Touching Base

I first began reading The Hardy Boys in 1977, when I was in the second grade. I started with The House on the Cliff in the revised text. I remember trying to read copies from the library before this (my brother had been reading them for years already), but I never got into them enough to finish them in the time I had them checked out. They were cool, though, with their red and brown covers, thick pages and glossy frontispiece.

At a later time, I excitedly found an old copy of The Tower Treasure with a brown cover and orange endpapers at a yard sale for a quarter. We used to go to town once a week for groceries, and my brothers and I would head for the bookstore while my parents went grocery shopping. I bought as many Hardy Boys books as I could gather money for, and read them voraciously. My collection had begun.

Years later, it came to my attention that the stories had been revised beginning in 1959. That's when I noticed my copy of The Tower Treasure was an original. It was the first original text book I'd read, but I hadn't even realized it at the time. That began a new journey, to find and read the originals.

I've finally reached the point where I have all the books, original and revised, but a couple of years back I realized I hadn't read them all. So, I decided to start at the beginning and read them through in order. After noticing a couple of posts online reviewing certain titles, I also decided to follow up reading each book with a quick reaction blurb. I managed to type up the first 20 or so, then my computer died, taking all that effort with it.

I got sidelined at that point, but eventually picked back up. I wavered after The Mystery at Devil's Paw, debating whether to continue through the later books, or return to the beginning and read the revised texts. I decided to continue. The revisions were sporadic, and released in their own odd order, so there didn't seem to be a logical way to read them. I decided to finish reading the new stories, then read through the revisions. Many of these I'd read as a kid anyway.

I've gotten to The Clue of the Hissing Serpent, and remember reading the final six of the canon when they were new in the 1970s. I can finally say I've read the whole series... Soon I'll start again with the revised texts. Then, I'll be better able to speak to how they changed and evolved through the years.