yes! That's it! The Amazon reviews are hilarious:

I've always remembered reading this book, a surreal and really rather sinister and apocalyptic tale of kids on the run in the name of individuality. The premise bears a lot of similarity to the 1998 movie Disturbing Behavior, with parents zombifying their kids in order to make them behave, but minus the "mature themes". If anything, one could say it was like Disturbing Behavior meets Logan's Run, written for sixth-graders.

...

Shark-infested rice pudding! Just like mom used to make! This book should be required reading.

...

I read this book when I was a kid, and it's strange! I was unable to tell if it was a parody or just bizzare. I read it again recently, and what do you know? I still can't tell. But it did teach me that I'm worthwhile, and that I should always stand up for myself.

...

Those scenes with the cracker flavors! And the one where the girls each pick out their own penny treat, of a piping hot sweet potato or a dill pickle or candied grapes or...

Ah ha ha, I was such a precocious reader that my mother, bless her heart, actually talked to the librarians and gave permission for me to check out YA and adult titles when I was still in elementary school...and she was generally so hyper-controlling about every other aspect of my life, I know she would have been utterly APPALLED if she realized some of the content of the stuff I was reading right under her nose! But she wasn't really a great reader herself, and her friends mostly only read really mainstream bestsellers; and she approved of reading as Educational and Improving (and better than watching tons of TV or running about on my own); so once in a blue moon if I tried to pick up something one of her friends brought to the beach (like V.C. Andrews or Audrey Rose), I'd get told to put it down because it was "too old for you" -- but she never hassled me over dragging bags of age-inappropriate stuff home from the library. XD

OMG, please read and report back!

Warning: Books may contain horrific racism. Or not - depends if non-white characters make an appearance. Avoid Circus of Adventure at all costs - not technically racist but incredibly xenophobic.

I read them in India. They were quite popular there when I was there.

The Doll's House was SO HEARTBREAKING. Birdie gives her life for Apple! It is seriously making me tear up right now just remembering it.

That's the thing. A book with a really great description of food I will remember forever.

me too!

I KNOW, RIGHT? I teared up too, writing it!

And do you remember Home Is The Sailor, with them miraculously finding the lost doll at the beach? Oh my heart.

No! I missed that one!

I read the Betsy books over and over again; also Betsy-Tacy, by a different author.

The Lenski books are surprising -- her own doll-like illustrations really belie the serious content. I remember in STRAWBERRY GIRL, the heroine, the daughter of migrant workers, had her mother make a new dress for her of carefully-saved feedsacks. Then she proudly showed up at school for a birthday party only to find out she wasn't invited, and was mocked for her dress.

omg, I read those. they were in my middle school library.

Haha, yeah, I'm sure a lot of them are pretty cringeworthy to read now.

I just thought to look on BookMooch as well, and there's a fair selection, but so far everything I've clicked on is not in the US. (Though I have a ton of unused points, so if someone's in another country and willing to send to me, I might go ahead and get some.)

Ah ha ha, yes, the two that I had were the big fat novelization of the first movie (which in those pre-VCR days was the next best thing to watching it all over and over again), and Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I may have read a few more of them but those were the only two that I owned and that stuck in my memory.

Man, I even shortened my name to Nita in middle and high school because of Diana Duane.

Tolkien from The Hobbit through to Return of the King (I read it too much I think - by age 12 I could recite the whole thing as a campfire store at summer camp), C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, Agatha Christie, E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen series, James Herriot, Sherlock Holmes (much to the shock of my 4th grade English teacher), and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on.

Huh.

On perusing Wikipedia, it seems I only ever read 'High', not 'Twins'. Weird. (But I seem to have only read the first 20 or so High books. Which took about 45 mins each.)

I know. And in one of them, someone was permanently weakened by rheumatic fever, and I pronounced it wrong, and, after my mother corrected me with some amusement, she explained about why I'd never heard of it or known anybody in real life who had it -- it was because when we got strep throat, we had antibiotics that would clear it up in a couple of days, and that was a thing that happened with untreated strep, before antibiotics.

She explained about diphtheria, when Laura and Almanzo had it in The First Four Years, and all the childhood diseases they had in all the Betsy books (measles, mumps, German measles, the works) and the Great Brain books (another series!) and polio, too. She grew up pre-vaccine and lived through polio scares, and all I'd ever dealt with was chicken pox. I grew up thoroughly respecting the powers of vaccination.

The 1918 flu epidemic was very vividly in the All-Of-A-Kind Family books. I wish I'd thought to ask my grandmother about that, before she died. She would have been five, then.

I wanted to be a marine biologist after years of reading and watching Jacques Cousteau, and spending almost every weekend at the beach. That dream died in an extremely unpleasant fashion in junior high when we took a school field trip to spend the day out on a boat with folks from the UH marine bio department, and I discovered that my tendency to motion sickness on land translated to VIOLENT NON-STOP SEASICKNESS on open water. *shudders at the memories*

And oh, the meeses remind me of a few more favorites -- The Wind In The Willows, the Narnia books (Reepicheep was a particular favorite), and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. Also Watership Down, which was another one of those books that I read and reread endlessly.

First time I read Black Gold (as I think I have even said in Rachel's comments section before), I was about 20 pages from the end, and then... a section from earlier was inserted! And the end didn't exist.

(So I got to pretend it wouldn't end in complete and abject tragedy for awhile, til we ILL'd it from another site.)

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