Favorite Books From Your Childhood?

Bullseye 2620

Bullseye 2620

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I read a lot back in the Fifties, but my hands-down favorite was Tom Swift. Yours?

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Bullseye
 
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CS Lewis, Narnia series. JR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, a coupla years later, at 12 or so. Isaac Asminov, Foundation series, at 14....
 
Most of what I read in the fifties was apparently not memorable. Sixties? Donald Hamilton! Later, W.E.B. Griffin, even though he occasionally errs on technical details.
 
Onomea said:
CS Lewis, Narnia series. JR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, a coupla years later, at 12 or so. Isaac Asminov, Foundation series, at 14....
Click to expand...

I followed that same route but want to add that I read Ender's Game somewhere in the 80's and it was huge in my mind. I have never forgotten how the book so deftly explained that leaders that make tactical styled decisions really have to take the consequences of their actions into their plans. Of the few times in my life that I have the clarity of thought to remember that, it has always kept my path clear and true. But then I read 1984, Animal Farm, and a book that I'm dying on remembering the name of that was something about scientists that create a super computer that rules our government. It did tests on us like lab animals. Dang it, I can't even find it on Google. Someone help me out. It was horrible in a Pre-Terminator kind of way. I know it had a sequel that wasn't what I hoped for because I think aliens saved us from our own creation of the ruling super computer that merged with the Soviet super computer. I guess it was a Cold War fear of technology spiraling out of control type issue. Fun reading until the alien ending. There isn't anyone to save us from our stupid.
 
Old Yeller, and then in high school, Travels With Charley and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
 
Maximumbob54 said:
I followed that same route but want to add that I read Ender's Game somewhere in the 80's and it was huge in my mind. I have never forgotten how the book so deftly explained that leaders that make tactical styled decisions really have to take the consequences of their actions into their plans. Of the few times in my life that I have the clarity of thought to remember that, it has always kept my path clear and true. But then I read 1984, Animal Farm, and a book that I'm dying on remembering the name of that was something about scientists that create a super computer that rules our government. It did tests on us like lab animals. Dang it, I can't even find it on Google. Someone help me out. It was horrible in a Pre-Terminator kind of way. I know it had a sequel that wasn't what I hoped for because I think aliens saved us from our own creation of the ruling super computer that merged with the Soviet super computer. I guess it was a Cold War fear of technology spiraling out of control type issue. Fun reading until the alien ending. There isn't anyone to save us from our stupid.
Click to expand...

I think you are talking about Colossus, a mid-'60s novel that was made into a not too stupid movie a few years later called "Colossus: The Forbin Project."

As to what I read, it was all over the map. I remember being stuck on Oz books in third and fourth grades, and Mark Twain (probably editions edited for children) the next year. Ray Bradbury and anything science-fictionish became important in the junior high years that followed. Somewhere in second or third grade I found a volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales, which were so violent and distressing compared to the happy-talk versions that my teachers and parents had read to me that I wondered why anybody would even commit such stuff to paper.
 
I spent lots of time in the library and read the Landmark Series which are all about American history. I liked stuff about the pioneers, founding fathers, war heroes, etc.

In the 60's I got into James Bond, Matt Helm and spy stuff. I also remember Exodus and Lord Jim.

I am so glad that I read as much as I did when I was young.
 
Favorite books from your childhood?

My father's 1st edition copy of Will James' autobiography "Lone
Cowboy".I read it many times & still have it. I was
a little disappointed when I learned many years later
that it was largely fiction & that Will drank & smoked
himself to death at an early age.Doesn't really dim the
enjoyment of the hours I spent reading it.
Regards,
turnerriver
SWCA 1426
 
I read everything I could get my hands on.
Got in trouble in elementary school for quoting TIME magazine which contradicted what the teacher was saying. (TIME was a better magazine back then. Haven't read it for years.)

I read a book on the U.S. fliers in World War I over and over. I think the movie "Flyboys" was based on that book.
Later I read Robert Service, Rudyard Kipling, Steinbeck, Ruark, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald etc.
 
I read just about everything, loved to read. History books were my favorite non-fiction, especially liked "The Longest Day" and "In Hell Before Night". WWII and the civil war dominated my reading. As far as fiction I liked westerns, James Bond and science fiction. Especially liked "The Forever War" and anything by Heinlein.
 
As a child I had few books. I loved The Bible Story Book and the encyclopedia. The first library I ever saw was a bookmobile in 1st grade. Got Go Dog Go, Are You My Mother. First library I ever saw in a building was when we moved to a town. The elementary school had a huge library. I read everything I could get my hands on. About 1 mile away was a small public branch library. I was deeply impressed by Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Two Years Before the Mast, Red Badge of Courage, Iron Men with Wooden Wings.
 
R.A. Heinlein's SF books, esp. Tunnel in the Sky.

Jim Corbett's Indian hunting adventures and various African hunters' tales.

James Bond and Matt Helm

When very young, Kipling's jungle stories and by my teens, Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews's exploration books.

Any gun books, esp. those by Elmer Keith and Larry Koller.

T-Star
 
Thanks to DCWilson. Colossus, The Fall of Colossus, and Colossus and the Crab. Very strange but fun reading. I'm forgetting that I read some of the Lois Lamore books. Actually I read everything my grandfather had and it was a big section of the paperback book shelf. I also absorbed some of the Sharpes books by Bernard Cornwell. They were great from what I remember. I know I'm slaying some of you guys with me being a kid in the 80's. Sorry.
 
I must have read all of the Hardy Boys series several times each. I also read all the classics, Lewis, Tolkien, Twain, Dickens, etc., but I always came back to Frank and Joe. ;)
 
As a kid:
The Radio Amateur's Handbook (I'm still reading it)
QST, CQ, & 73 magazines
Big Red
The Caine Mutiny
Solar Science Projects
 
Red Badge of Courage, Where the Red Fern Grows, A Day No Pigs Would Die... I'm sure I will keep thinking of them. I used to read just about anything but the good ones keep popping back into mind.
 
Homer Price

Howdy,
I don't remember who wrote them but I could not get enough of the books about a boy named 'Homer Price"
Homer had a peanut shaped head and battled doughnut machines that had run amok.
After that it would be Comic book.
I was also given (They sit just to the left of me now) a hard back set of the James Bond books around 1965. CASINO ROYALE, GOLDFINGER, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, MOONRAKER, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. I was 13 and they struck me like they did Jethro Bodine
Thanks
Mike
Double naught spy.
 
Andre Norton got me started on SciFi in 7th grade, then Robert Heinlein. "Tunnel inn the Sky" started my love of Bowie Knives. Pretty much stuck with Science fiction and military history after that. When I was in my 30's my grandfather started my addiction to Louis Lamour. Now days I don't read as much as I used to but I do stick with David Drake, Clive Cussler, Brian Garfield and David Morrell and S.M. Stirling. I now waste a lot of time on the computer that I used to waste reading.
 
What sticks in my memory from the '50s is Landmark books. There were dozens of them. I had a lot of them and read and reread them, and went to the library for more. Kipling and Mark Twain. Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence at age 12, but found it heavy going. I still have it on my shelf 50 years later, but have shied away from revisiting it.
 
Marshwheeling said:
What sticks in my memory from the '50s is Landmark books. There were dozens of them. I had a lot of them and read and reread them, and went to the library for more. Kipling and Mark Twain. Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Click to expand...

I'd forgotten those. I think I had read all of them at one point -- I couldn't get enough. I remember feeling disappointed that I'd read all of them and would have to wait until they published more. They certain taught me how important it is to have a dream in life to aspire to.


Bullseye
 
I kinda had the hots for Snow White.

I enjoyed Goldilocks and the 3 Bears but it scared me- what if the bears chased her? I also imagine how differently it could have turned out if Goldilocks had had access to our forum and had studied up on proper bear guns:

Papa Bear: "Someone's been sitting in my chair."
Mama Bear: "SCREAMMMMMMMM"
BANG - BANG - BANG
.......and Goldilocks lived happily ever after in a nice little house in the woods with no mortgage and an endless supply of jerked bear meat and nice bearskin rugs........
 
I remember the Landmark books, IIRC there was a U.S. series and a World series. I remember one about Alexander the Great, his horse Bucephalus, his friend Black Cleteus. In the U.S. series, I recall one on the Alamo, Custer, Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and the U.S. Marines. Another favorite series was called "Through Golden Windows", a mixture of history, historical fiction, poetry, humor, etc. Another favorite was entitled "They Put Out To Sea", about the various explorers, Magellan, etc. Also back in the 1950s I was bitten by the Civil War bug, I was fortunate to inherit sets of the Douglas Freeman books, Lee's Lieutenant, R. E. Lee plus the 10 volume set Photographic History of the Civil War.
 
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Where the Red Fern Grows are two that stand out in my mind. Go back a few more years, and I liked all the Dr. Seuss collection.
 
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