h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In my case it was one of my Father's Pogo collections,"Ten Everlovin' Blue-Eyed Years of POGO".
My brother threw up on it when I was nine. It was a hard cover book and my mother is an *****. She threw it away. It was worth $50 at the time cause it was a first edition.
I still remember every page of that book long after I've forgotten all the school books....

Well, it was 'The Hungry Catepillar' for a kid's book, je suppose... but I consider 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' as the first 'proper' book, as well as '101 Dalmations'... I remember my dad asking me to read a page out loud to him every night as a course in perfecting my 'reading-aloud' technique when I was 6...

Gosh! I'm sobering up!

What a pity.
My daughter has been reading novels since the day she started 'reading for real'.
One day she was in a remedial reading class, the next day she had teachers sending home notes telling me not to let her read so much because it got in the way of her 'schooling'.
The notes were barely literate.

... but I did read it when I was very small (I don't know how old I was then... that far back you see...). The reading out loud was merely an excersise in rhetoric - how to present one's voice etc...

It depends on what can be defined as a 'proper book' on what age group it is aimed at and such like. I could probably tell you, but I'm too p*ssed to remember at this particular point in time...

I had the same problem as your daughter - the books in the primary school library were far too easy for me by the time I had reached Year 2...

...a pity that I'm sobering up, or posting when half-sober

A pity that you're sobering up. Now comes the aftermath, which I am not worthy to calculate.

My parents had enrolled me in some monthly book club as an infant, so I had quite a stash of them by the time I was 3 or so. Many of them were Sesame Street books. I first remember being *aware* of reading (i.e., aware that I was looking at the letters and translating them into thoughts) when I was sitting in my carseat in the back of the car with a Cookie Monster book.

*sigh* I still have a special place in my heart for Cookie Monster, actually... "I lost my cookie at the disco" was probably my favorite song of that time period...


Mikey

Apparently when I was 21 months old I took one of my books into my Mum and Dads room, climbed into bed with them and read the thing out loud cover to cover. After the initial shock my Dad got suspicious, took the book and turned to a random page and asked me to read from there. Of course I couldn't 'cos I had *learnt* the book from it being read to me and knew when to turn the pages!!

The first book I remember reading properly though was the Ladybird classic "Janet and John at the Seaside". I remember that I wanted a blue bucket and spade just like John's!?

I had loads of books. Still do, but the first book I can remember reading was in the second year of the juniors - (8-9). I remember leaving class to go to the loo, and picking a book up to take with me. Yep, I read on the loo. I read whenever I'm not moving usually. It was a book about the Trojan Horse.
I've got books that are now in my son's room, that my mother dated 1977 when I was 7, so I guess I must have read them, but I don't remember reading them. Most notably the stories of Perseus and Theseus, and Puss in Boots.

I remember the ladybird books. They were numbered in order of difficulty.. 1, 1a, 2.. etc.. up to about 7. The ones with "a" were a bit harder because, as well as Janet and John, they featured "Spot", their wayward dog. Number 7a "Janet and John and their dog Spot on a Trampoline" was difficult because it featured words such as "Trampoline". I was handed them all the day before I started school. I read them all that afternoon- thought them ok, thin plot, reasonable characterisation. Then, in school, they turned to page one of book 1, and just read that one page. Very slowly. This was the beginning of my dissillusionment of the education process, and the reason that today, I throw acorns at at squirrels.

Poisoning them is fun too, in the park...

I have been wondering what my first book was, and I have no idea at all. I was raised by my parents, and my grandparents, and my eldest sister was 16 when I was 4 years old, so a lot of adults read to me. My mother only stopped reading to me when I was 18 or so and went to Uni. Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, at that age probably.

The first one I can remember reading to myself was Prince Caspian when I was about 7, but I must have been reading for 2 or 3 years before then.

Ben

I started reading at school I guess. I read the books that were forced in front of me but I couldn't really keep up with the rest of the class. In the end I started reading the Asterix comics. The first real book that I read and enjoyed was probably 'Thge Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.' After that I got really into reading.

The first books I remember reading for myself were the 'Ant and Bee' series by Angela Banner. I don't know how old I was - three or four, I guess.

They've always had a special place in my heart, so I was delighted to find they were still in print when I went shopping for books for my daughter a few years ago.

Yes. I had various bad experiences with Teachers and books.
More than once I read the assigned text for the whole year on the way home and then kept track in the book while the other morons were struggling through words like 'piano' and 'octopus' and I was reading something completely different like Jules Vernes 'From the Earth to The Moon' or old what's his face's 'Pilgrim's Progress'.
I certainly would have to thank Ian Fleming and Don Pendleton for their trashy books and their effect on my reading skills. I think I read my first 'Executioner' paperback when I stole one from a book sale box when I was in the fifth grade. I think it was called 'Miami Massacre' and had a picture of a girl in a yellow bikini clinging to a careening marlin boat bridge while the hero blasted away at the various meanies.
I would like to thank all the stupid adults who called my mother when they saw me walking down the street reading and not tripping, not stepping in front of cars, and ask them what ever became of their illiterate little gits.
Sorry.

Did you have any impressions of what kind of people wrote the books ?
Or were you conscious of the fact that books had been written?

I have vague memories of just picture books.

As for my first read book?

I spent a lot of time travelling down to London for appointments at Great Ormond Street hospital when I was growing up. As a treat for innumerable blood tests - my Mum used to take me to the natural history, British and science museums - and I'm fairly sure I read a lot of pahmphlets and stuff from their. I was pretty passionate about it all then. I made a scrap book full of news-paper cuttings about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.(Still got it actually! )
When I was at nursary we were told to paint shapes or Rainbows I blobbed a brown and orange thing and proudly proclaimed it to be the destruction of Pompei!

Mostly I was I was fasinated with how things worked I think the earliest book I remember reading was this red one titled something like "how things work" - phones, television sets, why we get rainbows...that sort of thing.
I'm fairly sure we've still got that one too.

There was also this big book "how your body works" - which had lots of pictures and was liberally applied to my young mind to justify another blood test. (I still think of a scab as lots of little blood-cell soldiers holding hands to make a wall. )

you were anemic or a diabetic?

Actually my tonsils were playing up. Simple really. but oye! I was a sickly child.

Ah, humm, then that means that in some karmic way, my conversation with you is a trifle apropos....?
I assumed they were removed?

War and Peace, in the Russian. I'm now on to the sequel by Dubya, the one with pictures instead of words