Books from your distant past

Since I joined LT I’ve been gradually adding books that I read long before LT even existed, as well as current and recently read. I’ve always had an extensive library and am a prolific reader. So it’s been fun and enlightening to catalog my library, and by “my library” I mean all the books I’ve ever owned even if I’ve since lost or given them away.

By looking up authors and recommendations from other members, I’ve discovered books that I loved at the time, but had since forgotten about.

Today I remembered Gormenghast. How could I have forgotten it? And now it’s come to mind, I even remember where I was when I was reading it, and other details.

I remember reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I’d picked it up at a youth hostel in India in 1971, an old and battered paperback. And my first Thomas Hardy. But the reason I remember the physical detail, is that when I got to the end, I realised the last several pages were missing. Pre-Google, pre ebooks, there was no way of buying another copy, I eventually finished Tess decades later.

Here I am at the Taj Mahal actually reading my first Thomas Hardy novel ..

Thanks for reminding me of Gormenghast and also of the frustration of reading books where pages were missing, especially when in a place where there were no convenient public libraries where one could find another copy. And thanks for the photo from a different era.

While teaching in Uganda back in the seventies I read anything I could get my hands on, and I recall finding in my school's meagre library a rather battered complete set (no pages missing!) of Winston Churchill's multi-volume The Second World War, which I read avidly.

My granddaughter found a 1948 copy of Pride and Prejudice on my book shelf a few weeks ago.

I lived on a coffee plantation in Colombia in the mid 1970s. I rarely got any new books to read, except when we went to the city, and I could pick up some pulp science fiction in Spanish, or once, at a college bookstore, D.H. Lawrence in English.

I met an American at some point, and I begged him to give me the book that he read on the plane. Reluctantly, he did. It was P.S. Your Cat is Dead, and it was like a tall drink of cool water in the desert.

>4 vwinsloe: That was nice of him.

I finished listening to Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne yesterday on You Tube. I first read it in Jr. High in the 1950s.

>5 mnleona: Very!

Runway Zero Eight was a paperback I purchased in 6th grade as one of the offerings of the Teen-Age Book Club. This was a monthly 4 page flyer which listed new paperback books for sale. The teacher would collect the money and the orders which were then sent off and in due time a box came back with new books to read.

I read and re-read that paperback and when I grew to man's estate I decided I wanted a hardback copy. This was pre-internet so it did take awhile to find one. Over the years the hardback too has been read and re-read. Every time I read it, I'm in that plane sweating out every second and wondering if we're going to make it...

"Well, let's see if I can send out a distress call. What's our flight number?" "714." "Right. Here goes, then." He pressed the button on his microphone. "Mayday, mayday, mayday," he began in an even voice. It was one signal he could never forget. He had called it one murky October afternoon above the French coast with the tail of his Spitfire all but shot off, and two Hurricanes had mercifully appeared to usher him across the Channel like a pair of solicitous old aunts. "Mayday, mayday, mayday," he continued. "This is Flight 714, Maple Leaf Air Charter, in distress. Come in, anyone. Over." He caught his breath as a voice responded immediately over the air. "Hullo, 714. This is Vancouver. We have been waiting to hear from you. Vancouver to all aircraft: this frequency now closed to all other traffic. go ahead, 714."

>9 alco261: sounds perfectly lovely!

The first non-reader, chapter book I can remember reading from my teacher's library is Pipi Longstocking. I read it again and again as I did all the Little House on the Prairie books. When I was a pre-teen I checked Valley of the Dolls out of the library, thinking it was about dolls!

>10 Tess_W: I checked Valley of the Dolls out of the library, thinking it was about dolls!

Reminds me how, much later in life, someone told me about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and said I might like it because it was about railroads. I had never heard of either the book or the author. On reading it I was very disappointed to discover that it was actually about nonsensical right wing political ideology, even if it did contain railroads as well!

>11 John5918: Many years ago I had a variation on your theme which involved my son. Somehow, on his own, he learned to read by the time he was 3. He didn't necessarily understand everything he read but he had no trouble reading anything.

At the time my wife had taken up reading romance novels. My son noticed most of the covers featured a couple locked in an embrace and usually kissing. He took to calling these books "kissing books." One day he asked me if I read "kissing books" and I told him I didn't. A few evenings later, when my wife and I were in bed doing our usual bedtime reading, he marched into the bedroom and, with the extreme confidence of the very young , announced Dad DID read "kissing books." I asked him how he knew and he replied. "Because you have The Romance of the Rails on your train book shelf!" (....So there - :-) )

Rereading an old favorite at the mo', A Canticle for Leibowitz, ca 1961, though I first read it mid 1970s.

>13 nohrt4me2: I loved that one! I read it in the mid '70's, too - once for fun and once for a college class. I'm probably due for a reread!

>14 Hope_H: I am enjoying it!

>14 Hope_H: It sounded familiar to me! I realize it is on my wishlist! I will have to get it next. Thank you!

>9 alco261: on my WL that goes!

>18 Tess_W:

Me too! I was trying to find it free on Kindle but looks like I'll have to pay.

>19 John5918: Why not get ebooks from your local library and read them in the Libby app. That’s what I do now I’m retired

>20 kjuliff:

We don't have local libraries here! If I lived in UK I would certainly be borrowing real rather than e-books, but much as I prefer real books, I have to rely on ordering e-books for my Kindle, unless someone is coming out from UK who can bring me a hard copy.

>21 John5918: oh I’m sorry. Am in the US. I should have checked your profile. I wonder if there’s any other way but assume you have looked into it.

I still have it!

>23 2wonderY: I read the entire series when I was young. Don't ever know what happened to the books when I left home. I suspect my mother threw them away when her and dad moved. However, she did purchase me the first five again from an antique store as a Christmas gift.

>24 Tess_W: That was a nice gift.

My mother belonged to the Book of the Month Club and I have her books. These are from the 1950s.

I remembering getting books from Scholastic Book Services when I was in fifth and sixth grade. I remember reading some Encyclopedia Browns and Emil and the Detectives. I don't still have those, though. I suspect the oldest books I own that were mine first are a few Science Fiction Book Club editions, including Dune and The Foundation Trilogy.

ETA: I am also a huge fan of A Canticle for Leibowitz!

>28 Jim53: I still have my paperback copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz which I read about 1966 or 1967 - I remember where I read it and really liked it. It's about time to read it again and see if it still impresses me.

>29 hailelib: The first time I read Canticle, at about thirteen or so, I didn't really grok the third section. Coming back to it later, I found it deeper than I recalled. If you reread it, I hope you enjoy it!

When I was younger I remember reading and enjoying what would nowadays be called YA books. It's a Mile from Here to Glory and Sir Machinery. Both currently out of print, I fear. Also, Black and Blue Magic.

Although I haven't reread it for several decades now, during times of stress I used to turn to The Secret Garden, a book that my mother first read to me at bedtime.

As an early teen I enjoyed Nevil Shute. Rereading some of those titles, I see him as a capable author of straight-forward characters.

>32 librorumamans: I have The Secret Garden and also have downloaded the movie with Margaret O'Brien.

I chose The Secret Garden for my reading group and they loved it. Reading again this novel of rebirth both personal and in nature I thought how relevant it seemed to our troubled times.

I am new to the Internet and unfamiliar with procedures here, however: Raised in the countryside in Ireland with neither interest nor desire for television, the mind capable of exceedingly detailed 'images' of descriptive text ... 1966 - The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton. I was 'with' the children upon realising that they were in the wrong aeroplane ... remember, very well, being terrified of being 'found out' if 'the men' turned around ... ! (pl - 27 mædmonað, 2024)

>35 MrLivingstone:

Welcome!

Enid Blyton was not part of my childhood; this surprises me since my mother was an Anglophile Canadian. Thus we had all the Beatrice Potter books (which had been hers forty years earlier) and lots of Arthurian books, particularly those by Howard Pyle. I expect he was not much known in the British Isles, although Wikipedia tells me that Vincent van Gogh admired his work. Who knew?

I also consider myself fortunate to have not had a TV at home until my last years of high school. Lots of books and a fair number of LPs. I remember that when we spent time at our cottage, there was a suitcase just for books.

ETA: Our cottage did not have electricity (or running water).

Once we got past Beatrice Potter and Ladybird books I don't recall much esle apart from Enid Blyton, except of course Biggles, of which I must have read every single one. We got a TV relatively late in my childhood, and of course in the early years TV was only broadcast for a limited number of hours each day and was strictly controlled by the parents, so we read a lot.

Talking of Ladybird, apparently there's an exhibition of Ladybird books on in St Alban's next month.

>37 John5918: Ah, Biggles! Our high school library had a lot of them, and I read every one. That was then. There are quite a few of them now available on Faded Page Canada, and I thought to try them again. Uh, no. Clunky as all get-out.

>38 haydninvienna:

Yes, I agree. I loved them as a boy, but I reread a couple recently and was disappointed. Capt W E Johns also wrote a shorter series for girls about a WAAF officer called Worrals. I read a few of them as a boy but didn't find them as exciting as Biggles. One thing that struck me even then was that Biggles apparently remained more or less the same age during his daring exploits from his debut as a WWI fighter pilot through nearly a hundred books right up to the 1960s.

I must reread a few Enid Blyton books and see if they have survived time and adulthood.

Books from my childhood which I have enjoyed rereading as an adult include The Wind in the Willows, Swallows and Amazons and Ivanhoe.

And on the subject of re-reads, I remember as a child being gripped by The Coral Island. I read it again as an adult for context when I was teaching Lord of the Flies and completely understood why Golding wrote a riposte.

Another book from my past which I have read many times over the years is David and the Phoenix. My parents gave it to me as a Christmas present when I was 10. In addition to my re-reading I read it to my son when he was young and I read it to his entire 6th Grade class.

The teacher had asked parents if they would be willing to come in and read one of their favorite childhood books to the kids. The company I worked for at the time allowed the employees time off for a maximum of 6 days to do community service so I used some of that time to do the reading.

I made it a point to change my voice for each of the characters - I gave the Phoenix a British accent, a nice cackling voice for the banshee from whom they bought a custom wail ("Och, here's a lovely one, now - five minutes long, ascending scale with a sob at the end, guaranteed to scare a statue." "Bah!" said the Phoenix impatiently. "Enough of these squeaks! We want a real WAIL, my dear Banshee...We are prepared to pay in gold.") and appropriate voices for the other characters.

At the end of the first reading all of the kids were silent. The teacher thanked me and I headed for the classroom door. At the door I said," I guess that didn't go over very well. No one said a thing." And the teacher said," Are you kidding? They were hanging on to every word you read. If they hadn't been interested they would have been doing all kinds of other things."

I finished the book on the second day. The kids gave me a round of applause. One young lady rushed up to me and wanted to know the title of the next book in the series. When I told her it was just the one book she was crestfallen.

I re-read the book again last summer.

>41 alco261: WOW! This is a great story. I am sure you made an impression for their future reads.

>39 John5918: Read Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree to my kids when they were small (the youngest of the 4 is now 26). It seemed to hold up OK. I've read The Wind in the Willows but not the others. I don't even want to try the Famous Five or the Secret Seven now.

W E Johns must have been quite a character. Oddly, it was from him that I had my first lesson in what would now be called ecology. In 1960 he published a book called Where the Golden Eagle Soars about the Scottish Highlands, in which he told why a campaign to kill off "vermin" (small carnivores such as weasels) led to orchard trees not bearing fruit. The connection is that the weasels and other small carnivores were controlling the mouse population; mice like honey; and a plague of mice destroyed the hives of the pollinator bees.

>43 haydninvienna:

Speaking of odd characters, I am reminded of Ring of Bright Water and Gavin Maxwell.

>43 haydninvienna:

Yes, Johns must indeed have been an interesting character, having flown in World War I and continued his career in the air force.

While I think of it, another timeless children's classic which I have enjoyed rereading is The Railway Children.

While chatting with my sister and niece today, I mentioned this thread. My sister said, "I've wanted to reread that book about the children in the sailboat, whatever it was called." "Oh, you mean Swallows and Amazons?," my niece offered. "Yes, that's it!"

Before my niece supplied the answer, I had been about to suggest A High Wind in Jamaica, which I read as a teenager. Hughes' book is a rather different story from Ransome's!

>46 librorumamans: Oh, I enjoyed A High Wind in Jamaica! I really only remember the setting and how it spoke to me, but I don't remember the plot at all. I must read it again.

Today I got a book from my library I had requested. I told the librarian I had not read it in along time. The book, The Purple Quest by Frank G. Slaughter was published in 1965, the year my daughter was born.

Last month we were in UK and we went to an exhibition of Ladybird books in St Alban's. That brought back many memories of reading Ladybird books as a child.