First Book You Read

RookieWriter

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
1,745
Reaction score
40
Location
Mojave Desert
What's the first book you read? By this I don't mean a children's book as a kid or something you had to read for school. What I want to talk about is the first book you ever went out and bought with money you saved up because you wanted to read it. And why that book?


For me it was Private Parts by Howard Stern. I was in high school and watched Stern on the E! show at night and had become a big fan. I had already seen the movie several times and loved it. I wasn't a reader at the time but saved up some money from working a minimum wage job and went out to Barnes and Noble one night to get the book. Got away from the TV (not Howard) and video games for a few nights and locked myself in my room to read the book.
 

maggiee19

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 12, 2015
Messages
493
Reaction score
52
The Stepsister, by R.L. Stine. This was in 2002. I was 21 years old. Before then, I'd only read books for schoolwork and textbooks.
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
I remember the first book I read, but it was indeed a children's book. I have zero idea about the first book I bought and read?
 

abdall

trash mammal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
276
Reaction score
44
Location
Utah
I don't remember what it was called, but I do remember it was about ancient Egyptian mummies and how they were made. I was like....6 or 7. I actually hated reading before my mom made me read about Egypt and I've been an avid reader since.
 

Maggie Maxwell

Making Einstein cry since 1994
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 21, 2013
Messages
11,682
Reaction score
10,337
Location
In my head
Website
thewanderingquille.blogspot.com
Heck if I know. I remember the first book I read myself was a version of Goldilocks and The Three Bears. The first chapter book I read was a Sweet Valley Twins chapter book. The first YA book I read was Tamora Pierce's Wild Magic series. But the first book I bought for myself? No idea. I was already too in love with books to make note of it being a special occasion.
 

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 4, 2009
Messages
22,617
Reaction score
7,295
Location
Wash., D.C. area
As far as I know, it would have been from a Hardy Boys knock-off series called The Three Investigators. Each book ended with the team debriefing Alfred Hitchcock about the cases. I think I got a box set of the first three books as a gift, and loved them so much I bought the others as I was able to. I was about 10 (Incidentally, I couldn't read until I was about 8 or 9).

The cool thing is my dad is mentoring kids in reading, and somehow came across the series and is reading them with the kids, and he and I discuss them too. It's amazing how much of the stories I remember after 40 years and thousands of other books read in between!
 

lonestarlibrarian

senior bean supervisor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 30, 2009
Messages
756
Reaction score
169
Wahhh! I loved the Three Investigators... and Trixie Belden...

I think the first books I really remember buying were a stack of Nancy Drews. They were the 1980's rewrites, and I was so confused when I got them home as to why the titles were familiar, but the stories were totally different from the ones I'd checked out at the library.

About the same time, I think I acquired Baby Island (because I was a sucker for stranded-on-an-island stories) and The Little Princess/The Secret Garden (because I loved FHB). Baby Island, I bought for the cover. The Nancy Drews and the FHB's, I bought because I loved them from reading them at the library, enough to want to buy my own copies.
 

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
4,197
Reaction score
1,049
Location
Los Angeles
Hmm. I didn't have to buy it because my mom worked at the library, but remember reading Book of Three and absolutely needing to continue with the series. Maybe in 3rd or 4th grade. I had already seen Black Cauldron but like a lot of Reagan Babies had a hazy memory of it. The series did not disappoint in the slightest, nor did it when I went back as an adult to reappraise it.

I read The Hobbit around the same time, and was and forever am a huge Tolkien fan. But the Prydain series will always be special, it's plainspoken and yet subversive, and all the characters are complex and surprisingly angsty. And Princess Eilonwy, not the protagonist but given a lot of screen time, was one of the earlier example I can think of of the 'strong female character' in kidslit. She was a boss.
 
Last edited:

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,975
Reaction score
4,508
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
First one I bought on my own? Yeesh, I cannot remember that far back.

I do remember reading the Choose Your Own Adventure junior book about building your own robot. And then there was Mail-Order Wings, which was a favorite because the girl got to fly. (Always thought the end was a bit of a letdown, though. I mean... wings, for cryin' out loud!) I may or may not have gotten that through one of those Scholastic Book Fairs.
 

starrystorm

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 9, 2018
Messages
2,987
Reaction score
605
Age
24
Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions. A prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events. I remember it being outside and just waiting on a chair for my dad to come inside with the package. I felt so grown up.
 

lizmonster

Possibly A Mermaid Queen
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2012
Messages
14,532
Reaction score
24,099
Location
Massachusetts
Website
elizabethbonesteel.com
No idea. We spent a lot of time at the library when I was small, and as I grew I often got books for gifts. By high school I was hoarding lunch money to buy paperbacks, but I can't even guess where I started. It was a while ago. :)
 

Coddiwomple

shipwrecked in antiquity
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2018
Messages
1,784
Reaction score
1,310
Location
Far away
This thread mainlined me straight into an ecstatic reverie. Oh, sweet memories of Scholastic book fairs in elementary school!

And the book club? Pouring over the form, agonizing over selections, filling it out and giving it to the teacher... and then the long, delicious wait... and the day they'd arrive! Grubby hands cracking open new books, kids chattering, teacher trying to marshal us all into the next construction paper and Elmer's glue project but no because BOOKS! (My picks usually had horses in them.)

I just spent ten minutes trying to find images of Scholastic Book Club order forms from a certain decade in the previous century. Oh, the magic!

eta: Omg I bought this book back then

3038456533_c92e066c8d_z.jpg


AHHHHHHHHHHH *collapses in a puddle of nostalgia*
 
Last edited:

williemeikle

The force is strong in this one.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2005
Messages
3,732
Reaction score
669
Location
Canada
Website
www.williammeikle.com
I'd read a lot in our local library and from my Granddad's bookcase before I bought books for myself. Apart from comics, the first actual book I bought was a paperback of Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean, sometime around 1968 when I was ten, after seeing the movie. The next one after that was probably The Ipcress File by Len Deighton, because I was on a spy kick in the late '60s
 

Siri Kirpal

Swan in Process
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 20, 2011
Messages
8,943
Reaction score
3,151
Location
In God I dwell, especially in Eugene OR
Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

We got most of our books from the library and I got some as gifts. Was required to save my allowance, not spend it, so purchases were few. I did buy a few of the Scholastic books: Incredible Tales by Saki (which I still have and recommend) and Jade Snow Wong's autobiography, which I gave to the local elementary school when I left home (I recommend it too).

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

PiaSophia

Balkan writer of feminist horror stories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 8, 2019
Messages
631
Reaction score
27
Location
Netherlands
Website
www.pia-sophia.com
Oh, I wish I knew what the first book was I bought myself! I only remember I was a kid, lol.

I'm going to ask my mom.
 

Norman Mjadwesch

vacuous eyes, will bark at shadows
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 17, 2018
Messages
2,295
Reaction score
1,862
Location
Far Far Away
I used to love my Golden Books, especially the one about dinosaurs.

th


Heh, check out the price! 25 cents!!

And on the inside cover: This book belongs to... norman
(coz I didn't know how to write capital letters lol)


And yeah, the book club picks at school were one of the most magical times of my childhood. It’s weird, all of us here have similar memories about stuff like that but hardly anyone I know IRL gives a shit.

When I was 17 I started to keep a record of every book I ever read and it’s become a kind of secret diary because I can remember a lot of what I was doing at the time I was reading some of those stories, e.g. a particular holiday or reading on the veranda or weather etc, which allows me to access memories that those book lists trigger. None of which helps me to remember the first book I read or the first book I bought, since that predated my records. I was too young, books have always been part of my life as far back as I can remember.

----------------

ETA. A memory has leached into my mind. I remember my mum telling me that my first book may have been:

md517796343.jpg


OMFG how cute is he?!

I remember that book and almost remember my love for it. Just looking at that cover that I haven't thought about in at least forty years...
 
Last edited:

neandermagnon

Nolite timere, consilium callidum habeo!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
7,271
Reaction score
9,333
Location
Dorset, UK
I don't remember because when I was a kid/teen I used to get books from the school library and the library in town. I'm not sure I bought any books with my own money until I was in my 20s.

Regarding books we didn't have to read at school, I've always read books outside of school anyway, but in secondary school one of my friends was in a different English set to me and so had different set texts to read and a couple of times I read the set text for her class, just because the books looked good. She thought I was insane for doing that. I'm trying to remember which books they were now. Books I remember reading from the school library that I didn't have to read included "I am David" by Anne Holm, "Brother in the Land" by Robert Swindells and "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. I can't remember if any of those were set texts for my friend's English class. I just remembered one of her set texts - a book called "Buddy" - I just googled to try and find who wrote it, I think it's by Nigel Hinton but can't be 100% certain I'm not confusing it with another book. The Wikipedia page says it's often used in Britain and Ireland as a set text in English so that adds to the probability that it was this book. I can't remember enough of the plot to tell from reading the plot summary on Wikipedia. *facepalm*

The first adult fiction book I read was probably a Stephen King. I think the first Stephen King I read was Firestarter. I can't remember whether I bought myself any Stephen Kings. Unless it counts as buying it if you get a book token for your birthday/Christmas, in which case I'd have no idea what the first book I bought was. Probably would've been an Asterix book (been collecting them since I was six).
 
Last edited:

RookieWriter

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
1,745
Reaction score
40
Location
Mojave Desert
The first adult fiction book I read was probably a Stephen King. I think the first Stephen King I read was Firestarter. I can't remember whether I bought myself any Stephen Kings. Unless it counts as buying it if you get a book token for your birthday/Christmas, in which case I'd have no idea what the first book I bought was. Probably would've been an Asterix book (been collecting them since I was six).

I believe the first novel I read that I actually finished was a Stephen King book. At least it is the first one I remember reading.
 

insolentlad

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 6, 2017
Messages
107
Reaction score
14
Location
Florida Panhandle
Website
insolentlad.com
Though I read loads of supposedly 'adult' books from the library or my folks' book shelves, I strongly suspect the first I bought for myself was an Edgar Rice Burroughs title. Which ERB I couldn't begin to say, but I eventually bought all that were available.
 

B.D. Skunkworks

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 19, 2019
Messages
106
Reaction score
45
Age
36
Location
Philly
Ah yes. My first book was "The Merchant of Death" by D.J. MacHale. First book in the Pendragon series. It was actually the hardcover two-in-one edition that included the second book "The lost city of Faar". I remember being in the bookstore with my mom and begging her to buy it for me, having already read book one via a friend from school who loaned it to me. Good times:)
 

mrsmig

Write. Write. Writey Write Write.
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 4, 2012
Messages
9,883
Reaction score
7,169
Location
Virginia
Like others, I'm not entirely certain what book I first purchased for myself, but chances are good it was Scott O'Dell's The Island of the Blue Dolphins. Talk about a kick-ass heroine.
 

Gang aft agley

defunct human bean
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 6, 2019
Messages
69
Reaction score
5
Location
PNW
The first book I remember reading for pleasure (didn't purchase it, checked it out from my English teachers wall-o-books) was The White Mountains by John Christopher when I was ten. That trilogy started my love affair with science fiction and was a gateway drug into the seedy underworld of fantasy too.

First book I purchased? Not really sure, but I do remember buying Imajica by Clive Barker at a yard sale when I was fifteen. That was triiipppppyy. Matter of fact, I may have to add that to my reread list. Thanks for this thread :)
 
Last edited: