I was raised without a TV as well.
But lots and lots of books. My mom used to go to the used stores and buy every children's and non-fiction book she could find. We might have been poor but we were going to be educated if she had anything to say about it.
When I was 10 I read Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn’, Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’ (Disney hadn’t ruined it yet in the mid 60’s), Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘Tarzan of the Apes’, Jack London’s ‘The Call of the Wild’ and several more....................