Books you liked as a child but can't stand now. [Archive]

Tallent

06-20-2009, 01:53 AM

I have recently been going back to some of the books I loved as a child to read to my children. But more than a few of them I just can’t stand to read now. I have delightful memories of the book Brain Wave and tried to read it to my kids. I had to give up because I was tripping over the poorly constructed sentences.
Which books do find you dislike now but loved as a child?

Kitty Pryde

06-20-2009, 02:05 AM

When I was little I thought "The Dark Is Rising" was ten thousand kinds of awesome, spooky, magical, otherworldly. I tried to read it as an adult and I was like WTF is this poop?

The other books in the series held up better, though.

Oh yeah, I used to think The Secret Garden was great. It was the first non-picture book I ever read, back in 1st grade. But now I think it's awful, because of the author's religious philosophy and because of the portrayal of a kid with disabilities.

Millicent M'Lady

06-20-2009, 02:13 AM

Oh yeah, I used to think The Secret Garden was great. It was the first non-picture book I ever read, back in 1st grade. But now I think it's awful, because of the author's religious philosophy and because of the portrayal of a kid with disabilities.

What, really?! I loved the Secret Garden when I was a kid. The religious philosophy must have gone right over my head when I was a little 'un. Where is it seen in the book? I'm really afraid to read it again now in case I ruin it for myself!

Fokker Aeroplanbau

06-20-2009, 02:22 AM

I used to love the Seventh Tower, now I just can't look at it straight.

Heh, life moves on.

WendyNYC

06-20-2009, 02:22 AM

I loved HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS. Loved! Like, it was the best book EVER. I reread it recently with my daughter and...not so great.

Kitty Pryde

06-20-2009, 02:23 AM

What, really?! I loved the Secret Garden when I was a kid. The religious philosophy must have gone right over my head when I was a little 'un. Where is it seen in the book? I'm really afraid to read it again now in case I ruin it for myself!

I realllllly don't want to hate on anybody's religion around here. When I was a kid, I thought Colin was NOT physically disabled, he just was sickly and afraid to run around, and the other two kids give him the confidence to learn to walk. But the author was really saying that he WAS physically disabled, but he was able to heal himself through the power of positive thought, after some encouragement from his friends.

While I do think that positive thinking is helpful, I think it's harmful to imply that positive thinking can cure one of one's ills.

Millicent M'Lady

06-20-2009, 02:29 AM

I realllllly don't want to hate on anybody's religion around here. When I was a kid, I thought Colin was NOT physically disabled, he just was sickly and afraid to run around, and the other two kids give him the confidence to learn to walk. But the author was really saying that he WAS physically disabled, but he was able to heal himself through the power of positive thought, after some encouragement from his friends.

While I do think that positive thinking is helpful, I think it's harmful to imply that positive thinking can cure one of one's ills.

Oh my God, I thought the exact same as you. I thought he was just told so often that he was poorly that he believed it when it wasn't true? Thanks for clearing that up and sorry for the derail!:D

childeroland

06-20-2009, 02:48 AM

Clive Barker's Books of Blood, though I might have to give them a second look. Much of Stephen King's stuff which hasn't held up so well for me. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. Christopher Pike's books, though I wouldn't say I can't stand them now. Some Lois Duncan, though sometimes I still hanker for one of her stories.

TerzaRima

06-20-2009, 03:50 AM

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn now makes me cringe because of the family's almost fetishistic worship of the son at the expense of Francie and everybody else. The author doesn't wink to us about it or anything. I know some of that reflects the times, but it makes me crazy to read.

Delhomeboy

06-20-2009, 04:45 AM

When I was little I thought "The Dark Is Rising" was ten thousand kinds of awesome, spooky, magical, otherworldly. I tried to read it as an adult and I was like WTF is this poop?

WhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAttttt?????? ;) You know, these were probably the first "wordy" books I ever read...but damn I read them. The best ones were The Dark is Rising, The Grey King, and Silver on the Tree. Jeez, I still remember the titles...

And I think I can remember that poem they had in the back, remember? Just of the top of my head: When the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back, three from the circle, three from the track. Wood, bronze, iron, water, fire and stone, five shall return, one go alone...

ah! Good times.

On a separate note, it almost looks like the loss of innocence inevitable with growing up is at play in this thread. We used to enjoy these stories just for being stories. Then we grew up, learned what badly constructed sentences were, and now instead of being swept away like we were in our youth, we tsk, tsk at our beloved memories and scold ourselves because, by god, the sentence construction is terrible. and the deus ex machina is everywhere. Things our young, hopeful minds didn't know and, perhaps, would've been better off not knowing.

sunday morning

06-20-2009, 05:36 AM

V.C. Andrews. Okay, so I haven't actually read a complete book of hers as an adult, but I've leaved through a few & didn't like them. I think it's more to do with being a writer than grown up, though, because I've learned what to do/what not to do in writing, and I tend to get annoyed with books that aren't well written. Not always..but a lot of the time, if the writing is really bad, I can't get into the story. Whereas when I was not serious about writing, I didn't notice that.

smcc360

06-23-2009, 09:35 PM

When I was a kid, I greatly enjoyed a series of spy novels I found up in the attic- Nick Carter, Agent of Axe. Nick Carter was so badass, his codename was Killmaster! (I always wondered if he started out as Kill-Apprentice and worked his way up).

The books, which were written in the '60s and '70s, had titles like The Mind Poisoners, Codename: Werewolf, 14 Seconds to Hell, A Bullet for Fidel and Operation Che Guevera (lousy Cubans!), The Casbah Killers and The Arab Plague (lousy Middle-Easterners!), and Vatican Vendetta and The Ebony Cross (lousy Catholics!). Every book was packed with gruesome murder, exotic locales, beautiful women, and high-tech gadgetry (Nick Carter had a poison gas bomb disguised as a testicle, for example).

There were literally hundreds of these things, and I thought they were terribly sophisticated, with all of the graphic violence and explicit sex you'd expect from a good James Bond knockoff. Engrossing stuff when you're ten years old.

Just recently, I wandered into a used bookstore in upstate New York, and was thrilled to see shelves of Nick Carter books. I scooped up a bagful and took them home.

They're... awful. Absolutely, irredeemably, unreadably bad. Say what you will about Brown, Meyer, and Paolini. They're Dickens, Austen, and Hemingway compared to the anonymous authers of Assassin Convention, Zero-Hour Strike Force, and Operation Sharkbite.

And yet... the ten year old who lives in my heart loves them still. :o

CaroGirl

06-23-2009, 11:55 PM

The books, which were written in the '60s and '70s, had titles like The Mind Poisoners, Codename: Werewolf, 14 Seconds to Hell, A Bullet for Fidel and Operation Che Guevera (lousy Cubans!), The Casbah Killers and The Arab Plague (lousy Middle-Easterners!), and Vatican Vendetta and The Ebony Cross (lousy Catholics!). Every book was packed with gruesome murder, exotic locales, beautiful women, and high-tech gadgetry (Nick Carter had a poison gas bomb disguised as a testicle, for example).
But you really can't beat a poison gas bomb disguised as a testicle. I mean, the mental image alone...

Those Golden Books that I loved so much as a kid are a load of crap.

Acoustic

06-24-2009, 01:06 AM

The Giver made me pee myself back in 4th grade.
Now it doesn't.

CaroGirl

06-24-2009, 01:52 AM

The Giver made me pee myself back in 4th grade.
Now it doesn't.
I read The Giver for the first time two months ago. Blew me away. :)

Priene

06-24-2009, 12:13 PM

Lord of the Rings.

brainstorm77

06-24-2009, 01:26 PM

Does anyone remember 'The Choose Your Own Adventure' series? :)

callalily61

06-24-2009, 04:06 PM

One Little Golden Book in particular: The Seven Sneezes. I still like it but when I read it to my kids my first thought was this is so not politically correct! It has an obviously ethnic rag man living in a shack--we had a rag man in our neighborhood when I grew up.

I read The Giver a few years ago and I still love it.

Someone upthread mentioned the blatant preaching in The Secret Garden. When I read it as a kid I didn't notice, but as an adult I was annoyed and bored with it. I skipped those sections to get to the actual story.

thethinker42

06-24-2009, 04:29 PM

I'm probably committing all kinds of blasphemy here, but...

The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein

ADORED that book when I was a kid. Read it again a few years ago when I was thinking of buying it for my cousin's baby shower (she asked for lots of books, good on her). I almost had heart failure in the store. It was like, "WTF??? What is wrong with this stupid person? Sucking the tree dry without ever giving back? YOU TWAT! I HATE YOU!" *tears book to pieces*

Well, okay, I didn't really tear it up, but I definitely saw the story in a different light as an adult...

jst5150

06-24-2009, 04:30 PM

Shel did a lot of writing for Playboy and Dr. Hook, too. So, yeah ... :)

sunday morning

06-25-2009, 07:11 AM

Does anyone remember 'The Choose Your Own Adventure' series? :)

Oh yeah! I read some R.L. Stine ones when I was a kid & I thought they were the coolest thing ever. Haven't heard of/read any since so I don't know what I'd think of them now.

Medievalist

06-25-2009, 08:54 AM

I loved Doctor Dolittle books; can't read 'em at all now.

jilly61

06-25-2009, 05:18 PM

I loved the Meg and Mog series as a youngster. Other than that I grew up reading myths and legends. I had a book full of them which my godparents gave me. That has to be my favourite book of all time. Wish I knew what it was as it got lost over the years.

Sai

06-25-2009, 06:45 PM

As a kid I really loved the 'Chronicles of Narnia.' A few years back I thought I'd read some of the books I missed out on as kid. I just couldn't do it. I also tried reading some of C.S Lewis' sci-fi stuff, and I couldn't get through that either :(.

callalily61

06-25-2009, 06:48 PM

The Bobbsey Twins. Seriously. I blew through every one of these when I was a wee thing. I found one at a used book sale a few years ago and grabbed it.

Good Heavens. The sugary-sweetness of it caused brain cavities. *boggles at childhood reading choices*

Acoustic

06-25-2009, 07:31 PM

I read The Giver for the first time two months ago. Blew me away. :)
I was alright with it until I read The Messenger.
:( I over analyzed it or something.

brainstorm77

06-25-2009, 08:32 PM

Ha and don't forget the Degrassi Junior High books :)

RunawayScribe

06-25-2009, 11:04 PM

The Babysitters Club series.

Nuff said.

spamwarrior

06-28-2009, 06:08 AM

The Boxcar children.

Prit

06-28-2009, 08:03 AM

As a preteen, it was The Babysitters Club.

As a teenager, I'd say that the Dragonlance series fits the bill. God, me and my friends used to be so obsessed with those books.

Kind of weird how I still love some of the books I liked as a kid, but can't stand others.

roseangel

06-28-2009, 11:46 AM

I still love Mercedes Lackey's books, and the Dragonlance books, but the romance novels I read when I was a kid no longer interest me, I can't stand the Babysitters Club anymore and I used to read every Nancy Drew book I could get my hands on but now I can't get passed the first page.

ChrisKelly331

06-29-2009, 12:44 AM

the first chapter book I bought for myself in elementary school: Sugar Bee by Rita Micklish. Oh who am I kidding I still LOVE Sugar Bee.

regdog

06-29-2009, 03:25 AM

Hugo The Hippo

Pepper

06-29-2009, 05:57 AM

The Goosebumps series.

Rowen Of Rin

DMarie84

06-30-2009, 09:26 PM

The Babysitters Club series.

Nuff said.

What about the Sweet Valley High books? I loved those books when I was 10-12 years old.

I saw one in the library and picked it up and read the first few pages. I don't know why I thought those were so great when I was young...

And I also figured out that over 150 of those books were made. Good grief!

mister_lister

06-30-2009, 10:32 PM

underthecity

07-01-2009, 06:18 PM

Does anyone remember 'The Choose Your Own Adventure' series?

I do. I used to love these, and their respective clones (i.e. Twistaplot). I would check out a stack of these before Christmas break during grade school and spend hours reading them. I haven't read any as an adult, though.

Back to the topic at hand, I used to read Piers Anthony's Xanth series in grade school and into high school. After the 11th or 12th, I started burning out of them. Nowadays I can't even bring myself to read excerpts of them.

The same goes, to some extent, for Rober Asprin's Myth Adventures series. I loved reading them until two things happened. 1: I got tired of how the MC (Skeeve) would kind of act like a dumbass through the story until the end when, during the big climax, he would reveal how he had figured everything out and would explain everything to the other characters. 2: Asprin himself burned himself out and stopped writing them.

Asprin revived the series a few years ago with a book whose story took place in the middle of the original trilogy. That one about did it for me, as I enjoyed the story, but the newer character growth and development was now out of place, if this book were supposed to be a new number 3. The biggest issue was that in the original trilogy, Aahz always called Skeeve "Kid." In later books he called him by his name. But with this new book, taking place in the first trilogy, he called him "Skeeve." So this was hugely out of place. That and other issues kept me from looking for any more Myth Adventures books.

SaraL

07-10-2009, 08:01 PM

DragonHeart

09-13-2009, 06:11 PM

Agree with the Babysitters Club series. I convinced my mom to actually sign up for this book club thing and they'd sent me four of those at the beginning of every month. I'd read all four the day I got them. I don't even know why I liked the series in the first place. I do know that I ended up with 80 or 90 of them. Yeah.

Also, the Animorphs series. I thought it was the coolest thing ever when they first came out. I even had all the books that went with them. The Andalite Chronicles, etc. Even the choose your own adventure versions. They're not so cool now, alas.

scarletpeaches

09-13-2009, 06:25 PM

Chronicles of Narnia. Not so much the writing, but the underlying Christian message of the books. When I was a Kid I liked them for that very reason; now as an educated adult I find them repulsive. Subliminal and overt proselytizing of children is repugnant to me.Yeah, kinda like Pullman's subliminal and overt proselytizing of atheism really, isn't it?

I don't see the problem with children reading Christian books. I do however have a problem with people thinking being 'educated' and being Christian are mutually exclusive.

I read LWW when I was seven, loved it then, still love it now.

As an educated adult, I have no problem with the Narnia books.

Kathleen42

09-13-2009, 06:32 PM

Yeah, kinda like Pullman's subliminal and overt proselytizing of atheism really, isn't it?

Probably the reason I don't have a desire to re-read either Narnia or His Dark Materials. Of course, I read both as adults.

Myself, I'm going to go with Sweet Valley (Twins and High).

I recently thought about re-reading some Judy Blume but, well, I'm scared. I want my childhood memories left intact.

IdiotsRUs

09-13-2009, 06:34 PM

All sorts of fables and legends were my thing. King Arthur ( the proper version mind :D) *sighs*

Then the Hobbit and Hitchhikers when I was ten. Then I was lost in a world of myths and space....Still ove them now though.

But I also read anything with horses, which I would probably puke on if asked to read today.

And you know, I never even saw the 'Christian' message in Narnia or ( more subtly) in LOTR. Not just when I was a kid either. When someone told me I was like WTF!?! Possibly because I'm not a Christian so I filtered them through my own beliefs and saw symbols / motifs / themes that agreed with them, not the author's intent. So the subliminalism didn't work on me :D

Ken

09-13-2009, 06:50 PM

... didn't really read many books when I was a lad. Mostly perused Mad Magazine and Cracked. Don't really dig them, now, but that's really because they aren't as good as they used to be, imo.

~*Kate*~

09-13-2009, 08:11 PM

I recently thought about re-reading some Judy Blume but, well, I'm scared. I want my childhood memories left intact.

I re-read some last month and was pleasantly surprised.

I was a huge BSC fan myself. I remember telling my parents all about the first book when I was 8-- they rolled their eyes and I couldn't understand why they didn't see the awesomeness.

S.J.

09-17-2009, 10:48 PM

I recently thought about re-reading some Judy Blume but, well, I'm scared. I want my childhood memories left intact.

The other week, I reread one of the 'Fudge' books and found it just as hilarious as I had six years ago, when I was ten - but then, I'm not what you'd call an 'adult' when it comes to literature, yet, so maybe you should just go with your instincts and leave them well alone.

I used to love all the Enid Blyton books, particularly 'Swallows and Amazons'. Although I still think they're really good books, all the "Oh, how frightfully beastly!" moments are annoying as hell, haha.

Kitty Pryde

09-17-2009, 11:00 PM

Judy Blume definitely stands the test of time. I recently reread "Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing". Brilliant. Peter's adventures take place on a very small scale (his apartment building, his elementary school), but they are still moving and funny.

I was a massive babysitter's club fan. This blog has hilarious adult reviews of BSC books written by someone who loved the books when she was little: http://bscrevisited.blogspot.com/ I reread one of those recently. They aren't very good now that I'm grown...but I love em anyways.