rachelmanija: (Books: old)
rachelmanija ([personal profile] rachelmanija) wrote2011-03-20 02:30 pm

Childhood nostalgia poll

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]

[identity profile] coraa.livejournal.com 2011-03-21 02:58 am (UTC)(link)
I read an embarrassing number of Babysitters Club books, embarrassingly late. They were completely mindless, totally popcorn, and I could read one in something like half an hour, and sometimes what I wanted actually was to not have to think very much for half an hour.

My memorable-for-the-title-not-the-book memory is "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks," which was about... a plant that ate dirty socks, truth in advertising. (Actually, two. But one of them, IIRC, ate clean socks.) The plants had adventures, including things like the time where they ate a singing Christmas sock and got sick from the battery.

In the way of goofy early-90s middle-grade books, it had sequels, including, if I remember correctly, "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Up In Space," which I may have read, and "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Gets a Girlfriend," which I did not.

[identity profile] miz-hatbox.livejournal.com 2011-03-21 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
I strongly suspected that you had made up the concept of "The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks" out of whole cloth, but no, there it is on Amazon. With a title like that, it really ought to have been written by Daniel Pinkwater...
ext_2822: (art - storybook bear)

[identity profile] metron-ariston.livejournal.com 2011-03-21 05:32 am (UTC)(link)
Oh jeez, I was super into The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks long past the point at which they were age appropriate. They were so bizarrely hilarious. It didn't hurt that the first one I read was the second book in the series, and it was a road trip/family vacation plot, my favorite subgenre.