Thursday 13 January 2011

Booking Through Thursday: Firsts

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/firsts/

Suggested by Joy:
Do you remember the first book you bought for yourself? Or the first book you checked out of the library? What was it and why did you choose it?

I really have no idea! My mother probably brought me along to the library long before I could read, because she used to read a lot herself, and also borrowed children's books from the library to read to me. When I started school, we also had a school library, and I borrowed piles of books from there. I have no recollection what might have been the very first one. My choices around the age 10-11 or so would have included a lot of Famous Five and Nancy Drew and similar. I did not own many of those, but I borrowed them frequently from the library.

As for my own collection of books, in my early years it probably grew from books I was given at Christmas and birthdays. But there is also an old tradition of annual book sales in Sweden, each year at the end of February. I can vaguely remember browsing through catalogues for the book sale from perhaps the age of 11 or so. I'm not sure it was all up to me to decide what was bought, though. I think the books we got from these sales were often "classics". Out of the books from my youth that I still have in my bookcase I'm guessing that some might have been bought at such sales: Children's editions of the stories from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The Diary of Anne Frank. A collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. Anne of Green Gables. Little Women by Louisa M Alcott. (All in Swedish.)

Monica

7 comments:

  1. I am not sure it was my first, but one of the first I picked out on my own was Fox in Socks at my school library. It may be that it was the first time I was at a library without my parents....

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  2. There are several books on your list that I still love to this day. Little Woman, Odyssey, Iliad, Nancy Drew....I don't remember first bought book, but I do remember first library book checked out. Check out my answer for Booking Through Thursday.

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  3. I'm finding this answer to be retty standard. I wonder if our parents would remember. My son is going to be three in March and we've already been to the library too many times for me to remember his first independant pick. Guess that's better than no books!

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  4. I loved Nancy Drew too!

    I don't think I could answer this for my own kids, even, and they are only 8, but it does bring up some fun memories.

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  5. here's mine http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/01/booking-through-thursday_13.html

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  6. Yes, Poe!! I've probably read all this stuff! You read that as a girl? Scary stuff for a young person. And The Bobsey Twins. Not sure if I am spelling that right, it was a very famous series when I was a child, along with Nancy Drew. I also read some Robery Louis Stevenson as a child, but mostly his poetry. Bell, Book And Candle, a fantasy story kind of like Bewitched.

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  7. I don't remember the first book, i was readiing at first grade, 6 years old. i do remember the first 2 books i recived in the mail when we lived in Kentucky, my grandmother sent them to me for Christmas, Bomba and the other Tarzan and the Ciy of Gold. i had all the Nancy Drew, books is what i asked for at Christmas. the first book i can really remember and i don't know when it appeared was our family Bible Story book and also my Fairy Tale book. loved all of those

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