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.
The second one I read, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, was a series of shorter stories about Tarzan in his youth. There were illustrations at the start of each chapter, but none that I remember of him strangling, stabbing, spearing, and shooting arrows into the local tribespeople that I remember.
To be fair, Tarzan later adopted a tribe, or they adopted him, and they were his loyal friends for the rest of the series. But even then, Burroughs basically described them as black people with Caucasian features and set them apart from the others that way.
I remember picking the books up again after an absence and reading a part that ... I can't remember the language, and I don't want to misquote, but it was describing the Africans in the story in very stereotypical racial terms. This was late '60s, maybe even early '70s. I expressed outrage to my parents about the passage, and they said I was overreacting.
Really great topic!
I started reading early. 3 1/2. It was a sentence book called "Tip the Pup."
My earliest memories of real books...When I was around 6 my dad got me a set of encyclopedias. Geared towards children, don't remember much else about them. I just remember reading them over.. And over...
I remember reading "Dolan's Cadillac" in the car on the way home from the beach when I was around 8 years old. That started my life long King love affair. I think the next King I read after that was "The Langoliers."
I loved The BabySitters Club series too. Lol.
I started reading early. 3 1/2. It was a sentence book called "Tip the Pup."
My earliest memories of real books...When I was around 6 my dad got me a set of encyclopedias. Geared towards children, don't remember much else about them. I just remember reading them over.. And over...
I remember reading "Dolan's Cadillac" in the car on the way home from the beach when I was around 8 years old. That started my life long King love affair. I think the next King I read after that was "The Langoliers."
I loved The BabySitters Club series too. Lol.
I can't remember if it was the first Star Wars, or ET... which came first? (probably Star Wars huh?)
What i remember of the first Tarzanbooks Tarzan The Apeman and the Return of Tarzan was how he often reflected how cruel the white man was, how cruel the civilized life was. How deceitful man was and how much simpler it was in the jungle or a simple society where you know the rules. As he complains to his friend that you say civilized society has rules, yet most are trying to break them. It is better in the jungle. I think the jungle tales of tarzan is the fifth or something like that. Then he was propably getting stereotyped but the first ones are good.
And I do remember that too. If I remember right, it was quite the band of cutthroats who dumped off the Greystokes, parents of Tarzan, into the jungle, and the boat gang with Porter and daughter Jane weren't much better. If I remember right. It's been decades. And when Tarzan got ensconced in civilization, he couldn't wait to go back to the jungle.
I'm also wondering if the editions that I read, which my father had from when he was a kid in the '30s and '40s, might not have gotten sanitized a bit as time went on and civil rights issues came marching in. And since I read them in the late '60s and maybe early '70s, it's possible that my sense of justice and outrage could've been a bit focused on the racial issues I saw in the books at the time.
I get what you are saying,
and, you bring up an important issue.
I'm not sure I like the idea of "sanitizing" books. Is this not a form of censorship?
Believe me, I do not support racism, sexism, etc., however, I think society grows from understanding errors of the past and knowing how we have changed for the better (hopefully). Should not children learn history directly from language and attitudes of the time rather than from "sanitized" versions?
I have a copy of the "unsanitized" version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking. Both of these books in their original versions are kept "in storage" at my local small town library and the new "sanitized" versions are on the bookshelves. The original versions may be checked out by special request. I am happy that they are still available and were not destroyed.
To be clear, I totally understand why new updated versions of children books/stories are released to reflect changes in society, however, I do not want the original versions to go disappearing into the mist. I think books and writings are important reflections of our changing society and culture and are valuable insights to the past.
Arcadevere
Gentle Lady From Brady Hartsfield Defense Squad
Arcadevere
Gentle Lady From Brady Hartsfield Defense Squad
and here is my list of "First"
My first english book was the complete set of Sherlock Holmes' Story (i read all of them during my stay at province)
My first S. King book was Misery
My first N. Gaiman was American Gods (library borrow)
My first J. Grisham was the Runaway Jury, but the copy lost while i was on my way going home so i purchased new copy recently
My first D. Brown was The Da Vinci code
My first History reference novel was Assassin's Creed : the secret crusade (also my first Video game-related book)
My first comics was the Archie comics and Sandman
My first Japanese Manga was Yamato Nadeshiko : The Wallflower
My first Children's fiction was Harry Potter series
My first Y.A. was Hunger games, because i'm not really a fan of Y.A. so i recently started reading them
My first Hardbound was my mini Atlas
My first course-related book that i have is The Visual Dictionary for Architecture
My first book that i write on was my kindergarden books lol
My first signed books were Trese Comics and Kikomachine Komix
My first english book was the complete set of Sherlock Holmes' Story (i read all of them during my stay at province)
My first S. King book was Misery
My first N. Gaiman was American Gods (library borrow)
My first J. Grisham was the Runaway Jury, but the copy lost while i was on my way going home so i purchased new copy recently
My first D. Brown was The Da Vinci code
My first History reference novel was Assassin's Creed : the secret crusade (also my first Video game-related book)
My first comics was the Archie comics and Sandman
My first Japanese Manga was Yamato Nadeshiko : The Wallflower
My first Children's fiction was Harry Potter series
My first Y.A. was Hunger games, because i'm not really a fan of Y.A. so i recently started reading them
My first Hardbound was my mini Atlas
My first course-related book that i have is The Visual Dictionary for Architecture
My first book that i write on was my kindergarden books lol
My first signed books were Trese Comics and Kikomachine Komix
Didn't read "real" books until 4th grade. We had a teacher who read books aloud. The two I remember are Where The Red Fern Grows and Call It Courage. I checked Red Fern out of the library and read it myself. After that, it was game on! The Little House books, A Wrinkle In Time, a biography of Annie Sullivan (Helen Keller's Teacher). Then I found my Mom's ghost story books....!
Anyone who sanitizes a book should be sanitized themselves. It goes beyond censorship--which is bad enough--it manipulates history, and that's never a good thing. If an old dead author happens to have been a racist, why clean them up and pretend they weren't? Show them for the ignorant fools they were, don't sugar coat em.
And anyone who tampers with Twain should be shot.