bedtime stories

DUDE, I fucking Love His Dark Materials. I'm still into them. I hear he's planning more! Did you read that little red one, Lyra's Oxford? It was a short story about Lyra doing something about birds and witches which is setting us up for the new things.

I still love Harry Potter, and I did read A Series of Unfortunate Events. I was into the Time Warp Trio, and The Bartemus Trilogy, it was really good. The Amulet of Samarkand was the best one of that series. I read Lord of the Rings, tons of Roald Dahl, Eragon, uhg, and The Da Vinci Code. Also, I read the ones that were all called Vampires don't drink Lemonade, and Witches don't teach Gymnastics and things like that. There were about a million of those. Artimus Fowl too.

When I was very very young I used to read The Secret Garden, which I've mentioned a million times and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew, I didn't bother reading any of the other books in the Narnia series.

My two main sources of literature in my tiny years were the library and my mum's family's children's books which were all in my room.

From the library I would get learner books about Miffy, and the Ladybird shortened versions of classic tales like Heidi. When I gained some independence with my reading I took to reading ghost stories and true supernatural accounts that have scarred me for life. I spent ages 5-10 terrified of the dark, convinced I was going to be buried alive or see a banshee or a sailor carrying a coffin on his back and yet I continued to check these stupid scary books out.

Anyway, the books we had at home were mostly Enid Blyton. I would stay up long in to the night reading her stories and when I finished a book I'd step over to the bookcase to get another one. I don't remember the names of them but one of them had a picture of a young guy chasing a wheel of cheese on the front. When I reached the bookcase I would keep walking on the spot while I chose my book so that my parents downstairs would hear footsteps and think I was off to the loo. My favourites were the Amelia Jane stories. I didn't like The Famous Five, I felt I couldn't relate to their middle-classness but the Secret Seven were just low-rent enough for me.

Of course I also dug The Babysitter's Club, Sweet Valley High, Goosebumps, Point Horror (that's RL Stine, Caroline Cooney, Richie Tankersly Cusick et al.), LJ smith, Celia Rees, Anne Rice and a series called Making Out by K A Applegate, I think it was called something different in the US but it was your typical soap opera-ish stuff.

I'm forgetting loads here but they're the highlights. I was never into Roald Dahl, I read The Witches and James and the Giant Peach but I couldn't get into his books. There was just something very irritating about them to my younger self.

My first book was The Blood of the Monster or sometin' like that, by R.L.Stine, than Frankenstein, than a 4 year pause, than some stuff for school and than Fight Club and the rest is, as they say, history....

I read the Xanth series by Piers Anthony. Also, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in TIme, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters. Doctor Who books. My favorite Roald Dahl was the B.F.G. I remember reading a book about a boy and his black cat that could travel through time. They wound up in ancient Egypt where cats are held in high regard, but I can't remember the name of it...

I don't remember anything specific because I read anything I could get my hands on. I spent so much time reading, I think I miss a lot of pop culture references from the 80s because I was buried in a book rather than watching TV. Now I find myself reading everything again to my daughter.

As a little kid I read all of those Garfield books and Choose Your Own Adventure books (I was always pissed that I seemed to make the wrong decisions!).

I then got into the Silverstein stuff. I loved those books and found them absolutely hilarious.

I read a lot of true accounts of ghost and ghost stories. I liked being so scared I would sleep totally under my covers and sweat my ass off. I was terrified of actual ghost being in my house. I was sure it was haunted. But I still read those books.

I then got into a lot of biographies. I started to really like true stories. That is how I found Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson changed what I was looking for. And broadened my "playing field." It was soon after that I found the genre of fiction I was looking for...

I used to read those choose your own adventure books too. Those things were great. But yeah, I always made the wrong choice, too. Even when I cheated.

Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorites from when I was a kid.

Tolkien, Blyton, Pratchett...

And classics like Alice, Petar Pan, Pinoccio...

I loved Gradimir Stojkovic and his series of "Hajduk".

And I was hooked on those "choose your own adventure" books. I love them even now, but I can't find any.

7th grade I started on the [URL=http://www.geocities.com/evilsnack/well.htm]Well World [/URL] series by Jack Chalker....starting with Midnight at the Well of Souls

then the Piers Anthony [URL=http://www.piers-anthony.com/xanth.html]Xanth[/URL] series...till it just plain got silly

The Dragon and the George by Gordon Dickson.....

I'm reaching waay back here. It took me all day to find the Well World name and author, all I could remember was the premise...

[QUOTE]The variety of races in the Well World series is one of the features that makes it worth reading. The races can be divided into two broad categories, which are known as carbon-based and non-carbon-based. On the Well World, the former reside in the Southern Hemisphere, and the latter reside in the Northern Hemisphere.

Although the book affirms that there are 1,560 extant species on the Well World, half of which reside in each hemisphere, less than half of the Southern hemisphere (270 hexes) is mapped, and only 58 of the Northern hexes are mapped.

Some of the Well races are also encountered by humanity in its own region of space in the Milky Way. Others managed to sneak along when humanity was first sent to populate Earth, and although these other races mostly died out, they left legends.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=McMuddle;925545]then the Piers Anthony Xanth series...till it just plain got silly[/QUOTE]

It did get silly didn't it? The first half dozen or so were really good though. They were pun-sational!

My first book ever was Safety Can be Fun by Munro Leaf
I used to check that thing out of the school library for months at a time!

I read this one book from the library called The Boy who fell through time. It was pretty good. I think I remember that one book about the cat and going through time to Egypt. Humm...

[QUOTE=Brainfat;925559]It did get silly didn't it? The first half dozen or so were really good though. They were pun-sational![/QUOTE]

Yeah, same thing happened with the Incarnations of Immortality series.
[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Pale-Horse-Incarnations-Immortality-Bk/dp/0345338588]On a Pale Horse[/URL] was good, Bearing an Hourglass was ok....With a Tangled Skein was ok but slipping.....then he lost me. I read them all, just didn't enjoy them quite as much as the first ones.

ooh. My two all-time favorite kids books, and I still have them, are
[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Old-Black-Witch-Wende-Devlin/dp/B0007DKKDC/sr=1-2/qid=1170459944/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-4240662-4269553?ie=UTF8&s=books]Old Black Witch[/URL] and [URL=http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Greatest-Freak-Show/dp/0689206402/sr=1-3/qid=1170459838/ref=sr_1_3/104-4240662-4269553?ie=UTF8&s=books]The World's Greatest Freakshow[/URL].

Does anybody remember the Dark is Rising sequence? I remember liking that series. OH! and the Chronicles of Prydain (you know, the Black Cauldron and etc.). good times.

Damn, this is reminding me of some books I read 20 years or more ago...like
[URL=http://www.stormbringer.net/elric.html]Elric of Melniboné[/URL]

[QUOTE]"It is the color of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the color of bone."[/QUOTE]

I read the Dark is Rising too! Jeeze, I keep forgetting all these good ones. I like Greenwitch. Did you? I did read A wind in the door, and A Wrinkle in Time, and those. I didn't like that one with just the twins though. I also read the Castle in the Attic. Good one. Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little, The Phantom Tollbooth. I read all the Narnia books too. That was before I knew they were basically the Bible. I liked Narnia. This is a good thread.