What books got you into reading as a child?

What books got you into reading as a child?

Captain Underpants definitely played a role, but Harry Potter was what really got me into novels. My dorky elementary school self loved the idea of a misfit in glasses suddenly finding out he's the chosen one

Deltora Quest, Horrible Histories and Thomas Holtz's Dinosaurs.

Also this

The pinnacle of literature.

My father sat down to me and told me about a book he had when he was a child; he told me that there were many wonderful things in it that made him a dreamer while he was growing up in a soul-destroying communist dystopia. He then gave me his old copy, a big fat book it was, and later I often found myself flying through the pages so fast I wasn't even comprehending the contents. I remember being so excited to read, I spent my whole day in school looking forward to get home and reading for four hours straight.

Weird thing is, my father never came across as a reader to me. But this one memory of him talking about his childhood and Jules Verne warms me inside for some reason.

Dad asks if I want to read a sick book about cowboys and demons when I'm like 11 years old and then yeah

Harry Potter and shit.

But what got me into reading heavily was as an adolescent reading about longbows, holy relics, lots of sex with hot women, and all that shit that Bernard Cornwell wrote repetitively time and time again in his Holy Grail books, and then also the Saxon Stories series after, but surprisingly never Sharpe even though I loved the TV show before I ever picked up one of Cornwell's books.

Goosebumps, mainly for the covers.

We all did it user. It's okay.

Artemis fowl

All the kid friendly books and classics. I read whatever I could get my hands on.
Man I miss those days.

My dad read Lord of the Rings to me as bedtime stories, except the very last pages which I read myself. I guess it all started there, but I must give Harry Potter some credit aswell; those books really enthralled me during my childhood and early teens.

My Dad did the same to me user, was great bonding. We took turns reading the first two books to each other, even though he'd read the trilogy hundreds of times before, and then as a challenge he let me read the third book on my own. After that my grandfather gave me his copy of Solomon's Mines and after that I couldn't stop reading.

Goosebumps and Catherine Macphail books

I remember Captain Underpants and Percey Jackson before making a move to graphic novels then books again in high-school.

Everyone seemed to like Deltora quest.

I've been reading something since I was 3, can't even remember.

Jesus, what age are you cunts?
First books I remember deliberately reading in my own time were Roald Dahl novels and short stories

the hobbit and animal farm

Percy Jackson, Eragon. My first "Lit book" was a Tolstoy short story called Family Happiness. What truly got me into the Canon was Lolita though.

I was a healthy child, so I read comic books

I loved this guy's books

I read keep the aspidistra flying when I was 13. It took me 4 months.

And this one, fuck

These illustrated non-fiction books on the mythologies

In particular, it was this illustration of Athena by Giovanni Caselli in the book on the Greeks

As a kid I wanted to read a book, so I randomly picked the shortest one I could find... Kafka's Metamorphosis. I was a bit spooked, no idea what it was going to be all about.
Still one of the spookiest nightmares I had: I was in bed, paralysed, eyes open, watching the housemaid and my mother talk about how awful a person I'd been in my life, and how at least now that I was dead, I'd be going to hell where I belong, (etc.) and me watching them talk in huge inner agitation while my body lay frozen. Not exactly Kafka's but I think he was a bit to blame.

Oh that's not entirely true, as for my first conscious experience, I remember I enjoyed Gogol when I was in elementary school. And also my dad's psychology magazines, convoluted articles on sexuality, I thought it was something weird and alien. There was a photo of men kissing, it freaked me out, lel.
Probably that's the reason I'm so messed up, haha.

Hehe xD imma fugin mess too bro wanna make out?

My parents bought me these when I was a kid and I loved them all.

Stay the fuck away from me damn homo.

xD eheh

captain underpants was great, got the last book on my shelf. need to read it some time.

I guess it was the Percy Jackson books that really started my love of reading. I had read bigger and better books in the past, but those were the first ones that I really tore into. Would read them all day in school, trying not to get caught by the teacher while reading in class.

Ranger's Apprentice
Discworld, Magician. (these especially because i felt super cool and clever reading them.)

Alex Rider

Deltora Quest, Alex Rider, Harry Potter, Ranger's Apprentice, The Hobbit, Great Expectations (My family inherited my great grandmothers entire Dickens set), Paul Jennings, Morris Gletizman, the JUST books.

Very ausfagcore basically.

...

Come on now niggas

Aesop, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island. Pretty much , just not in a set.

I remember trying to read Oliver Twist at 9, but I put it down around when they force him to leave the nice older guy and go back to the thieves' hideout because it was just bumming me out too much to continue.

This was my favourite.

Also Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Horrible Histories.

I

forgot pic

I read his Flying Dutchman trilogy. I had a black lab just like Ben. I miss my dog and those books.

In elementary school I read Hank the Cowdog, the Hardy Boys adventures, a couple of horror and sci fi (goose bumps and a few others, I can't remember). I liked reading. Then it was Catcher in the Rye and On the road in middle school.

Alex Rider, Artemis Fowl, Captain Underpants

I still have a 600 page (on composition paper) science fiction book I wrote between 4th and 6th grade about some suburban kids in the future going on a space adventure to stop some corporate alien guy from harvesting a dune planet for resources.

Holy shit, typing this out is weird now that I've read dune

The Pendragon series was the first book series I ever completed.

>no hank the motherfucking cowdog itt

only books that made me laugh out loud as a kid

That's really sweet, user

...

r u me?

Artemis Fowl

This. My first was Mossflower, though.

War and Peace

This

Mah nigga

Warriors, Harry Potter, Janet Evanovich, David Eddings.

My dad read the Hardy Boys to me until I was 7, then we started reading them together and had a 2 person book club for a few years until I was too busy with schoolwork.
I really regret not finishing the series with him, because they all got ruined during Hurricane Sandy, but I've been trying to buy him the old editions he had, but they're not a real replacement because they don't smell like the stale cigarettes of my grandma's house.
Everyone I've met likes to shit on the Hardy Boys for being such simple plots, having no character development, etc. but they were a fantastic series of mystery books to get a kid hooked.
I want to get a complete set of the same editions I was raised on to read to my kids, but full sets are really expensive.

When I was a seven year old I browsed Veeky Forums interminably to while away the unendurably long summer days... to become a man of culture, I worked my way through the classics (Joyce, Wallace, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Melville, Tolstoy, Nabokov, McCarthy, Knausgaard, Krasznahorkai). That was a suitable intellectual basis for advancing to more mature and sophisticated art forms.

Harry Potter
Percy Jackson
Quantum Prophecy (hype shit)
Some gay vampire shit that I'd rather not remember the title of

Anyone read this shit? I think I stopped after the second one

Fuck yeah. I read all of the ones that were out (maybe... Four at the time?) over the course of like two months, then forgot all about them and never finished the series.
I remember liking them more than Harry Potter. It just seemed like a more interesting take on the whole magic scene.

Comics like Moore's run on Swamp Thing, Top Ten, Planetary, etc.

Twilight?

Redwall

Lots and lots of little books about Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology, and abridged versions of the Iliad and Odyssey. I've read some pulp fantasy too, such as Percy Jackson and Eragon, but mostly due to peer pressure.

My first real book was Robinson Crusoe. I want to reread it, but I don't want to corrupt the fond memories I have. Does it still hold up?

wowee, imagine where you'd be now if your adult accomplishments were commensurate to your childhood precocity

Thanks I fuckin love my Dad

>tfw my dad hasn't read a book in over 40 years

Master of Horror Numbah Wan

(Hint: Not actually scary.)

It was lots of fox related stuff.
The fantastic Mr. Fox and pic. Seems like everything I was read as a kid involved the countryside, foxes and farms.

Shit I think I remember the first book I ever read. It was something farm related. I have memories of actually being able to READ it and finding that amazing. Now I need to go ask my mum what it was called so I can bask in nostalgia.

More like Captain KEKderpants hahaa

Einstein Anderson, and then Tom Swift. My whole family are into science.

oh, cu ck is corrected now, that's a shame

I only liked them for the covers. Goosebumps is what got me into drawing, not reading.

Yup

Mine was White Fang and Call of the Wild by Jack London when I was around 10 or so. This anthology of Brothers Grimm that my dad got for me was also pretty formative. Today I mostly read non-fiction. In particular, linguistics/cognitive science and pure math (applied math and other practical shit is inelegant and more unaesthetic STEMfag plebs)

I found it in my mother's library.
The first book where I remember thinking 'I can read this'

I must have been about 2 or 3

dumping more nostalgia

I was born in the 90s but my mum pretty much just read me all the books from her childhood.

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I adore these books. Highly recommend to those who didn't get to enjoy these.

redwall, penndragon, goosebumps

>homeschooled (not sure why--parents weren't particularly religious)
>mother made me read zillions of books
>lived close enough to the library to walk/bike to it

Hardy Boys
Golden Mountain
Foundation, Norby, Understanding Physics
Sherlock Holmes

It was a pretty comfy childhood.

The Famous Five books, and to an extent, the shitter Secret Seven.

absolutely incredible series. I probably read the entire thing through 6 times during elementary school. they also got me into are you afraid of the dark

the only newberry medal book i ever loved

I read Lord of the Rings when I was 10 for some reason
pic related was definitely my childhood defining book though and inspired me to no end

Frog and Toad all year I think it was called

I love this book user....

This. This was the Book. I had already forgotten

...

I have no idea why I picked this one

Jennie by Paul Gallico.

I was nine, and I was basically illiterate when I started it. I don't know why I couldn't really read until I was nine. I just couldn't. Maybe it hadn't clicked yet. Maybe I'd been taught poorly. I don't know. I just couldn't read, or spell.

I'm not sure what was attractive about it -- it was an old, mildewy book I took out from the school library. The front was small and dense. It was set in a time period I knew nothing about, in a country I knew equally as little about.

But I worked my way through it, and by the end I was literate enough to jump into any other book from that little school library I chose.

The best.

99% of my books as a kid were fairy tales.

regrettably

>4th grade, 2004
>old man on front cover
>Boring, "The noun" title
>no pictures
>"God fucking damnit this book is going to suck"
>Class reads a chapter a week
>Read the whole thing in 2 days cause brain exploding plot for a 9yo asperger