Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books
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The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander. The ending book, The High King, is still one of my favorite books ever.
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Depending on how early childhood we're talking (in addition to the ones @Aria mentioned above, which we'd been talking about...)
I read The Hobbit really, really young, and I feel like that may have left some impact. I tried to get into LotR after, but I bounced off and it took a long time before I launched myself back in wholeheartedly--I was either near or in my teens. (The difference there is stark.)
One of the series that was very dear to me as a kid was the Animorphs books. They came out on an assembly line (monthly, I think) and I ate them up as fast as they made them. Applegate dropped the whole series at the start of quarentine; I've seen a few people look back at them, and checked out a couple as they go.
One of the comments someone made on a "read and comment" thing was "these books are for children; I'm sure there isn't going to be any disembowelment." I'm not sure if they were joking or genuinely unprepared. Holy hell this children's book series about tweens fighting space aliens was dark.
(Tobias was always my favorite; never quite forgave Ax for getting half his books. Looking back, I'm kinda surprised it wasn't Marco, but nope: sadboy hawk was My Guy.)
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Oh man - yes. The Beggar Queen and its sequels is what really sticks in my mind about Alexander though. Just
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@insomniac7809 said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
(Tobias was always my favorite; never quite forgave Ax for getting half his books. Looking back, I'm kinda surprised it wasn't Marco, but nope: sadboy hawk was My Guy.)
Tobias was my first fictional crush.
Didn't matter he was a hawk. -
@Quinn said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander. The ending book, The High King, is still one of my favorite books ever.
I picked up one of the middle books of the series, not realizing it was a series, and fell in love with it. Also a book that insomniac and I were talking about tonight, only to realize we've lived in all the same towns the author did!
Another one I loved when I was little, though I probably would not recommend it today, was a book called Born Different by Frederick Drimmer, which told the stories of several side show performers -- Joseph Merrick (aka "The Elephant Man"), Chang and Eng Bunker (where the phrase "Siamese" twins came from), etc.
Considering that this book was published in, like.... the late 80s? I can definitely say that it is, uhhhh, super not "PC" -- especially not by current standards-- which is why I would hesitate very much to suggest it. But it told the story of their lives as children before their fame, their time as performers, how some of them overcame a physical limitation, careers and families they built after retirement from the touring circuit, and just.... generally presented them as people who happened to have this thing about them that was interesting and different. I read it when I was young enough that it positively affected my perception of disability and, being that I was a kid from a pretty messed up home, I really connected with the idea that the world could be harsh and cruel, but that most of the people portrayed (definitely not Joseph Merrick, eesh, that is a heartbreaking story) could have good lives and find people to connect with and love despite that.
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@Quinn said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander. The ending book, The High King, is still one of my favorite books ever.
I came to this thread of post about the Prydain books. I distinctly remember reading them weirldy out of order (starting with the last one which I did not understand was part of a series initially, then the second, then the first and third, then the fourth) because of limited copies in my school library. I've got copies of them at home now that I occasionally reread (in order).
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@Auspice said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
Tobias was my first fictional crush.
Didn't matter he was a hawk.Oh, incidentally: Marco talking about Jake in the "introduce everyone at the start of the book" reads really differently to me now than they did back in the day.
"Rachel is a girl who is pretty. Ax is an alien, who can morph into a human; the girls say he is good-looking when he does but I am a guy so I have no way of knowing. Jake is my best friend; he has a strong jaw and the sort of presence that always makes him seem bigger than he is and somehow makes you sure that the decisions he's making are the right ones. I'd never tell him this, but I trust him absolutely and there is nothing I wouldn't do for him. Cassie was also there."
Like, this could be an accidental inverse of r/menwritingwomen but I think it might be on purpose.
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I actually recently reread them. I remember hating Taran Wanderer as a kid because Eilonwy isn't in it at all but as an adult...wow. It's up there as one of the better ones in the series.
@Aria Weirdly enough when I was in high school I babysat for this family I became really close to. One day I was reading one of those books when they came home and the mom said, "Lloyd Alexander...did he live in Pennsylvania?" and I said, "Yes." And she said, "I lived across the street from a Lloyd Alexander when I was young. I used to go over and he'd play his violin for me when I was a little girl. Did that one play the violin?"
I've never been so jealous.
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Ender's Game, The Dark is Rising series, Anne of Green Gables series, Caddie Woodlawn, Harriet the Spy, all of Judy Blume's books.
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Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. It was the first sci-fi/fantasy adventure book I ever read that had a girl as the main character.
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A Gathering of Gargoyles, by Meredith Ann Pierce. The second in a very strange trilogy, it's my favorite of them all, although the whole trilogy is worth reading. It's a very melancholy and dreamy sort of book, with fun science fantasy sort of things.
This Time of Darkness, by H.M. Hoover. YA dystopia before dystopia was cool. The protagonist lives in a decaying, underground city and hooks up with the weirdo in her class to seek the world outside.
Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper. But not the novel; I didn't read that until later. But they made a ridiculously beautiful kids' book version of it called The Adventures of Little Fuzzy that was one of my favorite books as a kid. Although I'm still not sure how it got made, considering one of the adorable fuzzy aliens gets straight up murdered by the bad guys.
The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley. The companion/prequel to The Blue Sword mentioned up above. I read this one first, and so I loved it more.
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Oh man. I first read that on audio book, and it has never been the same just in print. So it remains the only audio e book I have ever purchased.
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@faraday The Hero and the Crown was the one I ended up reading first, and I loved it madly, and it's probably my favorite book. My mother was an English teacher then, and she ended up teaching that book to her middle schoolers, and I was a snot that she'd ruined my copy. When my ex dumped me right before our wedding, I made an interstate move listening to that book on tape.
I have read a lot of other McKinley books, but that one may forever be my favorite.
I have the Chronicles of Prydain on my Kindle, and when I am bored or maybe sad, I go read those. They never get old.
I've read the Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper) so many times that I have the poems memorized. You know, just in case.
The Ordinary Princess (M.M. Kaye) was another one of my beloveds, as was Cricket and the Emperor's Son (Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth). My copy of The Owlstone Crown (X. J. Kennedy) is in the hands of some friends' children.
Ooh, and Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series has largely held up. As has L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz. But man, those are so much weirder than I recalled as a child.
I have a playlist: http://musoapbox.net/topic/91/tributary-s-playlist
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@Tributary said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
I have read a lot of other McKinley books, but that one may forever be my favorite.
Yeah I liked Hero and the Crown too, and the Robin Hood one she did. Blue Sword was the first I found, though, and my favorite.
@Quinn's comment about Lloyd Alexander reminded me of another series I liked: The Illyrian Adventure and its sequels, also by Alexander.
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The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. I memorized the whole poem for a 6th grade reading project and I still remember it.
And a Swiftly Tilting Planet was my favorite L'Engle book. I've got the poem from that one memorized as well.
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Ender's Game is high up there. Never really got into the rest of the series, but loved the first.
Also, I have been trying to remember The Blue Sword for years. XD Thank you guys!
Another that really stuck with me when I was young: Island of the Blue Dolphins.
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@Derp said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
V.C. Andrews - Flowers in the Attic Series: Look, I was a pretty advanced reader and I devoured this series. Even the prequel that everyone else hated.
Nice. When I was kid my family went on vacation and I took 2 books along, Red Dragon (the prequel to Silence of the Lambs) and It. My mother was horrified that I was reading books well beyond my 11-year-old sensibilities, so confiscated them.
When we got to the cabin we were staying at, someone had left behind Flowers In The Attic and My Sweet Audrina and I read those instead. She didn't have a clue about them.
I definitely learned something from those books.
ETA - Meaningful childhood reading list:
The Stand - Unabridged and Illustrated Version
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Princess Bride
The Little Drummer Girl
Discworld series through Hogfather (and then it changed enough that I didn't like it anymore) -
I didn’t grow up in a household with lots of books. My mother had one of those 356 stories and poems books that she would read to us every night but beyond that it was mostly library books. The first one I recall blowing my mind was the Rats of Nimh. There was also a book I read while still in primary school that I don’t recall the name of. It was a high fantasy one about a warrioress who would add a thin single braid to her hair for every person she killed. It had a cover heavy with purple. For a long time I wore a thin braid in my hair to remind myself to be badass.
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@RavenGirl said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:
I didn’t grow up in a household with lots of books. My mother had one of those 356 stories and poems books that she would read to us every night but beyond that it was mostly library books. The first one I recall blowing my mind was the Rats of Nimh. There was also a book I read while still in primary school that I don’t recall the name of. It was a high fantasy one about a warrioress who would add a thin single braid to her hair for every person she killed. It had a cover heavy with purple. For a long time I wore a thin braid in my hair to remind myself to be badass.
You talking about the Chronicles of Kencyrath? Protagonist named Jame?
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Did no one else read Shel Silverstein or Roald Dahl??? Paper Bag Princess ftw. Also, back then 'Sick' (by Silverstein) was just funny but now I truly get it.
