Do you remember the book or books that made you love reading?
For me it was when my 5th grade teacher turned me on to Andre Norton's Witchworld novels.
Do you remember the book or books that made you love reading?
For me it was when my 5th grade teacher turned me on to Andre Norton's Witchworld novels.
Some idiot down my street drove his excavator into the power line. No TV, Internet, nothing. So I started roaming the house for something to read and found the first book of the "Sword of Truth"-Series by Terry Goodkind.
Didn't even notice when the power came back on.
1 "People are stupid. They can be made to believe any lie because either they want to believe it's true or because they are afraid it's true."
2 "The greatest harm can result from the best intentions."
3 "Passion rules reason, for better or for worse."
4 "There is magic in sincere forgiveness; in the forgiveness you give, but more so in the forgiveness you receive."
5 "Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie."
6 "The only sovereign you can allow to rule is reason
7 "Life is the future, not the past."
8 "Talga Vassternich."
9 "A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole."
10 "Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self."
11 "Embrace life, seek strength without hate."
12 "You can destroy those who speak the truth, but you cannot destroy the truth itself."
13 "There have always been those who hate, and there always will be."
14 "In this world, everyone must die. None of us has any choice in that. Our choice is how we wish to live."
I've gone all the way back to the 'start' with the first confessor with plans to finish ALL the books this year including the handful I've not read yet.
I've been reading since the early noughties and have devoured nearly every book the moment it came out, but I fell out of the habit with the omen machine.
absolutely devastated to find he passed a couple of years ago. now I just have to hope there are no cliffhangers
The Famous Five books by Enid Blyton. Every Saturday morning, in the 1950s, a 2 mile walk to the Library to see if there was one I hadn't read.
I remember reading "Where the Red Fern Grows."
Well, hang on a sec, I don't remember reading the book per se, but I do remember thinking to myself, "I didn't know reading a book could make me cry."
I also remember telling my third-grade teacher about that when we were alone because I didn't want the other kids to make fun of me. At the end of the school day, she started giving me a book a week from the library, but the fact that a first read made me wonder if I could feel something else just from a book.
I just realized I've never told anyone else about that.
--Shinerdrinker
The first book I ever read all by myself, when I was five, was The Monster at the End of This Book, starring lovable furry old Grover. I loved it and never looked back.
Tom Swift, Jr. series. Looked forward to each new one coming out. Later, once I could find them, I enjoyed the original Tom Swift books, too.
Yup! I remember when they were first introducing TASERs, it was mentioned it stood for the Tom A Swift Energy Rifle!
Its a pity the Taser was invented instead of the TASP. Police would be zapping non-compliant protestors to orgasm instead of agony.
I started reading at age 5 and devoured Little Golden Books, then moved on to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Little Grey Men, Famous Five as mentioned above. Also my sisters collection of Trixie Belden girl detective stories, generic British pony club stories and my mom's set of Angelique bodice rippers translated from French.I wore out my fathers first edition of The Hobbit when I was ten, read and re-read his collection of scifi paperbacks and LOTR till they fell apart by the time I was 12. Analog, Galaxy, E.E. Doc Smith, Asimov and golden age anthologies. I think I read Kon Tiki at the same time.
Reading for pleasure, reading for greater understanding, reading to let go of stress has been the one constant in my life.
Don't remember if these were the very first, but they are the earliest I remember -- The Tom Swift books and a series called We Were There... probably by different authors, but the series had kids who are close to famous events in history.
I'm pretty sure the books I fell in love with reading were ones I already loved from when my mother read to us at bedtime - The Wind in the Willows and, strangely enough, one of the Sherlock Holmes collections. The first I remember reading cold was The Witches Bridge.
Growing up in the 1950s/60s, my available reading materials depended heavily on what paperbacks my 5 older sisters and brothers would consolidate their allowances to purchase together. The one author they all liked was ERB, so I read a lot of John Carter and Tarzan, as Ballantine Books started reprinting them as paperbacks/pocketbooks in the early 50's and into the 60's. Of course, by the time they were passed down to me, very few spines were intact and I received stacks of pages bound by rubber bands ...
Louis L'Amour was another family favorite, and the Sackett's showed me that not all heroes faced down the bad guys in dusty streets ...
My godfather gave me a bunch of books, shelves of books, when their youngest son went to college. I was 4, my mom read to me, and had taught me to read a bit before I was 4; just toddler books "See Jack and Jill and Spot, run up the hill."
Among the hundreds of books were some 40 books in various Time-Life series. I most remember books about Dinosaurs, Geology (pictures of volcanoes, geodesic, fossils, etc.) Forestry, Stars and the Galaxy, Automobiles, Aircraft, Oceans. The writing was the 1960's equivalent of Wikipedia. However, there were so Many Pictures . I was motivated to learn to Read all these New Words to better Understand the Pictures!
There were also a bunch of Hardy Boys books, and "Boys Life" stories of adventures in the wilderness.
I read well ahead of my peers in kindergarten, and that continued throughout my school years. When I read as much as I could of the books I had been gifted, I started reading books at the library 2 blocks away. I ran, biked, and played outside, but I usually read a couple of hours each day. TV watching was restricted by my parents. But I could read as much as I wanted to... well, I had to do chores.
Both of my parents read. They also read to me, and helped me to read, they knew the books given to me by my godfather were intended for when I was older. They let me look through them, but it was mostly up to me to Learn the words (Understanding the context often took longer).
I remember a lot of books when I was young because my mother read to us constantly. I always read on my own but didn't become totally addicted to reading until I was in the eleventh grade in 1961. I was in a drugstore, of all places, looking through the rack of paperback books they had available when I came across Joseph Heller's "Catch-22". I started reading it around three in the afternoon and mom had to yell at me to put the book down and come to the dinner table. I didn't sleep that night - I read. It was the same the next day except for the times mom made me come to the dinner table. I finished the book that night and was forever hooked. Who knew that a book could be funny, serious, traumatic, and heart-warming all on the same page! My addiction has lasted 61 years and I don't plan to ever seek treatment for it.
My first book was Soviet Encyclopedia of Farming and Agriculture in 17 illustrated tomes. Age five. And a huge, edited into a book collection of hunters & foresters magazines called Forest Tales.
Then there was Jules Verne starting with the Captain Grant's Children, Robinson Crusoe and some more in the same kind.
The one thing I hate about great stories is you read them so fast and then you have to find another one.
Very hard for me to place. I'm certain I read Little Golden Books in quantity, but I can't remember them. The first books I can really remember reading are the Thomas The Tank Engine stories (long, long before they became popular in the United States - I have no idea where my parents got them).
Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew followed soon after, and I devoured most of the juvenile section of the library (plus quite a bit from the adult section that my parents would have disapproved of, had they known).
I tackled The Hobbit at 10, but decided that (since it was a 'juvenile') I should read The Lord of the Rings instead. Read that, then back to The Hobbit, and forward to The Silmarillion.
By that point I was long since hooked, so we're off the topic :)
I don't remember which book was my first, probably Max and Moritz: A Story of Seven Boyish Pranks (original: Max und Moritz – Eine Bubengeschichte in sieben Streichen) by Wilhelm Busch.
Then all books by Enid Blyton (in German) they had in the public library, The Six Bullerby Children by Astrid Lindgren (in German).
A series by a German author about a boy winning a soapbox race contest (local, regional and finally national). First prize was a flight to New York in a Super Constellation with a visit to the cockpit.
This changed the MC's life. He wanted to become captain of an airliner. The next books in the series were about becoming a sailplane pilot, single engine aircraft pilot, multi-engine and finally commercial aircraft pilot.
I read (in German) The Outsiders of Uskoken Castle, original German title: Rote Zora und ihre Bande (Red Zora and her gang).
With thirteen or fourteen I found German translations of Science Fiction books and read all I could get. But these were few, I was 15 or 16 when finally one German publisher started with SF-paperbacks, 12 books per year!
In 1961 I started reading Perry Rhodan (weekly publication of a new novel/novella) starting with #1 and continued until somewhere between 300 and 400.
BTW, Perry Rhodan is still running, #3200 was published 16.12.2022.
HM.
I started reading Perry Rhodan at bit later - around issue 190, of the third printing ;-) Since that accounted for much of my weekly allowance at a ge 9 or 10, I bought most issues second hand on flea markets, though.
I remember having a "painting" of issue 1000's wrap-around cover on my wall as a teen. The supplementary Perry Rhodan Magazin issue 10 had a large poster and my dad graciously helped me to transfer it to canvas using Mod Podge.
IIRC, my love of the printed word began with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little house books. It was Heinlein, though, who convinced me at age ten, that books beat television, any day.
I just can't remember it it was "Have Spaceship, Will Travel", or "Starship Trooper." I know my social studies teachers in high school hated, and I do mean, HATED me, for quoting R.A.H. in class...
I have every book R.A.H. wrote, on my bookshelf. All are very worn.
Lazarus Long (The Senior) was my mentor, growing up.
I find it laughable that the past couple of years, some folks trying to get people active in local politics, are plagarising the hell out of R.A.H.'s "Take Back Your Government" (1992, ACE Books paperback).
When I call them on it, on social media, I mysteriously find myself blocked... Yet life, and love, go on.
I know my social studies teachers in high school hated, and I do mean, HATED me, for quoting R.A.H. in class...
I'm SO glad I wasn't the only one.