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Conversely, even as a male, mine was Nancy Drew. I could not enjoy Hardy Boys for some reason

Having read all the Hardy Boys as a child, because I was told I had to read something, I can definitely agree they are not particularly enjoyable.

As a younger reader I read anything that passed me by, later I on I started avoiding various types of template books; Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were good examples of ghostwritten syndicated churn.

I also chewed through a number of an earlier Stratemeyer Syndicate production - the early 1900s boy genius space rockets, satellites, and monorails across Africa wonder of Tom Swift and ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tom_Swift_books

At least they didn't suffer from Alfred Hitchcock shoehorning his way into every book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Investigators

All that US origin "children's literature" pushed me into Canadian, UK, and European reading.

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