Reading your parent's books

Hi! I am a horrible but devoted stalker of this forum because I love the books and the civilily and camaraderie shown on this board.
A thought struck me today:

Did any of you ever read from your parents' book collection? Especially when you were younger?

I find the urge to collect my favorite books when I as a child and young adult. I'm hopeful that my kids one day would enjoy the books that I once did. I'm afraid I might be romantic and that it wouldn't appeal to a kid just because they belonged to the parent. I'd be heartbroken if they never picked up my copy of Anne of Green Gables or a single part of the Roald Dahl box set.

Did you read your parent's books?

It skipped a generation in my family. The books I admired and the books that inspired me to join Folio were my grandfather's Heritage and Nonesuch collections.

My parents were not readers by a long shot. The only thing I can remember they had was some Harold Robbins and Erma Bombeck, which I never saw them reading.

In fact my whole family are not book readers. I didn't discover books at home. I discovered books at the library.

I did, I grew up reading my parents' library, especially once I was in my teens. Nothing was censored (although in retrospect, I almost wish some things were--Harold Robbins, I'm looking at you!)

It's probably easier to get kids to read children's books you like, you can simply give them to them at an early age. And children's classics have proven their longevity and appeal.

#3

Ha--I didn't see your post before! That's quite a cross-post.

>4 LolaWalser: ha, ha, that is some humorous sychronicity.

I developed my own taste in literature early, but I do owe my mother a big vote of thanks for buying me, and reading to me, Marvel comics - from age 5 to when I could manage them on my own (about 18 months later, I should think).

She really hates super hero comics.

When I was young, I read a lot of comic books and (of course) Mad magazine. My Mom read books frequently, but not the classics by any means. Erma Bombeck was one of her favorites.

The book that I finally picked up and read, and through which I discovered that reading could be fun, was Mario Puzo's "The Godfather". When the movie came out, I knew details of the story that others didn't, and that made me feel good. Not exactly Tolstoy or Homer, but I was young and had begun a journey which eventually led me to Tolstoy and Homer.

My parents weren't readers either, other than the newspaper and magazines. The only book I remember was one I found behind the television. It was Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury, particularly memorable because of the racy 1950s cover art of a lady in a long, green gown open almost to her navel. That was quite shocking in our household.

My mother's bookshelf tended towards stuff like Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, Rosemary's Baby and anything by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner.

I am devoted to my paternal granddad's library, even creating a "Legacy Library" collection in my catalogue for the books of his I now own. He's introduced me to James Branch Cabell and Dmitri Merezhkovsky, and I'm looking forward to reading other titles & authors new to me. Wish I'd known of his tastes earlier, and made the effort to connect to him by talking about reading. I feel an affinity for him I never had when he was around, and I wonder how solid that affinity is.

I hope my adoration of book culture doesn't skip a generation, but I'm trying hard not to push anything on my kids.

Valley Of the Dolls...I remember a furtive read of that from my parents' bookshelf! Also Portnoy's Complaint, and, less furtively, Leon Uris and Agatha Christie. Still alive in their 80s, they now borrow books from me....Every now and then I have to go and retrieve them. Then next time they call they borrow the same books because "we've never read that one before". The books they borrow are a little less "racy" then the ones they read in their 40s!

My parents read a lot, mainly books from the public library. My mother loved Nevil Shute, I remember, and Wilbur Smith. Some of the titles I recall reading from her personal books: A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor, Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple, something by Naomi Jacob (I don't recognize any of the titles on wiki and thought it was Susan Crowther but can't find any reference to it); I also read in secret Lady Chatterley's Lover which I discovered hidden away at the back of the bookcase wrapped in brown paper. I have some of my mother's childhood books, too, such as Lorna Doone, What Katy Did and so on.

My parents were curious because I never saw them read ever. However they encouraged reading in us all the time. Going to the library was a weekly occurance. I never noticed that they never checked out a single book!

There's something awfully fun about reading a book you're not supposed to, isn't there. I have a book called "The Victorian Sampler" just filled with sex stories. I hide it toward the back, though the cover is rathr innocuous.

OMG, how in the world could I have forgotten Agatha Christie. My mother LOVED (still does I guess) Agatha Christie!!

She also had Portnoy's Complaint and the 'sexy' books (those were hidden of course) all of which I of course devoured.

More history books from my grandfather's collection. But books were always given to me when I was really young and I just developed a fascination with them and the concept of reading in itself. I remember the wonder and enjoyment I felt from getting a parcel of brand new school books at he beginning of each school year. Just loved their smell, feel and look. As for reading them? hmmm... I was only 8!

I'm another whose grandparents were more directly influential than my parents, neither of whom were great readers. I was born during World War II, and as my father (military memoirs & Teach Yourself poultry farming) was a career soldier I saw very little of him until 1952, so I and my mother (gardening and Mazo de la Roche) lived with his parents. My grandfather's reading was what you'd expect of an Anglican clergyman (i.e, to a small boy, v. dull!), but being Irish he revered fine language and taught me that the King James Bible was more to be valued for its imaginative than its religious qualities. My grandmother, on the other hand, adored true-life crime (the sleazier and gorier the better - her bible was the News of the World). She also enjoyed and read me detective stories, so Holmes, Poirot, Ellery Queen, Father Brown, locked room mysteries, etc, etc were among my earliest memories, even if I frequently had no idea what was going on!
But in the end, it was finding my father's childhood collection of RLS, Richmal Crompton (Just William) and P. G. Wodehouse that turned me into a lifelong reader.

As for passing on my love of reading to my children, my daughter screams if I ever sell a book because she already considers my library to be hers - she'll be getting them when I pass on. My son reads sporadically now, but did read Moby Dick shortly after turning 7.

My father only read technical journals, etc., but my mother had a bookcase full of hardcovers, most of which were historical.

She had a bunch of Thomas Costain books (such as The Conquerers, The Magnificent Century, The Last Plantagenets, as well as his historical fiction books), and an entire set of Durant's The Story of Civilization!

I recall 'reading' her book, The Wings of the Dove by Henry James before I could read (I think I held it upside down!) but have never warmed up to any of his works.

My mother also had Ben Hur, which I finally read as an adult.

I read all her Erma Bombeck and Peg Bracken books, too.

And I read my first Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea from her shelves.

I read a lot of my parents' libraries. My father in particular was a major influence: it was from him that I developed my love of Sherlock Holmes, Hornblower and London history, from which so much other reading has since derived. The one thing I gained from my mother reading-wise, was a love of Georgette Heyer's Regency novels - she had a full set of paperbacks, and I ripped through them then, and am rereading many now.

I was very lucky in having parents who read although, with hindsight, I can't remember much about what they read. Throughout their lives we shared and borrowed books from each other and when Mum died I 'adopted' as much of their library as I had room for. Both my 'kids' (in their 30s) now use me as a lending library even though our tastes frequently diverge and I have fond hopes that one day they will inherit and read all the books I have loved, though I hope most of them (the books, not the children) will be very old and yellowed by that time. I have instructed them (the children, not the books) that they are to take whatever they can and distribute the rest between my dear reading friends although, to be honest, if they chuck the whole lot on a bonfire I won't know or care and they are aware of that too.

Even books that wouldn't necessarily have been my choice became eventually interesting because my parents had owned them (as did books I inherited from grandparents)) simply because I believe our books say so much about who we are so I believe that passing on your library to your nearest and dearest is a lovely thing to do.

What's all this with a bonfire in the same sentence with a book. I just don't get it - it's not funny and makes me always nervous. I cannot understand why on earth anyone who reads books would utter such :-)

>22 ironjaw:

Please don't shudder too much. Most book burning is done for practicalities rather than ideologies. Still....recycling is better.

#22 I must add it's not something I would ever do but once I'm dead I'm not going to care even about book burning :-)

I remember my Dad's books well - which included rows of the orange paperback penguins covering most of the male classics (Conrad, Hardy, etc). I had to discover the female authors on my own.

He also has a first edition Dickens on his shelf that he bought when at Cambridge for 5 shillings in the 50s. I have my eye on that one.

My siblings and I must have perused every book in my parants library, and it was a very mixed bag. Books about other cultures, on verious religious beliefs (we were told to work it out for ourselves just dont come home and preach to them, lol), science, the weird and wonderful, Silmarillion, Cosmos by Carl Sagan, National Geographic, all types of Readers Digest, and the list gos on. my parents never got to finish school never lone high school and books of any kind where a treasure and you respected them, so its with out saying that we still all have our little golden books, as well as a love of reading, and are shamed and distraugt if we cause them harm in any way.

Both of my parents taught French and English. When I grew up, most of the books in our library were either British literature or French....and usually ratty paperbacks used in the classroom. I remember wanting so much to understand "Candide", Proust, Chaucer, Flaubert et al. I was more interested in the books on the top shelf like When I Say No, I Feel Guilty and Everything You Always Wanted to know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. There was also my mother's well read copy of Peyton Place that always seemed to be "put away" whenever I was interested in picking it up. I am very thankful to my parents for instilling a curiosity about books at an early age. Reading was encouraged because it was FUN. That's a gift that obviously has served me well in the last 41 years.

This is a bit embarrassing .The first "real" hardback novel I read was.... the Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth. around six¿?; Of course it was years after that that I got a clue about what was going on. But I still recall the atmosphere. I don't miss censorship but I could have done better that trying to be precocious; Un corsaire de treize ans by Charles Geniaux and Dick Turpin by Charles Harrison (that was better.) Notre Dame de Paris by Victor hugo( completely at sea) .Some works by a Alvaro de Laiglesia that passed for "daring" in the last years of a right-wing dictatorship...Captain's Daughter by Pushkin..(uh!)

Fortunately someone took me to the library

Those were left next door by former cousins, uncles and who knows.. My parents read the local paper, dad a contemplative thoughtful type: but more keen on sightseeing in the outdoors.They where encouraging of my reading habit though.(as it took some years to cause space problems)

My father had (still has, although even larger now of course!) a huge library of philosophy and theology, but I have to admit I ignored that collection of delights in favour of the fiction in the house; I particularly remember reading my way through the collections of Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, Len Deighton and Taylor Caldwell from the age of about ten onwards. There were also random classics around like Wuthering Heights, Barchester Towers, Lorna Doone, Treasure Island, The Last of the Mohicans etc.

When I was ill as a small child and had to spend long, boring days on the sofa (probably rather more trying for my mother than they were for me...), my chief diversion was always reading the spines of the books and imagining what might be inside. I must have had good eyes in those days, or maybe I only read the ones with the biggest print, but I can still remember quite a few...

I was given a lot of my father's children's books from the 1930s and 40s, most of which were actually 19th century classics (Captain Marryatt, Charles Kingsley, Dickens, Scott). And popular authors like Wodehouse, Dornford Yates and John Buchan. Like several others above, I grew up in a two-teacher family — one of English, one of German, which probably explains a lot — and was encouraged to browse freely pretty much as soon as I was past the sticky-fingers stage. There was a lot of 20th century British stuff - D.H. Lawrence, Orwell, Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Laurie Lee, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow, etc., most of it in terrible paperbacks with misleadingly unsuitable-for-children covers, but a few Folios here and there. Having to teach classic novels all the time, my father never read them for pleasure, though there were plenty of ink-stained copies of Tom Jones and The mill on the Floss about if you wanted one. German was more limited, but I did get to read Böll, Kästner, Wihelm Busch, Siegfried Lenz, etc.

Poetry old and new was encouraged, and occasionally an actual poet would come for tea, if it was my parents' turn to feed the speaker. They(*) were usually rude and smoked a lot (but then, it was the sixties...).

My parents and I still read each other's books during visits, although lately there's been a worrying tendency for them to sneak their unwanted books onto my shelves when they think I'm not looking...

(*) The poets, not my parents!

My parents had quite a few books, though less than I do now. I specifically remember borrowing The Silence of the Lambs because my dad told me I couldn't go see the movie when it came out until I had read the book. I duly read the book, aged 12. My parents still wouldn't let me go see it in the cinema (vastly unfair, I thought!) but watched it with me on video when it came out.

A few months later, my dad bet me that I couldn't read The Name of the Rose. I'm certain that he knew exactly what my reaction would be (immediately sit myself down and plough through the entire thing over a week with the aid of a dictionary) and how proud I would be when I had finished it.

I enjoyed reading both, and they made me feel very grown up in a way that Dickens never had! But I'm sure I didn't fully comprehend many of the themes in either book until much, much later.

Every single one of them :) Even the boring ones -- they were handy and I like reading. Besides - I would not have read a lot of authors if I was skipping books.

My father doesn't have much of a library - too busy working - and Mom's books always seemed boring...but I read *tons* of books from her classroom's library. (She's an elementary school teacher.) Does that count? :-p As I grew older, my tastes grew in such an opposite direction from her interests that we very rarely share books.

Yes, one does end up reading a lot of peculiar stuff in that way, doesn't one? And generations get connected through classics and bestsellers of decades past in a way that's highly unlikely to happen otherwise. What in the world would have made me read Giovanni Papini if not for my grandpa's collection, or where would I've found that totally forgotten book of Daudet's, Jacques (just to see what the touchstone fishes up--nope, not it), or some frighteningly sexy book by... Erica Jong, perhaps? with "parachute" in the title, and so on and on... And this was pre-Internet and online shopping and instant information on everything! Just you and this amazing mysterious more or less random collection of books.

When I was young, my dad was the reader in the family (other than me) and his favorite author is Hemingway. I hate to say that I purposefully avoided reading Hemingway for the longest time because my dad and I batted heads constantly and I didn't want to like something he liked... I've since grown up and realized that was ridiculous, so now I've been making an effort to go back and read them. So far, I'm angry with myself for avoiding books that I know enjoy. The other author he loves is Louis L'Amour, and I just don't enjoy westerns.

My mom was not a reader until about 2 years ago. We have EXTREMELY different tastes in books- she reads a lot of Christian fiction that her girlfriends share with her and those are FAR from my taste. Occasionally she will read one of my books- she's just starting the Amelia Peabody series- but mostly she thinks what I read is weird.

I was never encouraged to read. My dad was smart, but in the Mr. Bennet sense. He never encouraged me to read even though he was a highly educated surgeon.

I started reading Dostoevsky in year 10 and never looked back. Started collecting folio society books a year ago. I am hoping to amass a relatively decent library for my children, if I can ever find a wife. haha.

I know how you feel d-b. I feel silly even thinking about the literary preferences of people that don't even exist. But I'd like to think it's "don't even exist yet!"

My Mum had some Reader's Digest books that she subscribed to but I think I only ever read one of them (and dipped in and out of Robert Burns) - they could account for enjoying the look, and feel, of quality hardback books. I have always loved reading and still remember being told that I could read silently (eidetic memory). I still have all my childhood books, in my parents home, in a bookcase that my Papa (Grandfather) handmade.

I have just received my first FS order and tomorrow night I will read The Little mermaid to my 2 year old daughter whose first words were "a book". I taught English for 5 years in Asia before moving back to the U.K. so if her interest in books continue I will be able to help her learn to read.

>1 sambadoll84: What civility and camaraderie are you talking about. Its the next forum over. lol. Just kidding.

I have never been a summer person, even as a child, so I would spend the hot, humid days down in our cold, dark cellar, trying very hard to ignore the spiders in the corners, and would read through my father's old books. I remember one day him coming down to get some sort of tool in his workshop section and found me immersed in a paperback copy of The Man Who Fell to Earth. It was black with a few skeletons on the front, and since I loved Halloween so much, it caught my eye. I was about 1/2 way through and he just looked so surprised at me. I was about 9 years old. So my Barbie's were stuff in the corner and I found my true love! Books! Never looked back after realizing there was an intriguing world out there beyond our Fairy-tale collection and Reader's Digest condensed versions of classics,which I had already devoured!

>41 Lady19thC:

Did you then begin having conversations about (some of) his books you read?

I never did with my parents, who had many books about but never seemed ever to be reading them. I dearly hope I will have conversations with my kids about what they read. I've made an effort to be interested in what they find interesting, and we've had some good discussions so far ... mostly about books I've read aloud to them. We shall see if it continues.

My parents were great collectors ... of terribly bound paperbacks. Probably my most formative book-collecting moment came when I was 11 or 12, eagerly reading The Two Towers, and, dismay! the glue disintegrating as I turned a page. What was once a book became a randomly ordered collection of pages.

I think back to that day a lot. It's what drove me towards books that will last.

>42 elenchus:
Absolutely! He was the head librarian and head of the Audio/Visual department of a High School. He is now 89 and we still read and discuss our books!

>44 Lady19thC:

Great!

That's a great bit of news. I hope that's me at 89!

oops. wrong thread!