# Books that moved you as a child



## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

...or as a young adult.

There has been discussion about this on a professional email list I frequent and my first thought was Russell Hoban's A Mouse & His Child. I could not remember any of the plot but just the thought of the title brought almost physical feeling of sadness and tenderness and, I don't know, bittersweetness, so I downloaded it and BANG! it hit me again. It's about a toy clockwork mouse and his son, joined together by design, who are bought from a shop and eventually thrown away, after which they go on adventures, chased by an evil rat.
The writing is beautiful and the illustrations even more so.
This image has never left me:



It's just a lovely depiction of the love between a father and a son, which moved me very much as a child as my father almost certainly read it to me, and now, for very different reasons, it is equally moving (the illustration and the story). I'm glad I reacquainted myself with it.

Charlotte's Web also destroyed me.

What books moved you as a kid?


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## story (Nov 29, 2014)

The Red Pony by Steinbeck.

ETA and Charlotte's Web too, of course.

I'm sure there's more. I'll come back to this maybe.


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## weltweit (Nov 29, 2014)

The old man and the sea.

Except my English Literature teacher decided the old man's love for the child was latent paedophilia which I disagreed with vehemently despite not at the time really knowing what it was!


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## weltweit (Nov 29, 2014)

Will you consider Grapic novels, like "Flight 714"


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)




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## dessiato (Nov 29, 2014)

For me it was A Farewell to Arms when I was 14. I found it in a bin in the art room at school, took it and read it. I love it and have read it many times since I found it. It also helped me discover Hemingway and develop a love for literature.


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## JimW (Nov 29, 2014)

Red Shift by Alan Garner


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## girasol (Nov 29, 2014)

Little Prince.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

Don't just list them! Say why!


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

weltweit said:


> Will you consider Grapic novels, like "Flight 714"


Is a graphic novel not a book?


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## TheHoodedClaw (Nov 29, 2014)

Elidor, by Alan Garner is to this day still one of the scariest books I've read. We got to read it in primary five or six. The shadow-people in the attic brrr


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

re: Machine Gunners- theres a lot in there about poverty, defeating a bully, divorce from a kids perspective, and society in war. Resonated.


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

Oh and most of Brian Jaques 'Redwall' books had me grit-in-eye at points as a kid. Salamandastron is the one I still remember to this day. Armoured badgers, doomed last stands, humble nobodies finding true paths, community love. etc.


try also: Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.


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## May Kasahara (Nov 29, 2014)

The Wind On The Moon. I had already been completely drawn into the adventures of Dinah and Dorinda, their freedom and fearlessness (particularly love the fact that they get turned into animals and then spend a day learning how to doss around like cats  ). It's such a lovely, unworthy book, just about two siblings having fun...and then one of the main characters dies in a heroic self-sacrificial fashion. I HOWLED. I probably still would now.

Also always cried at the death of Aslan. They were just so mean to him beforehand.


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## weltweit (Nov 29, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> Is a graphic novel not a book?








It was great, my first exposure to AK47s and Aircraft Hi-Jacking ..


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> re: Machine Gunners- theres a lot in there about poverty, defeating a bully, divorce from a kids perspective, and society in war. Resonated.


I love that book. The tv series was great too. 'WHERE YOU GOING NOW?'


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## May Kasahara (Nov 29, 2014)

Futuretrack 5 and Julie of the Wolves are two whose endings introduced me to the concept that being a grown up sometimes means choosing the shitty unromantic path.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.


By Gene Kemp.

Great twist!


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## boohoo (Nov 29, 2014)

The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde - got a little obsessed by swallows - it's a sad love story.


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## ShiftyBagLady (Nov 29, 2014)

The Selfish Giant and Under the Hawthorne Tree had real emotional impacts on me as a child. I can't quite explain why the Selfish Giant did, it was probably just a moving sentiment, however Under the Hawthorne tree is about a family during the Irish famine and I read it shortly after one of the times we moved back to Ireland and it is a tragic and moving story but it made me connect with that part of Irish history that I hadn't been told very much about. I was also coming under a fair bit of anti-English abuse (I am Irish but had been living in England for a few years and had an English accent -when I lived in England I got anti-irish stuff nd our house was frequently raided by police :roll eyes: ) so it helped me to intellectually and emotionally connect with that resentment. There's also an infant death which made me weep as I was coming to terms with the death of my sister as well. So it touched me in many different ways and made me realise how powerful a book can be; when you read the right book at the right time it can be a transformative thing and that book really did move me


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## story (Nov 29, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> Don't just list them! Say why!




Okay.

The Red Pony because it was about the powerlessness of being a child, even though our (their) emotions are apparently stronger, truer and and purer than those of adults. That love cannot save the day.

Charlotte's Web: I suppose that's the same reason. Love does not prevail.

I absolutely adored The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner at 13. It nearly made me re-think my abandonment of cross country running. I'd duck into the hideous mausoleum that was rotting near the route we had to take and sneak a crafty fag and walk back in the to meet the red-limbed gasping goodies. It was meaningful to me because it was about the resilience of the individual in the face of the institution. 

Kes. I could barely finish it, it was so heartbreaking. Again, the pointlessness of loving and hoping.


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## fen_boy (Nov 29, 2014)




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## Poot (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> try also: Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.



I just read that to my son. With voices obvs. It was just as good as I remembered and he loved it.


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

May Kasahara said:


> The Wind On The Moon. I had already been completely drawn into the adventures of Dinah and Dorinda, their freedom and fearlessness (particularly love the fact that they get turned into animals and then spend a day learning how to doss around like cats  ). It's such a lovely, unworthy book, just about two siblings having fun...and then one of the main characters dies in a heroic self-sacrificial fashion. I HOWLED. I probably still would now.
> 
> Also always cried at the death of Aslan. They were just so mean to him beforehand.




being raised in a strict christian household totally spoilered Aslans Resurrection for me.


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

And if anyone thinks the newish Narnia films are dire then I dare you to seek out the 90s BBC adapt of Lion, Witch &


its beyond shit


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## Santino (Nov 29, 2014)

May Kasahara said:


> Futuretrack 5 and Julie of the Wolves are two whose endings introduced me to the concept that being a grown up sometimes means choosing the shitty unromantic path.


I loved Futuretrack 5! Never knowingly met anyone else who's read it.


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## Santino (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> And if anyone thinks the newish Narnia films are dire then I dare you to seek out the 90s BBC adapt of Lion, Witch &
> 
> 
> its beyond shit


I once had to sit through 3 straight hours of it while babysitting a 5 year-old.


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## wayward bob (Nov 29, 2014)




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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

Santino said:


> I once had to sit through 3 straight hours of it while babysitting a 5 year-old.




I can still hear the way Lucy squeals 'aslan!' to this day.


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## InfoBurner (Nov 29, 2014)

After these, I went through my goth phase, never been happier


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## ShiftyBagLady (Nov 29, 2014)

Oh, also there was a book called The Little Red Hen. The story was that she stubbornly refused help from her friends until the end where she realised it was ok to let them help. The refrain of 'I'll doing it myself', said the little Red Hen' has been one that has stuck with me for life.


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

Santino said:


> I loved Futuretrack 5! Never knowingly met anyone else who's read it.




loads of people my age have read Westall.

and Fisk


Trillions ftw


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

ShiftyBagLady said:


> Oh, also there was a book called The Little Red Hen. The story was that she stubbornly refused help from her friends until the end where she realised it was ok to let them help. The refrain of 'I'll doing it myself', said the little Red Hen' has been one that has stuck with me for life.


I remember that. I remember my mother reading it to me, and in hindsight, there may have been a certain register in her voice as she read it.


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## machine cat (Nov 29, 2014)

Z for Zachariah.

I can't remember how old I was when I read it, but it must have been important to me at the time.

Orang Utan I re-read The Mouse and his Child shortly after Hoban died and I still loved it as an adult


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> loads of people my age have read Westall.
> 
> and Fisk
> 
> ...


Have you read Westall's The Scarecrows? That really shit me up. Bleak as fuck ending.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

I reading Robert Swindell's Stone Cold for work and it moves me an adult. Not sure what I would have made of it as a child. It's about a homeless runaway in London.


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## davesgcr (Nov 29, 2014)

Bought it for my boys - (and to read myself again) 


Also Emil and the Detectives.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

davesgcr said:


> Bought it for my boys - (and to read myself again)
> 
> 
> Also Emil and the Detectives.


What book?


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## Pickman's model (Nov 29, 2014)

tacitus' 'annals of imperial rome'


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## Lorca (Nov 29, 2014)

flat stanley! about a boy who got squashed flat then posted himself in an envelope to America i think - took my daydreaming young mind to faraway adventures!


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> Have you read Westall's The Scarecrows? That really shit me up. Bleak as fuck ending.


I've not, might well obtain an ebook. The same author did a story about a single mum and kids who move into a v. oppressive village, taking the old witches cottage and being 'adopted' by the witches cat. Can't recall the title...oh god bless you google 'Yaxley's cat'

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Yaxley_s_Cat.html?id=tIHVSAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y


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## Poot (Nov 29, 2014)

Making some serious notes here for Xmas presents for my impressionable 9 year old boy, never having been a 9 year old boy and - more importantly - never having been him, I don't know which book will have the killer devastating effect on him. For me it was The World According to Garp when I was 15.

 Struwwelpeter also had a profound effect when I was 8 but not necessarily a positive one!


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## friendofdorothy (Nov 29, 2014)

I loved the Moomin books. They evoke the landscape and seasons so well. The characters are full of emotions and questions and the most important thing is the relationships between the characters. 

I bought them all again as an adult, they're worth rereading.


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## davesgcr (Nov 29, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> What book?



"The Silver Sword"


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

friendofdorothy said:


> I loved the Moomin books. They evoke the landscape and seasons so well. The characters are full of emotions and questions and the most important thing is the relationships between the characters.
> 
> I bought them all again as an adult, they're worth rereading.



She was a wonderful illustrator as well.


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## JimW (Nov 29, 2014)

Riddley Walker too, not just the vision but the idea of a kid shouldering a destiny


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## FridgeMagnet (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> being raised in a strict christian household totally spoilered Aslans Resurrection for me.


Aslans is much better anyway. "Susan, have you ever been mistaken for a man?"/"No, have you?" "Nuke the wardrobe from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)




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## Santino (Nov 29, 2014)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Aslans is much better anyway. "Susan, have you ever been mistaken for a man?"/"No, have you?" "Nuke the wardrobe from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."


"Get away from her , you witch."


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## DotCommunist (Nov 29, 2014)

'No way man! Let Edmund go!'


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## farmerbarleymow (Nov 29, 2014)

120 Days of Sodom - a very educational book for a five year old.


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## wayward bob (Nov 29, 2014)

friendofdorothy said:


> I loved the Moomin books. They evoke the landscape and seasons so well. The characters are full of emotions and questions and the most important thing is the relationships between the characters.
> 
> I bought them all again as an adult, they're worth rereading.


have you read her adult novels? beautiful, sparse, loaded writing


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## machine cat (Nov 29, 2014)

JimW said:


> Riddley Walker too, not just the vision but the idea of a kid shouldering a destiny



Bit hard going for a child to read no?


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## friendofdorothy (Nov 29, 2014)

wayward bob said:


> have you read her adult novels? beautiful, sparse, loaded writing


only one book of short stories. They are definitely on my want list - but I can rarely afford to buy books.


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## campanula (Nov 29, 2014)

Another Alan Garner reader here - Moon of Gomrath and Weirdstone of Brisingamen - in fact, I devoured them all. The Secret Garden was momentous for me - the loneliness theme which permeated the book resonated throughout my childhood...and, as an obsessive gardener, it's influence has extended across half a century.


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## wayward bob (Nov 29, 2014)

the one i can't identify that totally haunts me is the pictures-only book we had before i could read when my mum was a keen flashcard user (teaching in the genes). it involved the goings-on inside a sofa - where all the loose change and fluffy sweets have fallen - being chased around the springs by a pair of scissors will _never_ leave my subconscious


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## wayward bob (Nov 29, 2014)

friendofdorothy said:


> only one book of short stories. They are definitely on my want list - but I can rarely afford to buy books.


pm me your address i'll lend you one


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## friendofdorothy (Nov 29, 2014)

wayward bob said:


> pm me your address i'll lend you one


Very kind!


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## JimW (Nov 29, 2014)

machine cat said:


> Bit hard going for a child to read no?


Read it in my early teens, is.that older than we mean here?


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## machine cat (Nov 29, 2014)

JimW said:


> Read it in my early teens, is.that older than we mean here?



No idea - early teens may count.


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## JimW (Nov 29, 2014)

machine cat said:


> No idea - early teens may count.


Of course, what I mean is I was a child genius :ahem:  
But honestly didn't find it hard, got completely into the world. I've re-read it not so long ago and I clearly missed some of the allusions but think I got what Hoban was driving at.


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## madamv (Nov 29, 2014)

All these books involved caring.  I only really registered that as I was searching for them to take pics.   

The borrowers fascinated me.   I also loved the secret garden and little women.  
And another which involved hang gliding but I have no idea what that was called.  I was about 14 so 1984 ish....


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## goldenecitrone (Nov 29, 2014)

campanula said:


> Another Alan Garner reader here - Moon of Gomrath and Weirdstone of Brisingamen - in fact, I devoured them all. The Secret Garden was momentous for me - the loneliness theme which permeated the book resonated throughout my childhood...and, as an obsessive gardener, it's influence has extended across half a century.



I loved the Weirdstone of Brisingamen and got my dad to drive us out to Alderley Edge one winter weekend. Spooky place on a winter's day, made even spookier after reading the book when I was nine years old.

Also remember crying at the end of Watership Down a year later. First time I'd ever cried at the end of a book. And the last too, I think.


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## madamv (Nov 29, 2014)

I managed to get a copy of the dragons handbook for my daughter.  It's a quick read but shoomed me straight back to being 7 and reading in my bed....


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## Looby (Nov 29, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> And if anyone thinks the newish Narnia films are dire then I dare you to seek out the 90s BBC adapt of Lion, Witch &
> 
> 
> its beyond shit



I love it!


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## goldenecitrone (Nov 29, 2014)

Going even further back I've just remembered reading this when I was about six. Bleak and terrifying.


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## Looby (Nov 29, 2014)

When the wind blows had a big impact on me. We read it at school and I was already freaked out by nuclear weapons and war in general really. I had nightmares after I read it. 

They didn't move me but I loved the Faraway Tree stories and they're making a film so I'm chuffed.


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## wayward bob (Nov 29, 2014)

goldenecitrone said:


> Also remember crying at the end of Watership Down a year later. First time I'd ever cried at the end of a book.


snap.


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## goldenecitrone (Nov 29, 2014)

wayward bob said:


> snap.



Great minds bob, great minds.  And great tear ducts, too.


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## maomao (Nov 29, 2014)

John Wyndham's Tripods series which I read before the tv series was on so must have been about 9. Was the first science fiction I'd read.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

JimW said:


> Read it in my early teens, is.that older than we mean here?


Let's not be proscriptive. Hell, tell us about books that moved you as an adult too. It will all be interesting.


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## porp (Nov 29, 2014)

As a child (11-ish), 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit'. I found the sense of threatened violence, dislocation, and the end of childhood innocence very moving. Rattling good story as well.

'Tuppence to Cross the Mersey'. Probably the same age . Again, a comfortable middle class life is brought to an abrupt end by circumstance (I'm seeing a theme here).

Later on -  16-ish  -  'Down and Out in Paris and London'. Not getting into an Orwell argument here, but I remember finding what I might now see as poverty tourism, as something incredibly exciting. Not sure how to put it, but growing up in a very unworldly family, it was an early encounter with a broader way of seeing how life might be lived. Not very well put, but I can't find the words.


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

I've been thinking that not many books moved me as a boy (I was dead keen on war) but I remember one, a ladybird book when I must have been 3 or 4, which thanks to the wonder of the interweb I've managed to track down.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

Is the rabbit or the boy the runaway? Or is that the point? I'm moved already!


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

The Rabbit.  Given the circumstances of my early life, I can look back now and appreciate why that book had such a big impact on my little self. it was all about abandonment.


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## porp (Nov 29, 2014)

Oh yes, and maybe when I was 17. Brideshead Revisited. The sense of regret, missed chances and decline -  should not really speak to a boy of 17 but it did. The English country house means nothing to me nor did it then -  but the celebration of what Waugh saw as worth preserving in art and architecture certainly did spark an interest in me. The relationship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte appeals less now that I am much older, but at the time it was a strange sort of comfort to an awkward boy who didnt really fit in anywhere. As I get older and re-read it, the later parts of the book I find much more moving.


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## Sirena (Nov 29, 2014)

When I was about 14, I read 'A Clergyman's Daughter' by George Orwell and I was depressed for days afterwards.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

ShiftyBagLady said:


> The Selfish Giant and Under the Hawthorne Tree had real emotional impacts on me as a child. I can't quite explain why the Selfish Giant did, it was probably just a moving sentiment, however Under the Hawthorne tree is about a family during the Irish famine and I read it shortly after one of the times we moved back to Ireland and it is a tragic and moving story but it made me connect with that part of Irish history that I hadn't been told very much about. I was also coming under a fair bit of anti-English abuse (I am Irish but had been living in England for a few years and had an English accent -when I lived in England I got anti-irish stuff nd our house was frequently raided by police :roll eyes: ) so it helped me to intellectually and emotionally connect with that resentment. There's also an infant death which made me weep as I was coming to terms with the death of my sister as well. So it touched me in many different ways and made me realise how powerful a book can be; when you read the right book at the right time it can be a transformative thing and that book really did move me





Poot said:


> Making some serious notes here for Xmas presents for my impressionable 9 year old boy, never having been a 9 year old boy and - more importantly - never having been him, I don't know which book will have the killer devastating effect on him. For me it was The World According to Garp when I was 15.
> 
> Struwwelpeter also had a profound effect when I was 8 but not necessarily a positive one!





Belushi said:


> The Rabbit.  Given the circumstances of my early life, I can look back now and appreciate why that book had such a big impact on my little self. it was all about abandonment.


I don't think it's possible to predict what will affect a child or even an adult. What is wonderful about books is that even the author can be unaware of the resonance that may reverberate around an individual's mind. We all bring our own issues to these texts.


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## goldenecitrone (Nov 29, 2014)

I'm glad I got into reading as a youngster. In later life it's always been comforting to know that others are fully aware of the absurdity of human existence.


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## Kaka Tim (Nov 29, 2014)

maomao said:


> John Wyndham's Tripods series which I read before the tv series was on so must have been about 9. Was the first science fiction I'd read.



(pedant mode) It was john christopher who wrote the tripod books - but they are great kids sci-fi. They should re-do a TV version.


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## ManchesterBeth (Nov 29, 2014)

As a child?
Definitely The Tragedy of Rostem and Sohrab from  the Shahnameh. Not a book, I know, I know.

As a teenager?
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Waiting for Godot (play.)
Lord Of the Flies
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
A Thousand blessed sons/The Kite Runner.

As a young adult?
A Rebours.
Murphy.
Dubliners.
The Flea Palace.
The Blind Owl.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

I've just ordered The Tripods on DVD. I always just assumed it would never be available, rather than seek it out.
John Christopher also did Chocky, if anyone remembers that.
He also wrote an adult post-apocalyptic novel called The Death Of Grass, which I need to read.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

dialectician said:


> As a child?
> Definitely The Tragedy of Rostem and Sohrab from  the Shahnameh. Not a book, I know, I know.
> 
> As a teenager?
> ...


Aye, but why? 200 words or less on each please.


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## maomao (Nov 29, 2014)

Kaka Tim said:


> It was john christopher who wrote the tripod books


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## ManchesterBeth (Nov 29, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> Aye, but why? 200 words or less on each please.



Nah, too long. and cheesy.

I'll just say that all the books I've listed have really resonated with me on a psychological/philosophical level. Whether that be desires, the meaning(s) of mundanity, morality as an institution, the nuances of every day experience (particularly as regards The Flea Palace and Dubliners.)

Also. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

What we tend to miss in critiques of eastern bloc countries is a profound sense of humanism. We criticise authoritarianism, centralisation, bureaucratisation, but we never think to conceptualise the experiences insofar as a Nietzschean affirmation is concerned. An active force, if you will. Practice, not praxis.


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## maomao (Nov 29, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> John Christopher also did Chocky, if anyone remembers that.


I remember the book which was great. Apparently there was a tv series of that too but it was on children's ITV which my fucking prick big brother never let us watch. Seriously, I never saw Metal Mickey or half the shows my mates were on about.


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

Seriously? You had to watch Blue fucking Peter instead of Chocky?


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

dialectician said:


> What we tend to miss in critiques of eastern bloc countries is a profound sense of humanism. We criticise authoritarianism, centralisation, bureaucratisation, but we never think to conceptualise the experiences insofar as a Nietzschean affirmation is concerned. An active force, if you will. Practice, not praxis.



I posted a Ladybird book about a bloody rabbit, are we on the same thread?


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## maomao (Nov 29, 2014)

Belushi said:


> Seriously? You had to watch Blue fucking Peter instead of Chocky?


Yes, complete fucking tragedy.


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

maomao said:


> Yes, complete fucking tragedy.



tbh I had to watch Swap Shop instead of Tiswas because my Mum worried Spit the Dog would encourage us to spit


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## weltweit (Nov 29, 2014)

Another vote for Stig of the Dump .. great for the imagination.


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## Belushi (Nov 29, 2014)

weltweit said:


> Another vote for Stig of the Dump .. great for the imagination.



I just realised Stig of the Dump and some of the other stories here I never actually read - I just know them from Jackanory :thumbs :


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## ManchesterBeth (Nov 29, 2014)

maomao said:


> Yes, complete fucking tragedy.




The chairman has spoken. A tragedy it will be.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

dialectician said:


> Nah, too long. and cheesy.
> 
> I'll just say that all the books I've listed have really resonated with me on a psychological/philosophical level. Whether that be desires, the meaning(s) of mundanity, morality as an institution, the nuances of every day experience (particularly as regards The Flea Palace and Dubliners.)
> 
> ...


I thought The Unbearable Lightness Of Being was ace when I was 17 til I realised it was just about a lech shagging his way round Prague and trying to justify his solilpsism by having one of his victims take photos of Soviet tanks.


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## ManchesterBeth (Nov 29, 2014)

Yes, hence the Nietzschean affirmation.


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## ManchesterBeth (Nov 29, 2014)

Also, i want a soviet tank. don't dis them yo.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 29, 2014)

Belushi said:


> The Rabbit.  Given the circumstances of my early life, I can look back now and appreciate why that book had such a big impact on my little self. it was all about abandonment.


One of my proudest moments as a librarian was when two children had separately told me they had fallen out over some silliness. They are both Travellers and have experienced social isolation amongst their peers and had an awful lot of other things in common, one of them being that they were both experiencing grief, one because they had lost their grandmother and the other because they had lost a beloved family pet. As luck would have it, we'd just got a book set in a similar environment to theirs and in which the isolated heroine lost both her grandma and her dog at the same time, so I got them to read it together and they are now BFFs.


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## porp (Nov 30, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> One of my proudest moments as a librarian was when two children had separately told me they had fallen out over some silliness. They are both Travellers and have experienced social isolation amongst their peers and had an awful lot of other things in common, one of them being that they were both experiencing grief, one because they had lost their grandmother and the other because they had lost a beloved family pet. As luck would have it, we'd just got a book set in a similar environment to theirs and in which the isolated heroine lost both her grandma and her dog at the same time, so I got them to read it together and they are now BFFs.


Yes, you should be bloody proud of that.  Middle class complacency over library closures ('But surely everyone's got a Kindle') doesn't take account of of the life altering serendipity of libraries and the fact that librarians do more than reshelf books. But I'll stop before this gets too far off topic.


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## Orang Utan (Nov 30, 2014)

If it's about books and libraries, it's never off topic


----------



## hot air baboon (Nov 30, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> I've just ordered The Tripods on DVD. I always just assumed it would never be available, rather than seek it out.
> John Christopher also did Chocky, if anyone remembers that.
> He also wrote an adult post-apocalyptic novel called The Death Of Grass, which I need to read.



..er no Chocky _*was*_ John Wyndham...!


----------



## ShiftyBagLady (Nov 30, 2014)

porp said:


> Yes, you should be bloody proud of that.  Middle class complacency over library closures ('But surely everyone's got a Kindle') doesn't take account of of the life altering serendipity of libraries and the fact that librarians do more than reshelf books. But I'll stop before this gets too far off topic.


Just the ritual of going to the library is precious.
I remember that I used to go to the library and get four books out every week and I would read them all before going again the next week and sitting in between the book shelves reading bits and blurbs of different books, in the dust and book smell, while deciding which to take home with me for a week. It was the best thing. I can still smell it


----------



## Celyn (Nov 30, 2014)

deleted 'cos somebody had pointed it out already.


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Nov 30, 2014)

The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden when I was about 7, about a lonely Gypsy girl going to school - mainly because she had the same name as my baby sister who had died the year before... but the subject matter didn't help. I remember it being a great book in terms of explaining what it's like to be on the end of prejudice


----------



## oryx (Nov 30, 2014)

Used to love rumer godden, including her books about dolls (wasn't that into dolls so they had some other attraction). Great descriptions of isolation and interpersonal relationships. Also like her adults books.


----------



## friendofdorothy (Nov 30, 2014)

porp said:


> As a child (11-ish), 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit'. I found the sense of threatened violence, dislocation, and the end of childhood innocence very moving. Rattling good story as well.



Never read the book as a child but I met the author Judith Kerr as an old lady, she was lovely.


----------



## friendofdorothy (Nov 30, 2014)

ShiftyBagLady said:


> Just the ritual of going to the library is precious.
> I remember that I used to go to the library and get four books out every week and I would read them all before going again the next week and sitting in between the book shelves reading bits and blurbs of different books, in the dust and book smell, while deciding which to take home with me for a week. It was the best thing. I can still smell it



My dad was a prolific reader and used to take me to the public library to get the max number of books out everyweek. He always felt his education was lacking and as keen to learn stuff, to improve himself. That and he loved adventure stories and sci fi.

It was great - I'd get out all sorts of books, even when I was too young to read.  If I wanted an adult book - I loved books with photos of ancient egypt he would get them on his ticket for me.  Gave me a love of books and knowledge.


----------



## Cloo (Nov 30, 2014)

I was always haunted by the scene of the dead city of Charn in the The Magician's Nephew; such a vivid (ironically) and creepy scene. And similarly I was very moved by the end of 'The Last Battle'. I didn't and still don't give a shit about the Christian content of the Narnia books, I just took them at face value and loved them.


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Nov 30, 2014)

Cloo said:


> I was always haunted by the scene of the dead city of Charn in the The Magician's Nephew; such a vivid (ironically) and creepy scene. And similarly I was very moved by the end of 'The Last Battle'. I didn't and still don't give a shit about the Christian content of the Narnia books, I just took them at face value and loved them.



The Magicians Nephew is one of the best kids books ever imo. Why they haven't made a film of it I don't know.


----------



## Orang Utan (Nov 30, 2014)

The Christian element of the Narnia series completely passed me by. I still don't get it really.


----------



## eatmorecheese (Nov 30, 2014)

sparklefish said:


> When the wind blows had a big impact on me. We read it at school and I was already freaked out by nuclear weapons and war in general really. I had nightmares after I read it.
> 
> They didn't move me but I loved the Faraway Tree stories and they're making a film so I'm chuffed.



When the wind blows, followed by Brother In the Land by Robert Swindells. Bleak and terrifying read as a young teen.


----------



## DotCommunist (Nov 30, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> The Christian element of the Narnia series completely passed me by. I still don't get it really.


the stone table is a metaphor forr the cross. Sacrifice and resurrection. Subtle as a sledgehammer.


----------



## StoneRoad (Nov 30, 2014)

I read a massive number of books, of many types (still do, tbh).
But I can't say if any of them actually had a profound effect on me, I don't think any of them did - not even the Narnia ones - to the very great disappointment of someone who thought they would make me more receptive to religious indoctrination.
I can read books in a detached mode /state of mind with varying amounts of enjoyment, even "set books" of a type I don't usually like, such as Dickens (as some of them are massively padded as he was paid by word count for a serial work!).


----------



## Orang Utan (Nov 30, 2014)

That post makes you sound like a psycopath!


----------



## cyberfairy (Nov 30, 2014)

Depite the fact I am a Grownup, I can't cope with Goodbye Mog. I cried seeing it in the fucking library.


----------



## starfish (Nov 30, 2014)

Didnt read it but the pictures in The Trial of Adolf Eichman will always stay with me. My dad had a copy & i remember flicking through it as a child.


----------



## Cloo (Nov 30, 2014)

I find myself frustrated by wayward bob 's mention of 'A rag, a bone, a hank of hair', which I was very taken by when I read it aged about 9, but I also remember not understanding the end, and I can see loads of references to the 'twist' online, but unsurprisingly nothing explaining what the twist is. So if anyone remembers, please do a spoiler post, as it's driving me nuts now!

I remember the first 'grown up' book I read, aged about 12, was John Gardner's 'Grendel' (because we were doing Beowulf at school), and that was striking firstly for being told from the traditional antagonist's viewpoint, and secondly, for being the first book I read with the word 'fuck' in it.


----------



## Throbbing Angel (Nov 30, 2014)

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household

I was 13 or 14 and it was the first time I'd properly identified with a character in a book and felt something.

I can't for the life of me find an image of the front cover of the copy I read at school which has made me a bit sad for some reason  so that's an image of the first edition's cover.


----------



## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Nov 30, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


>


Where you goin' nouw?


----------



## DotCommunist (Nov 30, 2014)

may kasahar said:
			
		

> Also always cried at the death of Aslan. They were just so mean to him beforehand.




Orang Utan the above is a reason why the stone table/cross metaphor is so blatant. The various torments and ridicule handed out to JC in the proccess of his crucifixion are mirrored by the suffering of aslan.

CS Lewis was a vile misogynist cunt mind. I've got one of his short sci fi pieces that is just disgusting. The rocket men have made a base on the moon. In order to sate thier manly needs Earth sends them an old madame and an ascetic duty type idealouge woman. So disgusted are the men that they climb into a rocket and fuck off back home.

I mean _really_


----------



## hot air baboon (Nov 30, 2014)

....makes him a pretty lousy sci-fi writer aswell....

...a basic pleasure model would have done it...


----------



## Sprocket. (Nov 30, 2014)

The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.


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## madamv (Nov 30, 2014)

My mum has the snow goose on lp.  We used to love listening it as a family.   

A day in the life I read as an adult.  Amazing book.


----------



## Sprocket. (Dec 1, 2014)

madamv said:


> My mum has the snow goose on lp.  We used to love listening it as a family.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Read both in English at secondary school about twelve years old for the Snow Goose and a year later for One day in the life. . . Never forgotten either.


----------



## 2hats (Dec 1, 2014)

wayward bob said:


> it involved the goings-on inside a sofa - where all the loose change and fluffy sweets have fallen - being chased around the springs by a pair of scissors will _never_ leave my subconscious



Does this ring a bell by any chance..?


----------



## BCBlues (Dec 1, 2014)

maomao said:


> John Wyndham's Tripods series which I read before the tv series was on so must have been about 9. Was the first science fiction I'd read.



You're probably confusing it with Day of The Triffids which was by John Wyndham??

Didn't get into that book so much as one of his other works _The Chrysalids. I read this when I was about ten and some 45 years later I get the same imagery in my mind when I think about it.
 

_


----------



## maomao (Dec 1, 2014)

BCBlues said:


> You're probably confusing it with Day of The Triffids which was by John Wyndham??


No, I just got the author wrong, the books that I got very into as a kid were the Tripods. I read everything I could find by both authors though.


----------



## wayward bob (Dec 1, 2014)

2hats said:


> Does this ring a bell by any chance..?


omfg  take it away


----------



## wayward bob (Dec 1, 2014)

Cloo said:


> I find myself frustrated by wayward bob 's mention of 'A rag, a bone, a hank of hair', which I was very taken by when I read it aged about 9, but I also remember not understanding the end, and I can see loads of references to the 'twist' online, but unsurprisingly nothing explaining what the twist is. So if anyone remembers, please do a spoiler post, as it's driving me nuts now!


if i could properly remember it i would


----------



## not-bono-ever (Dec 1, 2014)

Wyndhams " the chrysalids" - fuckin hell- very powerful


----------



## marty21 (Dec 1, 2014)

fen_boy said:


>


Read this several times as a kid , loved it .


----------



## buscador (Dec 1, 2014)

About a dog forced to wear a hideous floral jumper. It inspired me to throw up all over myself when I'd been forced to wear a hideous floral dress to a party. The plan worked: my mum came to fetch me home; I never had to wear that dress again.

I've still got the book somewhere, along with my treasured Herbs, Magic Roundabout and Hector's House annuals.


----------



## May Kasahara (Dec 1, 2014)

Excellent work  I loved the Harry books as a child and now regularly read No Roses For Harry to my own spawn.


----------



## Sweet FA (Dec 1, 2014)

Great nostalgic thread 

A couple of my favourite authors have been mentioned:

Robert Westall, though my favourite was definitely The Devil On The Road - it involved ghosts and loving descriptions of motorbikes, what more could a 9 year old want? Also the Weirdstone of Brisingamen (and how _do_ you pronounce that? I always read it as Bri*zzing*uhmen (stress on 2nd syllable) my wife had it read to her as Brysin*gar*men (stress on 3rd syllable). Also Tripods and Stig of the Dump.






The ones that I loved most and read and reread from about 9 or 10 onwards were all by SE Hinton. Her books had it all; gangs, rich vs poor, shit/absent parents, motorbikes, fighting, kissing and romance but no shagging, love, friendship...gah, the emotional turmoil of it all 












Another one I read over and over was The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. So savage; from the opening violent football match to the torture of a fixed boxing fight towards the end. I think it was the brutality of the themes that got me - school is a war zone filled with bullies, hidden traps, teachers that can't/won't protect you, rules that you don't understand and friends that can only watch as you get fucked over.






Cheers OU, just had some emotional moments looking for the editions that I read as a child - the covers have a weird resonance.


----------



## Orang Utan (Dec 1, 2014)

I only read The Outsiders last year. It's a wonderful book. I read it at a festival while everyone around me was gurning.


----------



## kittyP (Dec 1, 2014)

I haven't read the whole thread properly but I will try and think of some that have not been mentioned.






This book had a massive effect on me as a kid. 
It is actually quite scary when you are at it's target audiences age. 
It manages to have a sense of loneliness and bleakness up against a sense of love and homecoming.







I think, even though they are very very different books, the reasons I liked it and it effected me so much are kind similar to the reasons above for The Children of Green Knowe.


----------



## kittyP (Dec 1, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> The Christian element of the Narnia series completely passed me by. I still don't get it really.



Yeah it did me too and I hate it when people spout it as a reasons that kids shouldn't read them. 
It's not like they are suddenly going to turn in to religious extremists by reading it is it?


----------



## kittyP (Dec 1, 2014)

cyberfairy said:


> Depite the fact I am a Grownup, I can't cope with Goodbye Mog. I cried seeing it in the fucking library.



Oh goodness noooo!! *bursts in to tears*


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Dec 1, 2014)

ooh the Children of Green Knowe I remember that creeping me out when I was a kid, can't remember why though


----------



## killer b (Dec 1, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> try also: Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.


I'm reading this to my kids at the moment. It's brilliant.


----------



## May Kasahara (Dec 1, 2014)

Sweet FA said:


> Another one I read over and over was The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. So savage; from the opening violent football match to the torture of a fixed boxing fight towards the end. I think it was the brutality of the themes that got me - school is a war zone filled with bullies, hidden traps, teachers that can't/won't protect you, rules that you don't understand and friends that can only watch as you get fucked over.



Totally agree with this, a refreshingly bleak book.


----------



## Orang Utan (Dec 1, 2014)

If you want bleak, the recent winner of the Carnegie Medal (sort of Booker prize for kids) was Kevin Brooks' The Bunker Diary. It would be grim reading even if it was for adults.
I've actually found that many kids can handle that stuff better than adults cos they don't understand the gravity of certain situations as well as some of us adults.


----------



## Saratoga (Dec 2, 2014)

Goodnight Mister Tom

It was a book that was reccomended about wartime britain. I had read a few others at the time and it was going OK until we reached the stage about the lads return to London, his mother and Trudy.

At the time I had my own stresses and used the book as my own escape and finding that in the book was really moving for me. Not many books could reduce me to tears at the time, but there you go.

I got it in a school reading assignment and excelled a bit much with the 'report' on it and after that started reading things like Clive Cussler books as well crime stuff.... But I'll never forget GMT.


----------



## Geri (Dec 2, 2014)

madamv said:


> My mum has the snow goose on lp.  We used to love listening it as a family.


 
I have it as well, my English teacher played it to us in junior school.

I managed to convert it to MP3 and it's on my ipod now. Listening to it always makes me cry.


----------



## madamv (Dec 2, 2014)

My mum too


----------



## mentalchik (Dec 3, 2014)

Loads of folk tales and mythology but the biggies were,





1974 when i was eleven (these ^ are actually the same as mine which are woefully much loved and re-read hence a bit battered but let off for being 40 years old)

and,





1978 when i was 15.............still my all time favourite although i had been hoovering up Moorcock, Azimov and others since i was around 12 thanks to my then ex stepfather



(sorry dotty, the box the set came in has long since disintegrated and there is some sellotape on Dune, much loved)


----------



## quimcunx (Dec 3, 2014)

Black Beauty moved me to feel miserable for him.


----------



## DotCommunist (Dec 3, 2014)

mentalchik said:


> Loads of folk tales and mythology but the biggies were,
> 
> 
> 
> ...



grounds for divorce m8!


----------



## mentalchik (Dec 3, 2014)

listen what do you think you'll look like when you're 36 ?


----------



## doddles (Dec 3, 2014)

Well, as a boy yearning to fly, Reach for the Sky. Douglas Bader's story.


----------



## Idris2002 (Dec 3, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> Orang Utan the above is a reason why the stone table/cross metaphor is so blatant. The various torments and ridicule handed out to JC in the proccess of his crucifixion are mirrored by the suffering of aslan.
> 
> CS Lewis was a vile misogynist cunt mind. I've got one of his short sci fi pieces that is just disgusting. The rocket men have made a base on the moon. In order to sate thier manly needs Earth sends them an old madame and an ascetic duty type idealouge woman. So disgusted are the men that they climb into a rocket and fuck off back home.
> 
> I mean _really_



One of the Narnia books (Silver Chair, I think) has a witch blatantly based on some Oxbridge materialist atheist lady philosopher who wiped the floor with him in a public debate.

You damned fool, Lewis.


----------



## Epona (Dec 3, 2014)

I could just make shit up to make myself look really learned and well-read at a young age, but fuck that.

The Mist Lizard - by Marc Alexander - time travel/dinosaurs/Atlantis shit aimed at 7 year olds that really got me into sci-fi:






And the "Shantih" series by Patricia Leitch, I read it because I liked horses, but it's also got a bit of archaeology and ancient celtic culture/mythology in there too.  (It's where I first heard of Epona, not me, the goddess thingy that I named myself after when I was presented with the form to choose a username).


----------



## Idris2002 (Dec 3, 2014)

H.M. Hoover wrote what would now be called 'young adult dystopias' - I don't think I finished any of them (!) but I remember vividly one scene where the degenerate descendants of a US army missile unit descend into the depths of their abandoned base to worship their god, a nuclear missile.


----------



## Virtual Blue (Dec 3, 2014)

Boy - Roald Dahl.
Loved it when I was a kid...


----------



## Chilli.s (Dec 3, 2014)

The Story of Ferdinand


----------



## felixthecat (Dec 3, 2014)

Most of Alan Garners stuff - Elidor and The Owl Service in particular.


----------



## madamv (Dec 3, 2014)

The Owl Service was well spooky on telly!


----------



## DotCommunist (Dec 3, 2014)

Saratoga said:


> Goodnight Mister Tom
> 
> It was a book that was reccomended about wartime britain. I had read a few others at the time and it was going OK until we reached the stage about the lads return to London, his mother and Trudy.
> 
> ...




really good adapt of that with Jon Thaw as the eponymous

I re-read as an adult and was struck by how skilled the writing of the mother character was. Not just a simple evil force, but sick, dangerous but ill.


----------



## DotCommunist (Dec 3, 2014)

Can't believe I haven't mentioned Watership Down. Effrafra's show-trial victim Blackavar. That wierd semi tame warren with the suspiciously healthy rabbits. So many set pieces. A YA book for sure, its too dense for under say 12 I recon.


----------



## kittyP (Dec 3, 2014)

Saratoga said:


> Goodnight Mister Tom
> 
> It was a book that was reccomended about wartime britain. I had read a few others at the time and it was going OK until we reached the stage about the lads return to London, his mother and Trudy.
> 
> ...



Oh goodness even thinking about that makes me well up. 
The TV version with John Thaw was good too.


----------



## kittyP (Dec 3, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> Can't believe I haven't mentioned Watership Down. Effrafra's show-trial victim Blackavar. That wird semi tame war4en with the suspiciously healthy rabbits. So many set pieces. A YA book for sure, its too dense for under say 12 I recon.



I read it at about 10 - ish and loved it but a lot definitely went over my head. 
I read it again as an adult and it moved and upset me even more. 
Same with The Plague Dogs.


----------



## StoneRoad (Dec 3, 2014)

Reading the bible and the ragged trousered philanthropist in my early teens ....... the former confirmed me as an atheist and the later as a socialist.


----------



## Mungy (Dec 3, 2014)

animal farm when i was 10 or so.


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 3, 2014)

oh: and 'the turbulent term of tyke tyler' not to mention 'the dark is rising' and 'wine of satan'.


----------



## JTG (Dec 3, 2014)

Spanky Longhorn said:


> ooh the Children of Green Knowe I remember that creeping me out when I was a kid, can't remember why though


Green Noah, demon tree, creeping fingers - can't catch me!


----------



## DotCommunist (Dec 3, 2014)

Pickman's model said:


> oh: and 'the turbulent term of tyke tyler' not to mention 'the dark is rising' and 'wine of satan'.




I didn't get access to any titles with the names of satan on the cover untill I was old enough to read Dennis Wheatly on my own time. Some breathtaking examples of old school british racism therein


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 3, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> I didn't get access to any titles with the names of satan on the cover untill I was old enough to read Dennis Wheatly on my own time. Some breathtaking examples of old school british racism therein


----------



## JTG (Dec 3, 2014)

I Was There by Hans Peter Richter

Three boys growing up in 1930s Germany and their experiences in the Hitler Youth. Chilling insight into how indoctrination works and the justifications used to persuade the German people that the Nazi persecutions and the war itself were right. At the end of the book the lads have joined the Wehrmacht and see action on the eastern front - where one of them is almost certainly killed in the final scene.

Made a huge impression on me in terms of analysing history and current affairs as well

“I am reporting how I lived through that time and what I saw—no more. I was there. I was not merely an eyewitness. I believed—and I will never believe again.”


----------



## Orang Utan (Dec 3, 2014)

Ragged Trousered Philanthropists put me off socialism for a good time as it was so cloying and treacly.


----------



## Saratoga (Dec 4, 2014)

Europa, Europa. Another moving one but read it as a later teen.... but that's non fiction!


----------



## JTG (Dec 4, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> Ragged Trousered Philanthropists put me off socialism for a good time as it was so cloying and treacly.


It's unreadable shite


----------



## MrSki (Dec 4, 2014)

ShiftyBagLady said:


> Oh, also there was a book called The Little Red Hen. The story was that she stubbornly refused help from her friends until the end where she realised it was ok to let them help. The refrain of 'I'll doing it myself', said the little Red Hen' has been one that has stuck with me for life.




I remember the story as her asking for help in planting her wheat & her lazy friends all refused. Then she asked with help watering & harvesting the wheat. She asked for help milling the wheat.

It was something like
"Who will help me planting these seeds?"
"Not I" said the cat
"Not I" said the rat
Not I" said the dog
"Then I will do it all by myself" said the little red hen.

Finally when she had done all the work and cooked the bread she asks
"Who will help me eating this bread?"
"I will" said the cat
"I will" said the rat.....

she replies "No you won't. I will eat it all by myself"

That is how I remember it anyhow.

ETA http://www.enchantedlearning.com/stories/fairytale/littleredhen/story/


----------



## Orang Utan (Dec 4, 2014)

If a hen ate bread its stomach would explode
(((((Little Red Hen)))))


----------



## ElizabethofYork (Dec 4, 2014)

Sirena said:


> When I was about 14, I read 'A Clergyman's Daughter' by George Orwell and I was depressed for days afterwards.



Me too.  I was a similar age.   I re-read it recently and found it fascinating.


----------



## Sirena (Dec 4, 2014)

ElizabethofYork said:


> Me too.  I was a similar age.   I re-read it recently and found it fascinating.


Woman escapes the suffocating sterile slavery of being her father's drudge by becoming a down-and-out and seeing frozen death and degradation all around. 

Then eventually escapes from that living horror by returning to the death-in-life of her father's household.

I still don't think I'm ready for it...


----------



## hot air baboon (Dec 4, 2014)

Idris2002 said:


> H.M. Hoover wrote what would now be called 'young adult dystopias' - I don't think I finished any of them (!) but I remember vividly one scene where the degenerate descendants of a US army missile unit descend into the depths of their abandoned base to worship their god, a nuclear missile.



..wonder if that came out before or after Beneath the Planet of the Apes


----------



## Idris2002 (Dec 4, 2014)

JTG said:


> I Was There by Hans Peter Richter
> 
> Three boys growing up in 1930s Germany and their experiences in the Hitler Youth. Chilling insight into how indoctrination works and the justifications used to persuade the German people that the Nazi persecutions and the war itself were right. At the end of the book the lads have joined the Wehrmacht and see action on the eastern front - where one of them is almost certainly killed in the final scene.
> 
> ...



I remember that one, as well. I can still visualise the cover - the title in gothic lettering, and a trumpet with the Hitlerjugend banner hanging off it.

As for socialism, well this will make me sound like a prick, but reading Raymond Williams' book on Orwell was a more persuasive introduction to the idea than Orwell himself.


----------



## Idris2002 (Dec 4, 2014)

hot air baboon said:


> ..wonder if that came out before or after Beneath the Planet of the Apes



After, I think.


----------



## boohoo (Dec 4, 2014)

The Outsiders, The Chocolate war, the Bumblebee Flies Anyway and a Rag, a Bone and Hank of Hair were all great reads in my teens. 
Loved  the Chocolate war. I need to make sure I have copies of these for when my daughter is a teen. And the Silver crown by Robert C O'Brien.


----------



## hot air baboon (Dec 4, 2014)

...this thread is depressing me at the inane rubbish I consumed none of which did anything other than pass the time.....I do though very clearly remember being taken as a very young kid to see the film of Kes when it was released & being in bits at the end of that...


----------



## ringo (Dec 4, 2014)

hot air baboon said:


> ...this thread is depressing me



Same here. I went from Willard Price's Adventure series straight to Sven Hassel and other adult fiction aged 11, completely missing out on teen angst, and not even starting on self-righteousness and political awareness until age 17. 






I do blame some really crap English Literature teachers for failing to grab my interest/prick my social conscience, but that's a bit of a cop out. Despite being an avid reader I just wasn't interested in being moved, I wanted exciting adult themes.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Dec 4, 2014)

_The Dark is Rising_ sequence by Susan Cooper. Got me interested in British myth and legend, and in "psychic phenomena". An excellent trilogy about the ancient battle between good and evil.

The _Green Knowe_ books by Lucy Boston. These really brought a lump to my throat as a kid because the characterisations were so good that you really felt for the protagonists.

_Time Trap_ by Nicholas Fisk. The best childrens'/young adults' book on time travel I read. Also takes into account causality and the nature of addiction.

Anything by Alan Garner, because it scared the shit out of me.

An awful lot of Diana Wynne-Jones' output, because whatever she turned her mind to, she usually hit the nail on the head. An especially big HUZZAH! for "The Eight Days of Luke", "Dogsbody", "Power of Three" and the Dalemark series.

The Earthsea trilogy.

And loads and loads more by Rosemary Sutcliffe, Joan Aiken and a host of other authors.


----------



## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

Pickman's model said:


> oh: and 'the turbulent term of tyke tyler' not to mention 'the dark is rising' and 'wine of satan'.



I was going to say The Dark Is Rising series


----------



## Pickman's model (Dec 4, 2014)

kittyP said:


> I was going to say The Dark Is Rising series


but i doubt you were going to say 'wine of satan'


----------



## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

hot air baboon said:


> ...this thread is depressing me at the inane rubbish I consumed none of which did anything other than pass the time.....I do though very clearly remember being taken as a very young kid to see the film of Kes when it was released & being in bits at the end of that...



Oh I consumed a lot of inane rubbish as well


----------



## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

ViolentPanda JTG Spanky Longhorn 

It's dated and not a good quality recording but I re-watched the BBC TV version of Green Knowe again recently on youtube


----------



## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

Pickman's model said:


> but i doubt you were going to say 'wine of satan'



Nope


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## ViolentPanda (Dec 4, 2014)

Idris2002 said:


> H.M. Hoover wrote what would now be called 'young adult dystopias' - I don't think I finished any of them (!) but I remember vividly one scene where the degenerate descendants of a US army missile unit descend into the depths of their abandoned base to worship their god, a nuclear missile.



I remember reading one of Hoover's called "Children of Morrow". Quite creepy in a post-apocalyptic way.


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## ViolentPanda (Dec 4, 2014)

Mungy said:


> animal farm when i was 10 or so.



Yeah, but what about the Orwell?


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## billy_bob (Dec 4, 2014)

I'm so glad The Dark is Rising gets a few nods on here.  I read the series at least three times as a young 'un and was completely transported by it.  I re-read it sometime in my 20s and was pleased to find I enjoyed it just as much.

John Wyndham's The Triffids (and most of his others), John Christopher's Tripods and LM Boston's The Children of Green Knowe I remember being very obsessed with. Also Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase series - I'm very excited that bob_jr's almost old enough to start having these read to him (a bit beyond his solo reading as yet...)

The one I most vividly remember upsetting me was something I cannot remember the name of, which we read as a class when I was about ten.  It's about the famine in Ireland but set, I think, in contemporary times.  A family goes on holiday to Ireland and all these weird supernatural things keep happening - food going rotten and stuff. Does anyone have a clue what that might be?


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## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

billy_bob said:


> I'm so glad The Dark is Rising gets a few nods on here.  I read the series at least three times as a young 'un and was completely transported by it.  I re-read it sometime in my 20s and was pleased to find I enjoyed it just as much.
> 
> John Wyndham's The Triffids (and most of his others), John Christopher's Tripods and LM Boston's The Children of Green Knowe I remember being very obsessed with. Also Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase series - I'm very excited that bob_jr's almost old enough to start having these read to him (a bit beyond his solo reading as yet...)
> 
> The one I most vividly remember upsetting me was something I cannot remember the name of, which we read as a class when I was about ten.  It's about the famine in Ireland but set, I think, in contemporary times.  A family goes on holiday to Ireland and all these weird supernatural things keep happening - food going rotten and stuff. Does anyone have a clue what that might be?



That rings a bell 

ETA: Is it this? Black Harvest by Ann Pilling?


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## Mungy (Dec 4, 2014)

ViolentPanda said:


> Yeah, but what about the Orwell?



i didn't know he'd written one as well. wouldn't have thought it was his genre.


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## Lea (Dec 4, 2014)

I really fell in love with books after reading the Chronicles of Narnia. It was literally a whole new World to escape to and fuelled the imagination. Of course I didn't get the Christian theme going on at the time. Just loved the stories. I remember looking forward to watching the animated version of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when it came on during the school holidays.

The other books I use to lose myself in were the Borrowers books. Loved imagination of the author with regards to the use of the borrowed items for their miniature homes.


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## Idris2002 (Dec 4, 2014)

I have to say, I was very proud of my niece when she worked out on her own that der-Narnia-mythos was a Xtian allegory.


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## Spanky Longhorn (Dec 4, 2014)

Mungy said:


> i didn't know he'd written one as well. wouldn't have thought it was his genre.


He also wrote Debbie Does Wigan


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## billy_bob (Dec 4, 2014)

kittyP said:


> That rings a bell
> 
> ETA: Is it this? Black Harvest by Ann Pilling?



I'm pretty certain it is from that description.  Thank you kittyP!


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## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

billy_bob said:


> I'm pretty certain it is from that description.  Thank you kittyP!




It rings bells for me but I'm not 100% I did read it or I have imagined I did.


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## oryx (Dec 4, 2014)

I used to really love books about animals, especially cats! Anyone else remember _Carbonel_ and _The Kingdom of Carbonel_ about a young girl & a cat with magic powers?


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2014)

Rats of Nimh!


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## quiet guy (Dec 4, 2014)

The Titus trilogy by Mervyn Peake


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## ManchesterBeth (Dec 4, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> Ragged Trousered Philanthropists put me off socialism for a good time as it was so cloying and treacly.



Which version did you read? The unedited manuscript? Repetitive as fuck.


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## Orang Utan (Dec 4, 2014)

dialectician said:


> Which version did you read? The unedited manuscript? Repetitive as fuck.


I dunno. Some scrappy copy that my parents had. Probably published in the late 70s/early 80s


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## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

DotCommunist said:


> Rats of Nimh!


Oh goodness yes of course!


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## oryx (Dec 4, 2014)

dialectician said:


> Which version did you read? The unedited manuscript? Repetitive as fuck.



I love The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

It's not great as a novel, in terms of it not being fantastically well-written - Tressell's style is pedestrian and narrative, and has not stood the test of time.

But it's readable and (I think) enjoyable, and its essential premise (of workers driving themselves into the ground for a system that abuses them and eats them up) is radical and still extremely relevant today.

I read it at 20 (early 1980s) and recently (since Cameron's bunch of fuckwits came to power) and its relevance and message still resonate really strongly.

Not really a children's book, though it can be, so I'm maybe going a bit off-thread.

One interesting thing about it is it's set on the South Coast (Hastings area), not the industrial North or Midlands, as so may books with a similar theme are.


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## ManchesterBeth (Dec 4, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> I dunno. Some scrappy copy that my parents had. Probably published in the late 70s/early 80s



Oh that's the lawrence and Wishart version, like 300 odd pages IIRC? 150000 words.

Trust me, if you'd read the 670 page version you'd comprehend just how tortuous that experience was...


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## ManchesterBeth (Dec 4, 2014)

oryx said:


> I love The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
> 
> It's not great as a novel, in terms of it not being fantastically well-written - Tressell's style is pedestrian and narrative, and has not stood the test of time.
> 
> ...



He could make that point in 150 concise pages though. It's needlessly prolix. He reminds me of Orhan Pamuk at his worst (in Turkish) though I like Pamuk's proustian deconstructions of istanbulite bourgeois life... esp. Museum of innocence.  difficult...


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## oryx (Dec 4, 2014)

dialectician said:


> He could make that point in 150 concise pages though. It's needlessly prolix. He reminds me of Orhan Pamuk at his worst (in Turkish) though I like Pamuk's proustian deconstructions of istanbulite bourgeois life... esp. Museum of innocence.  difficult...



That's another of my all-time favourite books. Slow, fantastically detailed chronological historical description of an obsessive romantic crush! I read it just after coming back from Istanbul which may have fuelled my love of the book.


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## Orang Utan (Dec 4, 2014)

kittyP said:


> I was going to say The Dark Is Rising series


You can still say it too if it moved you


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## kittyP (Dec 4, 2014)

Orang Utan said:


> You can still say it too if it moved you



Then I will.

The Dark Is Rising series.


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## ManchesterBeth (Dec 4, 2014)

oryx said:


> That's another of my all-time favourite books. Slow, fantastically detailed chronological historical description of an obsessive romantic crush! I read it just after coming back from Istanbul which may have fuelled my love of the book.



The anthropological imagery and comparisons are pretty fucking great.

I must confess I haven't read it in English. In Turkish it has this odd poetic quality, like swimming along a gentle river and then, bam. colliding with a bolder. I note that many English-speaking reviewers thought it slowed around the 200 page mark and then sped up during the last hundred pages, but in Turkish, i thought, it was slow and immersive until the last 100 pages and then there's a caesura, an immediate jolt.

It's not even about a contrived ending, i think. There's quite a dasein-esque element to the whole thing — it's quite good at illustrating, on an emotional level, the pull of authenticity.


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## May Kasahara (Dec 4, 2014)

oryx said:


> I used to really love books about animals, especially cats! Anyone else remember _Carbonel_ and _The Kingdom of Carbonel_ about a young girl & a cat with magic powers?



And Carbonel and Calidor! Loved them all  and spent much time wishing our local chemist had magic cats communication fluid in big glass bottles on its facade 



quiet guy said:


> The Titus trilogy by Mervyn Peake



This also, it was one of those early adolescence whack-round-the-head perception shifters for me.


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## DotCommunist (Dec 5, 2014)

machine cat said:


> Z for Zachariah.




this has been made into a film and will air at the sundance



> *Z for Zachariah* / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Zobel, Screenwriter: Nissar Modi) — In a post-apocalyptic world, a young woman who believes she is the last human on Earth meets a dying scientist searching for survivors. Their relationship becomes tenuous when another survivor appears. As the two men compete for the woman's affection, their primal urges begin to reveal their true nature. _Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine. _(Part of US Dramatic Competition)


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## campanula (Dec 5, 2014)

My dad bought me the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists for my 13th birthday (he was also a painter and decorator)...and I loved, just loved the first chapter...but confess that by the time I got to Nimrod the Mighty Hunter (shamefully not very far in) I was getting a bit....restless.
To my shame, even reading as an adult, I have failed to get much further than halfway through.
The very first book I ever had is still weirdly resonant. I was about 3 or 4 and it was my first reading book - Tip the Dog
'Look Tip, there is a ball....Good dog, Tip' - not exactly riveting but O, how clearly I recall the little tan, black and white scruffy terrier type of the title.

Here is where I quiver in horror at my avid reading of the Mallory Towers and Katy books...how vividly I longed for that middle class comfort and security, instead of the moonlight flits and foster homes of my childhood.


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## hot air baboon (Dec 5, 2014)

....the Piper at the Gates of Dawn bit from Wind in the Willows...


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## hot air baboon (Dec 12, 2014)

...seemed lame to put something as obv as LoTR...but when you come down to specifics....

( another bit of the book Peter Jackson the Tolkien Thief managed to f**k up totally - but hey at least he's made a couple of billion more out of ME than JRRT ever did )  



_The drums rolled louder. Fires leaped up. Great engines crawled across the field; and in the midst was a huge ram, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet in length, swinging on mighty chains. Long had it been forging in the dark smithies of Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in the likeness of a ravening wolf; on it spells of ruin lay. Grond they named it, in memory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old. Great beasts drew it, orcs surrounded it, and behind walked mountain-trolls to wield it.
But about the Gate resistance still was stout, and there the knights of Dol Amroth and the hardiest of the garrison stood at bay. Shot and dart fell thick; siege-towers crashed or blazed suddenly like torches. All before the walls on wither side of the Gate the ground was choked with wreck and with bodies of the slain; yet still driven as by a madness more and more came up.

Grond crawled on. Upon its housing no fire would catch; and though now and again some great beast that hauled it would go mad and spread stamping ruin among the orcs innumerable that guarded it, their bodies were cast aside from its path and others took their place.

Grond crawled on. The drums rolled wildly. Over the hills of slain a hideous shape appeared: a horseman, tall, hooded, cloaked in black. Slowly, trampling the fallen, he rode forth, heeding no longer any dart. And as he did so a great fear fell on all, defender and foe alike; and the hands of men drooped to their sides, and no bow sang. For a moment all was still.

The drums rolled and rattled. With a vast rush Grond was hurled forward by huge hands. It reached the Gate. It swung. A deep boom rumbled through the city like thunder running in the clouds. But the doors of iron and posts of steel withstood the stroke.

Then the Black Captain rose in his stirrups and cried aloud in a dreadful voice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and stone.

Thrice he cried. Thrice the great ram boomed. And suddenly upon the last stroke the Gate of Gondor broke. As if stricken by some blasting spell it burst asunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in riven fragments to the ground.

In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dinen.

"You cannot enter here," said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!"

The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.

"Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.

Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry and war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last._


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