What book turned you into a reader?

[Ian Naxieas]

This is a tough one. I read a bunch of books growing up, but I wouldn't consider myself an avid reader until later. I do believe it started with Stephen King though. I saw Maximum Overdrive as a kid and fell in love with it and it introduced me to King's work. I'm pretty sure I started with Misery, but it might have been Carrie. From then on I read a bunch of his books in no real order, as well as watching the movies/TV series based off his work. There were still plenty of class assigned books in middle and high school, but I was always reading something or another in addition to those. However, once I graduated I haven't read a single book since then. x) I've listened to a few audio books but that's about it. No idea why it fell off so hard for me either.

 

[ATenderLad]

This is a tough one. I read a bunch of books growing up, but I wouldn't consider myself an avid reader until later. I do believe it started with Stephen King though. I saw Maximum Overdrive as a kid and fell in love with it and it introduced me to King's work. I'm pretty sure I started with Misery, but it might have been Carrie. From then on I read a bunch of his books in no real order, as well as watching the movies/TV series based off his work. There were still plenty of class assigned books in middle and high school, but I was always reading something or another in addition to those. However, once I graduated I haven't read a single book since then. x) I've listened to a few audio books but that's about it. No idea why it fell off so hard for me either.

Unrelated to reading, but Maximum Overdrive really messed with me as a kid. I saw it in a motel room after my mom had fallen asleep at like, 2 AM. I thought it was a dream for years, because how could a movie about a truck with the Green Goblins face be real? I didn't connect it to Stephen King either, "He does scary movies about cars, sure, but this wasn't scary; a vending machine killed a guy with a soda can!"

Flash-forward about fifteen years and someone turns on their "favorite movie", with me slowly recognizing parts like sunken memories. It was a weird night, like my dream/nightmare had escaped the confines of my brain.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

Unrelated to reading, but Maximum Overdrive really messed with me as a kid. I saw it in a motel room after my mom had fallen asleep at like, 2 AM. I thought it was a dream for years, because how could a movie about a truck with the Green Goblins face be real? I didn't connect it to Stephen King either, "He does scary movies about cars, sure, but this wasn't scary; a vending machine killed a guy with a soda can!"

Flash-forward about fifteen years and someone turns on their "favorite movie", with me slowly recognizing parts like sunken memories. It was a weird night, like my dream/nightmare had escaped the confines of my brain.

Haha, that's awesome. xD It's well known that the real director of the film was cocaine, so no wonder you thought it was a dream. It was one of my favorite childhood movies, so I'm glad it escaped your brain for everyone to witness. It's the much better and more faithful adaptation of Trucks from Stephen King's short story collection Night Shift. The other is, well, Trucks, a 1997 made for TV movie. It's not particularly worth checking out, but it does have two brilliant scenes. Sorry for the poor quality on the second one, it's all I could find.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Anyone remember these? These night have not been my first books or series I read but these were what spun me off to consume more into horror and sci-fi and darker content and hit up everything my tiny school library had to offer that I could comprehend.

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

Sandokan by Emilio Salgari. A nineteenth century adventure novel.
I had read an incomplete version, then later got a more robust edition of the novel.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Don Quijote de la Mancha is classic. They forced me to read it at school and I did so reluctantly, but I've read it a couple of times after and it holds up really well for something written in the 1600's. Comedy, Satire, Action, Drama, it has it all.

 

[99nereids]

so reading was really hard for me as a kid with undiagnosed adhd & attention span issues, i dont think i really learned how to read til i was 4 or 5 & it was somewhat thanks to me obsessively playing pokemon sapphire lol
so books were in general pretty hard for me to engage with for long periods of time. UNTIL. i started reading the Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket.

this cover is forever ingrained into my memory. I was in the zone reading thru these, and there were a ton of them. My mom's a fan of the author & she would read thru them with me sometimes hehehe, I ended up getting to book 12 out of 13 before i lost interest but i want to reread them all someday, and get to that last book!!!!
This series got me sooo interested in fiction & its still the main genre i read today.

 

[tranzittruther]

I loved reading as far back as I can remember, the earliest contribution to my love for reading I can remember was a bedtime stories book that had one page in a normal sized font and the next in much bigger text and with a drawing so that after the parent was done reading their part aloud, the kid could continue reading one or two sentences.
Another book I liked as a kid was a compilation of a few of Aesop's fables with really pretty illustrations.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Didn't really read much when I was young. I thought reading was the most boring thing ever because the books my school forced me to read were painful and besides I was too busy being dumb and playing MMOs. So for big part of my life I only read study related books. Of the books that finally got me started two come to mind: Herman Hesse's Demian and Roland Topor's The Tenant.

 

[lil_thang]

A Confederacy of Dunces - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

edit: oooh, herman hesse's Siddhartha was a good early one for me

 

[ciro64]

What book turned you into a reader?

That has yet to happen. I've always had trouble with books. I don't have problems reading comics, small fan fiction or general reading.

I've read this like butter though. I wonder if my problem lies within texts composed of fantastical artistic narratives as opposed to more objective information.

 

[99nereids]

50 shades of grey turned me a book reader and gay. shitty joke aside but I do swing both ways.
View attachment 23244
I read the Swedish version that was split in to 3 books and I was hooked I was about 14 when I read them.

woag that cover is so cool, been wanting to get into the dragonlance novels the setting seems interesting.

 

[Yukyon]

La Sombra del Viento - Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
I had read before but mostly out of being assigned books to read at school, that was the first book that I actually got invested in

 

[Maicon Valentine]

Sherlock Holmes was the first literary saga that I became a fan and read. (before that, only very good children's books too) (:

 

[betterhiroto]

For some odd reason, the book that turned me into a reader i am today is the Wind up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami when i was 13.

Yeah, bit of a heavy book for a 13 year old. Not going to lie, but i was a bit of a weeb and when i saw a japanese author (Which is rare in my country) i immediately grabbed that book and bought it. I did read a few books up to that point, but nothing that made me want to read more, they were mostly just encyclopedias and such, nothing really serious and big as this. After that i began scouting more and more of his books, and that's where it all really started! I don't really read his works that much now, but maybe i should go back to the book that made me what i am today...

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

For some odd reason, the book that turned me into a reader i am today is the Wind up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami when i was 13.

Yeah, bit of a heavy book for a 13 year old. Not going to lie, but i was a bit of a weeb and when i saw a japanese author (Which is rare in my country) i immediately grabbed that book and bought it. I did read a few books up to that point, but nothing that made me want to read more, they were mostly just encyclopedias and such, nothing really serious and big as this. After that i began scouting more and more of his books, and that's where it all really started! I don't really read his works that much now, but maybe i should go back to the book that made me what i am today...

Ummm yeah that is a heavy book for a 13 year old. lol. Well you had to learn about the birds and the bees sooner or later.

 

[SolarSpectre]

The first book I remember really liking was 'Of Mice and Men' by John Steinbeck. then I read the Hobbit and have been hooked on fantasy ever since

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

The first book I remember really liking was 'Of Mice and Men' by John Steinbeck. then I read the Hobbit and have been hooked on fantasy ever since

Lenny is a fascinating character.

 

[mrmoe273]

these two bad boys, not going to lie they both have confused me at some points but were good reads

 

[Kamako]

Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
The works of Paul Jennings.
The Long Walk by Stephen King got me back into reading for leisure/pleasure after a few years of reading only for academic/learning purposes.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I can't read but Part 8 ain't get animated for at least 15 years.

 

[Neopolitan]

Eric, by Terry Pratchett. My parents had a bunch of Discworld books, I picked the smallest one to give them a shot. Got hooked, read every other Discworld book we had, been a reader ever since then. Shame the series went downhill sharply towards the end, but I guess that couldn't be helped given ... y'know.

 

[Konatalzumi]

When I was in elementary school, my teacher handed us copies of Der kleine Vampir in Gefahr by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg.

It was supposed to be a month-long project designed to get us used to the idea of reading foreign literature through a fairly easy entry point... but the fact was that I just couldn't put that book down as soon as I got my copy. I'd re-read it week after week during the duration of the project, and I even surprised my parents by asking for more books on the series as Christmas and birthday gifts that very year. Suffices to say, I was hooked.

What about you? Which book held the magic for you?

Probably has to be either diary of a wimpy kid or the walking dead. I had wanted to read the walking dead comics since elementary school which was around 2011-2013 because I saw PewDiePie play the telltale TWD game that's based on the comic and mention the comics and I bought the compendiums in early 2022

 

[Adrastia]

When I was 11 I borrowed two Stephen King books from a friend. Cujo and Night Shift. I was probably too young to read those. But my friend was younger than me and she was reading them. After that I just wanted books all the time. Mostly horror.

Before that I read whatever I could find. I borrowed a copy of Dinosaur Tales by Ray Bradbury from my uncle. It had really great art. My siblings destroyed it though. I had trouble with the school library because the librarian kept putting my chosen books back and giving me kiddie books I was bored with. So I just turned to the city library.

One of the school library books I managed to take out without trouble back when I was about 8 or 9 was Cry Of The Heart by Mary Patchett. It's about a cat. It looks like Patchett was very popular in Australia but I really haven't seen her books here. I assume the book was donated as it was very old. My memory matches the version printed in the 50s.

 

[DaxterDotEXE]

Vurt by Jeff Noon