How did you get started?

[Jhaelen]

I honestly cannot remember. What I _do_ remember for certain is that I learned reading from a Superman comic book. So, it's quite likely it was a comic book (Superman, most likely), though - do those count?

If not it was probably a dime novel (Horror, most likely) - or don't these count either?

 

[Hand of Evil]

6th grade, had a book mobile come by and had 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and War of the Worlds. It was the covers that grabbed me on those two books, 95 cents a copy! From Wells and Verne went to Burroughs and Doyle.

 

[papastebu]

I honestly cannot remember. What I _do_ remember for certain is that I learned reading from a Superman comic book. So, it's quite likely it was a comic book (Superman, most likely), though - do those count?

If not it was probably a dime novel (Horror, most likely) - or don't these count either?

Dude. It ALL counts. Whatever is valid to you is valid. No judgements, here, just curiosity.

 

[papastebu]

6th grade, had a book mobile come by and had 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and War of the Worlds. It was the covers that grabbed me on those two books, 95 cents a copy! From Wells and Verne went to Burroughs and Doyle.

The librarian at our local park branch was aiding and abetting by providing his copies of ALL 24 of the Tarzan books, with the Valejo covers, and a good number of Barsoomian adventures, as well. There was on cool story by Burroughs whose story spanned several generations, where the good guy's descendants were fighting those of the bad guy, and they ended up battling it out either on the moon or on America's great plains. I only read it once, long ago, but it was really good from what I remember. I have never seen a copy of that novel since then. Wish I had it, now. I have been trying to collect the Valejo-cover Tarzans for a long time but I only have three. They are hard to find, just looking around, but my mom always said that's how you collect, so I don't go to Amazon without exhausting all my sources, first.
I have read a bunch more Conan comics than novels, though, and I didn't get to Verne or Wells until I was in my late teens, though I of course new a lot of them by heart from other media/friends.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a birthday gift from my best friend in the sixth grade.
Just so many good things.

 

[papastebu]

Dannyalcatraz
Again, Man: very lucky!
I think we were both post-Vatican II, but the textbooks at my grade school hadn't been brought up to speed, I guess. I don't really know what the deal was, but I missed out on some things. I did have this Canadian teacher in fourth grade that insisted that we watch "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" when it was aired as a cartoon on TV. It was a homework assignment!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I honestly cannot remember. What I _do_ remember for certain is that I learned reading from a Superman comic book. So, it's quite likely it was a comic book (Superman, most likely), though - do those count?

If not it was probably a dime novel (Horror, most likely) - or don't these count either?

Comics count! I learned a lot of vocabulary from Marvel & DC.

 

[Elf Witch]

I grew up in a home without books my mom hated them and was always yelling for me to get my nose out of them.

I got books from the school library and the earliest ones I remember were the Little House books, Black Beauty , Nancy Drew and the Alfred Hitchcock books for kids.

The first books I ever bought were the TV tie ins for Dark Shadows and from those came my love of Gothic romances. I still scour used bookstores and ebay for them today. My other love was Star Trek and when the James Blish novelizations of the scripts came out I bought those. I noticed that on the spine it said SF so the next time I was in the bookstore I wandered over and picked up Red Planet by Robert Heinlein I was hooked. I read all his juveniles then found Arthur C Clark and Issac Asimov.

My therapist introduced me to the Narnia books when I was 16 and when I was 19 I was introduced to Anne McCaffrey and Marion Zimmer Bradley. And I have been reading SF and Fantasy ever since.

 

[Thotas]

If comics count, there's no way for me to remember my first. Was into them well before I could read. Likewise, anything on TV with a spaceship, a monster or a guy with a sword had me entranced from an early age.

First thing I bought with my own cash? Either the first of the Blish Star Trek adaptations, or Poul Anderson's "The High Crusade". Anyone who hasn't read the latter has some serious catching up to do.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

I was very quiet, distant from my peers, and shunned by most kids from pre-kindergarden to grade 12. Since I didn't discover video games until I was ten, and RPGs until several years after that I had plenty of time for books. I had learned to read (by which I mean picking up a book and actually looking at the words and not just the pictures) at 3.

Lonely childhood, and adolescence, but it meant I was the first kid in my year at school to learn to read, and it led to me being a couple years ahead of the other kids in several subjects through most of elementary school.

And once I hit 18 I got some good friends. So it worked out well in the end.

 

[Jack7]

My first introduction to what might today be called fantasy was The White Stag, which I read in the 3rd grade, and next year the Saga of Siegfried and the Song of Roland. All my earliest "fantasy influences and sources" were mythological, not modern fantasy.

I have copies of all 3 books in my personal library, but not the copies I read first. Though the other day I did find a mixed French English copy of the Chanson de Roland, which I'm almost certain was the same copy I read many, many years ago.

Thereafter I began to read HG Wells, Jules Verne, ER Burroughs, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Immanuel Velikovsky (my intro to sci-fi - though I reckon few of you know who he is - but my buddies and I had superb discussions and arguments on his theories and writings). After that came the Golden Bough and Conan Doyle. And the Nordic Sagas.

I read Tolkien in High School, only after first taking up D&D, after being introduced to it through a wargamer I knew. I had a teacher in my AP English class tell me that she would fail me on my term paper because I wanted to do a comparative paper between the Lord of the Rings and Idylls of the King. (She hated Tolkien, calling him a "kid's scribbler," but liked Tennyson.) I told her it was my paper and none of her business, did it anyway, and she gave me a D, but I passed anyways. That made me like fantasy more.

Comics count! I learned a lot of vocabulary from Marvel & DC.

Most weekends my grandfather drove me to a chemist he knew who was a friend of his. He ran his own apothecary shop. When nobody else was around he let me grind medicines in his mortar with a pestle. This was my introduction into medicine and science, and at the same time my grandfather would buy me a comic book or two. In those days almost all comics were sold in drug-stores.

He'd buy me Justice League or Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman. I have extremely fond memories of those trips with my grandfather, and the times he took me fishing and hunting. Wish I'd kept the comics too. But my mother disposed of them the first time I went off to college.

Since those comics were from the 60s and very early 70s they might be worth quite a bit now.

I grew up in a home without books my mom hated them and was always yelling for me to get my nose out of them.

I had a buddy whose father was in the Navy during Vietnam and discouraged him from reading. Said it was unmanly. However my buddy's grandfather had been a Marine in WWII and read all of the time. And was a rather brilliant man. My buddy took after his grandpa.

My father was smart but didn't read a lot. My mother is very book smart, but extremely impractical. However she taught me to read at 3 years old. She went on to become a teacher. Yet when I started homeschooling my own kids and taught them to read at 3 and 4 she told me that was too young for me to teach them to read. They learned anyway and within a year were reading by themselves.

It's funny how different propel in the same family approach life very differently.