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Influential childhood books

dunbardunbar Member Posts: 1,603
in Off-Topic
Rather than derail the 'fantasy books' thread I thought I'd start a new one as I've often wondered how much our early reading influences our lives and leads us towards other, similar books.

For instance, I was weaned on "Winnie-the-Pooh" and "Wind in the Willows" before graduating to the "Swallows and Amazons" series by Arthur Ransome (all about doing wonderful things with the world around you). My first foray into 'fantasy' was "The Wierdstone of Brisingamen" by Alan Garner which really got me thinking outside my immediate world - and that is how my addiction began.
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  • iKrivetkoiKrivetko Member Posts: 934
    Most of them were encyclopaediae
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    I read Chronicles of Narnia when I was 12, and that was definitely one of the series that got me into reading multi-book fantasy epics. I'm not sure if 12 years old really counts as "childhood", though.

    You may not want to include comics for children in the thread, but by far the most influential reading of my childhood, other than Dr. Seuss, was the Harvey Comics series featuring Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch. I learned to read using these comics, and I was also watching Bewitched on TV at the same time. This was about 1969, and Bewitched was still on TV in prime time, *and* on our local station in syndication in the afternoons. There was no such thing as cable TV. I also had a pet dinosaur.

    Actually, just kidding about the dinosaur. But I did have a dinosaur picture book, and I learned to read and pronounce all their names by the time I was five years old. I had a huge collection of dinosaur toys and models, as well.

    Anyway, the combination of Casper, Wendy, and Bewitched got me hooked on supernatural fantasy for life. It was very powerful fuel for my imagination to think of what it would be like to live in a magical world with magical powers. I used fantasy to cope with being bullied, and other peer issues, as well as having to deal with an emotionally abusive stepfather. I could always escape into my fantasy worlds through books and TV, where I was too powerful and omnipotent to be bothered with the kinds of real life stresses that children go through.
  • SquireSquire Member Posts: 511
    I think The Hobbit was actually the first book that really stood out for me.

    Other than Spot the Dog, of course. ;)

    As a teenager, I had to do a lot of reading at school, but some of the books that I remember most were: Of Mice and Men, Catch 22, Lord of the Flies, and A Kestrel for a Knave.
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  • MoradinMoradin Member Posts: 372
    My first book ever was a decorated copy of Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles". I was 8 or younger, I liked it mostly for its nice images. I didn't realize that my dad had written a dedication in the front page, I was just too little to care and appreciate it. When I went back to the book a few years later, I remember crying over those words and over the realization of how much he loves me, even if he seldom shows it. Now that book is one of my most prized possessions because of those words, not really because of the content (which in any case is very good stuff).
    But without a doubt, the most influential book I read in my childhood was The Lord of the Rings. I was 14 the first time I read it and was completely mesmerized by it. About 50% of all the books I read during a given year are fantasy novels, thanks to that one.
  • proccoprocco Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 915
    The first books that I really remember were the Roal Dahl books, especially James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was in maybe 4th grade or so when I read those. A couple of years later I discovered a giant volume of Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination in my parents bookcase. It was from the '20's or '30's I think, and had some really crazy illustrations by Harry Clark. The stories were probably over my head at the time but I would spend hours looking at the illustrations. I still have that book to this day, 30 odd years later.
    Chronicles of Narnia was another big one for me, as was the Hobbit. I also read the first third or so of Fellowship of the Ring a dozen times, but couldn't get past that to read the entire series until years later. I seemed too opaque to me at the time, but I'm glad I finally sat down and read all three books (I just started reading the Hobbit to my 5 year old daughter, but I think it's too much for her just yet.)
    I didn't start really reading fantasy books until middle school, but then devoured every Piers Anthony book I could get my hands on, as well as the first couple of Shanara novels, the Dragonlance books, Robert Lynn Asprin's Myth Adventures, and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff that was pretty forgettable.
    Really, though, I think the books that had the biggest influence on developing my tastes were the Choose Your Own Adventure books, the Fighting Fantasy series, The Lone Wolf series, first edition AD&D manuals, and above all and everything else Steve Jackson's Sorcery! I'm glad to see those game books have been seein a revival lately.
  • ChorazyGlusChorazyGlus Member Posts: 151
    I read Jules Verne a lot when I was around 8. Then I stumbled upon Frederik Pohl in my town's library, then went to Asimov, Bradbury and I ended up with Frank Herbert's Dune. Fell in love with the series, even now I keep track of new additions. I remember at high school we had a mandatory list of reading as part of the final exams; 90% of books I put there were sci-fi and adventures. The looks on the examiner's faces were priceless.
  • BelanosBelanos Member Posts: 968
    I wasn't real big on reading when I was very young, though I did get right into the Hardy Boy books, but by the time I got to high school my nose was always in some book or another. I went through pretty much every sci-fi/fantasy book in our school library. One of my most intent sessions was with Lord of the Rings. I did nothing but read, eat, sleep for about three days until I was finished. My high school English classes were usually very boring for me, as I would have the books assigned for the term read within a couple of weeks of receiving them, then we'd spend the time in class with someone reading them out loud before discussing them. By then I was totally sick of them.
  • YamchaYamcha Member Posts: 486
    My first real books were Stephen King shorts (Nightshift), before that lots of Asterix, Lucky Luke and Donald Duck comics.
  • GreenWyvernGreenWyvern Member Posts: 247
    Nonnahswriter said:

    ...it's not that I hated reading. It's just that all the books I tried to read were too hard for me at the time!...

    I tried reading Terry Pratchett when I was young and hated reading. Didn't end well. I know there are books of his that are suitable for more youthful audiences [Such as "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents"], but uh... I just couldn't focus enough to understand anything that was going on. I wanted to go on the Playstation, or play some 3D Pinball on the computer, my poor feeble mind just didn't understand how to book.
  • CrevsDaakCrevsDaak Member Posts: 7,155
    ChorazyGlus said:

    I read Jules Verne a lot

    Ooooh, I had forgotten about Verne and Salgari ^_^ those were my favorite authors when I was 10 or so, I love adventure stories (but somehow I always forgot about them, crap).
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    It's hard for me to say early on, because I simply can't remember that far back. I do remember reading Hardy Boys books. We had a whole set. I also remember getting fascinated by the Narnia books. I read The Lord of the Rings when I was quite young and I remember being thoroughly engrossed by it. Things kind of went that way from then on. Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Lewis Carol, Weis and Hickman, Steven Brust etc... Somewhere in there I read my first Douglas Adams book and was HOOKED. I was also a big Asimov fan, and H.G. Wells and Kurt Vonnegut followed thereafter.
  • kiwidockiwidoc Member Posts: 1,437
    edited March 2015
    @Tresset That was a bloody awful way to treat someone who really understood what they were reading. I am actually a really fast reader (read LOTR in 3 days, and read The Robe in one night - didn't sleep much, but thats how I read). BUT I have never, ever managed to wade my way all the way through War and Peace. Too many characters and too many names for each character. I kept forgetting who the hell was who. They should have let you loose in a public library, not the school one, and let you choose your own books.

    @ChorazyGlus YEAH DUNE! I didn't mention Dune because I read that as a teenager, but God I lved the series. I even loved the movie - as weird and flawed as it was. I have just reread the series again - it's an old friend I keep coming back to over and over.

    @GreenWyvern try Pratchett again. If you read the books roughly in the order of writing it is much easier to follow the characters and whats going on, and the jokes make much more sense. It is worth it, as he is one of the greatest writers of our age ... just read the obituaries other writers are giving him.
  • TeflonTeflon Member, Translator (NDA) Posts: 515
    DK eyewitness books, I liked book about armour and bones.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    @Tresset - WOW, that must have been horrible. I mean I guess I can understand the logic, to challenge a young mind that they perceived as just budding into flower as far as the world of literature is concerned, but to be so brutal and blunt-fisted about the whole thing is just terrible. My condolences. No one should be put through that.

    I remember personally that my final senior paper, I was required to 'Challenge' myself and was forbidden from reading the stuff that I love as subject matter. Ultimately I was basically Assigned Vonnegut, which I hadn't read up till that point. I fought against it and absolutely refused to like it, let alone embrace it as I have done in later years. I think that if I hadn't been strong armed into selecting that particular book, and instead had been encouraged, I might have appreciated it as I do today.
  • ChorazyGlusChorazyGlus Member Posts: 151
    @kiwidoc Sorry for late reply; I got a new job etc etc;) Yeah, Lynch's movie was kinda weird (watched it again month ago or so), but I loved the cast, so many famous names and they really played their part well. Especially Baron Harkonnen's scenes were really how I imagined a Harkonnen would act.
    I watched the miniseries (2000's); now cast was really good, CGI looks great even now, but somehow it lacked the "raw" feeling of Lynch's film, I mean everything was too smooth and too little gore. But hey; it could've been done much worse.
  • wubblewubble Member Posts: 3,156
    edited May 2015
    Biff chip and kipper! (standard reading for kids throughout the uk when they're just starting to read)

    I read quite a lot of Roald dahl and Dick King Smith, I can't remember the actual books but I definitely read some from those authors.

    I remember doing group reading in primary school (in groups of 5 with a teacher) which was supposed to support everyone while they read, all that did was slow me down. I remember the school didn't get us to read any decent stuff (tolkien etc) though I did have a library card. The library serves around five villages and was almost closed down while I was 10 or something due to council funding being withdrawn, My local council hates my area because we're all supposedly rich (and don't vote their way) so we don't deserve a library (and plenty of other stuff but I'm going off on a tangent here), fortunately it's now volunteer run. At secondary school they gave us boring drivel that most of the nation probably gets and had to read it as a class (and got told off if we went skipping ahead). This led to me being rather disenfranchised with reading until my dad started encouraging me to go through some of his enormous collection of sci fi and fantasy. I'm now back to reading properly

    I just wish that schools would encourage and support kids to read and not just shove supposedly good books in their faces, If they actually stocked a nice range of books we'd be able to fall in love with reading and would probably learn a damn sight better than being forced to read something a stuffy old professor somewhere thinks we should read. Hell I'd probably even enjoy shakespeare if I'd been allowed to read it my own way.

    Sorry for the rant. :)
  • LadyRhianLadyRhian Member Posts: 14,694
    I read a lot of series fiction as a child. Nancy Drew, Tom Swift (I have particular memories of them drilling into the Earth's Molten Core through Antarctica), The Bobbsey Twins… But I also remember being into, or at least reading Superhero stuff like Sub-Mariner (I can sing that line from the animated series, "Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner is the King of the Deep!"), Fantastic Four and so on. Someone at a yard sale was selling books with those cheap-y plastic records inside, that you had to hold down with 4 quarters or they'd skip all over the place… I bought the Superhero ones they had. I am trying to remember what else was big back then, but that was a LONG time ago! (Early 70's) The earliest book I remember reading was about Samson and Delilah. And it had that horrible "Torn tissue paper" look artwork common to books in the early 70's. I was… 4 or 5 at the time?
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    I remember reading the entire series of The Hardy Boys. I'd read them pretty much in a single day. I also remember devouring The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (and the subsequent books).
  • kiwidockiwidoc Member Posts: 1,437
    ChorazyGlus said:

    @kiwidoc Sorry for late reply; I got a new job etc etc;) Yeah, Lynch's movie was kinda weird (watched it again month ago or so), but I loved the cast, so many famous names and they really played their part well. Especially Baron Harkonnen's scenes were really how I imagined a Harkonnen would act.
    I watched the miniseries (2000's); now cast was really good, CGI looks great even now, but somehow it lacked the "raw" feeling of Lynch's film, I mean everything was too smooth and too little gore. But hey; it could've been done much worse.

    I think Lynch's Dune did muck up the story telling, but it caught the sense of epic style and emotion I got from the book. The designs were truly excellent - I loved the neo historic look costumes, and the over the top rococo decorations on everything - they made for a sense of history behind the current storyline. I watched a fan edit version of Dune with loads of deleted scenes that made for a more coherent story. Some of the scenes had no post production so they were pretty rough, but it still worked. Sadly I can't remember where I found it :(
  • NimranNimran Member Posts: 4,875
    When it comes to books I read when I was little, only one series of books really stands out to me, and that series made me really interested in fantasy books and novels. It was called Broken Sky by Chris Wooding, and I read them all through grade school starting when I had found the first book at my school's book fair in 3rd grade. While everyone else read more well-known books, I was reading those, and I loved them so much.

    In middle school, I read R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, and everyone thought I was a loser for reading during recess, but I didn't care. I loved fantasy, and those books sparked my love even more. That's when I decided to write my own books, though only for my personal enjoyment. I've been developing the same world that I had started writing about since I was three years old, but the inspiration of these two great writers finally convinced me to put my world into words.

    During high school, I started sharing short stories about my world with my friends and teachers, and their feedback was largely positive, especially from the teachers. I found my all-time favorite book during this part of my life: Storm Thief by Chris Wooding, the same guy who wrote the Broken Sky books. I consider it one of the best pieces of literature that I have read, and I have read quite a few, though my tastes might still be questionable since I never could finish reading the Lord of the Rings novels.
  • NonnahswriterNonnahswriter Member Posts: 2,520
    Nimran said:

    I found my all-time favorite book during this part of my life: Storm Thief by Chris Wooding, the same guy who wrote the Broken Sky books.

    Storm Thief is excellent. :)
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