What were the non-children's books you remember as a child in your house?

[TooOldForThisWhoCares]

In mine it was:
The James Heriot "All Creatures Great and Small" series.
A range of Stephen King.
Catherine Cookson galore.
A really ancient, mouldy St James (?I think) Bible which stank and had some kind of infestation (not even religious so not sure why we had it).
An awful book called, I think, "Drum" about slaves in the southern states of America.

I'm sure there were more but those are the ones that stick in my mind. What a weird selection! I wish I could say it was all a mixture of classics and quirky novels but nope, that was it.

About 300 self sufficiency, spinning, knitting, making your own wine/beer/cheese books.

1930s dictionary, “family health”, Somerset Vaughan compendium and Complete Works of Shakespeare books.

A plastic bag of books my grandad wrote that are impenetrable unless you’re a university lecturer.

Be-ro baking book that got replaced every few years!

Generally books about keeping horses & improving horse riding - in particular a book about 'centered riding'

God, there where 1000’s of books from literature, science and nature, art and history. I read most of them.

Quite a few medical books and encyclopedias
(mum's)
Lots of Maeve Binchy and Catherine Cookson novels
History/social history books, I remember one in particular about old houses of Ireland, what would have been landlords estates back in the day or big country houses. Both sides of my family had a connection to a house or land in it.
Biographies
Loads of cookbooks

Love this thread idea

We had loads of books at home. Wasn't particularly interested in the fiction - I always had a massive supply of my own for that. I loved all the reference books
A beautifully illustrated bird book
Endless 'Observer' books on nature
I loved pouring over maps and atlases
Books about different countries, artists, composers
Even dictionaries!

David Attenborough Life on Earth. Used to love looking at the animal photos!

Nothing. My parents did not read, and were not fluent enough readers to understand reading as leisure or source of information.

Fat is a feminist issue
The Encyclopaedia
The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill
The Dairy Diary cook book

Lots of Reader's Digest books - those of the fancy leather cover.
Jaws
A biography of Kim Philby
Reader's Digest cookery book - The Cookery Year. That was like my mum's bible and now she has passed it on to me as disability and arthritis means she can't do really fancy cooking anymore.
A book of maps of America
Lots of Bill Bryson books - my dad LOVES him.

There were loads, but I particularly remember
I Claudius
A really mildewy Penguin paperback Animal Farm
A book of three Robert Ludlum thrillers that my dad ripped in half because he and my mum had both started reading a different story
A book called 'Yoga For Men' thar had loads of nudey pictures in it

One of my best memories is of our family going to stay with my Aunt who was a consultant, when I was about 5. My brother and I were staying in an annex attached to the house that was absolutely wall-to-wall books. It was stunning and I was in awe of it. I still love going to her house now with my own children and DH. We all stay in the annex and the books are still there!

My mum's nursing books. Every condition was accompanied with a horrific photograph of an extreme example.

A vast and eclectic range gathered from all 4 grandparents and 2 parents that all loved reading. Unsurprisingly I also became a book worm. They still moulder to this day in my Mothers house. There is something about that smell from opening a book that probably hasn't seen daylight for 50 years. Sadly my kids, although they love reading, are very wiggy about touching old, or even second hand books!

Great thread!

Corrie ten Boom - the hiding place - I think when I was about 9 that was the first adult book I read.

Everything by George Orwell.

Lots of french existentialist stuff and Simone de Beauvoir.

Once and future king

The female eunuch

A weird old book on yoga from before instagram sanitized it.

Lots of books about British birds
Some of those little white Observer books, I remember one about freshwater fish, I always loved the pictures
One about Prince Charles
Souvenir photo books from holidays my parents had before I was born, my favourite was one of the Tivoli Gardens
A few Readers Digest condensed books, several books in one volume with very fancy covers
Bleak House
An ancient and useless dictionary
Couple of James Herriot books
Animal Farm which I think I still have somewhere

The Barn. Soft porn that provided my sex education in the absence of any input from my mum.

I can still remember lines verbatim.

"Boobies, big sweet boobies. Ah, I could eat them. Aahhh..."

Cheers mum.

Encylopaedias
An Atlas
Map books
Lace and various other racy volumes
The Thorn Birds
A few cook books
Some Irish history/poetry books that had been passed down.

Until we started to get books as children there weren't many books in our house.

Ooh I forgot 'Clan of the Cave Bear'!

OP, I think our parents had very similar taste in books! We also had James Herriot, Catherine Cookson and Stephen King, plus various editions of the Bible. I loved the Tilly Trotter books by Catherine Cookson and all the James Herriot which I read when I was about nine or ten - definitely still in junior school.

I also remember Shogun, Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews (I read that when I was far too young, urgh), Nicholas Nickelby and David Copperfield, a load of books about sailing (my dad's passion) including Clare Francis' books about sailing solo across the Atlantic and sailing round the world with her crew....

My parents also subscribed to a collection to cassette tapes with accompanying books / large magazines (from one of the newspapers I guess) called Great Composers. I think there was one per week for a whole year. They were brilliant - I learned loads about classical music from them and also about history and various public sex scandals back in the 18th and 19th centuries!

A big Reader’s Digest (I think?) medical book which I poured over at the age of 3-5 which gave me way too much medical knowledge for my age. still have it, but it’s languishing on top of a cupboard, dusty, so I can’t read it.

The Yellow Pages — Mum didn’t really read for pleasure so I didn’t have much. Read a lot of her Women’s Weekly, Chat, TAB though!

Other than that,

James Herriot
Catherine Cookson
Spike Milligan's War Memoirs
Agatha Christie
The Northern Dairies Cookbook
A Jane Asher Cake Decorating Book

Dr Spock. I read that avidly. 1970's cookery books. My mum was really into the Bronte sisters so we had all their books and books about them. Old encyclopedias picked up from second hand shops and rummage sales. Most of our books were 2nd hand.

The complete book of love and sex.....it had illustrations of naked people
British National Formulary -Gran insisted on 'checking' every GP decision!
Bible
Complete works of Shakespeare
Readers Digest Encyclopedia
All the Stephen King's

@MawkishTwaddle

I had a similar self education when I found two books in the top cupboard of my parents wardrobe - Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn

Not the best introduction

Apart from the hidden ones, always copies of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, The Dairy Book of Home Management which you bought from the milkman if I recall.

A strange set of Encyclopedias from Canada which I think were supposed to be for kids but weren't bought for us, with a topic for each book and a Canadian family discussing the various subjects within them.

Apart from that books were mainly library hired and of the Catherine Cookson variety.

Loads but I vividly remember just after my 7th birthday, my father putting a book on the top shelf and telling me I was not, under any circs, to read it.

It was Alive.
About the Uruguayan rugby team whose planet crashed in the Andes.

Stole it, read it, loved it.