I've always loved to read. When I was about 4 years old, I guess I bugged the hell out of my big sister, and my parents, wanting to know what every damn sign said. But Conan I got into on my own, I guess. Then some Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, then didn't read too much fantasy for quite a while.I just didn't realize that there was adult fantasy out there, until I discovered GRRM on the net! Now I'm really hooked again!
The first fantasy book I read was the Hobbit followed by LOTR. I was probably around 10, 11.
It hooked me good and I proceeded to devour any fantasy trilogy/series I could find:
Brooks’ original Shannara Trilogy,
Eddings stuff,
Earthsea,
Narnia,
Pern,
Deryni,
Weis/Hickman Dragonlance,
Elric and any of the other Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion’s I could find (back then I had to hunt them down through various little bookstores and NY libraries),
all the Conans and Kulls,
Fafhrd and Grey Mouser,
even the Gor series –
basically anything I could get my hands on in the late 70’s, early 80’s.
It would have been in year 8 or 9 that one of my mates let me borrow Battleaxe by Sara Douglass. After having my first great experience with the series I went onto amazon to read some reviews about the book and the next series, where I found some links to authors such as Martin and Feist... You know what happened from there
'The Hobbit' in 6th grade, after that I was hooked.
I think the very start of my obsession with reading fantasy was when I read The farseer quartet by Isobel Carmody in yr 6, but what got me really hook onto the genre was WoT. a friend told me about how good it was and it seemed down my alley so i started and finished the 10 books in 2 weeks. This about 2 months before knife of dreams came out.
Sara Douglass's books (especially the early ones) tend to appeal to a lot of people that haven't read much fantasy before. I know many people who aren't fantasy readers at all who've read quite a few of her books. These are people who you wouldn't think would be interested in fantasy at all, so she does have quite a pull.Originally Posted by nick1689
It would have been in year 8 or 9 that one of my mates let me borrow Battleaxe by Sara Douglass. After having my first great experience with the series I went onto amazon to read some reviews about the book and the next series, where I found some links to authors such as Martin and Feist... You know what happened from there
Like most people i read the Narnia series then Lotr! At 11 i read and reread the sillmarillion and then i read lots of YA fantasy. It would seem that reading C.S Lewis and J R R Tolkien is a right of passage in the fantasy world. Its what has gotten most of us into reading fantasy...
I was a horror reader but got so bored of the same stuff over and over. A friend of mine was a fantasy reader and poked at me to try it. "The authors create their own worlds" he told me.
In 1997, I purchased "Eye of the World" book 1 of the infamous Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. It took roughly............................150 pgs to say........."I'm hooked"
I had always loved fantasy (Zelda was the first) , but when I really got into it was when I saw the Fellowship of the Ring one night in a theatre. After that I was hooked on all things epic fantasy.
I got into fantasy at a fairly young age, my school had a program where the amount of books you read earned you points which in turn earned you free pizza at Pizza Hut. Well, I love pizza, so I read a lot, and a lot, and a lot. I think the first fantasy book I read was something by Lloyd Alexander, from there on to Forgotten Realms, hobbit, LotR, Jordan, and so on to now, and the age of Fantasy Enlightenment all thanks to sffworld.
I was thinking back today about some of the books that I read in elementary school that got me hooked on sci-fi and fantasy. What youth books did you read that you still remember today? Here are some that come to mind:
- Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes - I loved this book and read it multiple times as a kid.
- Interstellar Pig by William Sleater - I can't really even remember much about this book, except that I loved it when I read it. Sleator also had some other interesting books.
- Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein - Along with Invitation to the Game, this is one of the few books that I've read more than once in my life.
- The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper
- His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
- Neal Shusterman books - I specifically remember liking The Eyes of Kid Midas and Scorpion Shards
- The Blue Sword and the Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
- The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
I'm sure there are a ton more but that's what I could come up with off the top of my head.
The Moomin books got me hooked on fantasy.
I can't remember exactly what was my first exposure to SF, but probably something by Asimov, Heinlein or Clarke out of my dad's collection, at the age of 13 when my English was good enough to read proper books.
Animorphs and Harry Potter...
The Hobbit, Dragonlance Chronicles and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks got me hooked on fantasy.
As for Science Fiction... Asimov and Clarke mainly.
I read a lot of Shel Silverstein, but particularly "The Giving Tree" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends", and anything by Roald Dahl. Later, it was things like "The Neverending Story' and "The Hobbit". Then there was a long dry period, until I rediscovered books in high school.
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