What do I remember best?
Willard Price series. Fantastic: a disaster a page. One of my favourite ever scenarios from any book was from Whale Adventure where one of the heroes, Hal (an impossibly mature & sensible 18 year old) got stranded on top of a dying whale. He managed to bring it back to the whaling boat by covering one of its eyes with a hankie so it swam round in a giant circle. True, they were written in another era, but if memory serves me correctly they did not suffer from the aggressive stereotyping of Biggles (i.e. no "filthy japs").
I also always enjoyed the Littlenose and Mrs Pepperpot series and, when older, books by Leon Garfield (his books were set in 18th Century England).
And lashings and lashings of Enid Blyton of course: - you couldn't escape it 25/30 years ago.
Oh, and Roald Dahl of course. I always preferred his rhymes to the elvish nonsense in Lord of the Rings, etc ("Augustus Gloop, Augustus Gloop, The great fad greedy nincompoop").
And Arthur Ransome. Although "Titty" caused the odd snigger.
The first book I can clearly remember is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Good to see it is still going strong, and I now read it to my toddler son.
Back to work/Olympics now....