STRANGE THINGS YOU USED TO READ

I absolutely loved the area telephone codes booklet ( late 70s). I used to read the place names out loud. Tallybont on Usk was my favourite, DH was born in Usk!

The Bible. I'm an atheist, I have never believed in God, even when I was a kid and went to a C of E school, but someone gave me a copy of the Good News Bible at some point, and I don't even know why I thought it was essential reading but maybe I just thought it was just one of those things that you should do as part of growing up.

I lasted a few pages. It was the most badly written thing I'd ever read.

Oh god yes, my mum had piles of these that she used to get from jumble sales and hide in the wardrobe. I was quite fascinated by the sex scenes, but quite disappointed later on that in real life it wasn’t quite the same (why was I not floating on clouds of ecstasy, lost on another plane of existence, ascending to the stars, etc. etc.? I mean, don’t get me wrong, sex is all right, but Mills & Boon rather oversold the whole business 😭)

My grandmother was a doctor’s receptionist, so she would bring all the magazines from the waiting room home and collect them. Her whole house was full of piles of Bella, Best, Woman and Home, Woman’s Weekly, and Readers Digest.

I was quite puzzled by Readers Digest to be honest - a bit too American with that funny layout. I preferred the real life stories in Bella and Best, but would read Woman’s Weekly in a pinch (though that was quite boring and full of knitting patterns). I do credit much of my knowledge about Life to those magazines though. There is literally no problem in life I hadn’t read about somewhere in there 😆

I was also quite partial to an interesting mail order catalogue, and absolutely lived for the Webb Ivory one my school gave out at Christmas 🤣

I think Mumsnet is like a problem page and letter page. That's why I love it

Actually, I think you've hit the nail on the head there @ClemmyTine!

I used to read the Guardian Guide cover to cover when I was a teenager back in the 90s, all the cinema listings, the works. I still feel I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of mid90s films even though I didn’t see most of them. The Last Seduction, Croupier…ah.

Mills&boon as a teenager. I was obsessed

Rag Week joke booklets sold by students from the local university.

A relative’s Nursing Times for the gory photos.

The Watchtower, put through the door by the local JWs.

Birth announcements in newspapers. Loved the interesting names etc

… Jessica Rose , born to Henry and Letitia, and sister to Phoebe May and Rupert John.

I used to love the problem pages too. From Cathy and Claire in Jackie to Claire Raynor, Virginia Ironside etc..
I think Mumsnet is like a problem page and letter page. That's why I love it.

Back of stuff/packaging: cereal boxes, vitamins tub, the back page of my dad's running club newsletter (full of rude jokes and satirical Dear Editor letters), etc. Typical 90s breakfast table kid

Travel guidebooks at the library. Did I ever go to Algeria, or Suriname, or Toronto? No. Was the information in the book likely, even then, to be 7 years out of date? Of course.

Survival books - I believe this is another common 90s-early 2000s trait. We all wanted to know what to do if our plane crashed in the Namibian desert, or if we were trapped in an avalanche.

Me too!

Oh yes! I used to read my gran's copies of Women's Own, Your Weekly and Bella too, I think I started doing pelvic floor exercises in my teens because of an article in one of those

I remember being fascinated as a child by Barbara Cartland's Book of Etiquette, which we inexplicably had a battered old copy of. I never got tired of it, learning that you should not greet your husband wearing "down-at-heel slippers" and so on.
We also had the Reader's Digest book of Strange Stories, Amazing Facts that had lots of paranormal sort of things in it - ghosts and cryptids and the like. It was fab but really weird.

Readers Digest here too!

And I was obsessed by the problem pages of women's magazines. I was in the Guides and we were sent to do a first aid course in the local courthouse and goodness knows why, but there were piles of magazines: quite tame stuff like Woman's Own etc.
The course leaders were pretty lax, and I remember lying on the jury's benches absorbed by all the relationship problems and the agony aunts' replies. I still enjoy reading Philippa Perry's advice pages in the Guardian now. Pamela Connolly's advice on sexual issues is rubbish though.

conspaircy type magazine called X-Factor
then story wise Literotica

Ah yes, It pays to improve your word power. Loved that.

Hating the capitals but think this thread has potential

I'll raise you Jan Kramer

Best medicine, not bed medicine 😀

I used to read my dad's readers digest too. It pays to improve your word power and laughter the bed medicine.

Yes. I loved RD as a young teen. I was too old for children books but there wasn’t much out there for that age group in the mid eighties. Judy Blume and not much else.

I used to read a dictionary for fun. 😂

From the age of around 9 I used to read my dad's copy of the Reader's Digest.

Snap!! My grandparents had a huge back catalogue and I used to spend hours reading stuff which made no sense to me!

Death notices and obituaries 😁

Outdated copies of Readers Digest when I was in my tween years, to start with I'd just read the jokes and the section about silly things that had happened to people but I went back to them and read the longer articles too. I remember one about some sort of innovative medical practice which was amazing but probably completely old hat by the time I read it