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james posted about their reading habits in childhood, which was the 70s and 80s.
I was a little later, the 80s and 90s. But books hold very particular memories for me, largely because my parents put value in reading and bookishness and so we always had bookshelves and bookshelves and bookshelves, and gifts more often held books than anything else.
The 70s was picture books. Dr Seuss, and others like that. Little Golden Books. Lots of picture books that I no longer remember but which we probably still have. Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Where The Wild Things Are. The Duchess Bakes A Cake. One Eighth of a Muffin.
The 80s was my childhood, and there were books galore.
Charlotte's Web, the early Judy Blumes, The Black Cauldron series, and the Dark is Rising. My sisters and I had The Babysitters Club novels, but we never got into the horsey girl trends. I loved Encyclopaedia Brown's cleverness, and the English Boarding School type novels - Malory Towers and Trebizon. At some point in primary school, I read all the great illustrated classics (it was a whole series) that my primary school library had. It would have been before 1986 when I was 10, because after that I switched school. I read all the legends, mythologies, fairy tales I could find, because they were interesting and curious, then added ghost stories and the paranormal to that because my new school library had those books and I came across them while hanging out in the library before school. The illustrations of one set of books on the paranormal completely freaked me out: the eyes looked straight through you and I loved/hated the shivers it gave me.
That was around that time we had a lot of Australian authors come to prominence, too. In 1988, Australia had its Bicentenary celebrations (of white people colonisation, but that wasn't really addressed in those days), so there were novelists such as Ruth Park and Mem Fox and, oh, plenty of others who I won't remember until you mention their books and then I'll go, "oh, and her, too!"
1987-1988 was the first year I got an 'adult' card at a library - specifically the local library next to my new school. And it meant I could borrow ANYTHING. Including all the Mills&Boone (Harlequin Romance) a 10 year old could lay hands on. Penny Jordan. Charlotte Lamb. Helen Bianchin. Robyn Donald. Smut and angst and alpha men (and quite frequently alpha-hole men): be still my beating heart!
My first year of high school (year 7, age 12-13) meant a new school and a whole library's worth of reading options! A lot of sci-fi and fantasy, most of the young adult kind - Grinny and You Remember Me, a great deal of nuclear apocalypse fiction (it was the end of the cold war), and grunge-style dysfunctional societies with (now I look back on it) very controlling governments and the concordant youth rebellions against them.
I think those were the precursor to Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, and Patricia Keneally, although the school library also had Danielle Steele, Virginia Andrews, Daphne Maurier, and other 'women's fiction' and you could read them quite freely if you didn't mind people sneering at your book choices. It was an all-girls public school in Sydney metropolitan area, with a focus on advanced and advantaged education for girls. So, I guess, pretty free thinking.
New friend introduced me to Terry Pratchett, and while I didn't really enjoy the first two Rincewind-Twoflower novels, I rather liked Equal Rites and the later series novels. I was also introduced to Douglas Adams, but he was too absurdist for my liking.
The local library provided plenty of additional reading options: Dave Duncan had some unique worldbuilding ideas but the first time I just skimmed it because I was interested in Rap and Inos and they were only together at the start and finish of the quartet. (I read it slower several years later and it was much better.) Tanith Lee's 'Sabella' was kind of intriguing but dark, and Sheri S Tepper's 'Beauty' was dark and confusing.
In class, we studied Shakespeare - A Midsummer's Night's Dream, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear... I took an extra unit of English in my final year and did Hamlet as well. There were classics and oddities - Jane Austen's 'Emma' and A Bridge To Terabithia, The Midwich Cuckoos and Housekeeping. The Once And Future King and The Children Of Green Knowe. (Weirdly, I remember reading the entire 'Green Knowe' series, but I couldn't have told you what it was about until I looked up the Wiki.)
I avoided many of the 'great American classics' - Of Mice And Of Men, Catcher In The Rye, etc. They seemed...boring. One Australian book that caught my attention, though, was The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland. A 'shiralee' is a burden or a responsibility, according to the indigenous Australian language that was referenced in the book, and...well, the ending was kind of heartbreaking if I remember it correctly. I think that was one of the first books I read without either a happy ending or some kind of resolution and it really stuck with me.
M.M.Kaye - specifically 'Shadow of The Moon' was my jam - Alex Randall and Winter de Ballasteros were both spectacularly individual and I adored them. 'Trade Winds' and 'The Far Pavilions' didn't work so well for me, although they were still okay.
I turned more fully to fantasy epics in late high school - Melanie Rawn and David Eddings. I tried to read Robert Jordan but never could get through his style, and I might have read Stephen Lawheads Pendragon Cycle but it didn't stick with me. And there were, of course, still the romance novels. I think the one that sticks best in my brain is Wild Bells To The Wild Sky by Laurie McBain, which I really want to read again to see if it's still as enjoyable. And maybe find her other works and give them a go.
When I was 16, my cousin loaned me Katherine Neville's The Eight which was EPIC mystery/fantasy and apparently has a follow-up novel The Fire which I have never laid hands on. Must do that sometime. I was so disappointed when a friend tried to recommend me another book in the early 00s as a 'similar to' and it wasn't even close...
University and a job meant I had a book budget and I went to town: I bought whole series (Pern, Brother Cadfael, Discworld, David Eddings, Melanie Rawn) and added new authors (Ann Marston, Elizabeth Moon) and finally decided to try out this 'Harry Potter' craze that was happening in kids lit...
Books have an emotional memory for me. As well as the memory of the plot, I recall snippets of where I was while I was reading them, how I felt while reading sections, or fragments of what was happening in my life. So even going through all this has been a fun walk down memory lane for me. :)
james posted about their reading habits in childhood, which was the 70s and 80s.I was a little later, the 80s and 90s. But books hold very particular memories for me, largely because my parents put value in reading and bookishness and so we always had bookshelves and bookshelves and bookshelves, and gifts more often held books than anything else.
The 70s was picture books. Dr Seuss, and others like that. Little Golden Books. Lots of picture books that I no longer remember but which we probably still have. Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Where The Wild Things Are. The Duchess Bakes A Cake. One Eighth of a Muffin.
The 80s was my childhood, and there were books galore.
Charlotte's Web, the early Judy Blumes, The Black Cauldron series, and the Dark is Rising. My sisters and I had The Babysitters Club novels, but we never got into the horsey girl trends. I loved Encyclopaedia Brown's cleverness, and the English Boarding School type novels - Malory Towers and Trebizon. At some point in primary school, I read all the great illustrated classics (it was a whole series) that my primary school library had. It would have been before 1986 when I was 10, because after that I switched school. I read all the legends, mythologies, fairy tales I could find, because they were interesting and curious, then added ghost stories and the paranormal to that because my new school library had those books and I came across them while hanging out in the library before school. The illustrations of one set of books on the paranormal completely freaked me out: the eyes looked straight through you and I loved/hated the shivers it gave me.
That was around that time we had a lot of Australian authors come to prominence, too. In 1988, Australia had its Bicentenary celebrations (of white people colonisation, but that wasn't really addressed in those days), so there were novelists such as Ruth Park and Mem Fox and, oh, plenty of others who I won't remember until you mention their books and then I'll go, "oh, and her, too!"
1987-1988 was the first year I got an 'adult' card at a library - specifically the local library next to my new school. And it meant I could borrow ANYTHING. Including all the Mills&Boone (Harlequin Romance) a 10 year old could lay hands on. Penny Jordan. Charlotte Lamb. Helen Bianchin. Robyn Donald. Smut and angst and alpha men (and quite frequently alpha-hole men): be still my beating heart!
My first year of high school (year 7, age 12-13) meant a new school and a whole library's worth of reading options! A lot of sci-fi and fantasy, most of the young adult kind - Grinny and You Remember Me, a great deal of nuclear apocalypse fiction (it was the end of the cold war), and grunge-style dysfunctional societies with (now I look back on it) very controlling governments and the concordant youth rebellions against them.
I think those were the precursor to Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, and Patricia Keneally, although the school library also had Danielle Steele, Virginia Andrews, Daphne Maurier, and other 'women's fiction' and you could read them quite freely if you didn't mind people sneering at your book choices. It was an all-girls public school in Sydney metropolitan area, with a focus on advanced and advantaged education for girls. So, I guess, pretty free thinking.
New friend introduced me to Terry Pratchett, and while I didn't really enjoy the first two Rincewind-Twoflower novels, I rather liked Equal Rites and the later series novels. I was also introduced to Douglas Adams, but he was too absurdist for my liking.
The local library provided plenty of additional reading options: Dave Duncan had some unique worldbuilding ideas but the first time I just skimmed it because I was interested in Rap and Inos and they were only together at the start and finish of the quartet. (I read it slower several years later and it was much better.) Tanith Lee's 'Sabella' was kind of intriguing but dark, and Sheri S Tepper's 'Beauty' was dark and confusing.
In class, we studied Shakespeare - A Midsummer's Night's Dream, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear... I took an extra unit of English in my final year and did Hamlet as well. There were classics and oddities - Jane Austen's 'Emma' and A Bridge To Terabithia, The Midwich Cuckoos and Housekeeping. The Once And Future King and The Children Of Green Knowe. (Weirdly, I remember reading the entire 'Green Knowe' series, but I couldn't have told you what it was about until I looked up the Wiki.)
I avoided many of the 'great American classics' - Of Mice And Of Men, Catcher In The Rye, etc. They seemed...boring. One Australian book that caught my attention, though, was The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland. A 'shiralee' is a burden or a responsibility, according to the indigenous Australian language that was referenced in the book, and...well, the ending was kind of heartbreaking if I remember it correctly. I think that was one of the first books I read without either a happy ending or some kind of resolution and it really stuck with me.
M.M.Kaye - specifically 'Shadow of The Moon' was my jam - Alex Randall and Winter de Ballasteros were both spectacularly individual and I adored them. 'Trade Winds' and 'The Far Pavilions' didn't work so well for me, although they were still okay.
I turned more fully to fantasy epics in late high school - Melanie Rawn and David Eddings. I tried to read Robert Jordan but never could get through his style, and I might have read Stephen Lawheads Pendragon Cycle but it didn't stick with me. And there were, of course, still the romance novels. I think the one that sticks best in my brain is Wild Bells To The Wild Sky by Laurie McBain, which I really want to read again to see if it's still as enjoyable. And maybe find her other works and give them a go.
When I was 16, my cousin loaned me Katherine Neville's The Eight which was EPIC mystery/fantasy and apparently has a follow-up novel The Fire which I have never laid hands on. Must do that sometime. I was so disappointed when a friend tried to recommend me another book in the early 00s as a 'similar to' and it wasn't even close...
University and a job meant I had a book budget and I went to town: I bought whole series (Pern, Brother Cadfael, Discworld, David Eddings, Melanie Rawn) and added new authors (Ann Marston, Elizabeth Moon) and finally decided to try out this 'Harry Potter' craze that was happening in kids lit...
Books have an emotional memory for me. As well as the memory of the plot, I recall snippets of where I was while I was reading them, how I felt while reading sections, or fragments of what was happening in my life. So even going through all this has been a fun walk down memory lane for me. :)
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A Calculated Risk by the same author is also pretty good.
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I just remembered the book that I got recced: "Labyrinth" by Kate Mosse. I was expecting some serious epic and got what felt like a really watered down reincarnation/restoration story.
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There were quite a few books about aliens contact in there - Moondust (about two kids who win a trip to the moon base and learn that Earth was started by aliens; it was more interesting than that) and this one about an alien life form that somehow communicated with prisms and rainbows because of science, but I don't remember the author.
I was a library monitor in Year 7 and Year 8 (last two years of middle school for USians; first and second form for UK) and so there were many books that passed through my hands and into my bag. Not all of them would have been classed as 'literature' either...
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