What was your first favorite book?

[Jan]

I saw this question in an interview and thought it was interesting.

Mine was "And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" by Dr. Suess. I must have borrowed that one from the Library a dozen times.

How about you?

Jan

[Dan Dassow]

I saw this question in an interview and thought it was interesting.

Mine was "And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" by Dr. Suess. I must have borrowed that one from the Library a dozen times.

How about you?

Jan

Non-Fiction
CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae

http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Mathematical-Tables-Formulae-31st/dp/1584882913

Fiction
"I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov

Fiction Children
Toss-up between
"I Am a Bunny" by Ole Risom and Richard Scarry
"The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams and William Nicholson

I read both of these books to my daughters so many times that I could read them with my eyes closed (and frequently did).

[WorkerCaste]

What a way to exercise the grey matter! I'm sure there were favorite books earlierin my life, but the first I remember with any certainty was "Divers Down!" by Hal Gordon (I had to do a search to get the author ) It was a young adult adventure set in Hawaii that dealt with young people exploring under the water. I was fascinated by the sea and scuba diving from an early age and this just fit right in.

[JoeD80]

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

[Karachi Vyce]

What an impossible question. I don't think I could name any one book as my favorite, at any given point in time.

That said, I do have books which I am quite fond of. For example: I still consider Clive Barker's The Damnation Game to be one of the greatest horror novels of the last 50 years.

[raw_bean]

Probably The Very Hungry Caterpillar, as I'm sure a lot of people could say.

[Righteous Bros]

The Land of Green Ginger - Noel Langley

[Marsden]

Winnie the Pooh & House at Pooh Corner.

[jonodan]

Well, if you want to throw out childrens books, (Goodbye Curious George! LOL).. ... my first favorite adult novel was "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton.

In addition to being a great story, the book was interspersed with pages that appeared to be authentic looking "Top Secret" documents and biological warfare scenario maps. Very cool!

[Truth66]

My favourite book was The Last Canadian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Canadian

Actually I didn't know that there was a movie made based on the book until today. However, based on what I read about the synopsis of the movie The Patriot, it sounds like it's no where close to the book. So out of curiousity I'm going to have to rent it to see for myself.
This was one of those rare books that grabs the reader right from the first page onwards. I remember when I was High School we had to read that book and I was really happy because I had already read it. One of those rare times when I actually finished the assignment questins before anyone else. Not to mention I made a lot of new friends that year. Interestingly one of the group discussions in class was if the book would ever make a great movie and who would play the main character. The general concensus in class (more than twenty years ago) was Harrsison Ford.

[DGTWoodward]

THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT series by Harry Harrison. The original four books, not the later more silly prequels (sound familiar Lucas?)

I actually got into them because a comic weekly I used to buy as a boy ran an original adaptation of the first two books. I enjoyed them so much that I went out and bought the paperbacks.

That is actually the switching point in my life that made me realise what a great thing books actually were. I never looked back from there.

[Fourmyle of Ceres]

My First Favorite Book

Great question!

I've done a day's worth of introspection to get to my actual first favorite.
It was the 3rd or 4th grade for me @ Washington Elementary School, Phoenix, Arizona, sometime in the 60's.
A librarian representing the Bookmobile program would occasionally come and read aloud from different genres. To make a long story short, the Matthew Looney children's series about a boy living on the moon was the first thing I can remember that had an impact. It was the coolest thing to read growing up during the Apollo era.
The impact lead directly to Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Zelazny, Bester, and eventually B5.
Last but not least, my very first Theater movie was sneaking out to 2001, A Space Odyssey on the first day of release...around 5'th grade.

[Spoo Junky]

I don't know if this book was my first favourite, but I still remember, "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak.

I also read lots of other books, like The Black Stallion series, Nancy Drew series, all the kids books by Roahl Dahl (I can never spell his name right), Judy Blume, and others I can't recall at the moment. My parents used to buy me books but I'd read them too fast, so they got me a library card - and did I ever use it!

[glindros]

The Hardy Boys.
I can't remember a specific book, but I know I read over 20 of them.
I do remember finding it odd that my mental picture of them did not match the image of them that appeared on the TV show.

[Jan]

Ah, now when it came to series...I never knew where they came from as they were obviously very well used (though in good condition), we had Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, The Bobbsey Twins, and...oh, drat. One other one that had an SF slant to it-boy genius/inventor-that's just fallen out of my head.

My mother did an excellent job of brainwashing her kids. Naturally there were always plenty of books around but she took any opportunity she could to comment on what great readers everybody in our family were and how much we all loved to read. I actually remember being around 6 or 7 and thinking to myself 'okay, if we're such great readers, let's see what this is all about' and picking up my first Nancy Drew. I had to labor a bit with the first one but very soon my mind learned to become immersed in the story and a reader was born.

Jan