Nancy Drew/The Hardy Boys

Who here read these as a kid? I did not, we never had any of the Nancy Drew books, my father had the entire Hardy Boys collection from when he was a kid, I read one of those books for a book report in school when I was 12, but I found them to be very boring and didn't bother reading through the rest of them...oddly enough, I read a few of them this past winter and NOW, (of course at 12 I was a very picky reader, I only liked stories about haunted houses and murders and stuff like that) now that I'm older and have a wider range of what I read, now I find them interesting.

Though I'm surprised that they have stood the test of time enough to be reprinted only a few years ago, and of course now both series have modern stories being written as well, I haven't read any of them but doubt they're much good...I wouldn't touch the modern Nancy Drews with a 10 foot pole but do have a couple of the 90s Hardy Boys Case Files I haven't gotten around to reading yet...and of course you can be sure money was the big motive but I was surprised when I read the reason Nancy Drew was ever invented was because people found out a lot of girls were reading the Hardy Boys...so on one hand you have a boys series and a girls series, something for everybody, but on the other hand my thought was what the hell?

It's logic like that, I think, that has some kids so biased against reading certain books because 'that's a boy's story' 'that's for girls', etc. When I took my neighbor kids to the library, I pulled out one about a boy who rides into battle in the Civil War, and I asked the girl if it looked like something she'd want to read, and she said 'that's a boy's book', and I said 'how do you know? and she said 'because there's a boy on the cover'...it's little things like this that make me nervous about the future.

Anyway, enough of my ranting, anybody read through these as a kid?

Loooooved Nancy Drew. I even like the older versions of the books before they updated them in the 80's. Hardy Boys though, I couldn't get into. I think I've read like one of two of those books, and that was it.

I found it easier to get into the Hardy Boys than Nancy Drew, I've read I think the first 3 of her mysteries, but 5 or 6 of the Boys. Had I been attracted to either of these when I was a kid, I would NEVER have touched Nancy Drew because I was not big on girls' stories.

I read more of the Hardy Boys than Nancy Drew. I think I read the entire Hardy Boy series when I was 8 or 9 and then started on Nancy Drew but then moved on to other books before getting through.

I used to love "Nancy Drew"! I really wasn't big "Hardy Boys" though, but I loved "Nancy Drew" because I wanted to be a detective when I was a child.