What did you read before you discovered "good" books?

When I was a kid, I voraciously devoured sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books:

As a teen, I took to screenplays and band bios:

And then, I grew up:

I was a fiend for band bios, musician autobios and that sort of thing. Obviously in my teens and younger I read things like goosebumps, and other YA stuff too. But I think the bios and my passion for music knowledge was a gateway to my now fiendish behaviour with literature. I slowly dabbled into 'good' lit. I read HST and the beats because a Loy of musicians I loved loved them and from there it simply got out of control.

Timberly, I would contribute to your thread, if you hadn't STOLEN ALL OF MINE.

No wait:

I realized it was time to move on to big kid books when I knocked one of these out in 20 minutes.

Also, don't forget FEAR STREET!!!:

Nonfiction. Film and music stuff, screenwriting, bios, comedy/satire, etc. Read Stephen King and VC Andrews when I was a tween, but after that all the popular stuff seemed too pulpy for me, even back then (though it didn't exactly motivate me to pick up the classics, either). As a kid it was all about novelizations of movies, and the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Comic books, Mad and Cracked magazine. I remember having one of those things opened up on the kitchen table with every meal. Very little fiction through my twenties. Then the gateway drug that was Fight Club hit at age 27.

I had a lot of books by R.L. Stine.

The Babysitter, The Babysitter 2, among many others. My favorite was Beach House, which translated to Het Verlaten Strandhuis in Dutch.

I also enjoyed Cindy books:

Aw. n_n

I read more or less ever Goosebumps, Ghosts of Fear Street, Spooksville etc. When I was younger I read all the Famous Five books. I even had the choose-your-own adventure one, which came with a die to answer profound conundrums such as "Who will be the first to try the ginger beer." Sometimes Timmy the Dog came up, so I'd just reroll. His options were never interesting.

Also, lots of comics. I still like comics, but I don't buy individual issues anymore really.

Choose-your-own-adventure books are the best. I often wonder if it would be possible to use the technique in an adult-fiction context. Maybe as like one huge dream sequence or something.

I read Finnegans Wake when I was five.

And here I thought you wrote it at five, Phil. Unimpressed.

or maybe the first chapter could be a set-up, bit of character development etc and then gives the reader one of two options on a very seemingly minute decision. then they have to choose which novella to read. you could even go hella gimmicky and make it one of those books where there's a story starting at each cover and ending in the middle.

would adults read that? i would.

Damn you Jane I was thinking the same thing about Timb stealing mine then got excited about the Boxcar Children and saw you posted them and I was sad again. Boxcar Children rocked though, I even made a model of the boxcar for a project it was badass.

I also read some of the Alex series

and I would read a bunch of hand me down books that belonged to my mom and her sister.

Like Beverly Cleary's

I used to read a lot when I was younger, so much so, that I'd get in trouble for reading. Yup I was a nerd.

is that a awful book for children or an adult CYOA?

either way, it's fucking awesome.

There's a whole slew of CYOA parody covers. They make ironic suggestive statements about the cover art. I liked this one, but yeah, CYOA was one of my faves as a kid.

Everything else was Lee J Ames "Draw 50..." titles. So less reading and more doodling, but still books as such.

I read Babysitter's Club, Goosebumps, and Choose-your-own-adventure books too.

There was also a lot of this:

!! <3

Yes! Me too Imke, I still have my Asterix collection.

I think Asterix and the Big Fight is probably my favourite. Getafix was all crazy, making potions and turning different colours. Teehee.

Trashy scifi and fantasy novels. Stuff like Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson and the Eragon series by whats-his-face. When I was a LOT younger I read the Magic Treehouse series like it was crack or something. Even though those things sucked, at least they got me reading.

Jane - I totally read Fear Street and The Boxcar Children!

Jaz - My mom got me into beverly cleary. It's so funny that we all liked the same things, although back then there prob wasn't as big of a martket for it as there is now.

Matt - I used to read the CYOA books. At least, that's what I think they were. You'd be reading and at the bottom of a page, it'd say, "If Timmy takes a left in the cave, turn to page 49. If Timmy takes a right, turn to page 109." His (your) choice would affect the outcome. I'd cheat, though, and jump ahead to make sure he didn't die.

Let's not forget:

Hey, man; the Magic School Bus rocked! The show's theme is still embeded into my memory. And, anytime the Who's Magic Bus comes on, that's all I think about. We read and watched it in my first and second grade classes. I still love it, even if it's extremely limited.

I also liked these books of short stories that are Australian (I think). Can't remember but all the books had titles beginning with "un-" e.g. "Unreal!".

Also a series of fairly basic detective stories to solve, that included pictures to help work out the crime.

I loved the Ramona books, Encyclopedia Brown, the Great Brain series and anything about American settlers including all the Little House books. Then came Stephen King, Jim Thompson, Dashielle Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison...though I still think they're all good books and I still like genre fiction. I think my reading has always been mixed with "good" books and mass market best seller type books.

I was just thinking the other day about this time in 5th grade my teacher decided to pick me out of everyone to tell how good I did on some vocabulary test or something and said how I must read a lot of books. I lied and said I did.
I didn't have the heart to shatter her illusion and tell her in front of the whole class that I basically learned how to read from richie rich, casper and sad sack comic books.

Then her head would probably have exploded when I told her how important Mad Magazine was to me.

Then the first book I ever picked up and choose to read on my own:

yes yes yes!

Paul Jennings! and yeah, he is an aussie (to the aussie thread!). i read all these too, Jack. so good. he was gross way before Chuck.

he had a bunch of other great books too. the one's popping up for me right now are: Gizmo and round the twist (round the twist got made into a tv series here, and it was so good)

Oh yeah I loved Paul Jennings!

There was one story by him about the guy who cried gnomes and got rich by selling them, his girlfriend had to pull out his nose hair to make him tear up.

Paul Jennings! That's him! Wow, I'm gonna look him up now. I vividly remember a story where a boy falls in love with an ice sculpture, and one where a bully is bitten by a cockroach or something, and his skin turns transparent. They were great.

All the ones you listed. And I feel ashamed of how much I loved them. I tried about a year ago to go back and read them. I figured since I loved them so much when I was younger that they would still be great. I could not believe I thought those books were great. Not all books I read when I was wee lass were bad though. Just the majority. I began reading Stephen King when I was eight and I think that really pulled me out of my goosebumps phase. And then after King I read A Clockwork Orange after having watched the movie. After that, I could no longer read the books that were in my school's library. They were all ridiculous compared. So since then I just read what I do now. I've moved on from Stephen King though. I pretty much like anything that is a combination of Vonnegut, Bukowski, and Palahniuk. I always like a bit of violence now too.