STRANGE THINGS YOU USED TO READ

[Alleycat321]

I loved reading the residential telephone directory when I was young, looking up the names and address of people that I knew.

Also, my local residential street directory.

Also, local events’ programmes (summer fares/fetes).

Also, cereal boxes.

What about you?

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.

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.

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!

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 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.

Bruno Bettleheim wow that takes me back!!

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

So many of these are making me LOL. I read, amongst many other things: old ‘Giles’ annuals; Readers Digest (a friend of my parents gave us old copies and Mum was too polite to tell her to stop); Exchange and Mart; every woman’s mag going plus my weekly ‘Jackie’. Dad was a crossworder so we had several old dictionaries, notably a Chambers Illustrated from the 19thc, instilling a lifelong love in me of browsing any and all books containing lists of words and definitions.

In my first adult job my friend and I got hooked on American women’s magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal and used to hoot with laughter over the ads for incomprehensible foodstuffs and recipes involving cans of soup. Then we chanced on a book about the Victorian ‘Girl’s Own Paper’, whose ‘Answers to Correspondents’ pages are hilarious and tragic, and I started buying bound volumes of the originals. I still have probably ten or so volumes and it’s a guilty pleasure to browse through them. Actually, any kind of old - especially Victorian - magazine is like catnip to me.

Any printed material whatsoever (as well as my usual library books and books ordered from a magazine that came round school with a green bookworm on it, anyone remember that?)

I read Reader’s Digest too (why was it so popular over here?), the local paper, my parents and grandparents old books (medical dictionaries, Atlases (still fascinated by maps), some of my mother’s college course books (about law and democracy and the constitution, or why Britain doesn’t exactly have one).

The good stuff: parents got me a full set of junior Encyclopaedia Brittanica (anyone remember the red covers?) and I devoured it. Learned an awful lot; some of it dated now but Greek gods never age! The Beano every week - Bash Street Kids Lord Toffy Nose must have been a role model for Rees-Mogg, and I loved the Numbskulls with the little people inside a brain - a bit like Inside Out! and as I got older I grew up on the Grauniad and its Women’s page, which is why it makes me so sad and angry that the Guardian has sold out women over trans identifying men. Later on I bought Just 17 and then Cosmopolitan which was most of my sex education!

The bad: comics like Jackie and what was the other 70s one with lots of illustrated stories - there was one about a Victorian “angel” girl who wanted to do good all the time - looking back, strange reactionary values which may have been a backlash to 70s feminism.
My Dad’s photography magazines which back in the 70s and 80s had a lot of nude photography in them, and I also found his porn magazines, tame 70s stuff but shocking to early teens me.

@ClemmyTine, yes!

The Observer books;constellations, flowers, gem stones etc. Parents Home Doctor book, Some random 1920s or 30s book about handy household tips & home management. I remember one gem in it said female chauffers should be of attractive appearance, oh and how to resole your shoes with old tyres. I loved Exchange and Mart, cars, caravans and bondage gear 😂

I loved looking through the phone book too!

This.
It took me years to realise that anon wasn't the same name constantly being repeated.. and what was their surname? 😂

"This chap 'Anon' is writing some perfectly good stuff, but nobody seems to know who is agent is." (Flanders and Swann)

I loved the Highway Code as a child, and I memorised all the road signs. There was one really long sentence that just didn't make sense to my eight-year-old mind, though: "A green arrow may be provided in addition to the full green signal if movement in a certain direction is allowed before or after the full green phase."

My parents had a lot of popular psychology books, such as Families and How to Survive Them, which I loved reading. I devoured a book "Children are people too" on my parents' shelves, which argued strongly against smacking, and noted that English has developed a remarkable vocabulary for this, listing about twenty synonyms.

Also, I loved factual Ladybird books: always beautifully illustrated, and written in a short-and-to-the-point style. I learned about grave robbery, or "body snatching" from the book "What to look for outside a church".

I liked books of party games as well. I was fascinated by one called "Nelson's Eye", which I never saw played, in which a blindfolded child is given Nelson's hat and coat to feel, then told "here is where Nelson lost his eye", and made to poke their finger into the centre of a cucumber, or bowl of jelly.

You’ve just reminded me that I also loved reading books of party games. I was also very fond of a party cake recipe book belonging to my mum and can still recall some of the pictures to this day!

My parents had a lot of popular psychology books, such as Families and How to Survive Them, which I loved reading

I can recall reading my mum’s copies of How Not to Be a Perfect Mother by Libby Purves and The Parents’ Survival Guide by Laurie Graham. Can’t think what I got out of them, being a child myself!

Yes I had the Fireside book. Loved the pictures as well. I used to make up songs using the poems as lyrics and my brother would play the drums at the same time 😆😆

The strange notices in public loos about venereal diseases. My little head just couldn't fathom out what they were & I found them slightly disturbing. I used to read them out to my mum and ask umpteen questions.

Anything. Absolutely anything. But as a teenager growing up rurally in the 80s, I loved the Observer property ads. All for lovely houses in London. I used to imagine what they looked like. Still love property websites. (I don't live in London though.)

In the bath, I loved reading shampoo and bath foam labels. I used to collect leaflets from places we visited to read.

I used to memorise notices around my school, such as instructions on fire extinguishers, although I didn’t know what they were for. I remember this notice, full of big words: “The authority does not hold any responsibility for any item of property left by any person on these premises”.

I remember my parents doing this party game for us. Our eye was an orange instead of a cucumber. I remember squealing!

Also another party game where you followed a torch light through a sheet with your nose. Then got a wet sponge in your face as you appeared at the top.

I bet they came from this book!!

I used to do this!