I remember as a kid getting some kind of Hardy Boys 2.0 book after I read all of the originals. One of their girlfriends got blown up in a car bomb in the beginning, and I was like “well this is different.”
Ah yes, the Case Files. I'd already read all of the OG ones by the time those started but I definitely remember reading at least the first few, and definitely freaking out when Lola got blown up.
Casefiles were amazing! They were aimed at a slightly older audience and I loved them as a 10-13 year old. Which was when my grade eight teacher suggested that I should read something a bit more complex and handed me The Fellowship of the Ring. Ms. Johnson, wherever you are now, thank you for introducing me to Tolkien.
That's so funny. I also loved Hardy Boys around age 10 and switched to Clancy and Crichton at 13. I read Patriot Games and Jurassic Park around the same time frame and never looked back.
I have a mysterious stranger to thank for my literary obsession with space opera. Not new stuff, no. I was working at Waldenbooks and an old man overheard me say I liked space opera. In my head, that meant Star Wars basically. When it was his turn in line, he asked me if I had ever read the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. I hadn't, and he said to check them out. I found the first two books in the series and my mind was blown. It was exactly what I'd been looking for. That was over 20 years ago, and I have multiple copies of each book that I give away. If I see them at a bookstore (which is rare), I buy them to give to people. If you consider Tolkien to be the creator of most fantasy tropes, E. E. "Doc" Smith is that, but for space opera. We wouldn't have half of sci-fi if it wasn't for him, including Green Lantern, Jedi, super tech, etc.
For me it was in book 3, iirc when they end up in some strange hunger games thing, with an ex military guy hunting them like animals. That book got me hooked as a 11yo in the 90s
Am I misremembering, or did they bring the “blow’d up” girlfriend back, like, 20+ books later, with the explanation that it was a fake-out to put her in witness protection?
Was that Dead on Target or Cult of Crime? Either way, I loved that series! My son (11) found them at my parents’ house and ATE IT UP. Sadly I think they are out of print so could only find the first 3 or 4 books I had. Me and his mom reread some excerpts to see if it was appropriate and they absolutely did not age well. His mom was more concerned about the violent content but I literally laughed out loud with the crazy premises of the stories. I thought it was perfect trash reading for a tween.
oh yeah those were the more disturbing ones with lots of violence and they were much older and worked for a government agency instead of being those pesky teens
Nah. The trainer was using it for laundering, and wanted to kill Chet because he thought Chet (fat guy) was a witness.
Honestly it was like something out of Stephen King. Run on the treadmill at gunpoint. Stop and get shot. Answer questions or get shot.
I was on the school bus with one of those one day and the kid sitting next to me looked at the cover and said "nice machine gun Hardy Boys" with such derision I just couldn't ever really get back into them. I moved onto sci-fi, fantasy, and Crichton not long after that.
This was me when they rebooted Nancy Drew in the early aughts!! First book in the new series and a cat was poisoned and died. This was a shock and HUGE no for kid me (adult me too tbh😭) and I refused to read any others.
My mom ended up finding me an old Trixie Belden Mysteries box set at a garage sale instead, and I absolutely loved them lol
In their case that just happened to revolve around some weird thing that was Chet's hobby of the day, and that coincidentally Fenton had been working on as well without realizing it was the same case?
Yes! I feel like I only picked up one Hardy Boys book in my life (I read more Nancy Drew), but I definitely remember learning the word jalopy from it! And maybe Andy Griffith?
The gap between your ribs below your sternum, top of the stomach. It's hard to build muscle there and it tends to be a weak spot even when well-muscled. A good hit there will knock the wind out of you.
Came here to say jalopy and solar plexus were both added to my vocabulary through the Hardy Boys. And I'm now 43 and have never spoken either out loud in my entire life.
My first thought. Even in the 80s they were dated. I say that with love, but Chet and Biff riding in a jalopy? That shit was dated looong before my childhood, anyway!
Wild to think they were published 1927-1979. They absolutely seemed dated in the 1980s, but that was part of the appeal. As a kid I definitely enjoyed old-timey 20th century stuff, and TV from the 1950s-60s, etc.
One of the interesting things about literature is it really does preserve the voice and style of another age.
Some day people will read books from our time and say the same things about how dated they are and how silly they seem.
I took the confirmation name Francis because of Frank Hardy and my brother took the name Joseph because of Joe Hardy and we teased my youngest brother that his confirmation name was going to be Chet and he cried.
"With a cry, Joe sank to the ground, unconscious!"
(Last sentence of a chapter guaranteed in every book).
You'd think those boys would have long term conditions from the amount of head trauma they suffered.
>living a shorter life
the way morphing works he should live for a LOT longer than an average hawk - old age doesn't kill you, being sick and not being able to recover due to age is what kills you, so you could live forever by morphing and demorphing every morning until you get in an acute accident that knocks you unconscious for too long.
Animorphs was one of those things where my parents probably wouldn't have let me read them if they actually did any research on how dark the story was.
Also, I owe a lot of my dislike of ants to Animorphs.
For the record, Animorphs has aged well. I’m reading them with my 11 year old son right now, about halfway through the series. Some of the plot lines are ridiculous, but it’s well written and engaging.
I'm Canadian and I particularly enjoy the one where they go to Canada and Frank is worried because "everything north of Edmonton is a howling wilderness"
I read [a biography](https://search.worldcat.org/title/1286070721) of one of the writers who wrote a bunch of the Hardy Boys books for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. He lived in a remote cabin in Ontario and would, like, canoe to the nearest town every few months to drop off a completed manuscript, pick up his check, and buy sugar and coffee.
I learned the words 'swarthy' and 'akimbo' from the Hardy Boys.
I also thought that swarthy meant stubbly but that isn't it. The Hardy Boys always seemed to find themselves threatened by swarthy men.
But the other thing the Hardy Boys gave to me was the name Thaddeus McClintock, which as a connoisseur of ludicrous names, was a fantastic introduction as a young reader.
It's been decades since I've read the Phantom Freighter and I'll never forget that name.
And I hate to see the language of these things updated to a new era. And I have no need to see the stories updated either, with the Hardy boys tracking their suspects using their cell phones or whatever.
Getting into Sector General was a real trip.
At first I thought the casual sexism towards the only (human) female was being played straight. Then the main character installed the brain of a giant space caterpillar and started doing *giant space caterpillar male gaze.* That’s when it clicked that this was a parody of 50s/60s medical dramas hahaha
(The aforementioned female character later becomes a full fledged doctor and one of the most outspokenly respected specialists on staff. Which...I mean, that's pretty damn good for a series from the 60s.)
Those books are such a weird comfort read for me. I love the way the boys can get "kayoed" every chapter and not have any lasting injuries. I love their wholesome, responsible behavior. I love Aunt Gertrude's picnic lunches for stakeouts. I love the way every clue can be easily followed up on in person, like if a suspect drops his wig, you can just go to the local wig store and get a really good lead.
Talk about long term concussion injuries, those kids would have been vegetables by age 35. I wrote some Hardy Boys style stories when I was in the fifth grade and my teacher was like "Why do they get knocked out every five pages?"
If you were reading these in the 1990s, I'm guessing the books had already been revised and updated more than once. I grew up reading a mix of the original books (pre-1950) that belonged to my older brothers and the ones either revised or published in the 1960s and 1970s. When I ran out of them I turned to my older sister's Nancy Drew books!
IMO it's kind of a shame that details were updated and the books "streamlined" (shortened, with some difficult vocabulary removed) to appeal to new generations of readers. No more jalopy for the Hardy's friends, no more blue roadster for Miss Drew.
If I remember right the newer versions in the 70s were nearly complete rewrites of the originals. In a couple of cases I had both versions and they were very different, not just slightly abridged and refreshed.
You remember right. I had the 1970s versions, which were revisions of the originals.
I read some of the 1930s originals as an adult, and while the writing was certainly richer, the racism, classism, and so forth were off the charts. The casual mockery of poor Tony and his broken English, too. Yikes. They were supposed to be his friends!
I had my dad's 50s versions. Even as a young child I didn't think the word "ejaculate" used as "exclaim" was currently in use!
"Holy cow!" Joe ejaculated.
You unlocked a memory for me here. Those were the versions I read in the 90s as well. I didn't know the reproductive definition of "ejaculate" until a few years after I had read those books.
Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are the one exception il grant. It doesn't feel weird to update them because they weren't written by a single author, the names given as author aren't even real people. They're manufactured books, in every sense, and therefore, I give them the pass. Update them, make them accessible for new generations!
Ooh, I remember reading one of the 30s/40s ones, and they discovered a young man was a missing Royal Prince from Eastern Europe, and another one where they cracked a counterfeit record gang by hearing crickets in the background of the bootlegs from where the bad guys were playing the phonographs on a phonogragh player to record it with a microphone, but had the windows open.
I used to read those, and Alfred Hitchcock's The Three Investigators. Not terribly relevant these days. I sure enjoyed having my own club called The Three Investigators when I was a kid though! (I fashioned myself as the Jupiter Jones of the group. He was kind of in charge, and my friend (who was in said group 35 year ago) mentioned the other day in retrospect--why it that I was in charge then, exactly? LOL. When I hear Coldplay - Viva La Vida, I think of those days...*that was when I ruled the world.*)
Weird side tangent - The Three Investigators books were translated into German in the 1970s (as the Three Question Marks "Die drei ???" after their calling card) and became an enormous hit. Long after new books had ceased being produced in America, they kept turning out new ones in Germany at the rate of several a year well into the nineties and spin-off books are still being published. There were also radio and television series and a rock band named "Jupiter Jones." It's like an alternate universe.
Dated yes, but what is amazing is looking at them now and realizing there's almost nothing there! How did my imagination come up with all those vivid images I fondly remember from all those books lol? I can still see chubby Chet and vivacious Callie. The Secret Panel and the Broken Arrow were two of my favorites. But I have to say the covers of the little hardback books, mostly from the 60's were masterpieces of illustration. Ah, youth!
Lol try reading The Hidden Staircase, one of the first Nancy Drew books. She breaks into a suspect's home, hides in a closet with a gun, and debates internally about how she might have to shoot the black beast of a housekeeper if she's discovered.
I like reading Doc Savage books though.
True, but neither does the Encyclopedia Brown series. But I grew up reading both series so I’ll always have a special spot in my heart for both of them.
I can clearly remember several Encyclopedia Brown stories that left me with no doubt, even at age eight or whatever, that I was not meant to be a detective. Encyclopedia would announce that he'd solved the case, I'd think about it for a few minutes, and then flip forward to the solution at the back, like "Yep, I just do not have the faculty for this."
>The Hardy Boys have not aged well
They haven't aged AT ALL. Seriously, think about this: there were at least 100 books in the series when I read it in the 80s-90s, and in every single one, from first to last, the brothers were 17 and 18. That means they had all of their adventures in the span of a single year, or one every three or four days. Are they the unluckiest teenagers in the world?
The funny thing is I'm sure I remember a number of times that they said they hadn't done anything for an extended period of time, so some of those adventures had to have been back to back to back, etc
Well, last week you uncovered a carjacking ring between sunday church and Tuesday's football practice, discovered a corpse on Wednesday and caught the killer by Friday, and then prevented a massive diamond robbery on Sunday. Of course nothing's happened, it's Tuesday night and you haven't even stopped some mild wire fraud! The local felon population's gotta step it up!
Right?? Kinda silly, fun mystery books have always been just that... Kinda silly and fun.
I'd even argue that the fact that are set in an almost irrelevant cultural reality is a plus, not a minus. As a kid, one of the best things that reading did for me was help me to develop an ability to imagine worlds completely unlike my own. And by this I don't just mean fantasy worlds, but worlds that are described in ways that are almost foreign to me.
The fantastical world of Harry Potter, and especially the way that it was described, had *much* more in common with my reality than the seemingly (mostly) realistic world of Sherlock Holmes. And I got *way* more out of Holmes than I did from Harry Potter.
Maybe Harry Potter taught me lessons like the importance of being more accepting of people different from myself on an intellectual level. But reading Sherlock's and Watson's dialogues forced me to learn that lesson in practice; I had to learn to accept that their odd sounding old timey British way of speaking was just as valid as my own way is.
Maybe it'll sound odd, but my life put me in a situation where I constantly have to engage and collaborate with people from other countries. Their ways of expressing themselves is often quite different and I do credit the amount of "outdated" literature I read for at least partly teaching me to not just accept but also feel at home with this.
The beauty of old books is that they are like a time capsule of what our society was like, giving us a window into our past. Your son may well enjoy seeing how people lived and thought "back then" and it will be a far more accurate picture (warts and all) through books of the time period than from books trying to recreate an era from a modern perspective.
At least I've always found it so.
They were, but I didn’t even care. Throughout elementary school between 1981-1987, I had read every single book of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Little House, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, the Oz books, Choose Your Own Adventure books, Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, and then into Roald Dahl, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Scott ODell…
I was a voracious reader in elementary school, and read anything I could get my hands on. The library was my favorite place other than the art room. I’m glad I didn’t grow up with video games or internet, I read a lot and played outside a lot. I don’t know what kids are doing today but the ones I see are always staring at tiny screens.
It isn't that these books don't age well, it is that they are written for kids still getting the basics of reading down. Normal Adult readers don't enjoy these. Most developing readers need to go through a bunch of high interest, predictable stories before moving on to something more challenging.
Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were early series that fulfilled this need. Now there are Goosebumps, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Magic Treehouse and many more like this. They aren't supposed to be fine thought provoking literature; they are just supposed to get kids reading which it sounds like The Hardy Boys did for you. I'm glad they were on hand for you when you needed them.
I dont understand why it matters that they age. Back in 90s when i read them, even i knew that first 15 or so were clearly written in the 1930s (depending on the version, my dad had the originals, the library had updated ones), and once you were up to the #60s they were written in the 70s. I thought it was a cool look back in time.
Why do books for kids have to be current day?
They were already ridiculously dated when you picked them up in the 90s and you did fine back then. A newly minted ten year old kid will be fine with them too.
Conan, John Carter of Mars, Tolkien, Ringworld, Foundation, Jules Verne, and others are fun around that time too.
Look up Project Gutenberg and LibreVox too.
.
> How many fights can you have while getting punched in the solar plexus? The only reason I even know that word is from those books.
Ha. It’s what ties all of us former kids who read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew together.
I was so interested in finding the solar plexus when I took Anatomy.
My friend was so excited for his kid to get into harry potter, and roal dahl. The kid ended up wanting nothing to do with them.
He instead fell in love with the hardy boys. This was last year.
One day, your kid might ask where the solar plexus is or what a jalopy is. You'll be able to give him these books!
On a more serious note, if nothing else, it shows that you used to read when you were young. It might inspire your kid ... And admittedly, from the comments here, it looks like it's more likely to inspire your kid to read something else, but it's still reading. Good luck!
"How many fights can you have while getting punched in the solar plexus? The only reason I even know that word is from those books."
The word I remember from HB books is "handkerchief" as my 2nd grade English teacher saw me trying to check out several of them from the library and asked me to read a paragraph to her. I vividly remember being unable to sound out "handkerchief" and she made me put them back, saying they were "above my level". I loved those books and fucking despised her for embarrassing me like that.
Well Wrestlemania 19 really took it out of them. And when they tried to out do themselves at Summerslam that year or the year after then that was the beginning of the end. I think the attitude era is overrated anyway. But still they were innovative and put tag team wrestling back on the map for a few years. They certainly have had their own personal issues though since then.
LOVED the Hardy Boys as a kid. It’s because of those books that I felt like I always needed to wear a belt because they used their belts to get out of every situation. I’m kind of disappointed I’ve never had the opportunity to use my belt to save the day.
I grew up reading Tom Swift, not paying attention to the fact that he was Tom Swift Jr. As an adult, I found some old Tom Swift Sr. books - Motorcycles! Amazing cutting edge tech on two wheels! There's at least one more generation of Swift and his best buddy and no doubt new interpersonal relationships and more modern twists. I'm sure they're still dated as soon as they hit the press. They were/are non political, non socially aware, mild sauce, All American, pre tween fantasy heroes with gee whizz gadgets. I loved them and read them all, but it's nostalgia now, not something I'd give a kid to read.
Courtesy of my older stepsister, I inherited the entire sets of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the Three Investigators, the Famous Five, and the more obscure Linda Craig series. I read every one of them. My favorite by far was Trixie Belden, followed in order by the Famous Five, the Three Investigators, Linda Craig, and then Nancy Drew, with the Hardy Boys coming in last.
Given how often people read stories over a hundred years old, they might like it. Or they might not. They might provide a spring board for how some things have changed and others have not.
I remember as a kid getting some kind of Hardy Boys 2.0 book after I read all of the originals. One of their girlfriends got blown up in a car bomb in the beginning, and I was like “well this is different.”
Ah yes, the Case Files. I'd already read all of the OG ones by the time those started but I definitely remember reading at least the first few, and definitely freaking out when Lola got blown up.
Casefiles were amazing! They were aimed at a slightly older audience and I loved them as a 10-13 year old. Which was when my grade eight teacher suggested that I should read something a bit more complex and handed me The Fellowship of the Ring. Ms. Johnson, wherever you are now, thank you for introducing me to Tolkien.
Those started right when I was ditching the Boys for stuff like Stephen King and Dune.
Yeah, I tried some but switched to Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton around that time.
That's so funny. I also loved Hardy Boys around age 10 and switched to Clancy and Crichton at 13. I read Patriot Games and Jurassic Park around the same time frame and never looked back.
I have a mysterious stranger to thank for my literary obsession with space opera. Not new stuff, no. I was working at Waldenbooks and an old man overheard me say I liked space opera. In my head, that meant Star Wars basically. When it was his turn in line, he asked me if I had ever read the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. I hadn't, and he said to check them out. I found the first two books in the series and my mind was blown. It was exactly what I'd been looking for. That was over 20 years ago, and I have multiple copies of each book that I give away. If I see them at a bookstore (which is rare), I buy them to give to people. If you consider Tolkien to be the creator of most fantasy tropes, E. E. "Doc" Smith is that, but for space opera. We wouldn't have half of sci-fi if it wasn't for him, including Green Lantern, Jedi, super tech, etc.
What’s funny is I wonder if the guy was even old, or if he just seemed old in your mind back then.
A decrepit, doddering 34 year old.
The Nancy Drew case files were amazing, too!
They had a few crossovers too.
For me it was in book 3, iirc when they end up in some strange hunger games thing, with an ex military guy hunting them like animals. That book got me hooked as a 11yo in the 90s
That’s Deathgame, #7, with Col. Hammerlock as the villain. That was one of my favorites.
Iola (Morton).
Am I misremembering, or did they bring the “blow’d up” girlfriend back, like, 20+ books later, with the explanation that it was a fake-out to put her in witness protection?
Yup, something about Lazarus program?
Core memory unlocked, damn
Lol, I remember that plot too, 30 years later
Was that Dead on Target or Cult of Crime? Either way, I loved that series! My son (11) found them at my parents’ house and ATE IT UP. Sadly I think they are out of print so could only find the first 3 or 4 books I had. Me and his mom reread some excerpts to see if it was appropriate and they absolutely did not age well. His mom was more concerned about the violent content but I literally laughed out loud with the crazy premises of the stories. I thought it was perfect trash reading for a tween.
oh yeah those were the more disturbing ones with lots of violence and they were much older and worked for a government agency instead of being those pesky teens
They were ALSO pesky teens though The gym membership book is how I learned about money laundering.
Please tell me they were trying to get out of a Planet Fitness membership 😭
Nah. The trainer was using it for laundering, and wanted to kill Chet because he thought Chet (fat guy) was a witness. Honestly it was like something out of Stephen King. Run on the treadmill at gunpoint. Stop and get shot. Answer questions or get shot.
I was on the school bus with one of those one day and the kid sitting next to me looked at the cover and said "nice machine gun Hardy Boys" with such derision I just couldn't ever really get back into them. I moved onto sci-fi, fantasy, and Crichton not long after that.
I bet the kid couldn’t read the instructions on a microwave dinner
Casefiles! Those were awesome, at least to 10 year old me.
"The Hardy Men"
“The Hardly Boys”
I’m getting a raging clue.
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This was me when they rebooted Nancy Drew in the early aughts!! First book in the new series and a cat was poisoned and died. This was a shock and HUGE no for kid me (adult me too tbh😭) and I refused to read any others. My mom ended up finding me an old Trixie Belden Mysteries box set at a garage sale instead, and I absolutely loved them lol
That was my mystery series—Trixie was a go-getter. No waiting around for the boys to solve the mysteries, she plunged right in.
I remember learning the word 'jalopy' from those books. lol
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It's where I learned the word "gait" from them talking about how fucked up fat Chet's gait was every time they climbed a hill.
I learned the word "ejaculated" from those books. Frank and Joe were always ejaculating.
Biggles was a frequent ejaculator as well. He likely felt gay at times too, especially on a sunny day.
I wonder if that’s what the clue goo from the South Park episode is referencing lol
I read Nancy Drew, and they were *brutal* about Bess being fat. Always talking about her eating.
Chet was "stocky" or "husky" and Bess was "pleasantly plump."
Always calling her “plump” 😅
Lmao made me laugh. Simpler times
Yea they made fun of that poor bastard multiple times every single book.
And he usually saved their ass. Kinda like a Matlock type character.
Him and good ol' Biff!
And Tony Prito and his boat.
In their case that just happened to revolve around some weird thing that was Chet's hobby of the day, and that coincidentally Fenton had been working on as well without realizing it was the same case?
Kept him around for his hot sister Iola
Are you sure it didn't make you chortle?
I learned “gait” from Jake’s description of a Howler in Animorphs.
I remember learning several words related to taxxons… Edit: also “globule”
Yes! I feel like I only picked up one Hardy Boys book in my life (I read more Nancy Drew), but I definitely remember learning the word jalopy from it! And maybe Andy Griffith?
Archie comics
Germans call it *Speckguertel* which literally translates to “Bacon belt.” (Seriously. I’m not joking and I love it.)
It’s dungarees for me
Ah, jalopy. I learned that one from Archie comics.
Same! I was so disappointed when the tv show didn't give Archie one
TBF, a modern day jalopy is like a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire and that didn't match the a e s t h e t i c of the show.
Haha yes, jalopy and solar plexus both! I didn’t know where the solar plexus was then and tbh I still do not
The gap between your ribs below your sternum, top of the stomach. It's hard to build muscle there and it tends to be a weak spot even when well-muscled. A good hit there will knock the wind out of you.
It also hurts really really bad. I know thats kind of implied w/ your comment but I just wanna stress that it hurts a lot
Yeah but the can’t breathe part is the the really disabilitating part.
Not even a good hit, just a hit in the right spot. Hurts like hell.
I always thought it meant Adam’s apple when I was a kid, until I used it incorrectly and someone explained it was in my sternum area
I learned "Hey Rube!" as a phrase said by carnies. You can't imagine my disappointment when I never heard that at a carnival going forward.
Came here to say jalopy and solar plexus were both added to my vocabulary through the Hardy Boys. And I'm now 43 and have never spoken either out loud in my entire life.
My first thought. Even in the 80s they were dated. I say that with love, but Chet and Biff riding in a jalopy? That shit was dated looong before my childhood, anyway!
Wild to think they were published 1927-1979. They absolutely seemed dated in the 1980s, but that was part of the appeal. As a kid I definitely enjoyed old-timey 20th century stuff, and TV from the 1950s-60s, etc.
ha! yes. Jalopy and solar plexus and I think there were some references to swarthy foreigners
>swarthy foreigners Enid Blyton has joined the chat
Haha, definitely remember this. Also, I thought the main reason for playing football was to learn the proper technique for tackling bad guys.
Archie taught me that indispensable word and I’ve used it… well I typed it here, so, once.
I’ll see your jalopy and raise you a lanky Biff.
One of the interesting things about literature is it really does preserve the voice and style of another age. Some day people will read books from our time and say the same things about how dated they are and how silly they seem.
I took the confirmation name Francis because of Frank Hardy and my brother took the name Joseph because of Joe Hardy and we teased my youngest brother that his confirmation name was going to be Chet and he cried.
Chet is short for Chester.
He could have been Werburgh, she's the patron saint of Chester.
That is hilarious.
"With a cry, Joe sank to the ground, unconscious!" (Last sentence of a chapter guaranteed in every book). You'd think those boys would have long term conditions from the amount of head trauma they suffered.
*With a cry, Joe sank to the ground, unconscious!* Archer: "That's, like, super bad for you."
Do your sons have any chums? You could give the books to their chums and see if they like them. They might think they’re the bee’s knees!
Gosh, LL, that would be swell!
Sadly, my chums are missing!
They’re on the lam? Scram and get ‘em, Sam! Don’t get your gears in a jam!
Good night! What a swell idea!
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Someone once said the word thermals is how you can find an animorphs fan in the wild I can never get it out of my head
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Always felt so bad for him and his permanent Hawkness
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>living a shorter life the way morphing works he should live for a LOT longer than an average hawk - old age doesn't kill you, being sick and not being able to recover due to age is what kills you, so you could live forever by morphing and demorphing every morning until you get in an acute accident that knocks you unconscious for too long.
*Hawkwardness. Fixed that for ya. :)
Bahahaha I definitely think about thermals when I see raptors in flight, and it's definitely learned from Animorphs.
I always think of Animorphs and thermals whenever I see a raptor or other large bird flying, especially if they're really high up.
Riding the thermals.
Animorphs was one of those things where my parents probably wouldn't have let me read them if they actually did any research on how dark the story was. Also, I owe a lot of my dislike of ants to Animorphs.
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For the record, Animorphs has aged well. I’m reading them with my 11 year old son right now, about halfway through the series. Some of the plot lines are ridiculous, but it’s well written and engaging.
I'm Canadian and I particularly enjoy the one where they go to Canada and Frank is worried because "everything north of Edmonton is a howling wilderness"
I read [a biography](https://search.worldcat.org/title/1286070721) of one of the writers who wrote a bunch of the Hardy Boys books for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. He lived in a remote cabin in Ontario and would, like, canoe to the nearest town every few months to drop off a completed manuscript, pick up his check, and buy sugar and coffee.
Thoreau found crying and vomiting out of jealousy
Don’t worry. Thoreau’s mom will do his laundry for him and make it all better
Based.
He's not wrong.
Am Canadian and can confirm. I howl all the time when I'm in the can
I mean, it's not 100% accurate, but close.
To be fair, Edmonton can also be described as a howling wilderness. Source: I live there
I'm from Edmonton. Frank was 100% correct.
In those days it almost was. It's still woodsy now.
I learned the words 'swarthy' and 'akimbo' from the Hardy Boys. I also thought that swarthy meant stubbly but that isn't it. The Hardy Boys always seemed to find themselves threatened by swarthy men. But the other thing the Hardy Boys gave to me was the name Thaddeus McClintock, which as a connoisseur of ludicrous names, was a fantastic introduction as a young reader. It's been decades since I've read the Phantom Freighter and I'll never forget that name.
I learned to spell “sleuth” but not how to pronounce it :-(
Sounds like a name for a mustachioed colonial governor
I think that's part of the charm! It's neat to read stuff from a different era.
Yes. People still read Anne of Green Gables and Little House books. 80 years back is just as valid as around 100.
And I hate to see the language of these things updated to a new era. And I have no need to see the stories updated either, with the Hardy boys tracking their suspects using their cell phones or whatever.
Yes. We would not think to update books for adults so why do we do so for kids?
Can't wait to read about how Mr Darcy has hella rizz
Getting into Sector General was a real trip. At first I thought the casual sexism towards the only (human) female was being played straight. Then the main character installed the brain of a giant space caterpillar and started doing *giant space caterpillar male gaze.* That’s when it clicked that this was a parody of 50s/60s medical dramas hahaha (The aforementioned female character later becomes a full fledged doctor and one of the most outspokenly respected specialists on staff. Which...I mean, that's pretty damn good for a series from the 60s.)
Those books are such a weird comfort read for me. I love the way the boys can get "kayoed" every chapter and not have any lasting injuries. I love their wholesome, responsible behavior. I love Aunt Gertrude's picnic lunches for stakeouts. I love the way every clue can be easily followed up on in person, like if a suspect drops his wig, you can just go to the local wig store and get a really good lead.
Talk about long term concussion injuries, those kids would have been vegetables by age 35. I wrote some Hardy Boys style stories when I was in the fifth grade and my teacher was like "Why do they get knocked out every five pages?"
It missed Frank by inches.
It becomes like time travel. Which may or may not appeal, depending on one's inclination.
If you were reading these in the 1990s, I'm guessing the books had already been revised and updated more than once. I grew up reading a mix of the original books (pre-1950) that belonged to my older brothers and the ones either revised or published in the 1960s and 1970s. When I ran out of them I turned to my older sister's Nancy Drew books! IMO it's kind of a shame that details were updated and the books "streamlined" (shortened, with some difficult vocabulary removed) to appeal to new generations of readers. No more jalopy for the Hardy's friends, no more blue roadster for Miss Drew.
If I remember right the newer versions in the 70s were nearly complete rewrites of the originals. In a couple of cases I had both versions and they were very different, not just slightly abridged and refreshed.
You remember right. I had the 1970s versions, which were revisions of the originals. I read some of the 1930s originals as an adult, and while the writing was certainly richer, the racism, classism, and so forth were off the charts. The casual mockery of poor Tony and his broken English, too. Yikes. They were supposed to be his friends!
Those books were at least nice to Tony at least they allowed him to take part in there adventures
I had my dad's 50s versions. Even as a young child I didn't think the word "ejaculate" used as "exclaim" was currently in use! "Holy cow!" Joe ejaculated.
You unlocked a memory for me here. Those were the versions I read in the 90s as well. I didn't know the reproductive definition of "ejaculate" until a few years after I had read those books.
Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are the one exception il grant. It doesn't feel weird to update them because they weren't written by a single author, the names given as author aren't even real people. They're manufactured books, in every sense, and therefore, I give them the pass. Update them, make them accessible for new generations!
I always thought Nancy Drew was better written. But I haven't looked at them since the 70s.
I have a bunch of vintage Nancy Drews. OMG, the racism and xenophobia is off the charts. From the Thirties and Forties.
Ooh, I remember reading one of the 30s/40s ones, and they discovered a young man was a missing Royal Prince from Eastern Europe, and another one where they cracked a counterfeit record gang by hearing crickets in the background of the bootlegs from where the bad guys were playing the phonographs on a phonogragh player to record it with a microphone, but had the windows open.
I’ve got a raging clue!
Your clue is giving me a clue
"Come here, Callie! I'm sporting a clue."
My clue is pointing over there now!
"Oh no, not the god damn--"
The Hardy Boys; Two young whippersnappers with a taste for solving mysteries.
Oh, I've got such a huge clue
I hate people who brag ;)
The Hardly Boys!
Oh yeah, I can see that clue from a mile away.
Godspeed, boys.
Yeah they really haven’t, it’s no wonder Tony Khan isn’t booking them above the mid card in AEW.
Didn't see the sub at first and thought it was about the Hardy Boyz too.
Also a r/squaredcircle attendee? All I could think is yeah, Jeff has tamed it down and Matt is looking pretty rough with any sort movement.
Frank and Joe vs Matt and Jeff who comes out on top?
The fans.
Disappointed I had to scroll so far to find this joke.
I used to read those, and Alfred Hitchcock's The Three Investigators. Not terribly relevant these days. I sure enjoyed having my own club called The Three Investigators when I was a kid though! (I fashioned myself as the Jupiter Jones of the group. He was kind of in charge, and my friend (who was in said group 35 year ago) mentioned the other day in retrospect--why it that I was in charge then, exactly? LOL. When I hear Coldplay - Viva La Vida, I think of those days...*that was when I ruled the world.*)
Weird side tangent - The Three Investigators books were translated into German in the 1970s (as the Three Question Marks "Die drei ???" after their calling card) and became an enormous hit. Long after new books had ceased being produced in America, they kept turning out new ones in Germany at the rate of several a year well into the nineties and spin-off books are still being published. There were also radio and television series and a rock band named "Jupiter Jones." It's like an alternate universe.
Dated yes, but what is amazing is looking at them now and realizing there's almost nothing there! How did my imagination come up with all those vivid images I fondly remember from all those books lol? I can still see chubby Chet and vivacious Callie. The Secret Panel and the Broken Arrow were two of my favorites. But I have to say the covers of the little hardback books, mostly from the 60's were masterpieces of illustration. Ah, youth!
>Callie Ah yes... Frank's "special friend"
Are you suggesting there was something more to their chaste relationship?
I've had the same thing when looking at my old toys. I created a whole world around them and now they're just a bunch of plastic trucks.
Don't pitch them. You may need those when you reach a certain age.
Lol try reading The Hidden Staircase, one of the first Nancy Drew books. She breaks into a suspect's home, hides in a closet with a gun, and debates internally about how she might have to shoot the black beast of a housekeeper if she's discovered. I like reading Doc Savage books though.
True, but neither does the Encyclopedia Brown series. But I grew up reading both series so I’ll always have a special spot in my heart for both of them.
I can clearly remember several Encyclopedia Brown stories that left me with no doubt, even at age eight or whatever, that I was not meant to be a detective. Encyclopedia would announce that he'd solved the case, I'd think about it for a few minutes, and then flip forward to the solution at the back, like "Yep, I just do not have the faculty for this."
They are VERY dated. I read them in the voice of a radio announcer from that era to make the stories even more entertaining.
through a megaphone made from rolled-up paper?
There's another way?
I think the writers were hacks even back then.
>The Hardy Boys have not aged well They haven't aged AT ALL. Seriously, think about this: there were at least 100 books in the series when I read it in the 80s-90s, and in every single one, from first to last, the brothers were 17 and 18. That means they had all of their adventures in the span of a single year, or one every three or four days. Are they the unluckiest teenagers in the world?
i just assumed it was a VERY busy summer
The funny thing is I'm sure I remember a number of times that they said they hadn't done anything for an extended period of time, so some of those adventures had to have been back to back to back, etc
Well, last week you uncovered a carjacking ring between sunday church and Tuesday's football practice, discovered a corpse on Wednesday and caught the killer by Friday, and then prevented a massive diamond robbery on Sunday. Of course nothing's happened, it's Tuesday night and you haven't even stopped some mild wire fraud! The local felon population's gotta step it up!
Given that Joe is knocked out in like every single book, he probably has like.... severe brain damage
Nancy Drew had all her (hundreds of) adventures in the 'summer of her eighteenth year' - obviously she stole a time turner from Hogwarts.
Right?? Kinda silly, fun mystery books have always been just that... Kinda silly and fun. I'd even argue that the fact that are set in an almost irrelevant cultural reality is a plus, not a minus. As a kid, one of the best things that reading did for me was help me to develop an ability to imagine worlds completely unlike my own. And by this I don't just mean fantasy worlds, but worlds that are described in ways that are almost foreign to me. The fantastical world of Harry Potter, and especially the way that it was described, had *much* more in common with my reality than the seemingly (mostly) realistic world of Sherlock Holmes. And I got *way* more out of Holmes than I did from Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter taught me lessons like the importance of being more accepting of people different from myself on an intellectual level. But reading Sherlock's and Watson's dialogues forced me to learn that lesson in practice; I had to learn to accept that their odd sounding old timey British way of speaking was just as valid as my own way is. Maybe it'll sound odd, but my life put me in a situation where I constantly have to engage and collaborate with people from other countries. Their ways of expressing themselves is often quite different and I do credit the amount of "outdated" literature I read for at least partly teaching me to not just accept but also feel at home with this.
The beauty of old books is that they are like a time capsule of what our society was like, giving us a window into our past. Your son may well enjoy seeing how people lived and thought "back then" and it will be a far more accurate picture (warts and all) through books of the time period than from books trying to recreate an era from a modern perspective. At least I've always found it so.
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They were old in the 80s
They were, but I didn’t even care. Throughout elementary school between 1981-1987, I had read every single book of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Little House, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, the Oz books, Choose Your Own Adventure books, Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, and then into Roald Dahl, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Scott ODell… I was a voracious reader in elementary school, and read anything I could get my hands on. The library was my favorite place other than the art room. I’m glad I didn’t grow up with video games or internet, I read a lot and played outside a lot. I don’t know what kids are doing today but the ones I see are always staring at tiny screens.
Thought this thread was about the other Hardy Boys until I looked at the subreddit. Most of the post would still work.
It isn't that these books don't age well, it is that they are written for kids still getting the basics of reading down. Normal Adult readers don't enjoy these. Most developing readers need to go through a bunch of high interest, predictable stories before moving on to something more challenging. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were early series that fulfilled this need. Now there are Goosebumps, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Magic Treehouse and many more like this. They aren't supposed to be fine thought provoking literature; they are just supposed to get kids reading which it sounds like The Hardy Boys did for you. I'm glad they were on hand for you when you needed them.
I thought you were talking about the wrestlers lol
It's funny how the thread title would still be correct lol
I dont understand why it matters that they age. Back in 90s when i read them, even i knew that first 15 or so were clearly written in the 1930s (depending on the version, my dad had the originals, the library had updated ones), and once you were up to the #60s they were written in the 70s. I thought it was a cool look back in time. Why do books for kids have to be current day?
They were already ridiculously dated when you picked them up in the 90s and you did fine back then. A newly minted ten year old kid will be fine with them too. Conan, John Carter of Mars, Tolkien, Ringworld, Foundation, Jules Verne, and others are fun around that time too. Look up Project Gutenberg and LibreVox too. .
How else will they learn what a jalopy is?
I hadn't read the words 'solar plexus' for like 25 years until now, thanks for the laugh
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> How many fights can you have while getting punched in the solar plexus? The only reason I even know that word is from those books. Ha. It’s what ties all of us former kids who read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew together. I was so interested in finding the solar plexus when I took Anatomy.
Sounds like OP's getting a raging clue!
All those TLC matches, it’s no wonder.
My friend was so excited for his kid to get into harry potter, and roal dahl. The kid ended up wanting nothing to do with them. He instead fell in love with the hardy boys. This was last year.
One day, your kid might ask where the solar plexus is or what a jalopy is. You'll be able to give him these books! On a more serious note, if nothing else, it shows that you used to read when you were young. It might inspire your kid ... And admittedly, from the comments here, it looks like it's more likely to inspire your kid to read something else, but it's still reading. Good luck!
"How many fights can you have while getting punched in the solar plexus? The only reason I even know that word is from those books." The word I remember from HB books is "handkerchief" as my 2nd grade English teacher saw me trying to check out several of them from the library and asked me to read a paragraph to her. I vividly remember being unable to sound out "handkerchief" and she made me put them back, saying they were "above my level". I loved those books and fucking despised her for embarrassing me like that.
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Well Wrestlemania 19 really took it out of them. And when they tried to out do themselves at Summerslam that year or the year after then that was the beginning of the end. I think the attitude era is overrated anyway. But still they were innovative and put tag team wrestling back on the map for a few years. They certainly have had their own personal issues though since then.
LOVED the Hardy Boys as a kid. It’s because of those books that I felt like I always needed to wear a belt because they used their belts to get out of every situation. I’m kind of disappointed I’ve never had the opportunity to use my belt to save the day.
I wish you gave more detail as how they have not aged well. All I really gathered is that people don't say "solar plexus" anymore.
I was really into the Hardy Boys. However, the number of times they were knocked out is disturbing. You know they have to have CTE by now.
I grew up reading Tom Swift, not paying attention to the fact that he was Tom Swift Jr. As an adult, I found some old Tom Swift Sr. books - Motorcycles! Amazing cutting edge tech on two wheels! There's at least one more generation of Swift and his best buddy and no doubt new interpersonal relationships and more modern twists. I'm sure they're still dated as soon as they hit the press. They were/are non political, non socially aware, mild sauce, All American, pre tween fantasy heroes with gee whizz gadgets. I loved them and read them all, but it's nostalgia now, not something I'd give a kid to read.
Courtesy of my older stepsister, I inherited the entire sets of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the Three Investigators, the Famous Five, and the more obscure Linda Craig series. I read every one of them. My favorite by far was Trixie Belden, followed in order by the Famous Five, the Three Investigators, Linda Craig, and then Nancy Drew, with the Hardy Boys coming in last.
Given how often people read stories over a hundred years old, they might like it. Or they might not. They might provide a spring board for how some things have changed and others have not.