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I devoured books as a child so hard to choose. Possibly the most profoundly affecting was the hitch hikers guide books. The appealed to my imagination. From them I cultivated my love of anarchy and the adsurd.
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The bogwoppits
Friday's tunnel
The whole swallows and amazons series
The Willard Price range - African Adventure etc
The wind in the willows
The hobbit, then LOTR
The jungle book
Everything by Roald Dahl
Hitch hikers guide
The bulldog Drummond series
I loved reading as a kid. We are just now in the process of gutting and completely redoing my lads bedrooms. Bookshelves and a nice little reading nest are top of refurb list.
Aged maybe 14, we'd to do a book review in English. They had a big cardboard box full of books that we could pick from.
I rifled through a lot of boring looking titles, and at the bottom found this little thing. I'd never heard of it.
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Massively influential in my formative years, and probably directly responsible for my sense of humour now. RIP, DNA.
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I read the sh*t out of these books.
I used to love the Asterix series
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And Garfield too
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big thank-you to bigbutslimmerbloke - i've been trying to remember the name of the tom swift series for years! =)
read so many wonderful books as a kid - couldn't choose the best one though...
In terms of meaningfulness and making me think about the world in general, this:
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I read it so many times it fell apart.
Winnie the Pooh.
"Pooh readings" were a night time ritual in our family. Yes, I know that sounds very very wrong.
Another +1 for the Arthur Ransome books. I read them all as a child, and then 3 years ago bought another copy of Coot Club and re-read it while sailing the Broads on holiday. I found it just as captivating as an adult - especially when moored up for the night at some of the places n the book. We even saw a small boat in Horning done up as a replca of the Death and Glory. It was truly excellent.
I read loads, but the best? No doubts - it's "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K Jerome which I read at 10. I giggled my way through it, and read it again every so often.
Hitch Hikers Guide here too
Huge fan, always have been and I guess I always will be and very thankful of being introduced to..
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At about 11 years old I read Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, they made me realise the world was bigger than I´d previously thought.
13 and I read The Hobbit, I realised the world could be much, much bigger again.
Oh God, loads of stuff! Secret Seven and Famous Five I used to devour, I read a lot of SF and ghost stories from the school library, particularly EE 'Doc' Smith and Arthur C Clarke, and I loved Arthur Ransome, I still have my original hard cover copies from the 60's, and I was thrilled to discover they were all available from iBooks, so I'm gradually collecting the whole Swallows and Amazons series on my pad and phone.
I was equally delighted a couple of years ago to meet a lady who's a member of the Nancy Blackett Trust, who own and look after Arthur Ransome's boat of the same name, which he lived on when writing [i]We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea[/i].
My favourite all time read is ChickenHawk, Vietnam chopper pilot's memoirs, left a lasting impression, must dig it out of the loft and read again,
PJ.
Fairly sure that the first book i ever read in infants was "Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry"!
Thereafter I loved The Magic Faraway Tree
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and any other Enid Blyton books. I remember liking this one because of the secret railway tunnels...
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Probably my best primary school read though was Speed Six by Graham Carter. A book about motorsport...
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peajay the last line of Chicken Hawk just sums it up brilliantly.
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for me as well 😀
Just joined this thread, not read it all, but suspect no one has mentioned,
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Here are the cops of London town, hard working, brave and true.
They drink their tea, stay up 'till 3 and take good care of you....
Edit - and of course, the classic,
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The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4
Dragonlance chronicles.
Stephen King - The Stand
Read the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole a million times when it came out,but for me its got to be Swallows and Amazons.
To kill a mockingbird, even today, once I pick it up, i'm there to the end.
Dez- 'For you tommy, ze var is over'
Another huge Ransome fan here... Also avidly read Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton as a kid and loved the HHGTTG series.
Also did the whole SF thing - Asimov, Clarke etc. For Horror it was James Herbert, Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King.
The single biggest book of my formative years was Iain Banks' Wasp Factory though. Still love it now...
Very Young - Mister Men - pretty much all of them, I was a bit mad for 'em apparently.
young - Enid Blyton - Faraway tree, Enchanted Forest, Famous Five, secret Seven
Then got really into Atlasses, Wonders of The World Mag and stuff like that. Anything with good photo's and diagrams and graphs and Information about the natural world. AND SPACE, anything with space.
9ish-13+ - Asimovs Foundation and Empire series, Phillip K dick stuff, Arthur C clarke, really went a bit scifi. and loads of Steven King, but never Liked Tolkein and all that fantasy stuff. And then decided to read books you're "supposed" to read.. Huxley, Orwell, Salinger, etc. Cos I decided I was intelligent HAH!!
A bit of [url= http://www.allthingsransome.net/downloads/nbsemaphore.html ]silliness[/url] for those in the know.
Thinking about it I first read 1984 in 1984 so must have been 12. Another book which had a massive impact.
Can remember The Cement Garden being memorable. I also went through a big Martin Amis phase where I had to read everything he'd written for a bit. Think that started with The Rachel Papers and then Money and Other people, London Fields. Stopped with Times Arrow cos I thought it was crap/grew up.. We read o Kill A Mockingbird in school, but to be honest, I was too young to get it. Looking back, I can see getting immersed in books was an escape from not wanting to grow up!..
Lord of the Flies.
(He sharpened a stick at both ends)
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I treasure the day I picked up my first [i]Swallows and Amazons[/i] novel. I was in a fever (properly ill) and demanded pemmican sandwiches. My mother brought me corned beef sandwiches and I ate for the first time in four days. The recovery was swift henceforth.
Also enjoyed everything by Enid Blyton, most especially, [i]The Mountain of Adventure[/i] which I must have read 12 times.
Thereafter, as I grew up a bit, [i]The Mouse and his Child[/i] by Russel Hoban captured my imagination.
As a younger kid, Swallows and Amazons and the Chronicles of Narnia... Little bit older, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight, and Terry Pratchett- think Moving Pictures was my first.
what is this Swallows and Amazons, it's obviously something I must read!
Enid blyton - various series at various stages of growing up, The "........... Of adventure" in particular.
Robert Heinlein- again, various books at various times - stranger in a strange land got me into trouble in RE, which was taught by the local Protestant firebrand minister.
Swallows and amazons of course.