the first real book you ever read
- Thread starter Tiny
- Start date
-
This message board permanently closed on June 30th, 2020 at 4PM EDT and is no longer accepting new members.
Flake, it was either Old Yeller or Black Beauty. I chose the dog book.Oh...
The think the first novel I read was Peter Pan. At some prehistoric time I read A Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The first two books that had a real impact and that I loved my mom kept bugging me to read until I agreed just to get her off my back were The Great Divorce, by CSLewis, and Catcher in the Rye. Those two caused me to realize that reading could be fun and interesting.
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
My Dad bought a small cottage and got a good deal - it had had a small fire in it and there was a bit of smoke damage.
I remember reading a set of books that had been left in there by the previous owners - they smelled a bit smoky and were slightly brown but I loved reading about the Bobbsey Twins' adventures - I must have been about six years old.
These books saved my life during a hard time when i couldnt read anything complicated. These were the most complicated i could handle. For 6 months i read nothing but these. Still today i know them word by word. They arent the best books ever written but since they saved me i love them!!
Thank you for my sanity!!
Thank you for my sanity!!
This was probably the first real book I read, and I remember being utterly obsessed with this book:
I recall reading a lot of those Hardy Boys hardcovers, then maybe Treasure Island.
Well,my first "encounter" with a real life book was when my third grade teacher(Mrs.Brunetti) read the illustrated version of The Hobbit to us.If I had to guess I would say the first real book I read myself was probably either Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing or The Boxcar Children.
I used to love the Berenstain Bears. This is first one I read that wasn't read to me by anyone else. I was proud of that accomplishment as a little one.
Reading didn't really take with me when I was young, though. I did read this in middle school, I think, and I did enjoy it enough to go out and get a copy of own to finish before the rest of the class could finish theirs.
I think this sold me on books, though. Read it in high school. It's about a kid that sold his soul to ole Beelz in order to get better at something. Being the, ahem, "goth kid" I was, I could relate to that on some level, too. And I subsequently read even more macabre stuff that warped my fragile little mind.
Judy Blumb is now 77 years old ! , I my self am very old, much
older then I was when I first read of the great Shiela !
older then I was when I first read of the great Shiela !
Some more come back to mind.
I'd go to my great-aunt's house in Southern Illinois, and she had a series of "Jerry Todd" books with humorous titles. Jerry Todd and the Bob-Tailed Elephant." They were for teenagers, I guess. Teenagers of the 1920s. There was a spinoff character, Poppy Ott, and a book entitled Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail. They were fun-enough books, but one of them came with a side story by the author (Leo Edwards) that was weird, and I mean kinda creepy-weird, although maybe less so for its time.
She also had a little jewel, The Classics in Slang, in which a low-grade pugilist in the 1920s, I think, was trying to impress his objet d'affection, who owned a book store. She'd give him Shakespeare to read, and then he would summarize them in the Prohibition slang of the time. (Ever hear of "gat"? Or "flivver"?) Quite entertaining.
My parents had a bunch of books for all ages. Voracious readers. My dad had a start of a Tom Slade, Boy Scout series that was pretty darn good. He also liked science fiction, and because my attention span wasn't fully developed (never has been), I gravitated to the short stories of Robert Sheckley, which I still think are brilliant.
It also included a "Chip Hilton" series by Clair Bee. It was youth in sports. I enjoyed the football-based ones the most, the baseball-themed ones okay, and I don't remember a blessed one of the basketball-themed ones.
Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was cute.
And I'd be remiss in not mentioning the Tarzan series which I did start reading at a fairly young age. I read them endlessly. It wasn't until I'd left them alone for a while and back to them later that I realized what an ardent racist Edgar Rice Burroughs was and the sadistic serial killer that he made out of his main character in the first couple of books. I'm frankly glad that society has sanitized that one.
I'd go to my great-aunt's house in Southern Illinois, and she had a series of "Jerry Todd" books with humorous titles. Jerry Todd and the Bob-Tailed Elephant." They were for teenagers, I guess. Teenagers of the 1920s. There was a spinoff character, Poppy Ott, and a book entitled Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail. They were fun-enough books, but one of them came with a side story by the author (Leo Edwards) that was weird, and I mean kinda creepy-weird, although maybe less so for its time.
She also had a little jewel, The Classics in Slang, in which a low-grade pugilist in the 1920s, I think, was trying to impress his objet d'affection, who owned a book store. She'd give him Shakespeare to read, and then he would summarize them in the Prohibition slang of the time. (Ever hear of "gat"? Or "flivver"?) Quite entertaining.
My parents had a bunch of books for all ages. Voracious readers. My dad had a start of a Tom Slade, Boy Scout series that was pretty darn good. He also liked science fiction, and because my attention span wasn't fully developed (never has been), I gravitated to the short stories of Robert Sheckley, which I still think are brilliant.
It also included a "Chip Hilton" series by Clair Bee. It was youth in sports. I enjoyed the football-based ones the most, the baseball-themed ones okay, and I don't remember a blessed one of the basketball-themed ones.
Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was cute.
And I'd be remiss in not mentioning the Tarzan series which I did start reading at a fairly young age. I read them endlessly. It wasn't until I'd left them alone for a while and back to them later that I realized what an ardent racist Edgar Rice Burroughs was and the sadistic serial killer that he made out of his main character in the first couple of books. I'm frankly glad that society has sanitized that one.
Last edited: