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.

Love this thread! My mum also had the Readers Digest Cookery Year - I can remember sitting in the kitchen poring over the pages and trying to work out what the recipes would taste like. Would love to read it now!
Also a lot of James Herriot, encyclopaedias, big thick history books of certain decades, science and space books, a lot of wildlife books too, particularly ones from BBC wildlife programmes. Also a book on growing up that my dad bought to avoid that awkward period conversation. I was fascinated by the puberty and sex section. Didn't spend quite so much time reading the chapters about healthy food or exercise weirdly!

DH says he can't ever remember books in his house .

Even when he was learning to read, his parents never read with him, took him to the library or bought him books, that's borderline abuse in my opinion!

It's not 'abuse', Dino, or not necessarily. My parents could read and write, but not very well -- both early school leavers, not through their own choice. taken out and put to work by parents who thought they were doing the best by them. For people from their background, sitting around with a book was either a sign of laziness or just incomprehensible, and neither of them read fluently enough to do more than read the gist of the newspaper, anyway.

It would no more have occurred to them to buy me books or take me to the library than it would have occurred to them to take me scuba-diving. It wasn't anything that had been done for them, or that they'd ever seen around them. They thought parenting was just about food and clothes.

The All Creatures Great and Small books, which I loved from the word go, even though as a ten-year-old I didn't always understand everything in them.
Two in the Bush by Gerald Durrell (likewise)
A few Dickens books
'The Woman In White'
A book of Walt Whitman poems
Some Dick Francis books of my dad's...

...and, on the seamier side of life, books I used to find under my parents' bed such as Jackie Collins/Harold Robbins, the Wilt books, Emmanuelle... oh and porn mags... I knew way more about sex at the age of 10 than I should have done, even if it was all too incomprehensible for me to actually understand.

One that my DF was issued with when he was in the Fleet Air Arm full of cutaway drawings of aeroplanes and suchlike. It fascinated me (and I am now the most non-mechanical person you could wish to meet).

Loads of Catherine Cookson
Helen Forrester
James Herriot
Loads of local history books
Wilbur Smith
Dennis Wheatley
Daniela Steele
Jackie Collins

Lots of books (my Dad would buy boxes of random books from the auction house - I read some very odd non-fiction!) but mainly I remember PG Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe (vaguely saucy covers). I read them all when I was a little kid, what a weird view of society to grow up with!

All big readers in my family - lots of crime books (Jeffrey Deaver and the like), Sci-fi and fantasy galore. My absolute favourite when I was small (7 or so I’d guess) was Arthur C Clarke’s mysterious world. Collection of cryptozoology discussions and pictures, the crystal skulls, the mummified mammoth from the peat bog etc etc. I loved that book

The dictionary. Everytime we dared say we were bored my dad would make us read 5 pages and test us we didn’t say we were bored often. Thesaurus if we were naughty

Neville Shute, Douglas Adams, Ian Fleming, piles and piles of dads library books (at least 6 a week!) and loads of mills and boon lol

Loads of them - but I specifically remember a book of baby care from the 70s (hardback, with a blue cover), loads of cookbooks - my favourite was this one in the picture, we were always asking to make stuff out of it. Usually from the cake/biscuit section. The Be-Ro cook book as well.

I also remember my mum had loads of Edna O'Brien books which I used to read in secret. I clearly remember one where a character got out of bed and put her bare feet on a freezing cold floor - I don't know why that's the bit that stands out, out of all the juicy stuff in those books!

Oops forgot the cook book photo

Readers Digest DIY book
Readers Digest Family Health Encyclopaedia
Readers Digest World Atlas

• you get the picture!

Also, loads of dictionaries and foreign language books, books about religion, Dr Spock, cookery books, encyclopaedias (my mum used to collect encyclopaedia periodicles that came out once every couple of weeks and then order the binders), books about art and artists, first aid books. Don’t remember any non fiction (apart from foreign language novels and a few Dickens books).

Complete set of James Herriot.
Complete set of Elizabeth Goudge.
Complete set of Charles Dickens.
Complete set of Richard Gordon "Doctor" books.
Lots of hospital romances, mainly Lucilla Andrews.
Lots of sports biographies, mostly athletics.
Lots of war books, e.g. The Cruel Sea.
Lots of RF Delderfield.
Lots of Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie whodunnits.

I was a voracious reader and was pretty much allowed to help myself to my DM's and DGP's bookshelves regardless of if it was "suitable" or not. Lots of those books stuck with me. They stayed in DGPs house, which I had to clear out last year, and most of the books were ruined by damp and had to be thrown out, which made me very sad.

Library books changed weekly
Complete set of Dickens
Universal Home Doctor and Universal Home Lawyer
Some Mazo de la Roche hard backs and a copy of Ulysses.
There were always books and I had lots of my own. I come from a hard up working class family but was always encouraged to read.

Definitely the Dairy Diaries and Readers Digest. My grandparents had a beautiful one about gardening but I can't find it or remember it well enough to search for it. Used to spend hours looking at the illustrations.
I also used to read my Dad's Wilbur Smith and Stephen King books on beach holidays whenever I'd finished my own more suitable reading 😂

Set of encyclopeadias. The SAS survival handbook. Madhur Jaffrey's cookbook. Roald Dahl's short stories for adults (dark stuff - not suitable for kids. I was banned from reading them so used to do so illicitly) Good Housekeeping cookbook.

My Mum was a librarian so there were always loads of books!

I remember the Atlas very vividly and looking things up in it.

A pale blue very thick paperback dictionary and Rogets Thesaurus.

A leather bound well loved set of Jane Austen's complete works.

My Dad's Haynes Manual for the car

The Dr Spock book on child care

Various cookery books, including one that was entirely things you could cook in the brand new microwave!!

A beautiful book of impressionist art, another one of photos from vogue.

My Mum was always reading though, I remember a succession of hefty paperbacks. Don't remember many titles though.

Clan of the Cave Bear.

Riders.

@thegreylady - did your copy of the Universal Home Doctor have a dark blue cover with the title on a lighter blue panel on the spine? If so, that's the edition we had. We loved the pictures and descriptions of all things medical or trauma...

We had two big bookcases in the living room. The shelves were stuffed with Reader's Digest books - lots of variation in the subject matter but all sorts from British Villages, British history, Strange & Weird Happenings, World History, Vanished Civilisations. We absorbed them all. Also medical books, recipe books, chemistry books, DIY and craft books, encyclopaedias.

We also had a large amount of fiction, yet more Reader's Digest condensed books with four novels in each (which we read, then wanted to read the unabridged versions), most of Agatha Christie's books, Ngaio Marsh, loads of hardbacks by a variety of authors from Jerome J Jerome to Neville Shute. Lots of the old hardback books were school prizes won by my grandfather and chemistry and calculus books owned by my late father.

We were used to having tons of books - had loads of our own up in our bedrooms as well - it never occurred to us at the time that we had many and plenty other people had very few, if any. My mum was appalled at the info that a lot of children were growing up without a single book in the house, and was determined her children were going to have plenty.

Well we had Jean Auel
Agatha Chrisie
Jilly Coopers books about Sloane Rangers
Lots of James Michener

Lost of science, anthropology, archaeology and history books. Books on travel, engineering, maths, religion and art. Loads on them. Classics, modern classics and oodles of ‘prize’ books from schools an Sunday schools.

Family of bookworms - why read one book when you can read 10 on the same subject from different angle?

All in order of topic and author. Until
Mum got bored one day and decided to order all the ones in one room by colour and size. Dad was not very impressed.

PrivateParkin.. I have that book! Rescued it from my Dad's house (he's close to hoarding!) very recently. So many memories!!

Dairy Diary
The Gardener's Year
Readers Digest Book of the British Isles or something like that...Info on all.the different regions, sections on wildlife and first aid
MindPower...some kindle early self help book about the power of positive thinking
My Dads faux leather bound collections of aircraft magazines and Encyclopaedia
Class - by Jilly Cooper...we had the audio book on cassette.

My DM hardly read books but my DF did and had quite a lot. I was a total bookworm and would try almost anything. I remember reading a lot of short stories and novellas: Conan Doyle, Maupassant, Somerset Maugham. Loved dipping into factual books too: the three-volume Readers Digest Encyclopaedic Dictionary, the world atlas. I remember there was an old household management book - not Mrs Beeton, much shorter and more recent - that had fascinating chapters on nursing invalids at home, how the sick room should be fumigated etc., how to make beef tea! We also had a First Aid book that included detailed instructions on delivering a baby; I read it so often, I was sure I'd know just what to do should the occasion arise (it never did).