STRANGE THINGS YOU USED TO READ

Lists of ingredients/composition of everything and medication prospectus/leaflets! (Still do now 🙃)

Bruno Bettleheim wow that takes me back!!

I studied Bruno Bettelheim's book "A Good Enough Parent", which was on my parents' shelves, so I knew what my parents were doing wrong.

Far more interesting that the mind-corroding Lord of the Flies I was supposed to read for GCSE English.

And the “this is John/Jane’s (insert organ of choice)..” the one about breasts was interesting and informative as I didn’t have any at the time. Explained how ducts work etc, with a cross section illustration.

I read all sorts of weird stuff as a child, including my mum’s parenting magazines and her collections of Posy Simmonds cartoons which often went entirely over my head! I was also allowed virtually a free run of my parents’ bookshelves which is how I ended up reading Jane Eyre and Gone with the Wind at 10, 1950s educational treatise ‘How Children Fail’ by John Holt aged about 12 (no idea why), and A Brief History of Time at a similar age. Not to mention learning about sex from various wildly inappropriate bonkbusters!

Everything from my Granny's People's Friend to my brother's Louis L'Amour westerns and Sven Hassel war stories (aged about 10) . I don't think my DM had any idea about the latter two.

Oh, I forgot, Whittakers Almanac. One volume had a section on it called College of Sexual Knowledge. It was an eye opener! I learned some ehm, interesting (for want of a better word) things.

My grandmother read The Lady, and my grandfather has The Spectator so would read those when at their house.

Thelwell
Horse and Hound
Giles cartoons

James Herriot books

Argos catalogue
Stocking Fillas catalogue (does anyone remember that?)

I have found my tribe! I read so many of the above. I can add decades-old Eagle annuals when at my Nanna’s. They had been my aunt’s & she’s a fellow “readanything&everythinger”.
In the late 80s I’d pick up DP’s Construction News on my way out of the house & read it on the tube on my way to work as an English teacher. I learned a lot about the Drax power station.

My DM had a mucky paperback called The Barn, which I used to sneak into her bedroom to read

Yes! I read my DFs Thurber books and loved them! Must have been A Thing in Britain at the time (60s - 70s?) And the Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape? (Had a cheeky cover with nekkid men and ladies on, was about human behaviour)...

Also: the instruction manual for every machine or white good in the house, including the car.

Ministry of Agriculture pamphlets on bot fly and sheep blight and rabies (again, DFs job). And a book on caring for Army mules and horses in the desert from his National Service. 😢

DMs books were all orange Penguins of films of the time, like Room at the Top, The L-Shaped Room and Billy Liar.

I loved reading dictionaries. I liked to find words with definitions that must be tricky, such as "colour". One children's dictionary didn't define it, but said "red and blue are colours". A better one did make more of an effort, but the definition of "whether" was "if", and "if" was "whether".

I also liked clothing catalogues, with the exotic names of colours, which would not be "red" and "yellow", but "vermilion" and "tropical". These catalogues always showed people wearing trainers without socks, which I used as justification for doing so myself.

As a child, I had Claire Rayner's "The Body Book": I've still got it, and it was clearly written for children. It described the sexual act in some detail, without using the word "sex", showed a boy peeing against a tree, had a close up drawing of a bumhole, and made no secrets about "growing old and dying". On the subject of touch and pain, it said "Most people don't like pain". Why only most people, I wondered? Why not all?

More recently, Jeffery Archer's prison diaries. I haven't read anything else by him, but I found the prison diaries absolutely riveting.

Cereal packets at breakfast, telephone directory, Argos catalogue, Readers Digest all favourites here too! As a teen the Habitat catalogue was my absolute favourite and as a pp mentioned apart from Judy Blume books and Flowers in the Attic, I don’t remember much early teen reading… I do remember reading The Thorn Birds when I was probably a bit too young! 🤣

Loving this thread. Readers digest for me and also whatever my dad had on his bedside table. Wisden cricketing annual and inexplicably, Jeffrey Archer

Same! We used to howl 😂

Oh yes and old medical dictionary of my mum's. Lots of black and white photos of people muffled up lying in bed on alpine balconies while recuperating from TB. Strange drawings of the human body showing the sections of the body - respiratory system, organs etc with a small smile on his face. Old fashioned names for illnesses and conditions; some incredibly offensive nowadays: "idiocy" "cretinicy" and so on. Seriously. There was also a section on what happened to the body just before and after death etc. Quite scary to read as a kid.

i think it was already ancient when my mum inherited it.

Anything & everything.

I loved my older brother's collection of Giles annuals and my Nana's 'Miss Read' books (my favourite was 'Emily Davies').

My parents had the full collection of The Book of Knowledge which kept me absorbed for hours. My Mum's copies of Woman & Woman's Own. My Auntie's copy of 'Lace' by Shirley Conran which taught me an awful lot about sex when I was a young teen.

My younger brother's copy of 'Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World' absolutely fascinated me and scared me at the same time.

Reading was a compulsion for me and still is.

Saga magazine aged 10. Not really target demographic

there used to be such good magazines so many gone and the ones that have survived are not as good
Annabel
Freezer Digest
Womans Realm
Living
Family Circle
to name but a few

Not so much reading - at school in the 80s there was loads of clothing catalogues ( Freeman's etc) from the previous decade in the craft department. We thought the most hilarious thing ever was the men in flares, and even funnier was the men in y-fronts. Kept us amused for hours

I used love reading the Miscellaneous Section of Exchange and Mart, the weird things people used to try and sell!

My dad took that as well! P&R weekly!

Dad's Exchange and Mart, His plastics & Rubber weekly. Much more innocent than it sounds! Though my Brother and I thought it should come in a plain wrapping!

Loved Home and Freezer Digest!!!

Friday ad - bizarre bazar and there was also a section about trying to connect with someone ypu saw on the street