What got you to start reading?

[chytach18-]

I can`t imagine life without reading. It`s a part of my well-being, my personality. I don`t remember when I started reading but my parents used to joke that I was born with a book in my hands.

[Chris_B]

My mother loved to read and so did my little sister, but I did not like to read. Then, when I was about 11, we moved to a new place. I remember it was at the end of the school year and everything was packed, ready for the moving truck to collect and move the next day and I was bored out of my skull. Out of sheer boredom I took one of my mother's books and started reading. Thinking back it was definitely not the best book I ever read, but it was good enought that I finished it and realised reading was fun. Gradually I started reading more and more and now I can definitely be described as a bookworm.

[hilarymay]

Books and stories were a big and important part of my upbringing. My parents and grandma used to read us bedtime stories which I loved. Once I started reading myself books became my friends! I loved the exciting worlds I could enter through them. I've remained a book lover all my life.

[bakermkcj]

My dad got me to start reading. I don't think it was his actual intent but that is what happened. My Dad was very religious and did not like the influence of TV, movies or radio. So when I was elementary school we were not allowed to watch any TV at all. There were several years during which we did not own a TV. So I read. I read several books a week. He sent us to a very small private school run by his church where I was the only student in my grade. When I finished my assignment I helped tutor the younger classes with their reading then I read. The result was that by the time my parents divorced when I was eleven I was reading at a college level.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Wow. All of you have great stories.

[mdielm01]

I have loved reading as far back as I can remember. I used to read phone books when I was a small child! I knew how to read long before I started grade school and I remember my first books being the books from Beverly Cleary. I have loved reading ever since and enjoy classics, thrillers, adventure, Christian fiction, the Bible, mystery, and many more!

[brancook]

When I was in the second grade, my mother gave me the first of the Magic Treehouse books. I adored them and even gave a small presentation about the author to my class. They sustained me for two years more, up until the point when I discovered Brian Jacques's "Redwall", a series I followed religiously for over four years. "Taggerung" was the first book I ever felt the need to re-read. My next big experience, in-between miniature climaxes such as my discovery of "The Hobbit" was when I was in the sixth grade and happened upon Robert Jordan's "To the Blight" (the second half of the "Eye of the World") at a book fair. Thus began a long and mostly pleasant sojourn into fantasy, culminating with the works of Terry Goodkind, which provided a nice platform into my 10th grade discovery of Ayn Rand. Before this however, I had already met my great literary love in Anthony Burgess, half of whose "Clockwork Orange" I read on a Tuesday night instead of preparing for a French test. My first meeting with Burgess remains the single most influential reading experience of my life and I credit this not only to the seductive power of the "Orange", but to the writer's own seductive personality: his 1986 essay "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" which appears in the forward of the Norton edition of the book, was the first time I'd ever heard anyone speak so heroically of the function of the author. "Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out" Burgess writes, "you are free."

Burgess still dominates my reading habits. It was through him that I began to sally deeply into Joyce, the classics and Shakespeare. He has also had a dominant presence in regards to music (Beethoven was the author's hero, and is now mine), foreign languages (he spoke six fluently; I speak four bumblingly), journalism and criticism, travel, Russia (Leningrad, or St. Petersburg is where the author compiled the basics of the "Orange's" slavic slang), teaching, and the 'job' of writing (2000 words a day was Burgess's goal).

There have of course been other writers since Burgess who have exercised their influence: James Joyce emerges the superior, followed by Vladimir Nabokov, but there is also David Mitchell, the critic James Woods, Adam Gopnik, John Keats, and Borges to name a few. I can however, trace all of these back to my Burgess capstone, which goes simply to show how far the man's reach extended and continues to extend.

[Nini055]

English class and Twilight hahahaha!

[literarycat]

When I was younger I struggled with reading, even failed a grade because of it. Then my teachers and my mom really worked with me in reading like finding books I was interested in and encouraging me to read to them. Since then my nose has always been in a book. I don't remember what that "ah ha" moment was, but I can remember always wanting books.

[Angelina_C]

When I was in kindergarten my teacher read to the class "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" by Bill Martin Jr. I loved that book so much that I practiced reading it until I could finish on my own. This really sparked my love for books and made me want to read even more. Kudos to my kindergarten teacher!

[mich2491]

I wanna say my first run in was 6th grade a goosebumbs book wish i knew what it was called, i have been looking for it. Then i really started in 11th grade i had a great english teacher that made me really get into it. I read probably about 30 books that year and i have been at it since.

[nikimikel]

College course - children's literature . The book: The Golden Compass. This was way before the movie was made. I couldn't put the book down and had great discussions about it in class. I finish the whole series within two months period.

[angelheld]

I was in the hospital a lot, when I was a child. Books were my way of escaping of taking myself to incredible places, with amazing characters. Hospital rooms turned into castles and if a book was interesting enough or funny enough, it could make me completely forget about the pain.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Wow, I like all of those stories. Welcome to the forum to several of you!

[Supcoolfofa01]

I've always liked reading, when I was little my mom would read to my brothers and I, probably up to like third grade. Then I started reading on my own a little, and then a lot. Now it's like reading is the only thing that I can actually do for more than half an hour without getting bored. The only time I dont enjoy reading is if its for school.