I'm assuming, most of us being in the RP genre and having an affinity for writing, that most of us have been reading for quite some time. I'm just wondering what kind of books everyone read? You know, the embarrassing ones with no real point or the series that just went on forever? (Everyone seems to rag on the books teenagers/the youth are reading today and I'm sure all of us have some skeletons in our closet on this front...)

When I was between ages 6-8 I liked this Dinotopia series O_O I remember liking that because I loved Dinosaurs.

And... Goosebumps. *shame* I read a few of those 'My Teacher is a Zombie' type books too. Generally, I read a book a day, and they were always along these lines because the only books I had access to were from my elementary school library.

I read some Roald Dahl (BFG) <3 after those got boring and then started on fantasy, which I grew to love.

His Dark Materials are still my favourite 'childhood' books... Though I didn't get the undertones of it when I was a kid, I was just fascinated by the world and daemons especially.

Of course, Harry Potter was in there too, and I loved it up until the last book where the only satisfaction I derived was from Snape's vindicated moment at the end.

Everworld, loved those books and the shifting povs.

Goosebumps of course. RL Stine books in general, read almost all of those.

Bridge to Terabithia was a favorite of mine more than decade ago. It's a shame if you search it now you only get that movie.

The Grounding of Group 6 was another big favorite. Parents paid to have you murdered. I liked a lot of eclectic Young Adult writers.

Robert Cormier, Lois Duncan, Judy Blume. Oh Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing... Aww. I feel all reminiscent.

I've always been an advanced reader. By which I mean I was reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld series by the time I was twelve, and was long past "See Jane Run" before I was six.

But there are some kids books that stick out in my mind, mainly the goosebumps ones. They had choose your own adventure goosebumps books, and I quite liked them. Robert Westall was a favourite too, although slightly cat orientated, and of course there are the Chronicles of Narnia books.

Harry Potter books came later, long after I'd started reading Stephen King and slightly before I started reading Dean Koontz.

Oh, boy. Everything from the CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia to Sabatini's Captain Blood and Sea Hawk. I read Leslie Charteris' Saint books up until he turned into a third-rate Don Hamilton. I even read some Ellery Queen, though I had to keep a dictionary at my elbow to do it. My father was a librarian and a big sci-fi fan, so my ABCs were Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke. I read all the Dragonrider books and all the Darkover books. I even read Robert Adams' Horseclans, weirdly enough.

I was one of those freakish kids whose answer to the question 'have you seen X movie' was usually 'no, but I read the book.'

These are the chapter books I started out with: Betsy, Tacy, and Tib series, Elsie Dinsmore books, the Dear America series, American Girl doll books, Babysitter's Club for a while, Little House on the Prairie series, Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Judy Blume, Madeline L'Engle, Redwall books, and of course, the YA writer to pwn all YA writers, Gail Carson Levine. Ella Enchanted is pretty much my favorite book ever. Oh! And I devoured every Nancy Drew book I could get my hands on.

Later on: Philip Pullman (all of his, not just HSM, which I read after the Sally Lockhart books), HP, Robin McKinley (she pwns), and Ursula K. LeGuin are some of the notable ones. I would randomly read a classic amidst all this, like I loved anything by Willa Cather, Frankenstein, East of Eden, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Thorn Birds, and Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.

...I clearly spent my entire childhood reading in my desk. :lol:

L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Goosebumps

...and thats among a really insane number. There are too many for me to remember.

I did read as a kid, but never avidly. I've always been highly character driven and if I didn't connect with the characters, I had no interest in the book. And, I generally preferred series where I could get to know the characters and stick with them a while. But, I've always been much more of a daydreamer and writer than a reader. It was not uncommon at all for books without familiar characters for me to get frustrated at it halfway through and then chuck the book aside and come up with my own ending. And, generally, I was more into music than I was books. Still am on some level.

Let's see, some of my favorites; there was lots of stuff my mother pressured me to read, but these are the ones I chose.

Above all others, The Black Stallion series. It was my tried and true stand by. Read the whole series and loved it. The first movie, too, is a masterpiece - they just don't make horse/kid movies better than that. The filming on the island - and now that it's on widescreen dvd ... *grins*

Second favorite was The Secret of the Unicorn Queen It was a fun little series that was about girls and time travel and other worlds with unicorn warriors, what could be better. My mother hated the books; I thought they were fantastic and loved them. Loved the characters. It was great. But, my mother got rid of the books when she thought I was too old for them and they went out of print shortly after. Took me years to track them all down and had to pay an arm and a leg.

Beyond that, Larry McMurtry was another of my favorite authors. He is excellent for character development and exploration and the books were so thick and juicy you could really get into them. Of course, Lonesome Dove was a favorite as was The Kid.

Hmmm... all of Tommie DePaoula's (sp?) stuff.

His Dark Materials, The Secret Garden, Bridge to Terabithia, Madeleine L'Engle, Ursula K. LeGuin, The Chronicles of Narnia, Maniac Magee, and Harry Potter.

Most of these I still hold a particular love for - Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, in particular.

I was a huge Narnia and Harry Potter fan : D
I can't really remember the rest of them because I'd just go into the library and pick something that seemed interesting.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I loved anything by Road Dahl too *nods* especially Witches.

I read The Seventh Tower by Garth Nix (I still love those books, too), Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, The Old Kingdom Series (again by Garth Nix), The Unicorns of Balinor, The Dragon Chronicles by Susan Fletcher and a bunch of others I can't remember. But, apart from Harry Potter and The Unicorns of Balinor (that one's just a little too young for me now), I still love the aforementioned. And I own all of those series, apart from the last book in HP, the last couple in The Unicorns of Balinor, and Susan Fletcher's stuff - that last one because I can't find them.

I devoured Roald Dahl's bibliography at an early age, and moved on to C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and general fantasy. And I think I had a few encounters with Goosebumps, as well. And quite a few Norwegian authors, whose names will mean absolutely nothing to you.

I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, so even as a kid I had a pretty diverse reading list. When I was really little, I read books like Pippi Longstocking, Emil, Lillebror & Knerten, and other Scandinavian books, but I was also really into books about horses, of which I had plenty. Plus I loved White Fang, The Incredible Journey, 101 Dalmations, Black Beauty... hmm, I seem to have had a fondness for books about animals... but really, I read just about anything.

Started reading books in English when I was about twelve. I think the first one I read was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, and I discovered that books are so much more enjoyable in the original language.

My god, reading through these lists is nostalgia-overload. I've read a lot of those books mentioned... Some when I was a kid, some not so much.

I completely forgot about the Unicorns of Balinor series... COMPLETELY, and I had a lot of them! All I remember was jewel horns and really ludicrous names that, in retrospect, aren't so pretty after all. O_O

I like to think my taste in books has gotten a lot better over time >_< I don't read Goosebumps anymore, so there's a plus :p Jk, I just thought it'd be funny to see how many people have read the silly kid's stuff.

So first, from first to second grade, I was into those American Girl books. Around that time I also followed the Dear America fad.

Then along came the angsty horse books, "Heartland". Then I got into Harry Potter.

Green Angel was sometime during there. I read a lot of ghost stories and anything to do with witchcraft. I read "Beyond the Burning Time" in the fourth grade.

i used to fawn over the boxcar children, nancy drew, and a load of others, but even then i had really picky standards, and it became a sort of challenge for my elementary school librarian to help find something htat i HADN'T read that would interest me ('cause i regularly spent lunch hour and recess there combing and reading)

The Harry Potter Series...hehe...

I also read a lot of Lois Lowry stuff. I have no idea why. But yeah, I really enjoyed those books. xD

Well... As a young kid I read some of the books Catastrophe86 mentioned and my teacher used to read stories from a book about Norse mythology while we were eating lunch. I also read some Roal Dhal. I also used to read Barbie books (and my grandmother would send me the Barbie magazine (I had a pink period that lasted for a year, everything (including me) was pink...)), I also read some really cheesy early-teen books that I can no longer remember the name of.

Then it became a trend at school to be part of a teenage book club and I joined that. Which led me to reading Sweet Valley High (I used to love the TV show too), a detective type thing with someone named Jenne McGarthy (I think) in them, and more cheesy teenage fiction. I never read the "spooky" ones (or goosebumps even though I have some) because I had a period after my teacher told us a scary story and I watched Titanic were I thought some ghost was trying to steal my lungs o.O

Moved onto David Eddings, C.S. Lewis, Harry Potter, J.R. Tolkien, L.J. Smith (first series I read entierly in English), Kelley Armstrong (not really what I should have been reading when I was 11-12, but I thought it looked cool XD). Then I read some of Anne Rices books (though I only managed to read five books before I decided it was mostly boring).

Nancy Drew. I devoured those books when I was little -- I still do. I liked Hank The Cowdog and Babysitters Club when I was really young. I also liked a lot of the classics: Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, The Wizard of Oz. Jane Eyre has always been one of my favorites too.

Vildea -- you don't mean Jennie McGrady by any chance do you? I loved those when I was younger, but they're not well known, so maybe that's not the ones you're talking about.

Goosebumps and animorphs where my addictions.

I found one of the books I was thinking of in my bookshelf (thought for sure I'd tucked them all away though o.O) and yes, it was Jennie McGrady I was thinking about :) I liked them, though I don't remember much about them anymore XP

I read everything I could get my hands on. Even tried Jane Austen at eleven or so but couldn't get through it. Made no sense at all.

Just before a trip overseas I got some Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton books for my birthday. Started collecting both when I returned. I'm nearly done with the original Nancy Drew collection. Five more to go! Oh, and The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley and ... those teenage romance novels, Sweet Dreams or something like that? Had millions of those, too.

Eventually I developed a liking of 'horror'. Although when you're thirteen, your idea of horror is more Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine than Stephen King. I probably went through the entire Fear Street collection, they were my favourites, not to mention the Goosebumps books. They were so awful.

Aw, now I'm feeling nostalgic!

Weren't those awesome? The library was probably about to just give them to us, my sister and I checked those out so many times. xD

Oh gosh.

Well, I've always been an avid reader. I don't mean this to sound braggy, but it's the truth. It's the way I was raised, my parents read to me a lot when I was a toddler. When I was 6, while other kids were enjoying Arthur and some short "chapter" books like Junie B. Jones (most of us were convinced her name was Jooniby Jones), I was blazing through the Little House on the Prairy series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Hm... I'm trying to think back to my elementary school days. I loved From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. My teacher read us Where The Red Fern Grows in either fourth or fifth grade and we all absolutely loved it. She had to have one of the students finish because she was crying too hard at the end, half our class was, which is saying something because we were all ten years old. That remains one of my favorite books. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, naturally (though I hated Through the Looking Glass). I never liked Raold Dahl that much, but I did LOVE his one book, Danny the Champion of the World.

And then of course, I loved fantasy. His Dark Materials, which I appreciated for their basic qualities until I reread them recently and was able to absorb more of Pulllman's comentary. C.S. Lewis books, a series by Lloyd Alexander. Harry Potter, of course. The Redwall series, I loved those. That brilliant series by Madeline L'Engle.

oh, and GOOSEBUMPS! Make your own ending and the regular story ones. And I must say I loved the television series too (though not as much as Are You Afraid of the Dark?)

Oh, wow, I used to read so many series when I was a kid. My favorite for a really long time was The Saddle Club series by Bonnie Wright. I also dabbled in The Babysitter's Club because that was what my older sister was reading. Then I discovered Harry Potter when I was in fourth grade and haven't looked back since. It kind of opened the floodgates for me and I got really into fantasy books, especially The Lord of the Rings and Tamora Pierce's Lioness quartet (and then everything else she's written, she was and is one of my favorites). Narnia and Redwall were in there, too. Anything that had magic or any sort of fantasy element in it, those were always my favorites.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
Goosebumps
Animorphs
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Shel Silverstein Books: The Giving Tree, Falling Up...

Those are all that I can remember... sad... :(

Marguerite Henry; everything she ever wrote. :3
Cheaper by the dozen -- which is much funnier as a book; I didn't even bother with the movie
Jean Craighead George; everything.

Those were the major favorites.

I read a lot o_o
Let's see.

Judy Bloom, Animorphs (I actually still own the entire series xP), Goosebumps, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and a lot of Ronald Dahl<3
Uh and countless other books, including the One-Eyed Cat which pretty much scarred me (I was like, 8.)