Speaking of Seuss, this book was one I read often as a kid. The story about the mysterious pants scared the crap out of me when I was really really little. There's something just not right about pants that chase you around at night and then sit around crying about it afterwards...

Also loved this one and this one.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

I remember a Dr. Seuss one about a bunch of hats and some dude named Bartholomew Cubbins.

Can't forget Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic - Shel Silverstein rules.

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

lol

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

LJ Smith was one of my faves as a teen! I have all of her books and she's finally releasing two new books this coming January...one is a sort of continuation of The Vampire Diaries, though with Damon being the main character now instead of Elena (side note: one of my alt screen names on chat programs for years was LNaGilbrt), the other is the final book in the Night World series which we've been waiting on for, oh I don't know, like six years! I think her first two books are actually really good...Heart of Valor and Night of the Solstice. They were really hard to get for a long time but they may have finally rereleased them.

I actually have all of RL Stine's Fear Street series. Started collecting them in 9th grade ('89-'90). I picked up a copy of Lights Out at a Target in Sacramento to have something to read while on the way to the mountains for the weekend, and I liked it enough to seek out the earlier books (at the time there were only like a dozen) and then continued on with the series. For the most part the series is just plain crap (though the first dozen or so books are actually pretty decent for YA horror), but when you want to indulge in mindless crap reading, they're the perfect go-to books (kind of like Christopher Pike, really). I kept buying the books after a while just to maintain the collection. There are very very few I've read more than once - Lights Out and Haunted get the most play - but since I spent so much money and worked so hard to get every last damn book, I feel obligated to keep them around. Though they're really just in a box in my garage.

LJ Smith, though...she gets a whole shelf on my bookcase. :) The Vampire Diaries is still my go-to quadrilogy when I want some brain candy and a mushy love story.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

lol

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Yes! Class of '93...w00t!

I still collect Mad Libs, though they just aren't as funny as I remember them being when I was a kid. Probably because words like "cocksucker" and "asshair" were much more amusing at that age.

Overall I was just a massively avid reader as a child. I wish I could remember all of the things I read over the years. Every time someone else posts something they read, it jogs my memory just a little bit more. Like I said earlier, I wish I'd saved all those books. I would love to thumb back through them now and then.

It's funny...as avid a reader as I was...whenever there was a reading competition at our school or local library, my reading would grind to a halt. I don't know why...I think probably because I read because I enjoyed it, and having it suddenly turned into a "you HAVE to read all these books or else you lose" prospect just made it less enjoyable and therefore something I balked at. Because ordinarily, I would have smoked the competition. I grew up in a small farm town where very few kids cared about things like reading for pleasure. So. I was an oddity indeed.

Did anyone else have those reading competitions in their schools as kids? I don't remember what the prizes were...you just had to read a bunch of books within a certain timeframe (like two weeks) and whomever read the most books won a prize, and then whomever read the most pages also won a prize. And then everyone who read over like three books got to attend an ice cream social and then release balloons with notes tied to them. So ridiculous (I remember being the only kid in my class who didn't get to attend, and my teachers felt sorry for me, and would let me play Oregon Trail to make up for it)

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

lol

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Yes, Amanda. I remember having to keep track of how many books I read on a sheet. Title, author, and a comment.  Most kids didn't fill up one for the year.  I had a file of those sheets.

I could see us going through one another's libraries and geeking out!  

Yeah. MadLibs.  Not so funny anymore.  But the funniest shit in the WORLD as a kiddie.

does anyone remember a series from either the eighties or very early ninties where the protaganist is more or less the only character, and the stories are almost exclusively about them surviving some accident or something and then being standed in different evironments and surviving that, and its basically what those survivorman TV shows or man vs. wild(never seen that one so im assuming there) are about. i remember particularly a book about a man surviving in an ice cave, maybe his plane crashed, and the book is basically a telling of how he stays alive, but methodically, very detailed. and it is fiction for kids, so not too advanced, maybe junior high level or late grade school. like the whole lot of you, i was reading well beyond my age from an early age. and im pretty sure there were other books that were variations on the theme too. but this one is the only one i can remember with some sort of clarity. i remember them because when i would really get into a book in my childhood days, all i would do was read until i was finished. or i should say, any activity i did i did while reading the book. save sleep, and some of school of course. but i would be so wrapped up in them. the bellairs books had a similar effect at the time too. but i cant remember that friggin name of that trapped man story. PLEASE! SOMEONE ANYONE! HELP ME OUT!

and yeah amanda, i remember those reading competetions. the big ones were the over the summer ones. and youd get a sticker on this sorta grid like piece of paper. then you got something if you read more than others. needless to say i was in the minority that took part in that program.
i was also a young author contest winner in a couple of grades in grade school. did that young author contest exist for anyone else?

Yes, we had the young author contest as well. I actually had a story of mine published in this special annual book that contained selections from various students within California when I was in 7th grade. I don't know if the publication was for like a specific region or the entire state, to be honest. We couldn't afford to buy a copy and believe it or not, a copy of the publication was not provided to those whose writings were selected! I still remember the story though; for a class assignment we'd been told to write an essay or story using anthropomorphism, and so I wrote this humorous short story about a family dog and that's what my teacher ended up submitting without my knowledge.

Angel, I geek out over your book selections all the time. Could you imagine if we'd traded collections as kids? :D

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

Goldbug

Someone please post a TP madlib. :)

On a side note, I also use to listen to those Muppet Movie soundtracks on vinyl.

I love Kermit playing banjo in a boat singing "The Rainbow Connection."

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

lol

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

lol

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Ive got good news....that gum you like is going to come back in style!"

"I'm a WHOLE DAMN TOWN!"