Books we loved when we were young

As a teenager I read a lot of Thomas Hardy novels, & I remember reading all the "Gormenghast" novels with (horrified) fascination.

I loved the Enid Blyton books
Famous Five
Secret Seven
The Adventure Series
Twins at St Clares
Mallory Towers

Noel Streatfield
The "shoe books"
Gemma - series about a former child actress sent to live with ordinary relatives

I also liked the "Sue Barton" books by Helen Dore Boylston that traces the career of an aspiring nurse

I remember being gripped by Thor Heyerdahl's true story "The Kon-Tiki expedition: by raft across the South Seas". I wonder what I'd make of it now.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
Any of the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton
Heidi by Joana Spyri

Luckygirl3

The Princess and Curdie - loved that book as a child.

And my all-time favourite as an adult is The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien.

Oh, my goodness, The Princess and Curdie, I loved it together with The Princess and the Goblin.

Loved the Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy books as a teenager. Halloween was my first Agatha Christie novel aged about 15 and I’ve loved them ever since.

Starting at about the age of 4

I tend to read by author. Read one book by an author and then search down every book they ever wrote and when I have read them I move on to the next one.

Milly Molly Mandy
Enid Blyton
Arthur Ransome
Jane Austin
Charlotte Bronte
Biggles
Louis may Alcott
Susan Coolidge
Lorna Hill and her sisters
Noel Streatfeild
Georgette Heyer
John Buchan
D K Broster
Jeffrey Farnol
Mazo de la Roche

And then around 18 novel reading more or less stopped. I always preferred fact to fiction, and with so many books on everything from Anthropology to Zoology around to read, who needs novels? When I was ill or under the weather I would pick up a Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, but that was it.

I could never get into The Lord of the Rings, in spite of all my family loving it.

Lord of the Rings - mainly with the hope of impressing a boy

When I was in my early teens, so late 1950’s , I used to buy small paper books for 1 shilling. They were gentle romances. The books black and white printed drawings and four illustrations to a page, I believe. Does anyone remember them?
I have no idea what they were called.

We lived opposite our local library. I was an avid reader and read every Enid Blyton, Just William, Paddington, The Borrowers, What Katy Did, Pony books etc.
I was a poor sleeper and my parents would leave the landing light on because my sister was scared of the dark. They had no idea that I would sit and read at the top of the stairs until they came up to bed. I admitted it years later and they were astonished that I had never been discovered.

As a child I loved all the Enid Blyton books . Famous five. Secret seven and the boarding school ones , which made me want to go to boarding school , which I didn’t go. Oh and the What Katy Did books.
I’ve always been a big reader and when I started work , I would read on my commute . The James Herriot Vet series’s would make me giggle to myself on the train as did the Tom Sharpe books .
I still read every night and I have installed a love of reading to my DC .

As a teen, i liked the 'Pan' books of horror stories.
They were very gruesome in some cases, and aways quite shocking.

I used to yearn for the day i could move on to the adult books.

Anything by Enid Blyton as a child, then Catherine Cookson (recommend by my Gran), more recently Dick Francis' racing novels.

Haha Jax. Yes us too. I really began this thread to reference teenage and early adult reading as lots of earlier threads focused on children's books

As a child:
The Secret Garden
Joan Selby Lowndes, Royal Chase and Tudor Star
Cynthia Harnett The Wool Pack and The Great House

As a teenager:
John Buchan
Georgette Heyer

Later Iris Murdoch, Dorothy Lessing, Agatha Christie. Would have loved the Shardlake books had they been available

what katy did and what katy did next also heidi was a firm favourite also milly molly mandy with her striped dress and the family at one end street loved those books too

The secret garden, all of the what Katy did books.
The famius five, the secret seven.
I think i preferred the five over the seven.
The waterbabies.

The Whiteoaks Jalna series.
Forever Amber was surreptitiously passed round at school, for the naughty bits, though they’d be tamer than tame nowadays.

Funnily enough, just last night I was thinking of Milly Molly Mandy, and the nice white cottage with the thatched roof….

Lucky girl, I loved The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie. Both written by George McDonald. Happy memories- Still have those books, you have tempted me to read them again.

I read them Nanny27, The Joy of Sex also did the rounds, holding the pages at all sorts of angles to work out some of the illustrations!

Famous Five. I still have my hardback copies too
Black Beauty.
Borrowers

The Famous Five and Secret Seven, Georgette Heyer and then Forever Amber, the Angelique books and yes The Carpetbaggers.

As a child, I absolutely adored Enid Blyton’s books. They engendered in me a deep love of reading that still exists to this day. They were banned in our high school library in the late sixties until I campaigned to get them reinstated. I can still remember the excitement of saving my pocket money to buy a hardback edition of a Famous Five story. I still have them all now. When my granddaughter is old enough to appreciate that some of the attitudes were very much of their time, then I shall let her read them.

The Princess and Curdie - loved that book as a child.

And my all-time favourite as an adult is The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien.