Let me begin

We moved the summer between Grade 2 & 3.  That summer, without friends, I devoured most of the books in my siblings collections.  By the next summer, my parents books were read through (not much to choose from ), and the children's library was found to be extremely boring.

I remember being denied access to the adult section of the library, but somehow either through my parents or the school librarian, the public library librarian agreed to let me into one section of the adult library only.

It was the science fiction area.

I remember reading the typical sci-tech stuff..and then, getting into Heinlein, such as Strangers in a Strange Land.

I read most of that science fiction section ...and eventually, they agreed, I could borrow from the rest of the adult section...but my love of the alternate society form of science fiction continued, along with fantasy of dragons and dragonworlds.  (The adults in my family continued to give me suitable stories for a girl of my age -- books on ballerinas or Nancy Drew)

I know that much of my understanding that the way our society behaves is patterned.  Given a shift in  circumstances it could be quite different..  Some of that has come to be found true, and I am sure, will continue to be.

so....I am thankful to that person who denied me access to the rest of the library and to the boring books in the children's section...

I wonder if anyone else was similarly influenced?

 As a pre-teen my choice was anything to do with horses.   As I got older, I wanted to read the more grown-up stuff, like you.  I bought a Jackie Collins book, "Chances".  And some Sydney Sheldon.  Both were quite racy for the time.  My friend, who thought my parents were uptight, casually said one day "I bet your parents wouldn't let you buy Cosmopolitan".  So I did. Next thing, I had about two year's worth stacked up.  

My parents didn't say much about my choices until I got into Stephen King, haha.

PS I read 'JOB' by Heinlein.

I devoured Nancy Drew books as a kid

My parents were cool and allowed me to read stuff from the adult section .... I stumbled upon Erica Jong and nothing was the same after that ....

Strangely enough we adopted an older dog so I was into dog books and innocently picked up Stephen King's Cujo as a result boy was I wrong about the story thinking it was about an adorable doggy  .... he's been my favorite author for almost 2 decades now ...

Either way I got more into the dark side of stuff from magic to true crime ..... monsters and madmen ... i think it allowed me not to just be naive about people and to realize that everyone has a dark side and dark intentions ....

Thankfully I skipped past Harlequin (wretch) and all that other girly crud .....

I grew up in a very small village - no book store; no public library.  The school library consisted of a single shelf with a few donated books.  Not much to choose from.

But once in awhile on a trip to town Mum would buy a book, and every Christmas each child got a book.   We read our own, and everybody elses.  And we read our mother's few books too - and any that she borrowed from neighbours.  If we had the skill to read it, we read it. 

Let's see.  What did I read?

The Bobbsey Twins series

Anne of Green Gables, and all the subsequent Anne books

Other books by L. M. Montgomery

The Black Stallion books

Call of the Wild / White Fang

Black Beauty

My Friend Flicka

Beautiful Joe

and a whole lot of books about Collie dogs

Blaze of Noon (Mom's book about early airmail and four brothers who were pilots)

Gone With the Wind (as a teenager)

and many more

How did they effect me?   They were so rare to be precious and I learned to treat them with respect - never mark in them, or dogear the pages, or lay them face down, or bend them so as to break the spine.  Use a bookmark.   Appreciate them. 

I learned to love reading, and love discussing books.  Since we all read the same books we had our own little family book club.  Now whenever I read a good book I look for somebody to discuss it with.  And I belong to a book club.

I learned to be contented by myself, curled up with a book, without TV or movies or someone to play with or something to do.  I'm alone this evening and as soon as I get off the net and have a relaxing bath I'll be reading a book.

I learned to love animals from all the animal books I read.

I learned something of history, geography, and human nature.  Gone With the Wind was my introduction to the Civil War.  I've learned more about it since.

And I've passed my love of reading to my children and my grandchildren. 

Oh yes, I also read comic books - Donald Duck, Superman, Westerns, Archie

And the newspaper  (we had an arrangement with an older neighbour.  We picked up his paper at the post office and he allowed us to read it.)

The Readers Digest

The Family Harold

The Farmers Almanac

Our Sunday School papers, and those of our siblings

And the Bible  (many times I started in Genesis to read it "all the way through'. 

If there was nothing else to read, we read the backs of cereal boxes and compared the French to the English.

Greetings!

My sis was two years older than me, and I think her choice in reading material influenced mine.  Generally, if she was reading something I would follow along behind if she gave it a good review.  She liked reading at that age more than I did and she read a lot more than I did.

At that age I read mostly Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, Nurse Cherry Ames, the Hardy Boys, and a few others.  I also read a lot of Archie and romance/"Love" comic books.  They don't make "love" comic books like they used to - I wish I would have kept a few of them.

I think reading encouraged my imagination and made me aware of the world that was out there.

Hope, peace, joy, love . . .

You know, I don't think I read Bobbsey Twins or other such books, until I was about 15 & was desperate one week for something to read..discovered a pile of them shoved in a cupboard, along with some British annuals.

Interesting choices so far...

Seeer, I can picture you and the books being such a treat.  that's awesome.

I was about 10 when I was quite enjoying my big brother's book with the writings of Plato.  It was a very big book with thin paper , ? onion skin?.....I was quite into it....when he came home & found me.  He was really really ticked.   Made me stop reading it, and promise to leave it alone.  Unsure what bothered him most...that I found it fascinating or that I touched his special book.  He would have been 18 or so, and moved out to school & marriage soon after.

I sense there was a few of the adult books snuck & read, as indicated by a few...but i haven't heard about the different genre's ...

Seeler -- reader's digest was a staple at our house, along with the reader's digest condensed.

ooh, and my mother gave me a series of classics....everything from Aesop's fables, to Robinson Crusoe to Little Women.  Some it took be a long time to bother reading..but, others were read many times.

Well, my books were chosen for me as a preteen. "Oh, she might like this", got it for my birthday, or passed down from someone else. I had Anne of Green Gables, Island of the Dolphins, Dragon somethingerother...

In high school we were asigned novels to read, but I was never able to finish one. I was heavily influenced by the corresponding films though: Flowers for Algernon, Lord of the Flies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Romeo and Juliet.

Also my grade 11 boyfriend was a reader and he gave me things to read, which were very influencial: Brave New World, 1984.

One thing I chose to read was Farenheit 451, but honestly, I didn't really select it. I just grabbed it randomly and covertly, off the shelf, then decided to read my prize. It was also quite influencial.

Those early books really steered the direction I took. Made me alternative and sceptical of the cut and clear path. Then I started reading pagan religion and herbalism, and the witch trials, and new age books. Then I was given Clan of the Cave Bear, and found Greenlanders. Then plant identification, re-incarnation, how to build a log cabin, secret societies, mysteries of the ancient world... I'm still a rebel. I blame the school system. ; )

I remember reading some of my older brother's books also, Pinga, and I'm sure if he knew, he would have been superticked - I just didn't get caught.  Not Plato, though - not books really, but magazines rather . . . they had pictures of nekkid people and little cartoons with adult jokes .  My first encounter with sex education.   I don't think my mom would have been happy with either one of us if she knew.

I also remember reading Little Women, Trixie Beldon, and Heidi.  We also had an old set of encyclopedia's - can't remember the name of them.  One of the books was a book that had little puzzles, stories, activities, etc.  We wore that book out - for some reason we called it the "Bimbo" book - I don't know why, it wasn't a demeaning title like one would think "bimbo" would be, we loved that book.

We also had a form of a picture bible - not a picture on each page, but a few coloured pages throughout.  One that I remember most, and one that we turned to most often was a picture of King Solomon with the two women and the baby. 

lol, beloved....that is what you found when you went babysitting..so i was at least a teen by then....

I think by Grade 11 I was well on my way to a warped sense of normal, EleanorGold...though, having an avantgarde teacher didn't hurt, who had a collection of off-the-wall books for kids like me...Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ..and a female quebecois writer whose name escapes me....

 My parents didn't really try to dictate what I read but some things DID make them flare their nostrils a bit. (Mad comics.)

I read all the Black Stallion books and Marguerite Henry books. "King of the Wind" is still my favorite by her.  

As teens, my best friend and I used to look through her brother's girlie mags and then later when I was old enough I bought Playgirl to share with friends.  You might say I was the life of the slumber party.

Seeler I could have sworn you were typing out my list of books I've read. I don't think I was ever told what books I could and couldn't read. I was always ahead of the rest of my age in reading though so for a while I had a problem finding books. The ones for "my age" were too boring and easy but the adult ones were too racy and made me uncomfortable. I eventually branched into fantasy to avoid that problem (for the most part).

My dad and I have a kind of book club of our own now. We both like the same type of books so we'll recomend them to eachother and discuss it after. Book are one of the main things I can think of that my dad and I talk about.

heh bethanyk -- fantasy? like Anne McCaffrey or ?...i think the redwall series and such has helped in this regard..seems to have been an explosion in that area of literature

I was a great Nancy Drew fan ... reading under the covers at night after "lights out".  I think I read every one of them.  (even carefully 'pre-read' a few that I purchased as gifts for friends!  Got hell from my mom for that!)

I remember reading "Diary of Anne Frank", and being very affected by it.  I enjoyed reading biographies of many people I'd heard about.  Now today, I'm working in profession where understanding the story of people's lives is my central focus.

I loved to volunteer at the library at school - senior public & high school - kinda a geeky thing, but I liked it. 

hehe I remember reading a Stephen ing book and being scandalized at how many times the characters swore.

Definately read Redwall Pinga. Not the whole series though, I grew out of that reading level while they were sitll coming out. I think some of the ones I started with where...

Terry Brooks
Mercedes Lackey
Terry Goodkind

Right....i think a reasonable calibre of literature appropriate for advanced readers who are pre-teen has developed in the market....a wrinkle in time comes to mind as well. 

My youngest son has been a voracious leader, and we were able to keep him busy without advancing into too adult of literature in his pre-teens.  (By 12 his best gift was a gift certificate to the bookstore, and he spent it in the science fiction section)

hmm I have read a wrinkle in time... I think it was in grade 3, possibly four

There are other sections? Huh. Who knew?  Are they any good??

Yup, Marrion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels (where else do you think the New Agers got the whole "crystal" idea?)

Anne McCaffrey's Pern stories. (No one has done the whole "lost history" thing better.)

Robert Heinlein, both Stranger in a Strange Land and the whole Lazarus Long chronology (although Time Enough for Love was the best of it)

Clifford D Simak's City, no better comment on the best and worst of humanity.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Quite an interestingly forward-looking commentary on the split between "science" and "spirituality" (although, as an atheist, he probably would have been annoyed at having "psycho-history" described that way.)   And of course, his "Three Laws of Robotics" which were pretty much a Golden Rule implementation.

And Jack Williamson's Humaniods, the first story I ever read that dealt with the idea of denying human beings freedom until we learned to stop killing ourselves and each other.

And the OT - as sci fi. Genesis works sooooo much better that way

Oh. And how could I have forgotten James P. Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker???

There is NO better take on the whole messiah thing than this. If I had to lay money on the NT backstory, this would be it.

My town did not have much of a library and I read everything and then I found Manitoba Extension Library. i ordered books. They sent books and I didn't have to pay to send them back. i was their best customer.I remember my dad dragging home a box of Horatio Alger books ( about 40) I read them all - rags to riches. Every book was the same.

I loved getting books as gifts. the only one I hated was Alice in Wonderland. I don't think I ever did finish it.

yeah! and to add to the list of science fiction

Heinlein & Aasimov

Wyndham - the crysalids

*** discovered after teens

Anne McCaffrey - absolutely

Zenna Henderson - The People Series -- but the Anything Box was classic.

Ursala  K. Le Guin  -- early stuff

A few years back I gave away my collection to someone...I think they thought they had died & gone to heaven....1970 & 1980's science/fiction fantasy with a primary focus on alternate societies or dragon times....  though most of that was collected in university days...kinda outside of this topic.

nancy drew. 

again, i'm with jess on something... this is TOTALLY freaking me out.

It must be your inner furry monster coming out ......

i didn't even know i had one.

Pinga - I think your son must be a lot like mine - with literary skills far beyond his chronological age.  By grades four and five he was reading adult books - mainly sports, but some science as well.    In grade six he had an assignment to read any book he wanted so he read a book about hockey, intended for adults, and wrote his report on that. 

By junion high he had discovered Tolkin.  He did an assignment on The Lord of the Rings.  His teacher refused and told him to do another because 'that book is a university level book, and therefor not on the reading list for junior high".  I had (and still have) a hart time understanding her reasoning.  If he was interested and capable why shouldn't he be reading it?  It obvisouly wasn't too hard for him.

If I remember right he choose a book from the list - one that he had read a few years previous - and dashed off a report in one night.  That satisfied her.  And he continued reading fantasy and science fiction, as well as sports, biographies, novels, etc ever since.

 didn't even know i had one.

The claws and fangs didn't clue you in on those full moon nights ?

 I got a copy of Edmund Spenser's 'The Faery Queen'  when I was around six: I still have it. God knows why anyone would give a young reader something written in the English of the late 16th century, but my mother was strange in many ways. And she hit the button somehow with this.

It is astoundingly good writing. this for example, about two knights fighting: "The Sarazin was stout, and wondrous strong, And heaped blows like yron (iron) hamers great... The knight was fiers (fierce) and full of youthly heat, and doubled strokes, like dreaded thunders threat... Both stricken strike, and beaten both do beat, That from their shields forth flyeth firie (firey) light, and helmets hewn deepe, show marks of eithers might..."

Okay, it's a bit violent, but there are also some wonderful passages about beauty, emotion, values and adventure. It's all an elaborately conceived Elizabethan propaganda piece in some ways, but somehow that punchy writing, so compact, so expressive, got into my head and I'd pore over it for hours. It was a world I went to and ventured in. I can still read it over and over, and it's be the top of my "desert island book" list.

It influenced me in a number of very powerful ways.

It got me writing (well, desperately trying to) and for 40 years I've been a professional writer. It taught me far more about writing than school managed to and far more than kids learn about writing in school today. It also enlarged my imagination and incited me to adventure and risk taking: which has also been a life-impacting influence.  It taught me quite a bit about the importance of morality.

And, as I said, I still like to go there and, familiar as it is, find new insights and excitements.

Awesome, Mike

To me, that is what I wonder about ---- I know tons of children are given Nancy Drew & similair stories,and though they may improve basic reading ability, they are not in general going to be life changing or altering.

The kind of read you suggest, which was a challenge, and was fabulous writing did that for you....it caught you.

OOOO how did I forget about Marion Zimmer Bradley. I read her too!