The Call of the Wild
discussion
What started your thirst for books ?
I so echo, not what but who! My mom was a voracious reader and still is at 95! She went to the library every week and I loved to explore books, even if I couldn't read - the artwork alone was inspiring.I agree it was the Little Golden Series, Dr. Seuss, Goodnight Moon and especially Richard Scarry's busy books.
Also the different classics presented throughout my school years - some I didn't like (Hemingway - yes I know scandalous), but some just amazed me (Shakespeare, The Scarlett Letter, Edgar Allen Poe, poetry...)
Reading is such an escape from time and place and an opportunity to learn. I read across multiple genres and love magazines/newspapers.
I'm so glad, all the Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, Wimpy Kid, etc - are drawing in younger readers!
Not The Call of the Wild, that's for sure.
I remember how Tya (Tyas Ari Wening Rahardini, a frined of mine - a daughter of a village doctor - oooh where are you now, girl?) invited me to play in her house and there I read a lot of books that later on I asked my mom to buy for me... The most remembered one is Kipling's Jungle Book....
then The Call of the Wild is the next milestones - when I was in college my lecturer asked us to read it and I can't stop reading till now....
Charles wrote: "I read Tom Sawyer when I was in the fifth grade, and it was the first novel I had read. I love it so much and it opened up a whole new world. A world I have been exploring ever since."I agree, when i started reading Mark Twain's Hucklebery Finn and Tom Sawyer is when i really started getting into reading "big books". They're still some of my favorite books!!
last apprentice i loved it
I've never really tried to pinpoint when I started to love reading. I remember reading "Dick and Jane" books when I was learning to read and I remember that I enjoyed the process. I know that I read a lot in the early years, I'd start with the cereal box in the morning. I loved reading encyclopedias of all things. The first book that I remember reading for fun was "Where the Wild Things Are", maybe it started then. My fifth grade year was when reading for fun really took off. I read the usual books that boys read, "Call of the Wild" was my favorite of that time. Later on I read "The Three Musketeers" and still love it to this day. So, it's hard to say if there was a point when I started a love of books but I can say that I've loved reading since I started.
"A Series of Unfortunate Events" and "Anne of Green Gables".
I can not remember a time when I didn't love to read! i guess I have my school to thank for it. They gave us kiddie books as kids and made it compulsory for us to finish them in a week (2 weeks max). Somehow, after that, it become more fun than actual work....:)Joanne wrote: "I suppose it's twisted, but I can read true crime, murder mysteries, etc. and I'm fine. Can't stand to read about cruelty to animals."
Believe me, i know what you mean!!
My Mother read us "The Princess and the Goblins" and I knew I had to learn so I didn't have to wait for someone else to make time to entertain me.
Great topic of discussion! I agree with what Joanne wrote, I can read about the most hideous things and be fine, but animal cruelty gets to me every time.My parents read to me growing up, as a number of you said. I guess it rubbed off on me; I can't go a day without picking up a book. The first time I really felt changed by a book had to be Catcher in the Rye, when I was a freshman in high school. That was the first time a book really "spoke" to me. After that, I read every day.
I devoured every book I could get my hands on. Genre didn't even matter, I just needed to read. After reading Vonnegut as a sophomore, I knew that reading would be a part of me and my life forever. Incidentally, Welcome to the Monkey House is what inspired me to become a writer. Reading and writing go hand in hand...
My mom read the Lord of the Rings to me over the summer that I was 7. I would read pages of it, but then put the bookmark back so that she didn't miss anything.That introduced me to fantasy and I've been reading ever since.
Cally wrote: "I just don't remember not reading. I guess I've always just liked to learn, and that includes about books etc. Plus, my Dad has converted the attic into a library, so I never run out of reading mat..."I agree completely. Like you I don't remember a time when I wasn't reading or being read to at night (I remember precious moments books) I also love to learn and am always looking for something new and interesting to read about bio's history fiction nonfiction etc. I wish I had a library. I'm running out of space in my room for all my books need to find a way to make some more ! Maybe one day ...wishful thinking .
I enjoyed picture books as a child. My thirst for reading didn't come until I was an adult. When I started exploring my creative writing skills so that I could express myself in words, my hunger to read took off.
I have no idea. I just remember being seven or eight years old standing at my brother's bedroom where, for some reason, there was a colection of adventure books (kind of like The Five but portuguese)on the floor and I picked up the first and I started reading it that night. It took me two or three days to read it so I was very proud of myself. Since then reading became one of the things that I like to do the most.
I've always loved to read. It was my escape,my refuge and still is today. My mother instilled in me a love of reading at a young age. I would get lost in a book and she would be calling my name and I would not even hear her. I resisted getting a computer for so long because I told people the amount of time you spend online I'd rather spend that time reading a book.
My parents' house and my grandmother's house were always packed with books. They even had 'toilet' books for those longer visits :)I started reading fluently before I was three. The books were there, I was insatiably curious, my grandmother taught me the basics and off I went.
Slight problem in that I started reading alone by finding my mother's horror books first. So I was ploughing through HP Lovecraft as a toddler - understanding just enough to scare myself silly and unable to stop myself reading every single scary book that I could reach.
So what started my thirst for books? A thirst for knowledge I could not slake any other way. That was in the 60s. These days I expect a child like me would be glued to the internet instead. As I am these days :)
honestly i didn't start really reading (well willingly anyway) until like my late teens. i was staying at my cousins and i couldn't sleep and she had a book sitting on her desk. finished it in one sitting, freaking breaking dawn of all things. funny thing is that i now hate all twilighters and the majority of the twilight books especially breaking dawn.
Can't ever remember not having a thirst for books. My parents always had them around and read to me until I could read for myself.
Watching my granny read her novels and seeing how much she enjoyed reading made me want to read as soon I could.
Silver Chief: Dog of the North is the book that started it all for me. Read that one at least 20 times starting way back in second grade. Read something from a book nearly every day of the 38 years since.
I too remember always reading something but the Chronicles of Narnia really hooked me as a kid.
It was in the fifty grade. I read bloomability by Sharon creech and I never stopped reading
I remember when I was about 10 years old, my dad went over to a friends house to fix thier car and I had to go with him b/c my mom was working.I was thinking this is going to be so boring. The friend said she had a few children's books if I wanted to read one while I was there. I had always struggled with reading and didn't really want to read but there wasn't anything else to do. I will never forget the way i felt, it was the first time I had ever lost myself in a book. I don't even remember the names of the books one was about a girl who was goofing off on a hamock with her friend and fell off and broke her back and the other one was about a young girl that had cancer both had happy endings of course. From that point on I have seldom been without a book. I was a painfully shy child and reading opened up a whole new world.
The fact that it was a forbidden fruit for me. When my mother found out I was "wasting time reading books" I was punished. It only strengthened my resolve and the excitement of discovering a new book remains with me still. Passing a bookshop is almost irresistable temptation.
i think for me it was more of a gradual process. i used to read quite a bit as a kid but first it was the junie b.jones books, the magic tree house books, the amelia bedelia ones, the captain underpants ones etc.i started reading more series books in 4th grade after i read Kira Kira.
in middle school we had to read during reading time and write reflections on books we were reading so it boosted my already present love for reading and eventually in 7th grade no on could keep me away from my books.
Marie wrote: "The fact that it was a forbidden fruit for me. When my mother found out I was "wasting time reading books" I was punished. It only strengthened my resolve and the excitement of discovering a new bo..."Haha i remember that as well. Id read late into the night and if one of my parents found out id get the look. It was not as bad then but well at the beginning of highschool my dad became a bit more stricter but now neither of my parents care as much. So long as i get my work done.
National Geographic magazines! And the encyclopedia that my mom bought from a door to door salesman (remember those?!)...a door to other worlds. That's what I remember early on, and of course many, many good novels.
... Been reading since I was pretty young :)
Definitely Second Jungle Book - it was real bible of my childhood. But I loved this one also despite all it's brutality.
Richard wrote: "As soon as I got out of high school I started to love reading."that's pretty late :)
Charlotte's Web
and
The Black Stallion
and
The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek
. Three great books that I fell in love with as a young boy. I still highly recommend them for young readers. Also a set of Encyclopedia Britannica we had in our home. I could often be found with a stack of them in my room... discovering the world.Oh, and having my mother read Homer's Odyssey to me when I was in the 3rd grade. She was in college and had to read it as a class assignment, so she read it to me. I loved it! And I still do.
As for The Call of the Wild , I read it in my 20's and instantly became a Jack London fan. I bought myself a huge "Complete Works" book of his and have since read almost everything he has ever written. Some of my other London favorites:
White Fang (Beautiful)
The Sea Wolf (Wow!)
Tales of the Fish Patrol
To Build a Fire
Love of Life
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Anthony wrote: "To Build a Fire
Now that is an agonizingly good read, I had not thought about it in a while.
I think for me it was a combination of the Little House on the Prairie series, Black Beauty, Black Stallion series, and Charlotte's Web.
I think the original queston was , ” what started your thirst for reading? ”, for me it goes back to my grandparents reading to me as a child. Very comforting memories.
Well. I can remember reading Sally, Dick, Jane, and Spot. I thought 'there has to be more to life than this...where are they keeping the Joseph Wambaugh titles..?'
ever since I started to read as a child I have always loved reading. My mom likes to read, that may have been my start. As a child i was lonely, so books were my friends. That may also have been what started me. I will never know. but when I read I learn and am always learning.
I read Call of the Wild, but it didn't get me going, though I enjoyed it a lot. I read 1-2 books a year. When I was 11 my mother and brother were constantly onto me to get me to read more books and finally I said, give me a book you think I will like and my mother gave me a Walt Slade western by Jackson Cole (Bradford Scott). I read more than 300 books that year, all westerns.
A need to escape the dull, stale, dry routine of everyday boyhood. Books are really the only escape-hatch open to a young mind with which to escape stultifying regimentation, carefully-guided 'educational programme', the sameness and monotony of a house-bound or classroom-bound environments, and the over-monitoring and over-supervision (which felt to me like a downward force exerted on my neck at all times). The idea of being 'steered' down certain safe, pre-approved paths and channels provoked me to frenzy which only shelves of books could ever soothe.
Probably the fact that I learned to read young, before even my earliest memories. My parents claim that when I was three or four I could read at a third grade level (and when I was in kindergarten my teacher often told my parents that she borrowed books from fourth grade teachers for me).I kind of stopped reading in junior high because it wasn't seen as "cool" to read, but I was bullied in my freshman year so I started bringing books to school to escape to a fantasy world. And that's where I am now -- obsessed with books.
From the time i started learning. I knew I loved to read. I read through out school growing up because I wanted to not because i had to . my favorite classes in high school were the literature classes. one of my favorite hobbies is reading. I love all kinds of genres especially books about animals. and memoirs too. now I am in my 50s and still love to read. finally broke down and ordered a kindle, mostly because I am running out of room for books.{ I have had to clear out my library and donate a lot of books}and by the way I have read CAll of the Wild.buck is one cool devoted dog.
^^^^ Sincere question: d'ye love reading or do you love books? Wouldn't you say--as clearly, you are an obvious lover of the world's #1 past-time--that its better to accept the occasional minor inconvenience of printed books (bulk, weight, size) rather than hasten their phasing-out by purchasing the medium which is aiding big business to oust them from our homes? Isn't the beauty and the magic of the printed page worth any hassle? What is a home without shelves and shelves of books. I ask you. Not trying to provoke anything here, but your comment started out so great and then made me sad to read. You 'finally broke down' and got a what? :(
I have bookshelves all over our house.anywhere i can find somewhere vacant there are bookshelves. I am not giving up the paper books yet. over the years I have given or sold the books I no longer want.I am still going to buy books. I am waiting for a kindle to arrive in the mail.thought i would take advantage of the "free" offers for some books on occasion. but my paper and hardcover books are still here. my favorite books I would never give up.too precious to me.
The children's adventure classic Swallows and Amazons, along with Enid Blyton. My parents were British obviously...
Without a doubt, my mother was the main engine behind my love for reading. And Marvel Comics.
When I was little, my mother would read to me out loud the books she was reading. I don't remember ever not being around books and as soon as I was able to read on my own I always had a book around. My favourites when I was little were the Anne of Green Gables novels, and Little Women.
I read Jack London's books when I was fairly young and thoroughly devoured them. As a girl they seemed so adult to me. They gave me a peek into a world that I didn't know existed. Truly, they opened up vistas for me that I still appreciate on many different levels.
Crime and Punishment.
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I read The Call of the Wild when I was about 9 or 10. Since I was very small I've had a fascination with wolves, and so of course this was required reading along with White Fang. It was hard for me to get through then, but the story of the man and beast bond was so touching that it was somehow okay.