What was the first book you read/owned?

Excluding the how-to-read-ABCs and as far as I can remember, the first books I read and held were "The Cat In the Hat" and "The Berenstein Bears" series. How about you?

owned: Ziggy Faces Life... Again!, a present from an aunt. (Don't blame me, I was eight years old at the time!) The first books I remember reading were kiddie encyclopedias that introduced me to concepts like maple syrup tapping and television production.

I think "owned" is significantly different from "read" - I place more value on the act of ownership than simple readership. What do you think?

Thanks micketymoc for finding time to answer.

Well, I agree that "owned" and "read" are different concepts. I phrased the question in such a way that it might be answered on the point of view of a reader or an owner (the first book you read might not have been necessarily the one you owned; and the first book you owned may not have been necessarily the first one you read -- those sort of things).

For me though, I value the act of reading, rather than ownership.

Oh yes, I definitely agree, reading a book is better than just owning a series of unread books, but (appropriately as we're in a site that glorifies the act of cataloging one's own collection) there's a world of difference between the reader who buys his own books and one na nakikibasa lang. No offense meant to those na nakikibasa lang, of course.

For example, I remember the title of the first book I ever owned, and the day I got it.

But the first book I ever read? Hard to say.

micketymoc, why would owning be better than reading? Don't you mean the reverse? Some reads are borrowed books and completely life-changing but some "owns" have never been read, therefore, no impact.

Maybe I wasn't clear.

Reading a book is better than owning an unread book.

But collecting books that you've read is a different proposition from borrowing books to read.

A library of owned books (such as the books we have on LibraryThing) constitutes a morphing map of your intellectual landscape: you consider a particular genre, or a particular area of thinking, valuable enough for you to invest in certain tangible pieces of 'em. The beauty of LibraryThing is that you can peek into other members' collections and guess at the kind of person behind the library.

That's how I see each book - a part of a greater whole, a single pixel in a portrait of your brain. So all things being equal, a read book you own has greater value than a read book you borrow, due to how the owned book adds to the bigger picture.

Mine's actually a whole set of Children's Encyclopedia. I dunno if this counts but I started to really love reading when I received my set of Childcraft from my parents.

My Favorite Volumes include, Stories (1), Math(10) and Animals(3).

Wow, thanks for mentioning Childcraft. The more I think about it, the more I realize how pivotal it was for me when I started reading horror.

The Math volume had this article about vampires and multiplication, for instance, that had really neat art, and the Places to Know volume had a "Spooky Places" section.

horror from Childcraft? Wow, that's a very interesting place to get inspiration from reading horror.

I've always loved Math, and I enjoy the puzzles and illusions there.

horror from Childcraft? Wow, that's a very interesting place to get inspiration from reading horror.

Interesting place indeed! Those bits from the Childcraft books really spooked me out big-time though.

The first one I remember was hurry, hurry by edith hurd. I have tried for years to recall the name as it is out of print and just recently found it for my niece's b-day! Looking at the pictures and cute story brings back lots of great memories.

when i was 12, i decided to collect books after getting jules vernes' journey to the center of the earth as a gift. (before that i borrowed heavily from the library and relatives send me books). it was followed by the magnificent a wrinkle in time by madeleine l'engle. the first book i bought with my own money ( christmas gifts) was the children's book of question and answers.

My earliest memories of my mother involve me sitting in her lap while she read to me from the Little Golden books. She claims she read them to me and I'd repeat them verbatim.

When I was five, the summer before I started 1st grade, the bookmobile came to our neighborhood and I got my first library card and checked out and read "A Frog A Courting He Did Go."

We were pretty poor and didn't have a lot of books. We did however have a book of Norse mythology which I loved. When I was 9 we got a set of World Book Encyclopedia, white cover with gold lettering. Between the ages of 9 and 16 I read them over and over again. When boys started coming around I didn't know what to do, so I'd get a volume of the encyclopedia and we'd sit on the couch and go through it. I have often wondered what those boys must have thought.

I can't remember which were the first books I owned or read, but some of the earliest ones I remember are a Dr. Seuss book, a couple of hardcover children's fairy tale books, and a book about Gus the ghost, or something like that.

The first pocketbooks I owned that started my collection and obsession with books were Sweet Valley Twins 1 and 2, which were given to me by an aunt.

I remember owning for the first time a few pocketbook size, hardbound, full-color copies of the Ladybird children's books in Filipino and in English. Most memorable are Ang Pulang Inahin and Chicken Little.

Ah yes, I also had several Ladybird children's books! I particularly remember The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

My very first book was an illustrated edition of Aesop's Fables. I went on to own Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, and Hans Christian Andersen Tales
All were gifts from my mom. She'd read me a story from the collection every single night before tucking me in.

Disney's Classic Fairy Tales is the first one I ever read.

Nancy Drew Phantom of the Pine Hill is the first one I bought with weekly allowance that I'd saved.

I can't believe anyone would remember the first book he/she read. I have absolutely no idea what mine was, but then I was an early reader. I do fondly remember The Berenstein Bears, though!