Apart from "My Book Of Bible Stories" and the "Paradise" book?

Crumpet

What were your favourite books/authors when you were growing up?

Call it my anal retentious streak, but I've rated every book I've ever read since I was 7. I had phases of favourite writers.

I was an Enid Blyton fan - The Faraway Tree, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Mallory Towers series

Then I got hooked on Franklin W Dixon's Hardy Boys and Judy Blume's eye opening, straight talking stories about growing up which really taught me everything I knew about what life was like for a normal girl not growing up in the JW world.

I started reading Agatha Christie when I was 9 and remember taking the maximum number of books I could from the mobile library van that came to our village and being as impatient for its fortnightly return as I was for the afternoon icecream van. I think that's where my obsession with violent death was born.

Whose fictional worlds did you lose yourself in as a child?

myababes

My most favourite was Little house in the big Woods. I used to loose myself in Laura Ingalls Wilders life and dream of living in the woods and eating syrup on fresh clean snow, an early equivalent of a slush puppy I suppose.

The series never seem to match up with the books somehow

TheSilence

When I was very young I enjoyed the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books and the Dr. Doolittle books. When I got a bit older I liked Where the Red Fern Grows and The Bridge to Terabithia. Also, the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in my opinion, far outstrips the movie. Some books about some young detectives, but it wasn't Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys... I can't remember the name of them, though. Also, Encyclopedia Brown books. Then, as I got a bit older, I got into Sweet Valley High books. I also enjoyed a book titled Don't Care High. And then, older, I enjoyed The Earth Children Series, by Jean M. Auel, which are some of my favorites even today. I was (and am) a voracious reader, so these are just the books that stand out in my recollection.

It's funny you mention My Book of Bible Stories. When my sister-in-law got pregnant with my first neice I started trying to collect some of my favorites from when I was a kid so that when I had my neice (and future neices and nephews) I could read them to her. It came up in conversation with my dad that I was doing this and he offered to get My Book of Bible Stories for me. I gracefully declined. Ugh.

Jackie

DaCheech

actually looking at it now, the book of bible stories is very violent, and I DO NOT READ IT TO MY Children

TheSilence

Oh, how could I forget these... The Secret Garden, excellent, and the Anne of Green Gables Series.

Jackie

looloo

folk of the faraway tree brill stuff !!

TheSilence

And, you know, young young young, who could live without Dr. Suess ;)

Jackie

faundy

I was an Enid Blyton fan, and Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Roald Dahl.

Then I got into the Nancy Drew Files, the newer Nancy Drews. I think they were written by a different person because I'm sure she must have been dead by the time the new ones came out.

Then when I was 16 I read the CS Lewis books for the first time- Narnia was like paradise to me, and it was actually more believable!

Then last year I read all the Harry Potter books over the summer, in the conservatory, eating Ben and Jerry's Phish Food. Oh, those were the days!

At the moment I'm reading "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins- it's Victorian Gothic, and amazing!

Great thread, got me thinking about books!

By the way, if ever anyone wants to PM me/MSN me and discuss books I would love it. I know it's sad but am studying to teach English and books are my life.

jaguarbass

Whose fictional worlds did you lose yourself in as a child?

Gulivers travels by Johnathan Swift.

And Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain aka Sammuel Clemens.

Crumpet

Faundy - I've got a 1920 edition of No Name by Wilkie Collins next to my bed. Woman in White is such a treat. Read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins as well. You sound like a voracious reader! And good on you for studying to teach English - if you have the passion you will make an excellent teacher and able to impart your love of a good story to the most stubborn child I think.

The Silence - ohhhh Anne of Green Gables - I loved that series.

Apart from "My Book Of Bible Stories" and the "Paradise" book?

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