When I was 11, my mother insisted that the local library give me free reign to all sections. (Yay Mum!). I read loads of history and science fiction with occasional forays into other areas.
Mr God, This is Anna by Finn was one that struck my eleven year old brain and stayed there. The characters’ exploration maths and science fascinated me. Nearly forty years on, I still read this book. I’m far more aware of the theological side but even as (or perhaps because I am) an atheist, it moves me. Their breadth of understandaing and lack of judgement seems very modern for a pre-WWII book.
The Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K LeGuin. Loved it as a teen, picked it up for my own teen daughter and waqs amazed at how well it stood up. I do love the later trilogy as well.
All of** PG Wodehouse** and Agatha Christie. Never took them seriously as a kid, still my go to reads for light entertainment.
Pratchett, a newbie at only 20 years - bought the first Discworld on the strength of the funny cover when it was published, still love them now.
What about you?
Do you love them for the same reasons (Earthsea) or different reasons (Mr God)?
What are the books that have stayed on your bookshelf and why?
She appears to have left the world of low fantasy behind and gone for historical mysteries, either New Orleans of the 1830s in the Benjamin January series or Vampires in Edwardian England with James Asher.
Don’t care. Her stories are always tightly plotted with fantastic characters and amazingly well researched details of time, place, and social milieu.
Steven Brust. I’ve been reading the Vlad Taltos (and various ancillary) novels… gah, I don’t know when I first picked up Jhereg, but I’m guessing middle school. So that makes it something like 20ish years. I’ve also read and greatly enjoyed a couple of his other novels, like To Reign in Hell.
Rex Stout. The Nero Wolfe TV show was on A&E (back when they were Entertaining, and played things that resemembled, in some small way, Art) in 2001-2002, so I’ve been reading those for ten years.
Richard Adams, or rather Watership Down. My teacher gave it to me in fifth grade. I read it every few years still.
Assuming you mean authors I liked when I was much younger, Jack London is at the top of my list. Many people think his work is just for children, but I still get immense pleasure from reading him today.
I remember reading To Build a Fire when I was in eighth grade, and it just blew me away!
It means pretty much what you interperet it to mean, books you liked as a kid, or books you liked a long time ago - While the others I posted were all discovered when I was a kid, I was an adult when I fist read Pratchett but it was over twenty years ago; my life is completely different, but I get the same level of enjoyment from reading his books.
So, if you don’t mind, when was 8th grade for you?
Bertrand Brinley and Donald J Sobol (the subjects of an earlier thread). I discovered the Mad Scientists’ Club and Encyclopedia Brown books in sixth and seventh grade and didn’t stop until I had read them all.
The same goes for Clifford B Hicks, the creator of the Alvin Fernald series.
It’s been decades since I last read them, but I suspect I’d enjoy re-reading the Betsy and Henry Huggins books by Carolyn Haywood and Beverly Cleary today.
Later additions: Kurt Vonnegut, Winston Graham, Robert Graves, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Robert R McCammon (fiction); John Keegan (nonfiction).
L. M. Montgomery. Her characters are so sweet and likable. they live in a lovely, cleaned up world that I would like to live in. the bad parts of humanity are there, just glossed over and pushed aside so she can focus on the parts of humanity that cheer a reader up on a bad day. I still love reading them as an adult, although her short stories tend to run together when read as a group. they work better read in small chunks.
Definitely introduce him/her to Robert R McCammon. He started out writing scary novels (Mine! will have you on the edge of your seat), but I actually prefer his other works, especially Gone South.
I may be weird… wait, let us stipulate ahead of time that I am, but I still like quite a bit of Mr. Robert Heinlein.
Yes, he was quite a sexist guy, but still some of his work has held up quite well.
Yeah, I’ll let the kid discover Heinlein for herself, she’s resonably fond of Asimov’s foundation series. I never found Heinlein’s YA books all that great, but I’d been reading SF (Asimov, Clarke etc) for years beforehand.
I still remember, as a kid, biking to the local library and getting lost in the stacks. Somehow I’d always end up in the darkened corner under the Science Fiction sign. I’d sprawl out on the floor between two shelves, reading Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and my favorite, Ray Bradbury. But, wait, what’s this? Dandelion Wine… it’s not SciFi, it’s… nostalgia. I didn’t know the word, but I knew I was looking back in time, feeling what it was like to be a kid back in the early 20th century.
I still pull my old paperback copy out, and look back in time… exact same feeling I had fifty years ago.
I loved L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” series as a kid, and recently re-read the original for the first time in over 20 years. I was pleasantly surprised at how nicely told it was.
Christie, yes (never read Wodehouse). Her books are always well-plotted and entertaining.
Larry McMurtry hasn’t disappointed me yet, and I’ve been reading him for almost 40 years. Pat Barker is consistently good – about 20 years with her. I have about 30 years with George R. R. Martin – he’s holding up just fine.
Childhood – I re-read The Railway Children last week and felt like I was nine years old again.
Sweet, I used to have The Railway Children, in a gorgeous big illustrated edition.
Heh, not asking for both butter *and *jam.
You’ve also reminded me of The Secret Garden, which I must introduce the kid to.
Rodgers01, I loved Stephen Fry’s introduction to a short story collection: (paraphrasing) ‘You are about to read Wodehouse for the very first time? You lucky thing.’ Get yourself down to a library. I had an Ex who kept insisting that I’d never understand the sophisticated humour of “WOADhus” so it wasn’t till we’d split up that I made the connection to my childhood comedy favourite “Woodhouse”. Enjoyable on many levels, just a brilliant satire of the times.
Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light still breaks my heart every time I pick it up; I also still love The Young Unicorns and A Wrinkle In Time, though not quite as much.
