I had one big advantage with my reading - the Port Stanley library was having a bit of a clearout after the war in 1982, and gave me almost their entire collection of pulp sci-fi novels (mostly late 1950s to early 1970s) which boosted my book collection by about 3000 instantly.

Still have a lot of them - pity the Clarke ones are a bit beaten up. I think they got more reading than everything else.