Books are amazing ways to stir the imagination and open our minds to many new things. Share your favorite book when you were younger and tell us how it impacted you.
20 thoughts on “READER FRIDAY: Share Your Fav Book Growing Up & the Impact it Had on YOU”
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s the first “real” novel I remember getting lost in. I knew I wanted to have that experience again as a reader, and probably the seed of wanting to write something that had that effect was also planted.
Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein. I was about 10 and reading was just something you did for school. I was on a weekly trip to the library to fulfill that requirement, when a wise librarian asked me what I liked to watch on TV. “Spaceships and Aliens,” I said. She pointed me in the direction of Heinlein’s works. The cover looked interesting with its six legged monkey, so I checked it out. From the first page I found myself transported to a world that I didn’t want to leave. That one book changed reading from a task to a pleasure.
Librarians are angels on earth.
My love of horses planted me in my elementary school library searching for books on horses or with horses in it. Louis L’Amour books were a gold mine. One of my favorite books (the title & author I’ve been looking for) was about a horse that could fly. That really triggered something in my imagination and may have been the book that planted the seed in me to write my own stories.
I eventually read every book on horses they had and I had to get my mom to bring me to other libraries. I eventually saved money and bought my first horse. My love of books lasted longer than my love for horses.
Did you read Black Beauty? I remember loving the book, though I have no idea now what it was about.
When I was nine or ten I founs buried in a chest in my grandmother’s attic a. Pile of romances by Grace Livingstone Hill. One of the reasons I found them so fascinating was that my grandmother said they were too old for me and I shouldn’t be reading them. They were all the same. One was rich, the other no. One was saved in Christ, the other no. At the end they were both rich and saved.
She was my mom’s favorite author. Well she also loved Louis L’Amour books too. My mom was a serious bookworm. After she went blind from diabetes, we bought her audio versions of Grace Livingston Hill books. The last few years of her life this is how she enjoyed reading books, by listening to them.
The “Encyclopedia Brown” Series by Donald J. Sobol. These were the first novels I read from cover to cover (without being forced to). I remember as a child of 9 being captivated by the boy detective’s deductive skills, lol! It began my love affair with Mystery/Suspense/Thriller novels.
I’ve written about this before: Harrison High by John Farris. I was in high school at the time. It was the first time I realized there was a stark difference between the literature I had read in my young life (my Dad was a librarian), the stories I had read in the Science Fiction Book Club selections I received monthly, and the reality in John Farris’ novel that I saw virtually every day at school.
After reading Harrison High over a weekend, it was a little difficult for me to return to Pip and Estella. I had never been in a Victorian English home, so I was unfamiliar with the dark corners and heat shields and ornate mirrors that would have been found in hers. But I thoroughly recognized the locker rooms, classrooms, and hallways of Harrison High. And Ann Gregor was spot on in looks and carriage of a girl in my Latin class. Though, these years later, there is a sentence that describes a moment in the relationship between school principal Neil Hendry and his ex-wife who left him, that I still don’t get.
I hate to sound like a card catalog, but:
Isaac Asimov – Nightfall & Other Stories – science fiction that wasn’t “geeky” (that came later)
Ray Bradbury – The Illustrated Man – for how the stories were individual, but connected by the tattooed man’s movements;
John D. MacDonald – the Travis McGhee series – for being a series better than the Hardy Boys
And Richard Brautigan – A Confederate General From Big Surprise – for looking at things askance, in interesting and surprising ways.
I hate to admit it, but the last hasn’t held up as well as the first three (+) ~
Otto Phil caught me again ~
That’s A Confederate General from Big SUR~
😐
Y’all have a good Good Friday & great Easter weekend.
I remember family reading time. My mom read books to us like Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, and Old Yeller. When I was old enough to read on my own (and my brother and sister decided sports was better than reading) I started reading my mom’s cozy mysteries and my dad’s historical fiction (mostly civil war era). Eventually I tried the books meant for kids my age and hated them, so I went back to filching anything my mom or dad read. My first book I chose to read that was not from their shelves was the Hobbit. I was hooked. I read every fantasy I could get my hands on, good or bad, I didn’t care. Eventually a friend gave me the first of Asimov’s Foundation books and I found a new love. Now I write speculative fiction, blending SF and Fantasy.
“The Hundred Dresses” by Eleanor Estes. Amazing book about this shy Polish girl from a poor home who wears the same shabby dress to school every day and is teased by the other girls. She tells them she has 100 dresses at home but no one believes her. She wins a drawing contest in school (designs of beautiful dresses). The other kids write her a nice letter about the prize but Wanda, alas, has already moved away and never gets it.
It hit me at home on many levels when I was little. I didn’t realize until I was an adult and tried to find a copy that it was a Newbery winner and is a very famous and beloved book.
That sounds like a touching book.
The Collected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s stories get better with re-reading. That volume was a world of its own.
The Shell Scott paperback series by Richard S. Prather. I probably got ahold of those a bit too early and they permanently warped me, Interestingly enough, Shell looked like a cross between Ken Bruen and Lee Child.
It was Robert Heinlein for me, too. Have Spacesuit Will Travel. In the eighth grade, we were in the high school building and had access to the library. Real books.The SF Book Club membership followed shortly after that. And all these decades later, I’m writing time travel, space visitor sort of stuff. I guess it sort of stuck with me.
Joe, I have to check out Shell Scott. Warping sounds interesting.
‘The Dark Is Rising Sequence’ by Susan Cooper. It was my first real experience reading about English life. I’m not sure what aspect affected me the most – the suspense and the mystery were both there and are there with me today. I think it was the mystery, though. Not as in a murder mystery, but the way storylines wove together, the ancient myths, the way Merriman and the other ancient ones seem to always be there, enigmatic, just out of sight, watching. This is something I carry with me today, and it shows in my writing.
The first book I remember being really sucked into, was the Book of Matthew in the Bible. I was maybe six, and suddenly realized that my Sunday School teacher wasn’t just making stuff up. And that he left a lot out.
That got me into the mindset that books contain knowledge, and not only that but they contain really cool stories, better even than TV.
By the time I was 10 or so, I had graduated to reading the Encyclopedia. And loved it.
Then as a teen I started reading “The Destroyer” series by Warren Murphy and realized books without pictures could be just as entertaining as Tintin and Asterix comics.
At 19 I’d say the single book that effected me in many, many ways, was THE PRACTICE EFFECT by David Bryn. He conjectured a world where if you don’t use something, be it an object or a skill it quickly devolves into an unusable object. But if a basic object or skill is used with a particular intent, and with clear purpose, it becomes in time perfect. But only lasts as long as it is continued to be “practiced”.
Hullo, this is Berthold the Leprechaun.
I would say that the book that most shaped my life was the 1953 version of:
It followed the life struggles of Tubbyrump Hornblower, a well known Leprechaun sage and mystic trying to find peace and wisdom in a period of time where everyone expected our people to be proficient at fighting dragons and flying on the backs of eagles and hanging out with wizards and such.
I laughed, I cried, I empathized, but mostly I learned the secret ingredient for making the best ale I have ever tasted, and that changed my life.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s the first “real” novel I remember getting lost in. I knew I wanted to have that experience again as a reader, and probably the seed of wanting to write something that had that effect was also planted.
Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein. I was about 10 and reading was just something you did for school. I was on a weekly trip to the library to fulfill that requirement, when a wise librarian asked me what I liked to watch on TV. “Spaceships and Aliens,” I said. She pointed me in the direction of Heinlein’s works. The cover looked interesting with its six legged monkey, so I checked it out. From the first page I found myself transported to a world that I didn’t want to leave. That one book changed reading from a task to a pleasure.
Librarians are angels on earth.
My love of horses planted me in my elementary school library searching for books on horses or with horses in it. Louis L’Amour books were a gold mine. One of my favorite books (the title & author I’ve been looking for) was about a horse that could fly. That really triggered something in my imagination and may have been the book that planted the seed in me to write my own stories.
I eventually read every book on horses they had and I had to get my mom to bring me to other libraries. I eventually saved money and bought my first horse. My love of books lasted longer than my love for horses.
Did you read Black Beauty? I remember loving the book, though I have no idea now what it was about.
When I was nine or ten I founs buried in a chest in my grandmother’s attic a. Pile of romances by Grace Livingstone Hill. One of the reasons I found them so fascinating was that my grandmother said they were too old for me and I shouldn’t be reading them. They were all the same. One was rich, the other no. One was saved in Christ, the other no. At the end they were both rich and saved.
She was my mom’s favorite author. Well she also loved Louis L’Amour books too. My mom was a serious bookworm. After she went blind from diabetes, we bought her audio versions of Grace Livingston Hill books. The last few years of her life this is how she enjoyed reading books, by listening to them.
The “Encyclopedia Brown” Series by Donald J. Sobol. These were the first novels I read from cover to cover (without being forced to). I remember as a child of 9 being captivated by the boy detective’s deductive skills, lol! It began my love affair with Mystery/Suspense/Thriller novels.
I’ve written about this before: Harrison High by John Farris. I was in high school at the time. It was the first time I realized there was a stark difference between the literature I had read in my young life (my Dad was a librarian), the stories I had read in the Science Fiction Book Club selections I received monthly, and the reality in John Farris’ novel that I saw virtually every day at school.
After reading Harrison High over a weekend, it was a little difficult for me to return to Pip and Estella. I had never been in a Victorian English home, so I was unfamiliar with the dark corners and heat shields and ornate mirrors that would have been found in hers. But I thoroughly recognized the locker rooms, classrooms, and hallways of Harrison High. And Ann Gregor was spot on in looks and carriage of a girl in my Latin class. Though, these years later, there is a sentence that describes a moment in the relationship between school principal Neil Hendry and his ex-wife who left him, that I still don’t get.
I hate to sound like a card catalog, but:
Isaac Asimov – Nightfall & Other Stories – science fiction that wasn’t “geeky” (that came later)
Ray Bradbury – The Illustrated Man – for how the stories were individual, but connected by the tattooed man’s movements;
John D. MacDonald – the Travis McGhee series – for being a series better than the Hardy Boys
And Richard Brautigan – A Confederate General From Big Surprise – for looking at things askance, in interesting and surprising ways.
I hate to admit it, but the last hasn’t held up as well as the first three (+) ~
Otto Phil caught me again ~
That’s A Confederate General from Big SUR~
😐
Y’all have a good Good Friday & great Easter weekend.
I remember family reading time. My mom read books to us like Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, and Old Yeller. When I was old enough to read on my own (and my brother and sister decided sports was better than reading) I started reading my mom’s cozy mysteries and my dad’s historical fiction (mostly civil war era). Eventually I tried the books meant for kids my age and hated them, so I went back to filching anything my mom or dad read. My first book I chose to read that was not from their shelves was the Hobbit. I was hooked. I read every fantasy I could get my hands on, good or bad, I didn’t care. Eventually a friend gave me the first of Asimov’s Foundation books and I found a new love. Now I write speculative fiction, blending SF and Fantasy.
“The Hundred Dresses” by Eleanor Estes. Amazing book about this shy Polish girl from a poor home who wears the same shabby dress to school every day and is teased by the other girls. She tells them she has 100 dresses at home but no one believes her. She wins a drawing contest in school (designs of beautiful dresses). The other kids write her a nice letter about the prize but Wanda, alas, has already moved away and never gets it.
It hit me at home on many levels when I was little. I didn’t realize until I was an adult and tried to find a copy that it was a Newbery winner and is a very famous and beloved book.
That sounds like a touching book.
The Collected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s stories get better with re-reading. That volume was a world of its own.
The Shell Scott paperback series by Richard S. Prather. I probably got ahold of those a bit too early and they permanently warped me, Interestingly enough, Shell looked like a cross between Ken Bruen and Lee Child.
It was Robert Heinlein for me, too. Have Spacesuit Will Travel. In the eighth grade, we were in the high school building and had access to the library. Real books.The SF Book Club membership followed shortly after that. And all these decades later, I’m writing time travel, space visitor sort of stuff. I guess it sort of stuck with me.
Joe, I have to check out Shell Scott. Warping sounds interesting.
‘The Dark Is Rising Sequence’ by Susan Cooper. It was my first real experience reading about English life. I’m not sure what aspect affected me the most – the suspense and the mystery were both there and are there with me today. I think it was the mystery, though. Not as in a murder mystery, but the way storylines wove together, the ancient myths, the way Merriman and the other ancient ones seem to always be there, enigmatic, just out of sight, watching. This is something I carry with me today, and it shows in my writing.
The first book I remember being really sucked into, was the Book of Matthew in the Bible. I was maybe six, and suddenly realized that my Sunday School teacher wasn’t just making stuff up. And that he left a lot out.
That got me into the mindset that books contain knowledge, and not only that but they contain really cool stories, better even than TV.
By the time I was 10 or so, I had graduated to reading the Encyclopedia. And loved it.
Then as a teen I started reading “The Destroyer” series by Warren Murphy and realized books without pictures could be just as entertaining as Tintin and Asterix comics.
At 19 I’d say the single book that effected me in many, many ways, was THE PRACTICE EFFECT by David Bryn. He conjectured a world where if you don’t use something, be it an object or a skill it quickly devolves into an unusable object. But if a basic object or skill is used with a particular intent, and with clear purpose, it becomes in time perfect. But only lasts as long as it is continued to be “practiced”.
Hullo, this is Berthold the Leprechaun.
I would say that the book that most shaped my life was the 1953 version of:
FOR THE LAST TIME I’M NOT A HOBBIT!
Autobiography of a Particular People of the Irish in the Age of Tolkien
It followed the life struggles of Tubbyrump Hornblower, a well known Leprechaun sage and mystic trying to find peace and wisdom in a period of time where everyone expected our people to be proficient at fighting dragons and flying on the backs of eagles and hanging out with wizards and such.
I laughed, I cried, I empathized, but mostly I learned the secret ingredient for making the best ale I have ever tasted, and that changed my life.