What Book Got You Started?

[R.A.]

I was a late reader, never really took to it until I was around 7 or 8. Then a friend of my grandfather gave me the four book collectors box set of LOTR. I was hooked every since.

[Willie]

In elementary school, I found Day of the Minotaur. Then came The Stone God Awakens and Thongor and the Dragon City. Conan followed and then DAW books.

[Melanie, the neutral party]

D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths: I read this book every year in middle school.

Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, Dragons of Spring Dawnin: This was the first "world"I followed.

[James]

Obviously, the hook to reading was any Dr. Seuss books. How can any youngster not want to venture in those crazy worlds. But LOTR brought me into a whole new realm of fantasy.

[Kateb]

I forgot children's books, when you think about it Peter Pan, Disney characters.

Dr Seuss was after my time, but comics aaahhh!!!! Superman, batman, Phantom there were so many.

The imagination was stirred, then came science magazines with short stories, finally I read Asimov, Clarke, Wyndham

Some of those stories are hard to take these days but some still hold their glamour eg John Wyndham'sthe truth about Lichens

[James]

I guess I'm dating myself... lol. Disney books are awesome! Especially, in creating a connection to characters one can meet at Disneyland.

[Kateb]

i still have some of my old Disney books from the 50's, my grand kids loved them. Sorry many of the new "kids" books are so PC.

[Chad]

My Teacher is an Alien

By

Bruce Coville

[Kateb]

Chad wrote: "My Teacher is an Alien

By

Bruce Coville"

brilliant , ok so there are some good ones around, but that is for a bit older reader than the ones I was talking about

[Chad]

Kateb wrote: "Chad wrote: "My Teacher is an Alien

By

Bruce Coville"

brilliant , ok so there are some good ones around, but that is for a bit older reader than the ones I was talkin..."

I thought you meant which books got me into writing sci-fi, which happened later. Younger than that, i had Dr, Seuss and Curious George and How to be a Grouch

[Jacen]

Chad wrote: "
I thought you meant which books got me into writing sci-fi, which happened later. "

I believe the original post did specify sci-fi/fantasy specifically. Though, technically speaking, I suppose some of Dr. Seuss's work actually qualifies. The Lorax, for example, could probably qualify as some variant of Urban Fantasy, maybe. It's an interesting idea.

[Karen]

I think my first introduction to fantasy/sci-fi was an excerpt from The Hobbit that I read in a children's magazine. But the books that made me a believer were The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and A Wrinkle in Time.

[Cathy]

What got me started was the Kindergarten reader. My parents weren't the type to read bedtime stories. I had to wait until I was taught to read by a teacher to get an interest in books.

[Aaron]

I read everything for kids as a kid and I think the book series that officially started me down the fantasy road was The Fall. At least this is the oldest possible purer fantasy book that I remember. I then branched out into lots of other fantasy. Sci-fi is a bit trickier...in elementary school I thought science was cool and wanted to read about hard sci-fi, I tried reading the Apollo 13 book but it was too hard and I found 20 thousand leagues too boring. It was at this point I found Ben Bova, who I really loved at the time and my parents bought me his books for birthday/Christmas if the local library didn't have them. If only they knew how trashy and smutty those books were, to be fair I had no idea either until I got older. I also found out about Douglas Adams around this time...but that's really more comedy then sci-fi.

[[deleted user]]

I think I was started by TV shows back in the early '50s. I was hooked on "Captain Video," a space opera TV show that few have ever heard of, even back then. Also "Walt Disney," especially Fantasyland. I think I started looking in the school library for Science Fiction books, but I would read anything that looked interesting. No way I can remember the names of any of the books now.

[Cheryl]

Cathy wrote: "What got me started was the Kindergarten reader. My parents weren't the type to read bedtime stories. I had to wait until I was taught to read by a teacher to get an interest in books."

But do you remember your first SF or fantasy?

And, yay for teachers who pick up the slack!

[AndrewP]

Thinking back I think the book that first got me into SF was Triplanetary by E. E. Doc Smith.

[Cathy]

Cheryl wrote: "Cathy wrote: "What got me started was the Kindergarten reader. My parents weren't the type to read bedtime stories. I had to wait until I was taught to read by a teacher to get an interest in books..."

My first fantasy novel was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. My first scifi was when I discovered there was such a thing as a Star Wars expanded cannon and not just the read along records I used to get

[Cheryl]

:smiles:

[Yvonne]

The first inkling of fantasy I encountered was in the fairy tale and fairy tale esque books my parents read to me. Then it was off to the lands of Narnia and Middle Earth. As for SF it was Star Trek novels that first pulled me in. I still need to delve into Star Wars. The truce at bakura is waiting so patiently.

[Tom]

The stainless steel rat series by Harry Harrison got me into Sf. Hilarious and quick reads.

[Peggy]

I don't remember what started me reading - I come from a family of readers and was probably born with a book in my hand. But like so many others, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was a game-changer.

[Roberta]

The book that got me hooked on SF is The Day of The Triffids https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
which was enthusiastically recommended by a friend in Grade 9, around 1960 - 61.

Fantasy? I don't remember, but we had a set of The Book Of Knowledge which had lots of stories , and I'd read it whenever I was bored.

[Hans]

this one hooked me into sci fi.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

[A.J.]

Just like Scott Lynch, I was converted when I read Raymond Feist's The Magician. Sure, I'd read other fantasy (Narnia, etc), but it was with The Magician that I decided never to look back and always to read (and write) fantasy. It was 1985 and I was just 15 (in a galaxy far, far away). It's one of the seminal works of epic fantasy and a massive influence on my own writing. It's still the best version of the Magician's Apprentice type narrative that I've read. And its set-piece battles are better than Tolkien's (for my money, and sorry if you consider me blasphemous!).

[Kateb]

i love Feist's books , yes they are some of the best, but I still feel Asimov started me in the sc fi , but then again I like both and Heinlein had some good stories.

At the time I called them fantasy, now there is a whole new categorising of the books.

[Grace]

I grew up on the Chronicles of Narnia (honestly, I heard them being read over and over again before I was even able to comprehend them, and have read them all many times since), so I've always had an affinity for fantasy.
The book that really and truly sold me on it, though, was probably The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander (Anything by Alexander really, but that one especially). It just opened up a whole world of depth and meaning and adventure that I hadn't really seen before, and I've been a fantasy and sci-fi addict ever since :)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

A lot of your comments have reminded me of things I loved and keep meaning to re-read. I enjoy seeing how long many of us have been avid fans, and how a few later-adoptees got hooked!

Now, to track down the books mentioned here I haven't read yet :-D

[John]

I'm pretty sure mine was The Hobbit, LOTRs and the Narnia series. Also, I was a big fan of pulp heroes, Doc Savage and The Avenger by Kenneth Robeson.

[Jacen]

Allison wrote: "Now, to track down the books mentioned here I haven't read yet :-D"
You and me both. I thought I was pretty well read, but a few of these works I didn't even recognize the titles of. I think my TBR bookshelf is in danger of collapsing.

[Kateb]

Not only are there some books here I haven't read but I am going to have to re read some old ones that I have good memories about

[Bruce]

Not including books like Dr. Suess, my first book was The White Mountains. It was totally awesome, and I got hooked after that. Then there was the The Lord of the Rings which I completely read in about a week.

[Chris]

Growing up I would consume anything that was put in front of me, Robinson Crusoe, The Count of Monte Cristo, Huck Finn etc.... but what got me hooked into sci-fi/fantasy was Ender's Game, I burned through those pages like kindling, read it 3 times in a row..that was it for me, I never looked back after that.

[Fabi NEEDS Email Notifications]

I can't believe how recent most of the picks here are first books. I'm feeling ancient.

My first fantasy/sci-fi book was in early middle school (no! it was not a new release - lol)

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

[Kateb]

Fabi, I fully agree. my first sci fi was in the 50's. Then it was Asimov.

But do we count comics? I was into superman, and the rest of the superheroes .

But I love Chris' comment on Ender's game. Each of my grandchildren have had a copy given to them from me as they reached teenagers. I had to get them started in the right direction with their reading. So hard these days with texting, dvds, and so on.

[Lena]

When I was 9 I watched Back To The Future for the first time and I loved it. Even today, time travel is one of my favorite topics in both books and movies.
Beyond that, I can name two books that I really liked. The first one I read was The Ghost From The Grand Banks. I was 9 or maybe 10 when I came accross that book on sale. All I needed to know back then was it was that the story was somewhat related to the Titanic.
I started to read it and there was a point where I just couldn't understand exactly what it talked about anymore because I was a kid who'd never heard of some of the words used in that book, but I found it fascinating nonetheless and I go back to that book often.
When I was 11, I read Fahrenheit 451 and I was amazed by it. I guess the fact that I read this in 2002, when the future seemed to be all about digitalization and books looked like this ancient thing that would inevitably disappear, helped me appreciate it a lot more.

[Dalton]

This one's tricky for me, as I can't recall fully what did get me started. If it counts as fantasy, reading Bridge to Terabithia in school really hooked me emotionally, and though it's not a "full" fantasy novel, it definitely explores elements of imagination and creation of a whole world.

If not that one, Gregor the Overlander hooked me like no other. I was a bit older when I read this series, but once I got going I couldn't stop. It had a world I actually wanted to live in. Incredibly underrated series.

[Raymond]

A.J. wrote: "Just like Scott Lynch, I was converted when I read Raymond Feist's The Magician. Sure, I'd read other fantasy (Narnia, etc), but it was with The Magician that I decided never to look back and alway..."

I was always a fan of Tolkien, myth and fantasy, from my early reading but was drawn back from Tolkien's work into Welsh and Scots mythology, the Icelandic saga's, folk and faerie tales. I remember reading "Terry Brooks" Shannara thing, and thinking it Tolkien without the mythology, languages and glorious telling. I was disappointed. I eschewed fantasy for a while in favour of history, myth and philosophy. Then, years later, someone handed me a dog eared paperback of "Magician" and I fell in love with the genre again. I understand fully where you are coming from.

[Raymond]

The first fantasy novel that I can remember reading (there may have been a few beforehand) was "The Moon of Gomrath" by Alan Garner, this was quickly followed by all of his other books. The Wierdstone of Brisingammen, the owl Service etc. I remember buying my first Michael Moorcock novel at thirteen as the cover looked a little like the cover for "The Wierdstone" and there I was reading of the eternal champion in all his forms. For the time, I was paid well. I did a milk round in the morning, worked in a freezer shop after school and worked in the dairy at the weekends packing milk. I was rich compared to most of my school friends and spent it all on records and paperbacks.
Now I spend it on booze and women and waste the rest (you knew that was coming)

[Torin]

As a child The Hobbit, read to me by my Mum when I was 7 as opened up a whole new world.

As an adult my brother lent me Magician by R E Feist when I was 18 and I couldnt put it down - read it in 36 hours including an overnigth stretch where I forgot to go to sleep ( I was a student then so that was an option) , it re-awoke a passion for books that School had nearly killed within me.

[AndrewP]

Torin wrote: " it re-awoke a passion for books that School had nearly killed within me."

I hear you there. Trying to teach the classics in school seems to me to be a way of discouraging people from reading.

[Karin]

The book(s) that got me into fantasy are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. My brother introduced me to the trilogy and no book or writer has ever topped it. Still looking for that fantasy book that can at least be of the same quality but I'm afraid my efforts are in vain.

[Kateb]

Have to agree with Torin , Feist series tops lord of the rings. Lord of the rings is a classic that set the stage for soooo much , but Feist did a good job with all of his books

[Torin]

Love Lord of the Rings, but the style of writing in the Riftwar Trilogy and beyond its so much more accessible today. Recently reread LotR to my son and bits were almost tongue twisters-which also made me realise I had skim read bits of it when I was younger.

[Raymond]

@Torin, I am not being disrespectful here, I just wished to point out that mainly Fiest and Tolkien alike were based on the classics.
Read some Greek faerie tales and you begin to see the inception of them. I suspect that since you like Magician etal you would love Greek myth and legend and that it was not the Classics that annoyed you but rather the way they were taught. My classics teacher started the very fist class with a bloody depiction of the battle at Thermopylae mingled with a wonderful telling of Aphrodities love life to keep the girls amused. All in the class went home and read ahead, before you knew it we were all enamored. A great teacher can be a wonderful thing.
I actually gained my higher English because of this. Reading Greek Myth I realised that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was based upon a Greek folk story; Piramus and Thisbe that he had pretty much ripped off. The classics, from all the world, that we can read and understand are all very good and very important. We have the net and think of the world now as small, after all I am sending you a note from far flung Scotland. Yet the world was always small, people are mainly the same as they always were, wearing different uniforms, but their ideas, hopes and wishes are the same.
In Njals Saga (around 1050 AD)((icelandic)) Gunner Hammunderson (the greatest hero in a generation), is betrayed by his wife, in favour of her younger, more attentive lover. Have you heard that tale before?
Star crossed lovers whose families are always feuding, fall in love and eventually take their own lives as each thinks the other dead.
familiar?
There is truly a reason that the classics are classics.

[Marti]

I, too, grew up in a reading family and frankky don't remember a time when I couldn't read but I remember the first books I looked for on my own at the library were by Asimov and the Mushroom planet series by Eleanor Cameron.

[Jacen]

Kateb wrote: "Have to agree with Torin , Feist series tops lord of the rings. Lord of the rings is a classic that set the stage for soooo much , but Feist did a good job with all of his books"

I can't agree with that. Feist is good, very good, but nowhere even remotely close to Tolkien's level. Oh, I'm not glamorizing the "classics." Feist probably really is more accessible to the average reader, but in final picture for a serious reader Riftwar is much weaker than Lord of the Rings. More engaging in places, perhaps, but the overall world and character building doesn't hold up to Tolkien's standard. Which isn't to say that Tolkien is the very best in those regards, either, other greats like C.S. Lewis, Lewis Caroll, and even some more recent authors like Robert Jordan are all in a similar overall skill zone. Feist's work just wasn't quite at that same level.

Feist's series also declined in quality sharply after the Riftwar Saga, with follow up series in the same universe sometimes reading more like fanfiction continuations than proper novels. I believe I read up to "Talon of the Silver Hawk" in the Conclave of Shadows series before I gave up on any more of his work. I still love the original Riftwar Saga books, though.

[QueenAmidala28]

Fourth grade - - I thought the stories were intriguing and a little scary; mainly I liked it because they weren't boring and very different than what other kids were reading at the time. Then in high school a boy a liked got me hooked on fantasy with and the Sword of Truth series. That was it . . .

[Alicen]

I've read books in the past but when I got really into reading (my jr year in highschool) I somehow picked the hunger games and fell in love with sci-fi near future dystopian (now just Sci-Fi in general) but as for Fantasy it was hands down Game of Thrones, even though its light on fantasy it caused me to want to read books with more magic in them.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Nick wrote: "I've read books in the past but when I got really into reading (my jr year in highschool) I somehow picked the hunger games and fell in love with sci-fi near future dystopian (now just Sci-Fi in ge..."

Man, you just leaped in the deep end, Nick!