First Fantasy Book Poll

[oceanworld]

Ok born after 1972 and the first fantasy book I've read, you know I really can't remember, I didn't start reading fantasy until after high school.

[imaster]

Born after 72 and I can't quite recall if I read "The Magician's Nephew" or Susan Cooper's "Over Sea, Under Stone" first. It was somewhere when I was 8-10 years old anyway. Then I mostly read YA horror for a couple of years before LoTR entered around when I was 12-13 and changed what I looked for at the library.

[JasonLee]

Born in 1966 and I'm pretty dang sure The Hobbit was the first fantasy book I ever read. I think it was in 8th grade. Robert Heinlein was the very first author I ever read, though.

[DurzoBlint]

Born in 1975, as best I can recall my first book was A Wrinkle In Time (maybe third or fourth grade). Shortly there after was Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then lost interest in the genre until high school when I was introduced to the Dragonlance Chronicles. Been building on it since then.

[Michigan]

Born in 78, not positive about my answer as I read a ton as a kid and that was a long time ago. I know my dad read Narnia to me when I was younger, that was probably my first intro to fantasy. On my own may have been the Lloyd Alexander stuff, at least as far as traditional fantasy goes, though I couldn't say for sure. Do the Choose Your Own Adventure books count as fantasy?

[Obtuse]

Born in 1975, as best I can recall my first book was A Wrinkle In Time (maybe third or fourth grade). Shortly there after was Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then lost interest in the genre until high school when I was introduced to the Dragonlance Chronicles. Been building on it since then.

Interesting. That's very similar to my experience. I read Lewis and Tolkien as a kid, then didn't really read fantasy again until introduced to Dragonlance at age 20. From there, my appetite for the genre became ravenous.

[nposecznick]

Born in 1973, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe very likely first, but memory is fuzzy. I did read a Wrinkle in Time fairly early. Read a bunch of D&D books like pick-a-paths and Dragonlance before The Hobbit. By highschool I was reading more sci-fi than fantasy and didn't read LOTR until junior year of college.

I tend to prefer current or future settings rather than past or pseudo-past. I discovered that around highschool clearly. Probably had to do with my growing comic book focus Junior high through college. Superhero stuff being science fantasy and all.

[EllenS]

I should have read the replies before voting in the poll. I added to the wrong option.

The first book I read that would normally be found in the Fantasy section of a bookstore was LOTR, but I'd been reading Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, et al for years before I read LOTR at 16.

Actually, upon further reflection, Burroughs and the John Carter books would have been my first fantasy books.

[Santaria]

My first that I can remember was the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe as an adolescent, though I think I read some fantasy as a kid, time travel, the indian in the cupboard. In any case, I didn't read anything as a teenager/ young adult unless you count horror and Anne Rice. And then one day my husband came home with The Eye of The World. Been hooked ever since.

[flickwizard]

Born before '72. Hmmm....first fantasy was probably The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (does that count? At the time, I thought it was the best book ever written. Now that I think on it, it still is pretty great.).

Let's see. Then came The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe(followed by the rest of the series), The Last Unicornby Peter Beagle, and then The Hobbitand LOTR. After, I started on the Deryni books by Katherine Kurtz, and kept going from there.