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.

Plane, obv

Loads of gardening books, loads of sci fi books.

Dairy Book of Home Management and of Home Cookery, like PP.

Always a pile of library books as well.

My dad had lots of slightly off beat non fiction books, but my favourite was a compilation of weird, sensationalist news stories from the early twentieth century. Things like stories about Siamese twins, religious fanatics, odd medical conditions etc. It was fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

My mum had a collection of old household manuals from the 1930s which I loved so much she gave them to me when I left home, and they started a lifelong interest in collecting old domestic manuals.

My parents were socialists/CNDers so we had a whole range of 'lefty' type books.
Fame is the Spur.
The ETU trial.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
Das Kapital. Then later .........
The Karma Sutara.
The Female Eunuch.
The Feminine Mystique....... and many more.
Dad was also a Catholic but a questioning one so we had ....
The Holy Bible.
Catholicism and Freemasonary an Exposure.
Knox's Book of Martyrs (illustrated) (not envy)
We lived in a flat above a library so had complete access to lighter reading and were encouraged to use it regularly.
I'm 65 now and still am a voracious reader as are my brother and sister.

I am loving all the dodgy yoga books and joy of sex giving people their sex education.
And HOW could I have forgotten Flowers In The Attic! Yes we had that series too.
Love the eclectic mix people have grown up with.

My mum was an avid reader so we had all sorts. The authors I remember were

Catherine Cookson
Dean koontz
Steven king

We also had a massive wildlife bbc book which me and my brother used to read. It had a huge baboon in the centre pages and I used to get it out, point at the picture and say ‘look db, it’s a picture of you’

My gran had one or two Catherine Cookson, and a red hardback called Sixty Famous Trials! It was ancient even then, and full of horrific details of Victorian murders. I used to read it avidly as a child!

ShannonRockallMalin And Clawdy,

Glad I wasn’t the only ghoulish little girl!

All the classics, and yes to the Joy of Sex. My parents had turned it so the spine faced inwards and the pages faced outwards but of course that didn’t stop us finding it.

Precisely 2 - A paperback copy of Lord of the Rings and a small paperback little copy of BeRo cake recipes.

Box loads of romantic novels in my mums native language. Loads of history books about European Kings and Queens. Absolutely loved looking at pictures of Habsburg Kings for hours. Loads of English grammar books from the 50’s and 60’s that I actually used to work my way through on rainy days.
Readers digest atlas of the world, which I loved so much as a child I bought one for my kids

LOADS of ancient religious books. Bibles. Welsh bibles. Family bibles with the family tree meticulously written out at the front - one for each of the seven children in my mother's generation. Hymn books (Welsh), and crumbling books of sheet music for said hymns.

Then my dad's engineering books. Readers' Digest. Old encyclopaedias. The occasional biography. We had The Dairy Book of Home Management as well, IamFrauBlucher! Collections of something called The Friendship Book of Francis Gay, which seemed to come out annually and was mostly rather twee poetry. No novels, thinking about it. Not much that you could call 'reading for pleasure'. Weekly trips to the library, though, and a huge bookcase for my own collection of books.

A variety of novels, dictionary, encyclopedia, animal books, history books, some what you may call coffee table books with a variety of themes (no idea how they made it into our house).

Mum had several cookery/baking books, some gardening ones.

I have now several of the novels I started reading as a teenager, some are out of print. Not sure if I still like them but they do hold very good memories.

Oh and I forgot - various Haynes Manuals for Ford Escort, Ford Capri, Ford Cortina

Corrie ten Boom - the hiding place - yes, this and various other holocaust memoirs.

Susan Howatch - Penmarric and lots of others.

"How to make love to the same person for the rest of your life" Ewwwww. That was on the bookshelf downstairs. The Joy of Sex was upstairs in a drawer.

The Hobbit.

Antonia Fraser.

Very few - an encyclopaedia, a Reader’s Digest ‘How to do Just About Anything’ and a number of Michelin guides to France. My father didn’t read books and my mother didn’t see the point of buying them when you could go to the library.

We practically lived at the library.

A weird one. The miriam Stoppard baby and child healthcare handbook mum bought it for when we were babies and I somehow found it around the age of 7/8...I'm training to become a paediatrician now and I vividly remember every disease in that book.

Otherwise I remember so many Agatha christie books.

My mum read modern languages at university so she had lots of French and German books - I remember wondering what the titles meant when I first learnt to read.

One that I think was called the animal king from, and another about rainforest animals, with big amazing photographs. I used to look through them all the time.
A woman's weekly children's novelty birthday cake cookbook, we used to look at that so much. They are the only ones I remember enjoying, I'd look through James Herriot or Viz sometimes .

My kids have never ever looked through our main book shelf actually , only their own.

A big thick book about British wildlife.

My mums mills and boons.

My sister(a fair bit older) had a trashy book which had summer romance stories in. I learnt all fair bit about sex from that one.

None. My mum and dad never read.

My mum used to love the Catherine Cookson adaptations on the TV and I remember her getting a Catherine Cookson book at some point. I can't remember the title but it was next to her bed for ages. I think she started it and didn't finish it.

She had loads of Take A Break magazines that I used to read from cover to cover - still a guilty pleasure of mine!

I remember some Stephen King books in my sister's room (10 year gap) that used to spook me when I went in there.

David Attenborough life on earth.
Masquerade -the one with the hare jewellery treasure hunt.
Monty Python books .
Mrs Beeton cookery book.

In the hall by the kitchen - reference books:
An encyclopedia, dictionary and thesaurus.
Lots of cookery books eg Elizabeth David.
Collins books of nature eg birds, flowers, mushrooms
Gardening books
Plus, randomly - Posy Simmons books (cartoons)

Outside my parents' room: a book case of fiction.

Bathroom - non fiction:
Feminist books eg Our Bodies Our Selves.
Books on politics.
Books relating to my parent's academic interests

Loads more I can't remember.

Mum and Dad didn't read very much while I was a child, so there were few books.
A Penguin Greek Myths
An English/French dictionary
A book about pulled muscles and exercises
Several versions of the Bero baking book
A book of household hints, one was how to skin a lamb by blowing it up like a balloon, another was how to tell if you had eaten rabbit or cat by looking at the bones!

Being a compulsive reader, I'm so envious of those had interesting books available at home. Luckily for me, a mobile library van visited every fortnight, and my secondary school had a wonderful library, crammed with delights, so I didn't only have the Golden Syrup tin or the Vicks ointment jar to read!

Everything, my parents have thousands of books, in fact even the kitchen cupboards are full of books, plus there were always loads of magazines and newspapers. It ranged from Shakespeare, James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, Simone de Beauvoir, Jilly Cooper, books on the occult, bibles, plenty of art books, books on photography, books on insects, wildlife, birds, history, politics, engineering, travel including a great one called Europe on £10 a day. Really diverse stuff, my kids have loads of books too and are both starting to love reading, our house is full of books too. Thousands of them.