the first one I can _remember_ reading is curse of the azure bonds. having said that, I know I read the Hobbit and the Secret of Nym (sp?) and others ... but frankly, I can't remember 'sitting down and reading them' cause my memory is failing in my old age ;-) -- but curse of the azure bonds is the first one i can distinctly recall sitting down and reading.
First Fantasy Novel/Series You Read?
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Captain Tagon
First Post
I can't recall which ones I read first, but from 9 to about 13 I was reading The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lloyd Alexander books, and some of the Shannara books.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
The first I can remember reading is the first part of Fellowship of the Ring; the English teacher had it in a shelf of books we could read whenever we were done with whatever work had been assigned. I started it like four or five times, would usually get to the Council of Elrond and something would come up and I'd forget about it.
Then my Uncle Jake heard about this and bought me a boxed set of the Trilogy + The Hobbit for Christmas that year. I read The Hobbit, liked it, but never got around to that huge trilogy until later.
The other big influence was a trip to the Air and Space Museum in Huntsville. They had a gift shop with all sorts of science-fiction in it, and I picked up Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space. That probably influenced me more than anything else at the time. I picked up a lot of the Gerrold Star Trek episode novelizations.
Then after I discovered D&D, I went back to LotR and read it. After that, I started in on a great deal more. The fiction in The Dragon was a great resource, and I started to read Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, and Analog. I was much more a Star Trek fan than a fantasy fan in the beginning, so SF initially held a greater appeal to me. Also, SF was more likely to show me something I'd never seen or heard of before. There just wasn't a lot of great fantasy readily available at the time; that wouldn't start happening for several years more.
Then, I met early GM of mine also ran a bookstore and had been a bibliophile for years. He had a living room covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full over everything from fantasy to engineering.
From him, I got a lot of the early fantasists: Dunsany, Lovecraft, Derleth, Wellman, Leiber, etc. And I started haunting the used book store in town when it was still good, and came away with the Adult Fantast series of reprints and new treasures. That made me start reading more and more fantasy.
Then my Uncle Jake heard about this and bought me a boxed set of the Trilogy + The Hobbit for Christmas that year. I read The Hobbit, liked it, but never got around to that huge trilogy until later.
The other big influence was a trip to the Air and Space Museum in Huntsville. They had a gift shop with all sorts of science-fiction in it, and I picked up Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space. That probably influenced me more than anything else at the time. I picked up a lot of the Gerrold Star Trek episode novelizations.
Then after I discovered D&D, I went back to LotR and read it. After that, I started in on a great deal more. The fiction in The Dragon was a great resource, and I started to read Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, and Analog. I was much more a Star Trek fan than a fantasy fan in the beginning, so SF initially held a greater appeal to me. Also, SF was more likely to show me something I'd never seen or heard of before. There just wasn't a lot of great fantasy readily available at the time; that wouldn't start happening for several years more.
Then, I met early GM of mine also ran a bookstore and had been a bibliophile for years. He had a living room covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full over everything from fantasy to engineering.
From him, I got a lot of the early fantasists: Dunsany, Lovecraft, Derleth, Wellman, Leiber, etc. And I started haunting the used book store in town when it was still good, and came away with the Adult Fantast series of reprints and new treasures. That made me start reading more and more fantasy.
Cthulhu's Librarian
First Post
The_lurkeR said:
Heh. I still have those on my bookshelf.
Great covers!In my 5th grade class, the teacher used to read us Choose Your Own Adventure books on Friday afternoons, and let the class vote on which choice to make. Guess which books I used to bring in for him to read?
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James Heard
Explorer
Hamlet, when I um, before mid-year in 3rd grade - followed very quickly by everything Susan Cooper (The Dark Is Rising) wrote and the Narnia books. That's when I got all my D&D books, but I read Hamlet before I got my D&D boxed sets for Christmas and started actually reading things with a purpose.
Wombat
First Post
Wow, the combination of Mists of Time (going back to early 1960s here) and How You Define It...
First "adult" book I read as a kid (aka something more than See Spot Run) was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- that may explain a lot about me.
If that doesn't count, there is Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wonder Book -- the rendition of Perseus and the Gorgons in there sparked all my love of mythology.
I read Ray Bradbury's The Homecoming (short story) when I was in about 4th grade; L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time was in 5th grade; The Hobbit was not until 7th grade. By this point I had already read a number of other "borderline fantasy" books, including a LOT of stories about King Arthur from multiple sources.
There was also kiddy versions of Jules Verne and the like in my childhood.
So in the end, it's pretty hard to tell...
First "adult" book I read as a kid (aka something more than See Spot Run) was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- that may explain a lot about me.
If that doesn't count, there is Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wonder Book -- the rendition of Perseus and the Gorgons in there sparked all my love of mythology. I read Ray Bradbury's The Homecoming (short story) when I was in about 4th grade; L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time was in 5th grade; The Hobbit was not until 7th grade. By this point I had already read a number of other "borderline fantasy" books, including a LOT of stories about King Arthur from multiple sources.
There was also kiddy versions of Jules Verne and the like in my childhood.
So in the end, it's pretty hard to tell...
Onos T'oolan
First Post
Lloyd Alexander's Taran series, followed by the Hobbit and LOTR. Somewhere in there was L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, but definitely Taran first
If there hadn't been Taran the assistant pig keeper, would we still have Garion and Rand?
If there hadn't been Taran the assistant pig keeper, would we still have Garion and Rand?
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RedShirtNo5
First Post
Like others, I read The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and A Wrinkle in Time around the same time. I'm nearly certain it was 3rd grade; long enough ago to obscure the exact order. I don't think I realized that books could be part of a series until 4th grade, when I read Narnia and LotR and then started to systematically devour the SF/fantasy section of my elementary school library. I encountered the red box basic set at the end of 5th grade, and started playing immediately.
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