What book got you into reading?

>tfw all my thoughts about the concept of the Ubermensch, all my philosophical ponderings over how to live the correct life, the negatives of hedonism, the superiority of the life of art, the values of asceticism, all the knowledge about life and literature from the hundreds of dense tomes I have spent my entire life reading, all my theories and philosophizing about consciousness and the mind, all my thoughts about culture and the importance of art and the life of the mind in their ability to overcome death and to create a meaningful existence, all my ponderings about love and its supremacy, about God and his relationship to art, all my hours spent writing and trying to create characters and beautiful stories, my attempts to live an artistic and aesthetic life, my theories of the aesthetic and literary life and its importance, my ponderings about the correct culture that we have to create, the philosophically justified means of creating this culture, the very meaning of my life and my deepest desires and loves, all come crashing down after seeing a cutie and realizing that Chad will be nailing her in the ass tonight

When I was about 13

>All that reading and he hasn't figured out how to subsume and emulate the qualities of Chad within oneself

Stay cucked, friendo

The "book" in my head
I realized I wouldn't be able to write well without reading others' books.

Ulysses

Rupi kaur - milk and honey

I read several books in middleschool/high school, but mostly fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Crime and Punishment was my first real book.

The old man and the sea

Book of the New Sun

angels and demons was the book that turned me into a consistent reader (unless we're counting comic books). prior to that, i'd read the first few harry potters, the hobbit, and several scholastic scooby-doo books. all of which i enjoyed sparingly, but none of which got me reading on a regular basis.

It wasn't a book, but when I saw those underage girl's titties just had to read Shakes.

Your diary

The first "real" book that made an impression on me was Exodus by Julie Bertagna when I was 11 back in 2004. Got me obsessed with dystopias and that the world was going to be overflown due to environmental issues in 2099.

None in particular. I forced myself to read because i've felt i was becoming a brainlet. I hated it at first but now it is an acquired taste

Got the first book of "Warrior Cats" (I think english title is just 'Warriors') to my 12th birthday from my father I think.

Unironicly this. I remember in highschool when I saw a copy and recognized the name James Joyce from my smarty honors friends reading portrait of the artist. On a whim I flipped through the pages and noticed that some chapters had a wacky gimmicks. I was instantly intrigued and picked up a copy of if from my library and was hooked.

1984

the collector
i felt a desperate need to find something good to cleanse my mind.

I always liked what we read in high school. After school, A Clockwork Orange then Brothers K were my first books.

lolita

The Hobbit, Billy Budd, Grendel

Stephen Hawking's A brief history of everything.

Slaughterhouse Five

Kuprin
The Duel

I picked up a parenting book on the shitter and became fascinated with the amount of research poured into it; it was an amalgam of statistics on the cutting edge of research in behavior psychology and psychometrics. Read parenting books faggots, they're hidden gems. But read the ones that are filled with research and are obviously meant for uber-bourgeois parents, not the pop-psych, "if you feed your kids carrots they'll grow up to be faggots attracted to phallic objects" kind.

Never gravitated toward fiction and I've maintained a brutish chauvinism towards the inferiority of muh romance, muh Pychon, and muh sci-fi. That said, those parenting books were a springboard into myriad scientific literature and philosophy. Also I'm probably autistic so YMMV on the whole reading sober, stat-laden nonfic.

Not wanting to be a brainlet

Hegel really

You actually read Hegel straight? Damn

I don't read books
Books read me

I read the Hobbit when I was 10, but too much of a brainlet to understand most of it, even though it's literally a children's book.

I read it when I was 6 or so and got it.

Though, I started reading LOTR when I was about 9 or 10, and didn't finish it until my late teens, and I didn't understand a goddamn thing about it.

Fahrenheit 451. For some reason that dystopian shit really did it for me

None
I keep reading hundreds of books and i still don't enjoy it. I keep believing that i'll be better if read more, but i know that i'm just lying to myself.
My life is suffering.

No but for real tho, García Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

It was some book about a chicken trying to find its way to the barn. I remember being so amazed once I learned how to read that I wanted to read everything.

Breakfast of Champions was what got me out of reading escapist stuff.

the Hobbit, age 5

>What book got you into reading?

Percy Jackson unironically got me to start with the greeks in high school.

Came here to post this

an audio book of a mystery novel that my dad was listening to during a family trip back in 2009. The author was Robert Crais. The book was The Watchman. I read all his books that summer. I think I was 16...yea wasn't much of a reader before that. Still am not too much of a reader now but if I find something I like I read the shit out of it and all of that author's work.....

this
i injured myself and suddenly had no hobbies

Probably when I was 10 or so. Not one book in particular but the stacks of my Dad's old Conan paperbacks.

hank the cowdog

Beowulf

this. found it randomly while looking through my parents' bookshelves and had already heard of it by that point.

I can't remember, I've read since a very young age. My favourite author as a kid was Roald Dahl

Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft

Spiderwick chronicals and harry potter between the ages of 8-10

Also Roald Dahls books like this guy mentionedbetween the same ages my previous post.

>No but for real tho, García Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold

This was the 2nd book that got me into reading. First was Waltari's The Egyptian.

Also I read the hobbit at age 10 and all of the lotr books at 11

All those books got me more and more excited about reading.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Brave new world into Dorian for me.

Pretty much this
Got bored of my normal hobbies; videogames, anime, manga, music. I started with some YA shit, but quickly threw it away, which let me to want to find something better

Unironically the Doom novels

the portuguese grammar book

probably those children's abridged classics. I recall reading 20,000 leagues under the sea in maybe 3rd grade and I loved it. still haven't read the big boy version tho...

Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Homer. Now I just force myself to read classics I don't enjoy so I can feel superior to people who actually enjoy their hobby

a sac of marbles. read it while in school and warmed up that weird worldbuilding feeling for the first time.

Cam Jansen mysteries. Thanks Mrs. Stern.

The Quran

Came here to post this. I would recommend this to anyone looking to get into reading (or getting back into it).
It's really short and Intriguing, and there is no padding to the story, so it moves really quick. It only took me about 2½ hours total to finish, and a native speaker should be able to finish it even quicker.

As a bonus, it illustrates how important books are, and what happens when people stop intellectually challenging themselves, either by distractions such as tv, or by being forced by the government. Because of this, I felt extra stimulated to start readind more after I finished Fahrenheit.

>As a bonus, it illustrates how important books are, and what happens when people stop intellectually challenging themselves, either by distractions such as tv, or by being forced by the government. Because of this, I felt extra stimulated to start readind more after I finished Fahrenheit.

wtf, the thought it was about censorship

For me it wasn't a particular book.

I have always loved video games but I reached a point where I felt like I played everything before. It wasn't necessarily true, there are many older games that I don't know much about but I wanted something new. I looked for the literature I thought have the strongest effect on gaming, so you could say the individual book was either a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's life's work or the Lord of the Rings.

I mostly read non-fiction and classic literature, although I may be stretching how old something has to be to be a classic. I feel it balances out how contemporary all the games in chinese cartoons I usually like are.

I'm gonna get crucified for it on Veeky Forums but Looking for Alaska by John Green *hiss* when I was about 14.

The Sound and the Fury or Heart of Darkness. Can't remember which cause I read them close to the same time.

Legit question: how can you read two books at the same time?

I was always a reader, but I remember I would tear into Goosebumps when I was in elementary school.

It was, but some of the characters have become extremely shallow and vapid as a result of not reading and thinking anymore. Yes, the firemen burn books and books are illegal, but by that time a large majority of people had already stopped reading altogether because of television /sports etc. I recognize a lot of the themes from this book coming true since the smartphone revolution. Sadly, I hear people talk exactly like Mildred and Mrs. Bowles every time I take public transport / go to the store / get a coffee somewhere.

I dunno. I always liked reading ever since I was little. I would just read whatever anyone put in front of me without thinking about it.

this

I have never read the book (I just added it to my list though) but that sounds extremely pretentious.
Everyone who wants to read already reads, in fact, I'd argue that more people read now than they ever have (even relatively, not just absolutely in numbers). You don't easily slip from reading a lot of books to just watching TV garbage as well.

Am I a fag?

I probably worded that wrongly. The protagonist and his wife were born just a few decades after books were banned, so they grew up this way, they didn't discard books one day and started watching 4-wall television (that does sound tempting) the next day.

It's not infinite jest, just read it in half an evening and then come back, I'm interested to hear what you think.

No, you're entirely correct. Bradbury wasn't talking about some mythical future, it was a critique of his modern day. Every generation is made up of the same kinds of people making the same complaints, it seems. I suspect the number of people who read for pleasure or profit has not actually declined by a significant margin.

I can't promise anything, I'm reading through The Gift of Fear and I'm a slow reader, so I'm sorry.

I feel you, I've been reading Maus for three days now and I'm only halfway through the first book.

How is The Gift of Fear? That's been on my list for a while since I heard about on uhh... some other website's reading forum.

It's... well, let's just say I'm still trying to at least beat out the most value out of it.

In the first 2 chapters, the author just jerks himself off instead of providing any substantial info, and relies on a thought that I as a reader haven't got enough imagination (I have loads). His understanding of the medical side of a stress reaction is laughable (I'm a med student). He probably tried to pass off some shit as genuine knowledge that he read about cortisol in a column somewhere when reading on a public toilet.
He's supposedly an expert (as he loves to write) but some (more than irrelevant amount) of the things he writes seem suspect to me.

I'm in the middle as well, but it's been getting better.
I'd definitely recommend this to women in general (they're going to get the most value from it) but personally, I'm not impressed.

Hello me. I'm two years older though but still.

Brothers karamazov

Ulysses.

I had heard about it and decided one day I wanted to read it. It's not that I didn't read before, but I never read seriously. Before taking on Ulysses, I read the earlier Joyce and numerous other works in preparation. There hasn't been any turning back.

Oh boy, it all probably started with the short cuts from books in our Polish lessons (From Poland), then continued with the duck tales comics left over in the general area. Been reading pretty consistently since then with a particular liking in military fiction. I think the thing that recently got me back into it after some shitty events was the Black Lagoon manga and the good old Polish textbooks, after living abroad i learned to love both languages, this is all surprising after seeing that here reading and art are not appreciated nearly as much.

So it wasn't just me when I thought that the arrogance of the author was made painfully Clair every other page. He supposed to be a leading figure in a manner of security isseus. He does have a tragic reason for becoming just that.

The Adominable Snowman of Pasadena

Well, in the book, he says he's been working in that precise field for 40 years. The arrogance is, I think, justified to some degree, but he definitely seems like he didn't write much in his lifetime.

>painfully Clair

...

Life of Pi. Initially read it bc I was sexing my Veeky Forums teacher senior year of hs and she threatened to withhold if I didn't finish my report. Read it in one sitting.
Wasn't that into it, but it made me feel good to finish a book for once.

this is what did it for me too

didn't really get back into it until college, ham on rye is what introduced me to raymond carver

i'm still not into reading desu

Horatio Hornblower series

...

Milk and honey