What Would Your Youthful Library Record Say About You?

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What would your youthful library record say about you? An interesting question and one addressed by John Crace (amongst others) in yesterday’s Guardian, (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/03/youthful-library-record-haruki-murakami-belle-de-jour).
I, like John Crace, used to enjoy reading the Biggles books. Indeed I still have a copy of “Biggles Millionaire” on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in my living room. A good old fashioned yellow hardback book. I also still possess H. G. Wells “The Time Machine” and his “War Of The Worlds”, together with Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (although the latter is missing one Braille volume. Heaven only knows what happened to that)! I must have been an extremely boring teenager as I have no recollection of reading anything salacious unless one counts a rather abridged version, on audio cassette of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” which, I must confess I did not enjoy reading.

Kevin

11 thoughts on “What Would Your Youthful Library Record Say About You?”

  1. Jay Dee's avatarJay Dee

    Interesting idea. I was mostly reading science books, and in particular, about dinosaurs. There was one dinosaur book I kept signing out that had detailed diagrams of skeletons that I’d trace out and draw what the head and body would look like. I had a lot of fun with that.

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    1. K Morris Poet's avatardrewdog2060drewdog2060 Post author

      Thanks for sharing your youthful reading tastes. I also was interested in prehistoric animals and remember reading “The Lost World”. I also recollect reading the Ladybird book, “The Story Of Medicine” which I found fascinating. Best. Kevin

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  2. floridaborne's avatarfloridaborne

    Mine would tell you that I’m dyslexic. I’m a very slow reader and read the Asimov “Foundation” trilogy many times over, remembering little about it until later in life when it was available through books on tape. Lots of SciFi magazine shorts stories, and SciFi books.

    As my sister used to say, if I had one shelf of books, I’d have reading material for a lifetime.

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    1. K Morris Poet's avatardrewdog2060drewdog2060 Post author

      Thanks for your comment. Talking books in their various manifestations are, as you say a great way of enjoying literature. As a teenager I had many books on cassette tape, most of which I still possess. However most of my reading now is done using the text to speech facility on my Kindle which is, I guess good for people with reading difficulties (not just blind people like me). Best. Kevin

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  3. waternymph88's avatarwaternymph88

    Mine really was quantity rather than quality. Used to read about a book a day, say 60 over the summer holiday. Things like Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, PD James: Classic crime fiction. Historical: Jean Plaidy, Antonia Fraser. Was reading biographies from about age 6 or 7 (gifted child. Poor me!). Wow: would love to find one of the lists I kept of the 64 or so books I’d read each summer – till I discovered Boys aged 14 or so…

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    1. K Morris Poet's avatardrewdog2060drewdog2060 Post author

      Thank you for your comment. You certainly where a gifted child managing to get through all those books! Did you buy many of them or mainly borrow from libraries? I have happy memories of my grandfather reading “The Famous Five” and other books to me. Almost every Saturday we would pop into Smiths and buy a book. Kevin

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