What books do you remember reading as a youngster, soon after you learned to read?

[Odds]

The old man saw them coming from the window, Tiny moved slowly to pick up his gun, while Le' Legionnare sat there sharpening his knife, humming "come death, come."

I have spent a large part of my leisure time over the years in the international hunt for Sven Hassle. I am sorry to inform you that he does not & never has existed.

That stories been circulating for years and it greatly annoyed the author. He's posted pictures from his time at the Eastern Front online and i believe his early books are largely based on real events; especially Legion of the Damned, which reads like a biography of Sven and his comrades.
His later books have a cavalier approach to the truth and become entertainment more than anything else.
One of the best of all was 'Wheels of Terror': Have you seen the film?

 

[Justin Passing]

I had books later, when I could afford to buy a few. About 12 + I suppose. I earned pocket money mending things when I was old enough to bike to the library to look things up. Mother brought sewing machines from somewhere - they were mostly just out of sync. Electrical/electronic things had dud transistors and valves - OC83's and OC65's iirc. My father got old techy books from work friends I think. Several about old flying stuff. Aerodynamics of the Auster. Mechanics of car steering geometries, Ackermann and Davis. The importance of camber, castor and trail, and then motorbike suspension. Still have meccano in the loft.
I was given an Intel 4004 processor when I was about 15-16 so I had loads of datasheets on its primitive assembler and circuits. I read those under the bed covers . Then 6800, 8080, 6502, Z80,...
And stuff from National Semiconductor - their linear circuit applications books were informative. 741's and 555's were new then, I couldn't afford those until later.
I had an early poorly illustrated book on cryptogams, and another on bugs.
Thats mossy things and blood/sapsuckers (hemipterans), not computer related.
Still have a head full of names like rhytidiadelphus squarrosus, amblistegium serpens and palomina prasina.
Also got hold of a mathsy book on Laplace transforms, Heaviside and Delta-Dirac functions which I learned because I liked the way they looked and fit each other. There's no point learning them, you just look them up, and I don't remember using them much, ever. I wish I could forget them and have that bit of brain back.
I refused to learn kings and queens because they're dead and didn't matter any more. Now I could learn them but would forget them in a week.
I had a green Collins dictionary, which annoyed me because I couldn't learn it. But the inside covers had all sorts of learnable stuff on them, like the Greek alphabet and German strong verbs. Remember those? I learned em though I didn't know any German then. Broken Welsh coal averages one ton to 40 cubic feet. Pi and e to 20 places, etc. The Periodic table, natch. They went and changed it later, b'stards.
Oh and times tables up to 20x 20. Handy for Countdown.

 

[Odds]

You read data sheets on the Intel404 under the bed sheets?
Naughty boy. You'll go blind.

 

[Dork Lard]

That stories been circulating for years and it greatly annoyed the author. He's posted pictures from his time at the Eastern Front online and i believe his early books are largely based on real events; especially Legion of the Damned, which reads like a biography of Sven and his comrades.
His later books have a cavalier approach to the truth and become entertainment more than anything else.
One of the best of all was 'Wheels of Terror': Have you seen the film?

There is a loosely affilliated international movement dedicated to identifying the real Sven Hassle which includes some very heavy hitters.

The gentleman you refer to has/had a fatal flaw, he has/had no money. What money he has/had can be traced to his legitimate earnings. He is/was a shill.

Whatever the origins of the series, the publishers continued it by using ghost writers.

 

[Dork Lard]

I can't remember the first time I picked one up, but I can't put down anything by James Herriot until it's read. I have a whole shelf dedicated to his books & I often rotate reading them inbetween other stuff.

 

[Odds]

There is a loosely affilliated international movement dedicated to identifying the real Sven Hassle which includes some very heavy hitters.

The gentleman you refer to has/had a fatal flaw, he has/had no money. What money he has/had can be traced to his legitimate earnings. He is/was a shill.

Whatever the origins of the series, the publishers continued it by using ghost writers.

There's a long list of anachronisms in the books here and whether you think he was full of shill is up to you. The books became a way for him to earn a living and i suppose there's only so much mileage in personal war stories - like a lot of war films, they rely on elements of entertainment to make the story rather than becoming a documentary.
The remake of All Quiet on the Western Front has been lauded and is tipped to win all kinds of Oscars but takes many liberties with the original text.

 

[Dork Lard]

There's a long list of anachronisms in the books here and whether you think he was full of shill is up to you. The books became a way for him to earn a living and i suppose there's only so much mileage in personal war stories - like a lot of war films, they rely on elements of entertainment to make the story rather than becoming a documentary.
The remake of All Quiet on the Western Front has been lauded and is tipped to win all kinds of Oscars but takes many liberties with the original text.

Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen is/was a shill.

Selling over 53 million books is not "a living", it generates an enourmous amount of money.

Follow the money.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

There's a long list of anachronisms in the books here and whether you think he was full of shill is up to you. The books became a way for him to earn a living and i suppose there's only so much mileage in personal war stories - like a lot of war films, they rely on elements of entertainment to make the story rather than becoming a documentary.
The remake of All Quiet on the Western Front has been lauded and is tipped to win all kinds of Oscars but takes many liberties with the original text.

When I first began work, there was a larger than life guy, who liked nothing more than recounting his experiences during the war, in the Royal Navy. To listen to his stories, he served on every ship in the RN, and every theatre of the war. Both at least my father and an uncle were in the RN, but neither mentioned their wartime experience.

 

[Odds]

When I first began work, there was a larger than life guy, who liked nothing more than recounting his experiences during the war, in the Royal Navy. To listen to his stories, he served on every ship in the RN, and every theatre of the war. Both at least my father and an uncle were in the RN, but neither mentioned their wartime experience.

Plenty of Old Salts know how to spin a yarn, for sure. My dad was more than happy to do so, with just the right amount of booze under his belt - but he did serve on HMS Belfast - We have the pic to prove it.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Plenty of Old Salts know how to spin a yarn, for sure. My dad was more than happy to do so, with just the right amount of booze under his belt - but he did serve on HMS Belfast as wireless operator.

I run an annual special event in June, often as not, Belfast's radio room takes part.

http://www.radio-amateur-events.org/IMW/past.htm .... #5038

 

[jeds]

Can't remember the titles but parents had a bureau, which had a small bookcase below. I read many of the books. One was about an American private eye. I literally remember reading about a horses head being left in a bed! A couple of the books were about physics - particles - and planets. I've no idea why, because my parents didn't seem to have a scooby about science. I don't know why but I read them cover to cover several times. I'm still fascinated by physics now and have quite a collection of books. I don't pretend to understand them completely but I like to think I have a general idea.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I'm still fascinated by physics now and have quite a collection of books. I don't pretend to understand them completely but I like to think I have a general idea.

We, none of us, retain everything we learn over time - if only we could retain everything. All we can hope to do, is retain what we need and use regularly.

 

[Odds]

I run an annual special event in June, often as not, Belfast's radio room takes part.

http://www.radio-amateur-events.org/IMW/past.htm .... #5038

It's such a small space it makes me wonder how the hell you could think straight when the big guns began blasting away - it'd drive me mad.

I wonder why HMS Belfast is closed on April 20th - surely not to commemorate Hitler's birthday?

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

It's such a small space it makes me wonder how the hell you could think straight when the big guns began blasting away - it'd drive me mad.

I wonder why HMS Belfast is closed on April 20th - surely not to commemorate Hitler's birthday?

I've no idea, could you not ask them?

 

[FiremanT]

My first book, was the original copy of Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. They struggled to teach me to read at school, really - I taught myself fighting my way through that book, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, borrowed from the local library. From that, I went onto the Biggles series, again borrowed from the library. An odd one I borrowed was Nanook of the North. School had tried to teach us with the short line of text and picture books, which just had no interest for me, so I learned nothing, other than the basics.

I have always had the idea that I read “The Water Babies” before I started school ( no pre or nursery school in those days”.

It is almost impossible that this memory is true, but I was a prolific reader at an early age, and devoured books.

I clearly recall in the Ist year of school being taken to the headmistress. I was afraid I was in trouble but was given a handful of dolly mixtures. This was a reward fir reading particularly “hard” words off a blackboard.

Oddly, there is a thread in the CC concerning what book is being currently read. Mine is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. This book is credited by Ricky Tomlinson as the most important he has read (albeit he read it in solitary confinement in prison )