The Books we used to love

MW

Does anyone remember the Point Horror books, they had a massive selection in our library that they would only let children over 12 take home. It was like trying to get served in an off-licence under-age, such an achievement bringing one home. Also, I read a book as a youngster, I believe it was called "Room 13", it was bloody brilliant when I was a child. Scared the crap out of me, it was about these kids that went on a school tour and were staying in a hotel, and Room 13 used to appear at night and there were vampires I think, I cannot source this book anywhere....please help!!!!!

biko

Haven't read any of those but loved 'The Last Man Alive' by A. S. Neill. That's still available I think.

gidget

yeah i remember the Point Horror books, also got into Christopher Pike as well. I always remember distinguishing between the two as they both had the same format and they used to be stacked together in the shops - was also into Sweet Valley Twins/ Mallory Towers/ Secret Seven but wasn't too fond of Famous Five though.

Dudess

I never read those horror books. Gutted. They sound class.

You couldn't beat auld Enid - even if she was a racist beyatch. Malory Towers kicked ass, as did The Twins at St Clare's. And The Naughtiest Girl in the School trilogy was superb. That Elizabeth was SO naughty!

Mawg

Point Horror, Christopher Pike and (when I was a bit younger) Goosebumps were all fantastic! I remember a book called "Hydra" scaring the bejesus out of me. Each chapter had a slightly different picture under the number, which ended up turning into this really scary fish thing....

Mrs. MacGyver

Had a whole collection of the point horror books - the babysitter 1,2,and 3 and halloween. They were class! Also loved Anne of Green Gables and the paddington bear and just william books (especially with the tv series in the 80's)

stovelid

Fav books when young:

Rumblefish and The Ousiders -SE Hinton

The Silver Sword - Ian Serraillier

The Machine Gunners and Fathom Five - both Robert Westall

Walkabout - James Vance Marshall

Rat a tat Mystery(?) - Enid Blyton

Danny the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl

Smellyirishman

Goosebumps, with classic titles such as "Say cheese and die!" where a camera had the powers to seal one's fate. (I can't believe I remembered that so easily) Also, the versions where you could choose your own ending were the business; if you kick the dinosaur in the nuts, turn to pg. 87, Otherwise, pg. 154.

All Roald Dahls books, The Hady Boys and the Famous Five were my childhood favourites. Loved Asterix and Tintin too.

Wishbone Ash

Enid Blyton's -

The Castle of Adventure
The Island of Adventure
The Sea of Adventure
The Mountain of Adventure
The Valley of Adventure
The Ship of Adventure
The Circus of Adventure
The River of Adventure

Unbeatable!

Feral Mutant

Ah, Goosebumps. Every chapter had a surprise at the end, the kind of thing that turned out to be nothing important, like the start of a Flash Gordon cartoon. That would annoy the hell out of me if I read them today but it was great back then.

_blank_

Mrs. MacGyver wrote:

paddington bear

I loved the Paddington books.

In fact, whenever I see anything on half price sale it brings back a joke from one of the books about a travel agents owned by a bloke called Alf Price and one of the characters thought there was a sale on!

Anyone else remember that?

Of course Roald Dahl books were classics. The Twits, Fantastic Mr Fox, Charlie, James and the Giant Peach, and later the Henry Sugar short story collection. Dahl is a legend.

Never got into Enid Blyton, the kids were just too nicey-nice or something, posh English gits no doubt

What about The Shamrogues, anyone else ever read them? Quality Irish children's fiction.

MooseJam

The Children of Cherry Tree Farm

Mrs. MacGyver

The matchless mice by Tony Hickey and the Tom Mc Gaughren books like run swift, run free (about foxses!).

Never read any roald dahl til 2 weeks ago! (my friends couldnt believe i escaped the last 27 years without reading them!) i've brought most of them becasue i feel daft that i didnt read them in childhood like other normal people here!

_blank_

Mrs. MacGyver wrote:

Never read any roald dahl til 2 weeks ago! (my friends couldnt believe i escaped the last 27 years without reading them!)

:eek:

Wow. I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying them.

Ha, that's mad.

gidget

Just remembered another set i got into when i was about 5 or 6 - the stories about the girl made of wood who couldn't go near fire and the boy made of iron who couldn't go near water and they had a load of books about their adventures as they travelled to this special land where they could be turned into a real boy and girl - i remember they were about 25p at the time, came in a purple colour and were published by Ladybird. Big difference in the prices compared to today eh?

Crumble Froo

hehe, was talking to my dad about harry potter the other day, and got into a conversatoin about enid blyton and roald dahl. i was a total bookworm, and loved enid blyton particularly.... st clare's, the naughtiest girl at school (the one with elizabeth, as mentioned above), the five find-outers, the famous five... never mad on the secret 7 though... also all the brer rabbit stories (though i remember i used to read in bed at night after the lights were out, and some of the illustrations turned quite sinister in that light... )...

goosebumps and the give yourself goosebumps, as mentioned above were brilliant, i love how the goosebumps always had a cheesy ending, where you thought that the horror had been eradicated, but there's someone at the end to do your evil laugh that the horror still lives...

tony hickey.. i remember one of his vaguely... a castle had to be saved... there was a magic violin or something too... very very vague

ooh! animorphs too! (before twas a tv show...)... i remember gettin as far as book 13, and not being able to get my hands on it anymore... i think the local libary closed down at that point... i was big into those books... what was his name... aximili esgarrouth isthill or soemthing... lol, i cant believe i can (sorta) remember that...

oh, and what was his name... irish writer i think... don conway? (anaconda from drumcondra).. good book... but thats not who im thinking of i dont think... did that trilogy... there was an owl named Kos, i think twas...

on that note, the animals of farthign wood were brilliant books... really really well written, deeper than you'd expect from watching the tv series.

ooh! "on silent wings" was the one with the owl...

and marita conlon mckenna, did the famine trilogy, starting with under the hawthorn tree... and that one we had to do in school... i cant remember what twas called, but it involved a family breaking up... there was an older brother greg, and i think a younger sister... lucy maybe... and another kid... neil possibly... and you'd read their different perspectives in different chapters... i learn the word 'concussion' from that book

wow, initially i could only think of enid blyton and roald dahl... haha!

Mrs. MacGyver

seansouth wrote:

:eek:

Wow. I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying them.

Ha, that's mad.

Yup reading 'danny champion of the world' - how did i miss out on such fantastic books?

Niamho!

Oh GOd!! i was addicted to those Point Horror Books!! lol

....and also a couple of years before that.... the Babysitters club Books (for the Girls only i'd imagine!!) i used to LOVE them...i even wanted to set up a Babysitters Club!! lol

looksee

the Narnia books
Heidi
all the Noel Streatfield books
The Borrowers
The Secret Garden

Mrs. MacGyver

Thanks for raising the 'Babysitters Club...i'd forgotten i'd a few of them! Any one read sweet valley twins or sweet valley high (with the wakefield twins and their arch enemy lila fowler)? I vaguely remember they had a television series based on these books.

Femelade

What about Judy blume!!
i loved her books i read them all twice or three times i'd say!

my faves:

# Blubber
# Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
# Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself
# Deenie
# Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
# Superfudge
# Fudge-a-mania
# Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great
# Tiger Eyes

Crumble Froo

looksee wrote:

the Narnia books
Heidi
all the Noel Streatfield books
The Borrowers
The Secret Garden

haha, i think most of them were forced on us in primary school!

and yah, judy blume was awesome too... wait... tales of a 4th grade nothing... was that her?

Niamho!

Mrs. MacGyver wrote:

Thanks for raising the 'Babysitters Club...i'd forgotten i'd a few of them! Any one read sweet valley twins or sweet valley high (with the wakefield twins and their arch enemy lila fowler)? I vaguely remember they had a television series based on these books.

YES!! I never really got into them as much though. the books or the Programme. i remember the Theme tune off the Programme though...:o

Dyr

earliest memories of books

preschool:
An illustrated version of blakes the tyger that the old man used to read me
The richard scarry books of nursery rhymes. class stuff
An art book that had all of boschs panels for "the garden of earthly delights". I was fascinated by those creatures..i was obviously a sick little f***r
Shedloads of greek mythology books. One of which was an illustrated version of the labours of hercules that had a picture of cerebus that i couldnt even look at.


Early days:
The worst witch ( I think anyway, what was her name?) i used to get em from the library just because i loved the illustrations..all pastel swirls
Some book called Thirteen O Clock by Enid Blyton that had awesome artwork, once double page spread of all the witches flying scared me silly. i would love to get me hands on it again.
Those little ladybird books that came with tapes to narrate them. i had dracula which was an awesome tape, dead spooky. And loads of tranformers ones that had crap sound effects


Double figure age days..stuff i really liked
All the biggles books, i inheirited them from the older brother. No little boy should be without biggles.
Earthsea by ursula k le guin.
Those role playing books that became dead popular back then where you had to make different choices as the story unfolded.
The red badge of courage
Jack Londons short stories.
Then read the hobbits and went mental on tolkien till i was about 15.


Add a healthy sprinkling of comics, the dandy, the beano, victor, commando, battle, transformers, eagle, scream ( oh god yes ted), storm force (urrgghh). Oddly enough i was never a massive 2000ad fan.

piby

Had a whole collection of the point horror books - the babysitter 1,2,and 3 and halloween.

Its mad that you bring them up because I found my old hardback version of the Babysitter trilogy up in the attack about a month ago. Before that I hadn't seen it since I first read them about 10 years ago!

Ruu_Old

One that just jumped into my head from primary school called Patsy O, must go looking for some info on it.

Jesus Wept

Mr men books ftw.

And the round the twist ones, is that what they were called, can't remember

sweetie

I started off on Enid blyton, famous five, secret seven and the adventure series (still remmber the mountain one for some reason), moved onto choose your own adventure, three investigators/hardy boiys, chronicles of narnia, final fantasy/lone wolf and then stephen king and clive barker. Still re-read the odd book from my childhood when i come across them. The chronicles have stood the test of time quite well. Also remember a great book about badgers called cold moon.

Jesus Wept

Anyone have the famous 5 vids? I found some of them kind of dark and spooky (i was pretty young!). It was always raining, thunderstorms, dark, big old houses, camping outside.

:eek:

Dord

Ann and Barry lol Chuckles...

I liked the Goosebumps series, oh and I read a lot of Roald Dahl's books. The BFG was my favourite

Crumble Froo

the worst witch was mildred, right? with a ms hardbroom as the principal?

Corruptedmorals

Yeah Mildred, and she got a tabby cat instead of a black one...and the girl out to get her was called Ethel.

I loved Enid Blyton, preferred St. Clares to Malory Towers though. I've most of her mystery books, a goof few Famous Fives, some Find-Outers, but I HATED them, never any Secret Sevens. The Naughtiest Girl in the schoool..brilliant. I still read her books actually.

What katy Did..What Katy Did Next..Narnia, Heidi..Heidi Grows Up..Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island..Anne's House of Dreams..Anne of Ingleside, Rilla of Ingleside. Em, Little House on the Prairie, those books as well. The Famine Trilogy by Marita Conlon Mc Kenna..the book with the family whose mother have left is called No Goodbye, there's one about travellers too, The Blue Horse, and one about evacuation to Ireland during The Blitz- Safe harbour. Some of the Marilyn Taylor books that I loved- like Faraway Home.

Roald Dahl, of course. I liked Boy and The Witches best. Hmm...Little Women, The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy. There's so many, I can't remember them all. Judy Blume as well, Babysitter Books and Sweet Valley High. Loved Babysitter Books, Stacey and Claudia were my favourites. Hated Malory and Mary-Anne, Kirsty was annoying too. Dawn was alright. Eh..Jessie? She was alright too.

Ruu_Old

Fantastic Mr.Fox, how did I forget him!?

Rovi

Mrs. MacGyver wrote:

Yup reading 'danny champion of the world' - how did i miss out on such fantastic books?

Check out his adult novels and short stories-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl#Adult_fiction

More wonderful stuff.

Zebra3

Hardy Boys. :cool:

Rovi

The Alfred Hitchcock 'Three Investigators' series, particularly the early ones.

dubtom

Wishbone Ash wrote:

Enid Blyton's -

The Castle of Adventure
The Island of Adventure
The Sea of Adventure
The Mountain of Adventure
The Valley of Adventure
The Ship of Adventure
The Circus of Adventure
The River of Adventure

Unbeatable!

Ah, that brings back memories, although I think I only read a couple of those you mention (my local library closed down)Read all the secret seven and famous five,over and over, loved them. Infact I'd say they actually helped me in school at reading and spelling, I improved 10 fold when I started....at 22:D
Had a look at a famous five in a book shop recently, couldn't believe the size of the lettering, absolutly huge

Tar.Aldarion

Smellyirishman wrote:

Goosebumps, with classic titles such as "Say cheese and die!" where a camera had the powers to seal one's fate. (I can't believe I remembered that so easily) Also, the versions where you could choose your own ending were the business; if you kick the dinosaur in the nuts, turn to pg. 87, Otherwise, pg. 154.

I loved those books, oh the choices. they are class.
Goosebumps and point horror ones were good too.

r3nu4l

sweetie wrote:

I started off on Enid blyton, famous five, secret seven and the adventure series moved onto choose your own adventure, three investigators/hardy boiys, stephen king and clive barker.

Edited to my own list! I see rovi liked the 3 investigators too. I thought I was the only one who read them!
Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob something or other Brilliant.

I also loved Black Harvest an Irish horror book about a family holiday where the kids encounter ghosts from the famine. Creepy!

I also liked David Eddings Belgariad and Mallorean series in my teenage years.

Vegeta

Asterix and Obelix where my staple when I was young. Was not a big book fan when I was younger though but am reading 2 books a week of late.

loving David Gemmel stuff

emmakelly2

Does anyone remember Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley High???? They were really good!!! I got so addicted to them...I read nearly the whole connection!!

Vegeta

oh the Sweet Valley Twins

irishgeo

the famous five books and just seen the cildren of cherry tree farm in another post and remnbered reading that.

jester77

Famous Five & Secret Seven, when I had all those read (or all that my library had) I read the Hardy Boys and once I had all those read it was Nancy Drew lol, liked my mystery books when I was younger.

But my all time fave book as a kid was I am David by Anne Holm.

Cheese Princess

Does anyone remember a book about a circus...think it was called Galliano's circus? There was a girl called Carlotta or something...think she was an acrobat...

I remember reading it with my granny and we read it so many times the pages had to be stuck back together with sellotape.

threebeards

joe robot wrote:

Ann and Barry lol Chuckles...

Stole my thunder lol

Julian Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the doooogg ftw though

nachos

This thread is bringing back so many good memories!

Loved the secret seven, fantastic stuff (even if they were all about smuggling). Never like the Famous Five at all.

Loved the Asterix books, used to collect them like they were gold-dust.

The Roald Dahl books were of course a staple of childhood, every child should be made read them!

Point Horror and Goosebumps aswell of course. Goosebumps got a bit boring after you've read a few of them as they all had the EXACT SAME format! Felt like such a grown up reading the Point Horror books as they were in the "over-12s" only section of the library!

And there was a series of books by Michael Scott about two teenagers who travel back in time to when Ireland was a magical place full of monsters and wizards. There was at least 3 books in the series WindLord, EarthLord and FireLord and possibly SeaLord though I never found that last one:(

He had some great books too, Gemini Game, Wolf Moon and there was some other ones like that/

MW

Cheese Princess wrote:

Does anyone remember a book about a circus...think it was called Galliano's circus? There was a girl called Carlotta or something...think she was an acrobat...

I remember reading it with my granny and we read it so many times the pages had to be stuck back together with sellotape.

It was called like The Circus comes to town, and Hurrah for the Circus etc, there were a few of them, I have them all in one book at home along with the Naughtiest girl in school and the Naughtiest girl is a monitor, ah bless her she came good in the end.

WellyJ

Anyone remember the Luvenders?

Was by an Irish author, kind of mild horror aimed at children?

Scared the hell out of me but really liked them.

Or the book about this family of potatos that lived in Newgrange?

Wow, that sounds pretty ****ed up when you read it back!

kelle

I wonder if anybody remembers a batch of books (we bought our off a travelling salesman). They were of American origin, there was 10 in all and lots of children from my school had them in their bookcases. They were different colours, there was a green one titled 'Things to Make and Do', an orange one 'The World and the Arts', a red one 'The World and it's Wonders'.
Does anybody remember them? It was around 1980 my Mum bought them.
I must have read each one a hundred times.
I loved Enid Blyton. I read all the Famous Five books, BTW did she do the 'Secret Seven' as well? I bought one of her books recently for my 6yo son, and had a read myself. I was amazed by the severe punishments dished out to naughty children, whose worst crime was like stealing stones from somebody's garden, from smacking to locking them in a strange room! It's a wonder our generation wasn't psychologically damaged:D