On the other hand, I also grew up with a lot of Alice In Wonderland.  Did some of your moms sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to you when you were young instead of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat”?  No wonder too many of you are normal.

Around first grade, I read the “Little House on the Prairie” series, the Narnia books, the Ramona Quimby books, the Bobbsey Twins books, and a whole bunch of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books.

If you want to talk early-puberty literary obsessions, though, it started with the “Wrinkle in Time” books, around fourth grade. I’m proud of having been super-into Madeleine L’Engle.

Around the same time, I was also super-into the Baby-Sitters’ Club books. Those, I’m not exactly proud of — but I’m also not ashamed of them. They were pure silly popcorn reading, and that was totally okay. I am, however, ashamed that I tried to model my 5th- and 6th-grade fashion choices on the fashion choices of the BSC characters. It was the early ’90s, so stirrup pants and oversized tunic tops were, in fact, everywhere — but they were still bad choices. (There is an entire blog devoted to the fashion choices of Claudia, one of the BSC characters: What Claudia Wore. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out.)

In fifth grade I was super-into Shakespeare, especially the sonnets and Romeo & Juliet. I wrote a lot of really bad sonnets to the boys I had crushes on (of course, I never showed them or anyone else these poems).

Then it was the Dark is Rising books in sixth grade. LoTR, Dragonriders of Pern, 1984, Les Miserables in seventh grade. Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in eighth grade (I liked the idea of being into Hemingway and Stein more than I actually liked the literature).

As for Ayn Rand, we were assigned Anthem in ninth grade English; I didn’t find it particularly interesting. I didn’t read The Fountainhead until college (not for class). When I did read it, I was so utterly icked out by the approving/sexy/excited tone of the rape scene that it broke any spell it might otherwise have had. I was just not okay with any philosophy where the protagonist raping a woman is proof of his powerful ubermensch awesomeness, and causes said woman to be totally into him forever.

Some of Anthony’s other books don’t even bother to hide the pedophilia.

http://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-piers-anthony

I guess I’ll have to go with the Xanth books. It took me reading some of his other books to realize just how creepy Piers Anthony’s is, with his fixation on sexualizing children.

Kids these days can rave all they want to about Riordan, Collins, Meyer and all those, but TOM SWIFT HAD FRICKIN’ LASERS!

If you like pulp hacks, but hey, some people still like L Ron Hubbard’s drek. As long as you can unashamedly admit that they’re pulp hacks, I have no beef with this.

And B E Pratt if you’d like to lay your grubby hands on the books I know I’ve seen some of them in a local (Nashville, TN) used bookstore called McKay’s. They might be able to help you out.

Zifnab was WAY more annoying than I remembered as a kid, though. YMMV.

I grew up loving Roger Zelazny, but won’t go near him anymore because he has That Voice.

So, all the stuff that I was way big into when I was younger, well, I’m still fond of it. (Mostly.) Including a lot of authors mentioned above. (Many of whom are simply good authors and should in no way be considered embarrassing.)

Like, I like Dragonlance. I don’t confuse it with great art but I like it. I liked Eddings better at the time; the years have revealed his flaws in ever-increasing clarity but that doesn’t mean that he never wrote anything worth reading.

And I like Ayn Rand. Not like I once did, but I see no reason to repudiate her. She was wrong about some things and she was also right about some things; overall, I’m better off for having read her stuff.

The one author I’d like to have a do-over on is Piers Anthony. I freely admit having really liked his books when I was a teenager. But now I don’t, and I wish I hadn’t then. The man was not without his cool ideas… but.