For all you early-90's kids

[Kid Airbag]

I'm assuming anyone who grew up during the early 90's engaged their mind in a healthy diet of Goosebumps-reading sometime between kindergarten and fourth grade.

If you did, you'll find this absolutely hilarious.

[AirRaid]

Goosebumps sucked. When everyone else was reading Goosebumps I was reading LOTR and Stephen King.

Edit: And Shaun Hutson.

[Technician]

Goosebumps ruled. Can't remember the ones I read for the life of me. I can remmeber at least a hundred titles of teen horror books from the late 80's early 90's

[Scuba Steve]

AirRaid said:

Goosebumps sucked.

Heaven forbid a series of books encourages more children to read.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Scuba Steve said:

Heaven forbid a series of books encourages more children to read.

That series made me question why I read.

[kristus]

One scary author I liked when I was little was Robert Westall. I started by reading his book Yaxleys Cat, found it very intresting. And went on to read some other shorters stories by him. I never heard of goosebumps though.

[Epyo]

Kids read books?

That "read" is past or present tense, doesn't matter to me.

[Job]

Bruce Coville and Edgar Allen Poe.

[Nautilus]

Oh wow, I've completely forgotten about Goosebumps. I only read two of the series or something though.

[Bloodshedder]

I never read Goosebumps. I may or may not have been a sheltered child.

[Ebon]

What's Goosebumps?

I think I was 3 to 8 years old when they were popular. Back then, I was only playing Doom Episode I on I'm Too Young to Die.

[Psyonisis]

,

[Job]

Ebon said:

What's Goosebumps?

I think I was 3 to 8 years old when they were popular. Back then, I was only playing Doom Episode I on I'm Too Young to Die.

Heh, that reminds me of my Doom 1 install with 3 or 4 floppy disks.

I remember that at one point my 5th grade teacher banned book reports on Goosebumps books because, seriously, about 80-90% of my class was only reading them and avoiding everything else on the reading list.

[caco_killer]

I tried reading Goosebumps books when I was a kid, but it was so boring that I never finished one. That site is pretty funny, though.

[Jehar]

I was frankly pretty bored with the series, it never eally turned me on. They didn't disgust me as much as the plethora of stine-alike horror novels made for pre-teens. Ugh.

But yeah, at that time, I was a fan of Coville, who actually had literary talent, and whoever wrote those Vampires Don't Wear Polka Dots. The Bailey School Kids? Was that it?

I didn't take them that seriously, but they were quite humorous.

That was about the time I found Ursula Le Guin and Piers Anthony. Tolkien came later.

[Zaldron]

Michael Ende's Neverending Story and Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon were my first "grown up" books. Then came Tolkien. Before all that it was every issue of Asterix.

[Lizardcommando]

I only read two books from that series. It's alright.

[exp(x)]

Oh man, EVERYONE read goosebumps in fourth grade. I read a few, but I wasn't as die-hard as a lot of my classmates. This book was more enjoyable.

[baronofhell]

I am now extremely depressed, this reminds me of my childhood and also how much it sucks to be an adult. Sometimes, I wish I could be a kid again with no worrys and ignorant to the reality of the world. Mommy.

[Ralphis]

Goosebumps was the shit in 3rd and 4th grade. I read more goosebumps combined than any other literature I'm afraid :(

However, Ender's Game was one of the coolest books I read growing up by far.

[Technician]

Looking back they were quite entertaining literature for young kids. I remember the budgeted TV show on Fox kids. Yikes. I read more novels then now. Its much more fun reading autopsy reports then novels anyway.

[deathz0r]

I still have my pile of around 10 or so Goosebumps books in my bedroom. Last time I read them was when I was 12 however.

[Piezo]

I read one of my three crappy "choose your own path" Goosebumps books, but the only other R.L. Stein books I read were Hit and Run and Halloween in that order. After I read Halloween I hated Stein forever because they were the exact same fucking plot.

[Kid Airbag]

Zaldron said:

Michael Ende's Neverending Story and Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon were my first "grown up" books. Then came Tolkien. Before all that it was every issue of Asterix.

My first "grown-up" book was Jurassic Park. The release of the movie coincided almost exactly with my dinosaur phase, when I was in first grade. My parents saw the movie first, and deemed it too scary for a seven-year-old kid. I was really upset, so they said they would let me see the movie if I read the book first.

They thought this was a good plan, since it would be outrageous for a first-grader to read a 400-page book, but I stole my dad's copy and fucking read it anyway. I didn't get all of the scientific stuff like all the DNA and antibodies and all that, but I did read the whole fucking thing regardless. My dad quizzed me on it after I told him I'd finished it, and he was suitably impressed enough to help me look up theaters where it was still playing by this point, and the only place was some second-run theater like forty-five minutes away, and it was like 11 PM but he took me anyway. That was awesome.

[Job]

Anyone remember those choose-your-own-adventure young Indiana Jones books?

[Frederick the Great]

Kid Airbag said:

I'm assuming anyone who grew up during the early 90's engaged their mind in a healthy diet of Goosebumps-reading sometime between kindergarten and fourth grade.

If you did, you'll find this absolutely hilarious.

Everyone knows that Goosbumps ripped off 'Are you Afraid of the Dark?', in the days when Nikelodean was cool and had the Adventures of Pete and Pete.

Now it's nothing more than a degenerate daycare centre for retards who are offended by fart jokes.

Fuck it - nothing lasts forever.

[Technician]

I like the new Nick.That Dora chicks one hot bitch.

[Scuba Steve]

I hear a lot of "Goosebumps were crap, make kids read good stuff"... frankly it doesn't really matter, Goosebumps series was one of the most popular series of books during the 1990s and I would wager tens of millions of children read them (my own brother having a collection of roughly 40). Arguably, Stine's books are not great works of literature, but it doesn't matter, whatever gets young adults reading (especially young boys which Goosebumps targeted) is good. ANY reading is good for you (unless it was written by Anne Coulter), and instead of telling kids "don't read that crap" foster any reading they want to do, while introducing them to new material as well.

[Technician]

Most of the series were written by ghost writers. You can tell from the strength and weaknesses of the stories. What man can come up with so many ideas? Especially ideas that don't follow much of an outline besides pre-teen situations (Bullies, and child romance)

[Koko Ricky]

These days I mostly read articles on the internet about various subjects, usually music, technology, religion, etc. But back in the mid 90's I read a fair amount of Goosebumps books (I'd say at least a couple dozen), though I don't ever remember being even remotely scared or particularly entertained by them. Everyone was into them and the coolest kids had the whole series. There was a short-lived parody series by another author whose title I can't recall, but I remember reading one of the books, entitled "Eat Cheese and Barf!" There was even a Goosebumps live action TV show (one wonders why it wasn't animated, which would have been more appropriate in my eyes), but by the time it came on I had outgrown my interest in the series and it suddenly looked incredibly cheesy.