Childhood nostalgia poll

[rachelmanija]

Please reminisce, fondly or not, about any of these, or other books read in childhood, especially if they seem to have, deservedly or undeservedly, vanished from the shelves. I'd love to hear about non-US, non-British books, too.

[Poll #1720139]

Comments

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Yah, all the horse books. (And Oz. The non-Baum person wasn't any good.) Never did read Elsie Dinsmore.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

...the first two books were pretty much just exciting adventure series! Really!

And in retrospect, the book that was all about how RPGs Are Evil (...except it was all LARPing, done on bikes, in a special private facility) is downright hilarious.

[anime-heart.livejournal.com]

I remember getting up at dawn one summer to read more of Swallows and Amazons ... my library had the whole series. I was utterly enthralled with the idea of having an island and your own sailboat.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes, I forgot Prydain -- rather odd since I even just reread them all a year or two ago to see how they held up. I liked them but they weren't at the level where I asked for my own copies or checked out the library copies endlessly -- judging by the reread, I think the disappointing treatment of Eilonwy may have had something to do with it. Narnia, for all of its own gender issues, was a lot more satisfying to me because the girls weren't prattlers and didn't get shunted off-stage to finishing school. :/ And the talking animals didn't hurt, either...

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

If I recall right, the last Terhune was Very Sad?

[pocketmouse]

We had Cherry Ames and maybe one or two of the others on the shelves at home, but I didn't read them.

Other books I read:
-Wrinkle in Time series
-Magic Cauldron books
-Narnia
-The Hobbit (I read that in third grade; I don't remember when I read LotR)
-Shakespeare (I read MacBeth in 6th grade, and I know it wasn't the first time I'd read it)
-Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

I read a lot of books from my mom's office -- I remember she had a big orange book of Ukrainian folk tales, and a big white book about Native Americans that I'd skim through for the stories.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I read both The Hobbit and LOTR so young that I literally do not even remember reading them for the first time -- I don't know when I first picked up my dad's paperbacks, but I'd definitely read them all by kindergarten: my mom had to fight with the school administration to get special permission for me to go to the school library along with the first-graders. Apparently they didn't bother taking kindergarten kids because we weren't supposed to be reading well enough to go, and she had to make a huge fuss about how I was already reading high-school-level books on my own.

The Silmarillion I read for the first time when I was nine -- I can date that exactly because it was a Christmas present the year it came out, and I still have that much-battered inscribed copy on my massive shelf-o-Tolkien.

[zdenka]

I cannot recall at this stage whether I ever read all of them or read them in any order, so I'm afraid I can't tell you.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

OMG, All-of-a-Kind Family! My library actually gave me their copy when they deaccessioned it because I'd checked it out so many times.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I still find myself thinking of a few details from the McGurk mysteries every now and then--the one with the contractor who wrote Greek E's in particular. I don't think I ever read Ghost Squad, though.

The ones I read over and over...

[gelasius.livejournal.com]

Other series: Babysitter's Club (Jessi!), Encyclopedia Brown, Edward Eager's Magic series (I think I read Half Magic and Knight's Castle at least fifty times each), Lloyd Alexander's books (Prydain Chronicles and the Vesper Holly series), Swallows & Amazons series (Titty!). Books: The Girl With The Silver Eyes (misfit telekinetic girl!), Follow My Leader (recently-blind boy and his guide dog!), Wren to the Rescue (which I somehow didn't realize was a series until I was a grownup), Songmaster (which got me started on Orson Scott Card when I was about nine). And probably a bunch more I'm forgetting. :)

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

Maybe? :) Having checked the wiki, nothing's pinging strongly, but I only have the vaguest recollection of the books anyway.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I never made it through the Silmarillion. I would try with the creation myths, get lost, and skip ahead to Beren and Luthien.

I totally called dibs on Luthien when I was part of a masquerade entry enacting filkertom's song "Return of the King, Uh-Huh" -- Aragorn in an Elvis jumpsuit, Eowyn and Arwen in prom dresses made from a vintage fifties pattern, and a crowd of fangirls in poodle skirts, representing all the races of Middle-Earth. With our poodle emblems referencing our characters. Our Entwife had a tree on a leash! Of course I had Luthien's emblem, and I also had LED blinky stars in my hair. It was AWESOME.

[gelasius.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* How could I leave the Wrinkle In Time series off my list? I love those!

[gelasius.livejournal.com]

I think it was Half Magic that has one of my favorite bits ever about how different adults interact with kids -- something about a) the annoying adults who try to pretend they're kids, b) the annoying adults who try to pretend the kids are also adults, and c) the awesome adults who know kids are kids and adults are adults and that doesn't mean they can't get along.

[gelasius.livejournal.com]

<3 Babysitter's Club. My friends and I would take on the characters as aliases, and I was Jessi because I was one of the young ones and I did ballet. Her plot line with the deaf kid got me to start learning sign language. :)

[skygiants]

Same here! I think I remember checking them out of the library at a certain age because my parents had this idea that for every lot of ten library books or so I should get at least one that wasn't sff, and the Sweet Valley Kids books were an easy way to comply with that rule.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

But Irene!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I remember loving them but otherwise not a damn thing about them!

[skygiants]

So did we! I always had to be Violet and carry my friend's cat around everywhere, which was a problem at that stage of childhood when I was afraid of animals . . .

Re: The ones I read over and over...

[gelasius.livejournal.com]

Aw, and I just remembered, The People in Pineapple Place (http://www.amazon.com/People-Pineapple-Place-Anne-Lindbergh/dp/1567924115/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300666590&sr=1-1)! Which was apparently such an important part of my childhood that I couldn't look at posters/ads for Pineapple Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Express_(film)) without thinking of it. Which is... different.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

He didn't have any series, though, did he? He was too weird for series.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

Other series books that stand out: Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, and Edward Eager fantasy books. Also Laura Ingalls Wilder. Madeleine L'Engle's Time trilogy.

Lots and lots of individual books, of course.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Apparently the Three Investigators have a huge fandom in Germany-- more books, fanfic, the whole nine yards. They were my favorite teen investigators, too.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah, no love for poor angsty DOOOOOOMED! Kullervo Elric Túrin Turambar, or all the mad-bad-dangerous-to-know angsty DOOOOMED! Sons of Fëanor? I am a total sucker for Fëanorian angst...and in retrospect, I'm pretty sure that Maedhros/Fingon was one of my formative h/c slashy ships long before I had any idea just why those scenes thrilled me so much.

Those costumes sound AWESOME. Please tell me there are photos somewhere!