Your first?

[Steve]

In a blog entry, PJ says

 

"My grandfather gave me my first "adult" book, I'm not sure what age I was, but this wasn't Roald Dahl or an Asterix tale, this was a real, honest-to-goodness book, with more than two hundred pages. The book was "The Big Kiss Off of 1944" by Andrew Bergman."

 

For me, it was "Enoch and the Brave Un" by Myra Clarke Crandell. The blurb is this: "A lonely Guilford boy plots to keep a puppy, but in a moment of courage, the dog earns his right to stay."

 

OK, with that blurb, you might argue that calling it an "adult" book is a stretch, but it was novel-length with no pictures and I read the whole thing by myself from beginning to end. And the father wanted to kill the puppy. The novel was set in the small New England town I grew up in, and I remember giving up other fun stuff to read it. Thankfully my Mom saved it and I'm reading it to my son now.

 

So what was your first?

 

-Steve

[pjl]

The blurb from the Big Kiss Off of 1944 reads:

 

"1944. The Allies are sweeping across Europe, Roosevelt is running for a fourth term, a New York gumshoe called Jack LeVine sips a beer as he stares out the window and waits for busniess.

 

Enter Kerry Lane, a chorus girl who once made fast money starring in stag movies; now she needs them back before the wrong people see them.

 

It looks like a routine blackmail assignment, but pretty soon LeVine's involved with several corpses, a Presidential candidate and some dirty dealing that could change the course of the war...."

 

 

Now I ask you, why wouldn't you want to read that book?

[Steve E]

The first book that I can remember reading on my own was The Blueberry Pie Elf by Jane Thayer. I was seven. I still remember the plot but I don't want to spoil it for you. My first "big boy" book was The Mysterious Stranger, a literary classic by Mark Twain. It was a gift from my father which he got from his mother during the Great Depression (the inside cover is marked 2¢ but pennies were real money back then). I think it started my lifelong obsession with fantasy and sci-fi. I consider it a prized possession.

 

Taking the day off to nurse a Halloween hangover,

-Thoth.

[astillac]

The first "adult" book I ever read was The Giver, by Lois Lowry. They classify that as young adult now, don't they? I'm not saying that's the first thing I ever read (I was ten, with, what seven years of reading behind me?), but it's the first book that I remember. It made a very strong impact, shaping the bulk of how I understand the world. I tell people if they want to understand the way my brain works, read that book.

[Steve E]

?

[Steve E]

I tell people if they want to understand the way my brain works, read that book.

 

I don't think think there is any book that explains how my brain works. (Abnormal Psychology? Beowulf? Anything by Cordwainer Smith? Close but no cigar.) But in college I did once break up with a girl over Flatland, True story.

-Thoth.

[astillac]

A book is a pretty good reason to break up - I mean, in the beginning stages of a relationship. It says a lot about the person, one way or the other.

[Steve E]

A book is a pretty good reason to break up - I mean, in the beginning stages of a relationship. It says a lot about the person, one way or the other.

 

Probably the other.

[pjl]

I don't think think there is any book that explains how my brain works. (Abnormal Psychology? Beowulf? Anything by Cordwainer Smith? Close but no cigar.) But in college I did once break up with a girl over Flatland, True story.

-Thoth.

 

 

I never broke up over a book, although I have had a book thrown at me while breaking up. Talk about a book leaving a lasting impression

 

PJ

[Steve E]

I never broke up over a book, although I have had a book thrown at me while breaking up. Talk about a book leaving a lasting impression

 

Ouch.