How old were you when you started reading seriously...

33. I'm 36 now. Until then I had barely read enough to graduate high school.

I've got some good news for you: reading is just as pointless as video games!

I actually grew up with good family values, didn't play video games all the time and started reading at a young age.

As a result, today I am highly literate and don't feel bad about myself.

Thanks for making me feel a little less bad about myself. You rock.

I envy you.

There's often a good and bad side to everything, but I honestly can't find the bad side to my situation.

When I first learned to read. I never stopped.

I started reading seriously when I was relatively young - probably around ten or eleven. That's more because of circumstances and my poor childhood than anything else, though; I was on-and-off homeless and it was all I really had. I don't think I would've started reading often until my late teens if not for that.

I have a two year old sister. Any advice on how to make her a bookworm?

Childhood:
>Shelves at home heaving with books
>Library every week
>Max number of books checked out
>Read them all
>Fiction and non-fiction
>Read all night sometimes

Middle School to High School:
>Still got tons of books at home
>Never read a single one
>Only books I read are those I'm forced to by school
>Resent reading any books I'm given
>By the end, just using spark notes
>Still getting A grades so don't see the problem
>Vidya and masturbation

Adult years:
>Start reading again
>Feels bretty good man
>Can't believe I ever stopped

Anyone else lived this?

Create pleasant memories of reading with her. Read to her, do the voices when she asks. Make her favourite drink for her to have while you're doing it. Then when she learns to read, bring her that drink when you see her doing it. It's all about that positive reinforcement and pleasant associations yo.

Those sound like the same techniques I use to get her used to some of the other stuff I'm trying to get her used to doing.

I guess it's all transferable concept stuff when it comes to training, cheers mate.

About 20.
It really doesn't matter, though.

No. Let her create her own journey through life.

He's not trying to brainwash her, he's trying to bond with her and share something he loves with someone he loves.

And then dote on her

Delillo didn't even start reading seriously until he was in his 20s, and now he's a pretty based author, though contrarian Veeky Forums would, of course disagree

>make her into a bookworm
>sharing

>being this cynical

>Delillo didn't even start reading seriously until he was in his 20s.

There is no way to verify at what age anyone started reading.

I'm just trying to bond with you and share my love of semantics.

are you me?

Started reading "serious" lit when I was 15. Picked up a book of short stories, "Modern Masterpieces," from the library bookstore. It included Joyce's "Araby" and "The Dead" as well as stories by James, Lawrence, Woolf, Mansfield, Conrad, Kipling, Faulkner, Salinger, Fitzgerald, etc. Became obsessed with Joyce throughout high school, read the basic classics and began dipping my toes in pomo before graduating.

Actually, pic related is the book that started it. This reminiscing made me dig around to find it.

Absolutely. In middle school I read a lot of fantasy but I dont count that. Read Bukowski in 9th grade and went from there back into serious reading so I like the hack for that at least (Ham On Rye is good desu)

I've never really read fantasy.

It seemed to be a diet of cotton candy.

I got right into literary fiction because I wanted the meat.

This is me exactly. I read books all the time until I was about 16 then I started hanging out with people who only played video games and then I did too. I'm 23 now and I've been reading a lot for about a year and getting away from them a lot and realizing I have nothing in common with them. It's sort of heart breaking because I've been friends with them for so long and I don't know what to say to them anymore. But I'm being true to myself finally and doing what i want because I want and not what others want.

Thanks user

>I wanted the meat
homo

theguardian.com/books/2003/may/24/fiction.dondelillo
>He didn't get seriously into reading until he was 18, working at a summer job as a playground attendant. DeLillo's brief was to patrol the park blowing a whistle, but instead he sat on a bench and consumed Faulkner, Joyce and Hemingway, marvelling, for the first time, at the "radiance" of language. He perceived that words had a "sculptural quality", that arranging them was a "sensuous pleasure".

Like I said I dont count it as literature but I dont regret it. I have fond memories of those stories as cliche and terribly written as they were.

I don't know what to do but laugh in your face.

>How old were you when you started reading seriously?

Hello fellow 18 year old! What do you mean by reading seriously? Do you mean reading deeper books or reading more in general? If you mean reading more, then I would suggest going to a local library and looking through book shelves to find something you either know nothing about or find something about a past interest. For me, I started reading seriously because I enjoyed learning facts and theories I hadn't heard before. I started reading a lot of non-fiction/textbooks when I was 16, and I haven't stopped since. If you feel like the only thing that you enjoy is videogames, why not read about them? There is a decent storybundle that you can get right now that features a lot of ebooks about videogames for a cheap price. If you are looking for a specific video game book recommendation, I would suggest The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell (Players Making Decisions also gets pretty good reviews). I would remind you that reading should be enjoyable and if you cannot get invested in Veeky Forums approved books, then don't feel obligated to force yourself to read them. You won't get anything out of it if you're drudging through a book.

Are there video game novelizations that he could read, too?

I bet those would be fun.

16

After that I used to read a lot but mostly SF and stuff like Verne or Dickens.

mods....

>were

mods are cucked by cicada faggot (implying my teams not tracking you right now)

First thing that comes to mind is Ender's Game, but i'm sure there are more.

This was me exactly, except I read huge amounts up through high school and then basically stopped in college and only read things that were assigned. I feel like the pressure in college just made me associate reading with having to seem as smart as possible, and it killed my appreciation of its intrinsic value.

I was 17, but 19 when it got real 50+ books a year serious.

I read the Illiad and the Odissey in my 15 year-old-summer. Frankly, I was too immature to keep up with all of its content, though I enjoyed them. For several months after that I became a normal boy again. Some day in Easter vacation I picked "Soledades" by Góngora; since then I am hooked.

What's helped me keep this hobby of reading is that I can buy, at the monthly fair, classics for like 1-2€.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that as years pass by, I find more and more depth and "density" to books, especially books from the realism period up to now.

A lot of late bloomers here.

Now I can see why I'm ahead of the game in many threads.

>Those sound like the same techniques I use to get her used to some of the other stuff I'm trying to get her used to doing.

Uuuuuhhhhh.....

most of my professors think I'm very well-read relative to my classmates, and I didn't start reading until I was 20.

When did you start reading?

post your five favourite poems and I'll be the judge of that

Got into reading when I was 11 and read The trial and Of mice and men

25
Same

My mother didnt allow TV on school nights (and my father dominated it on weekends) and we were allowed to stay up as late as we wanted so long as we were reading, so basically always. I stopped reading kids books around 4th grade and YA in 7th.

Time enjoyed wasting is not wasted time. Vidya was a great part of my childhood, wouldn't change it desu.

I got back into reading again around 15 or 16 years old. Don't feel like I've missed anything, it's not like there are a lot of good books out there anyway

This way she'll start drooling everytime a lad whips out a book.

Read every single night. If you read a longer book, always do a "what happened last time". Read exciting things.

I read more when I was younger but now that I am on the internet for about 12 hours a day I can't focus to read anymore. Trying to get through Moby Dick and I am seriously enjoying it but I can't keep my attention on it for longer than five minutes. I have it next to me right now but I am not reading it.

I started when I was 12, and I play more videogames as an adult in my 30s than when I was a kid.

As a kid, teen, and young adult, my hobby was reading critically acclaimed novels, which I already had in my house because my father was a great reader.
I read all the lit core stuff (at least until the early XX century) before I was 23.

Around that time, I stopped reading fiction because I begun to feel it is a waste of time, and switched to reading only History books. first it was very literary stuff like Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or the Conquest of Peru, and the Conquest of Mexico, by Preston.
But soon after I switched to more modern scientific works, and how much I was learning begun to supercede the quality of the prose.
Currently most of what I read consists of History books, Essays, scientific papers and monographs.

This is me. I nearly got bored of videogames and lustration in my teens until I discovered drugs and Veeky Forums.

Thank God my attention span isn't fucked.

22.

I've tried to be serious about reading by starting with a W. Somerset Maugham novel. It was Of Human Bondage.

Given that I had an American Historical education that involved lots of architecture and Swiss missing, I couldn't get into it.

Then after some Haruki Murakami novels, Video game collection and two attempts at reading Infinite Jest, I want to become a serious reader.

Other than getting into some Veeky Forums podcasts and a shakespeare summary one, I'm wondering if I've succeeded.

I did both. I played video games and read all the time.

20.

It's never too late, OP. I'm doing a PhD in lit now.

6, stopped at 15
parents were teachers

dad side of family is knowledgeable in history/french lit

but i stopped getting pleasure from it after i turned 15

i mean, i didn't stopped completely, i just went from reading 10 books a year to 1-2

of course 11-13 was wasted on a lot of YA garbage, it's only at 13 that i started reading more complex works

21.

I've read some books before, but nothing that sustained the pleasure I now have for reading.

I blame older people that recommended me certain books that were nowhere near enjoyable for me. We are all different and each of us has distinct tastes.

Ignore Veeky Forums when they say you should start with the classics. You should start with whatever you enjoy, even if it's trash according to most of us.

You'll eventually progress into other topics but ,with all honestly, read stuff that you know you'll probably enjoy. Whether it's "A Song of Ice and Fire" or "Da Vinci's code".

I used to play video games just like you until they didn't fill the gap anymore and became the same old repetitive shit. I've started reading since then. Best choice I've made.

wo dood
are you me
all I do these days is work and read