@@TheBookchemist Oh yes! I was on the first page and there is Lot's wife who looks back and the author thinks it's the most human thing to do! That bowled me over! I have had several favorites since then but Vonnegut was a trailblazer :D thanks for your videos!
For me it was Dostoyevsky and Joyce that made me fall in love with literature. I read Crime and Punishment at 15 and proceeded to read Notes about the Underground. The philosophical and religious elements really resonated with me. I think it's quite easy to see how a teenager my take to Dostoyevsky's work. It shaped the way I saw the world, and it was the catalyst for my love of Russian literature. As for Joyce I tried reading Ulysses initially because I had heard how hard it was and wanted to prove myself, but I failed. When I had talked to my librarian about it she pointed me to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I managed to finish. Part of Stephen's situation in the book were somewhat relatable, though I can't fully relate or justify some of the worse things. But Stephen's conflict between how he was raised to who he becomes as an adult was relatable, it also introduced me to poets like Byron and Tennyson. My journey to finish Ulysses makes it hold a dear place in my heart. I liked this girl but was really shy and had told myself that I'd talk to her if I could finish Ulysses because if I'd be able to conquer it's difficulty, then asking her out wouldn't be as bad. I failed multiple times, the furthest I ever got was to the cyclops section. I wouldn't finish reading Ulysses until after I had graduated high school. I'd be lying if I said I understood everything I read, but Joyce's prose and certain sections were really intellectually stimulating, my favorite parts from that reading were Proteus and Scylla and Charybdis. It taught me alot, it was probably to me what infinite jest is to other people, it taught me a different way to read and look for references. Ulysses also made other reading experiences alot easier in comparison. Because of it I would seek to read the classical works it references and I can't thank it enough. I don't reread it often but it it's the Joyce work I re read the most. I think some of the hate is warranted, but there are certain passages that make up for the bad ones.
Books that really left marks on my mind and that keep circling around it are: 1. The Business of Living by Cesare Pavese 2. The Tunnel by William H. Gass 3. The Trouble with Being Born by Emil Cioran 4. A Short History of Decay by Emil Cioran 5. White Noise by Don Delillo 6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt 7. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 8. The Poems by Joseph Brodsky 9. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa 10. Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
At various points in my life these books had a profound impact on my life: Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, Absalom, Absalom, and Beloved. They changed my intellectual vision, my mind and my spirit. I'm currently reading Charlotte Bronte's Villette; it's a slow, sprawling but satisfying read, and an amazing book in English translation by Mexican Writer Fernanda Melchor titled Hurricane Season. Pure Brilliance!
I've been a reader for most of my life but what propelled my reading was reading all of Jane Austen. I fell in love with how cleverly woven Austen's words are and the backdrop of history and the theological and philosophical implications therein. Pride and Prejudice continues to be my go-to book any time I need a comfort read. I moved from Austen to the Bronte sisters which I also loved because of how enticing and dark the novels are. Then I Dickens, then Hardy, then Dostoevsky. Once I hit Dostoevsky, I was a goner.
The books that made me fall in love with reading: - “Helter Skelter” - Vince Bugliosi’s true crime recounting of the Manson/Family murders captured my imagination and love for reading. - “The Hunt for Red October” - Tom Clancy’s early spy novel, hooked me on the Spy Thriller and Hero Series. - “Pillars of the Earth” - Ken Follett’s novel on early English church building and societal conflict thrilled me.
For me, even though I'm in my early forties, my keen interest in literature never really kicked off in earnest until the last few months of 2019. Prior to this, I always read voraciously but focussed my reading on non-fiction almost exclusively. So, since this 'kick-start' I've discovered rather a number of authors who stand out for me; Colm Toibin (initially upon reading Nora Webster), Julia Barnes (The Sense of An Ending), Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance) and E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime). Anyway, keep up the excellent content. It's very insightful and informative.
Probably reading Lord of the Rings as a kid but I only became serious with literature after reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five, an absolute masterpiece...
I loved this video! I find it so interested to think about reading on a more meta level. In my book podcast we do this series called My Life in Books where we interview someone about their life as a reader - we talk about the books that got them through dark periods, the books that changed their opinion on something, the books that made them love reading. I love talking to people about this stuff. I totally agree with you about your favourite authors and how they ignite something in you. For me this is Donna Tartt's novels, they just do something for me in another level.
The books that made me fall in love, and to continue falling in love with reading, are the ones that enter my life at the right moment. They usually mirror my life in some way, and similar to how you said, they articulate a truth I have never heard, but know to be true when I read it. Three memorable books from when I was becoming a serious reader: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I was experiencing my first death in the family. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was falling in love. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. It diverges from my blurb above, but it unlocked the musicality of language for me, which then helped when I returned to Shakespeare, poetry, Nabakov, and other writers who have a musical ear for language.
Got recommended your channel on reddit and you really motivated me to pick up reading again and taliking about the book in my language You are awesome, hope you continue making content
I loved reading from a very young age, but over time, reading books in school sucked a lot of the pleasure out for me (even books I actually liked). I didn't read much outside of school during undergrad. I always felt like I didn't pick up on the nuances we were meant to, or I didn't have the correct interpretation of books we read in school. Then I found a copy of Crime and Punishment left in the breakroom of a job I had working 3rd shift when I was about 20. I always thought of that book as "too hard," but I picked it up and found it surprisingly readable and compelling. I finished it in a couple of days and it opened a whole new world to me of reading classics and other "difficult" books on my own for pleasure, and not worrying so much if I was getting the right message out of the book. I still love C&P and Dostoyevsky (and Russian classics) today.
Vonnegut, because until then, I seriously didn't realize books could make me laugh! I was a teenager bored in a holiday resort in Portugal, I packed Vonnegut because somewhere on the internet said Breakfast for Champions was 'a good book for guys to read'. It made that holiday so much more enjoyable, I was reading it everywhere we went, I think I remember finished it sitting on the ground outside a gas station thinking how much this book shattered everything I thought books could do. It was amazing. I immediately gave it to my cousin, and he also read it on the same holiday in two days!
I think for me it's One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. It felt so weird I recognized something so similar to the environment of my hometown from the book written from someone from the exact opposite side of the earth. It's so shocking and opened a whole new world to me. I mean I read a lot of book before that, but that was the first time that I really felt like books connect people regardless of space and time and cultural background to some extent. It's unbelievable.
I began with the seismic impact of Lord of The Rings and Roald Dahl and the comics of Pat Mills and in my teens progressed through more radical writers like Alan Moore and William Burroughs and HP Lovecraft, like yourself. a huge influence, but there was a huge amount of writers who had a powerful effect on me, from Anne Rice, Thomas Harris, Thomas Pynchon, Johnathan Swift, Michael Crichton, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Angela Carter, Apollinaire, Lynd Ward, Clark Ashton Smith, Phillp K. Dick, Iain Sinclair, Robert Bloch, Mark Danielewski, Henrik Ibsen, Lord Dunsany, Cormac McCarthy and still more, hundreds more, into today. All these books changed my worldview or expanded it.
As a kid, I had a lot of trouble learning how to read. Really, it was because of a lack of motivation. So many people in my family handed me their favorite books promising me "you'll LOVE this! It's great". And every single time, it was exceptionally boring. Why would I want to bother learning how to read when everything out there, as far as I knew was so, so boring and not worth my time? I have no idea why the people in my life gave me so many historical fiction and non-fiction books to read when I was clearly a fantasy child. I loved anything with castles and dragons and magic, but everyone in my life was so busy giving me the books they liked that no one ever stopped to consider what I would like in a book. The first book that I ever truly enjoyed reading, and read to the end just because I wanted to, was Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. I didn't learn the word to describe the "Fantasy genre" until literally high school. But until I got to high school, this was the one book I had that proved to me that there were books out there that had things in it I would like. Not every book out there is boring, and there's a reason to keep reading to find the far and few between that I'd end up loving! It's so important for people, kids especially, to develop the language to describe the things they like and don't like in stories so that they can ask for the books they're interested in reading. I didn't know how to tell people that the books they were giving me were boring other than "this is boring!" and so more and more boring books kept piling up.
My Mom was a teacher and a lot of days I would ride back home with her instead of walking or taking the bus. One autumn evening in 6th or 7th grade (11/12 years old) we were in our school library long after everyone else had left. I had nothing better to do so I picked up books at random and flipped through them. One was a Tolstoy short story collection. I got stuck on The Death of Ivan Ilyich. 16ish years later, I graduated with an English degree.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle started my love for Science Fiction, The Lord of the Rings, kicked off my love of Fantasy. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte put me on the path for reading classics, and The Good Earth ignited my love for reading literature set around the world.
I loved the Harry Potter books, classic answer. Then, I read in my high school years Wuthering Heights and I was absolutely blown away by it, I fell in love with the Victorian era and books from that time :))
For me it was Catcher in the Rye. I read it for the first time in the summer between 8th and 9th grade and to this day (while I have read books since that are probably better) I have never been so enamored with every sentence as that first reading. I will always be indebted to it
1. Umberto Ecco. "Name of the Rose" in particular, but all of his works 2. Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Cemetery of Forgotten Books 3. Mika Waltari (a Finnish writer, known best by his beast of a novel "Sinuhe")
It's impossible for me to not mention " the book thief" by Markus Zusak. Told from the perspective of death ,it draws u in n takes u on an unforgettable ride of human emotions n power of 'words' and a string of beautiful characters.
Great and stimulating discussion as always. My first book-love was the Wizard of Oz, but what really made my eyes and mouth open wide with the stunned realization of how much beauty there could be in books was reading the best science fiction from the golden age of sci-fi (Arthur Clarke, Asimov, Silverberg, etc.). That was an injection of steroids into my imagination. “Childhood’s End” is my favorite sci-fi book ever.
I would say three authors (technically five I guess) made me fall in love with reading. Erin Hunter with the Warriors series was sort of my Harry Potter, the fantasy series that got me hooked on fiction in elementary school and middle school. In high school and undergrad I lost interest in reading since it felt like an obligation, turning more towards movies as my favorite art form. The big exception to this was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which I was assigned for a history class and absolutely adored, the first book I read in full in years. Finally I have to give my thanks to Mark Twain for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which I read for fun/curiosity in grad school and has set me on the literary fiction addiction I am currently in today.
The two authors that as a kid I just devoured everything they wrote were Eva Ibbotson and Derek Landy. The books by other authors that really made an impact on me were The Illustrated Man, Looking for Alaska, Annie on My Mind, The Shadow of the Wind, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
It all began with the Lord of the Rings. My sister, being 10 years older than me, was trying to read it when I was in either 1st or 2nd grade but gave up. I picked the book up and it was the first time I lost myself in a story. I consumed dozens of fantasy novels as a result. What brought me out of just being a fantasy fan to loving literature as a whole was Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Robert E. Howard's Conan stories for me. My Dad bought them in the 70's when he was a teenager. Stunning set of stories and they've lingered in the mind ever since.
"Green Eggs & Ham" by Dr. Seuss. It was the book that taught me how to read. I was obsessed with it. At the young adult level, "Hatchet," "The Foxman," and "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler" kept me reading, along with Twain and Poe. At around 12-16, I read "Dracula," Michael Crichton. Ray Bradbury, and Dean Koontz. Eventually, I became obsessed with C.S.Lewis (especially his Space Trilogy, and the Screwtape Letters) , Peanuts, Tolkien, and Calvin & Hobbes comics. The only book I read in High School which surpassed my being forced was "Jane Eyre." My first Literature books that I discovered as an adult which I blame for sending me into "the next level" as you say were "Lolita," "Anna Karenina," "Ada, or Ardor," and "The Stranger." They expanded my skills as a reader, and made me think about not only the story being told, but why it was told in that manner. I don't think I could have attempted Gravity's Rainbow if I didn't have some confidence obtained from Nabokov, Philip K Dick, and even some T.S. Elliot poetry.
The books that made me fall in love with reading were Little Women (an abridged version, when I was 10), The Myths of Cthulhu, Werther, Demian (all these in high school). I'm not really a rereading person, although now I'm getting old I started feeling the desire to go over a few books I loved in my childhood and adolescence and recently ordered most Lovecraft's works and Little Women in a full uncensored edition, and would really like to get a good translation of Werther (I'm a Spanish speaker, from Chile) and Demian. Other foundational texts came in my university years: Frankenstein and Matilda by Mary Shelley, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Orlando and A Room of One's One by Virginia Woolf, among others. Big hug
This has definitely been The Neverending Story by Michael Ende for me. I will never forget when I received this book for Christmas and only left my room for something to eat for two days. I love Michael Ende in general, but this book showed me what literature is able to achieve in your head. Also the German edition is written in two different colours, depending on in which world you are. I never reread this book as an adult and never will, because I will keep the feeling sacred I had back then. Michael Ende wrote also for adults and I love these stories as well. I am quite sure you would also like them. I loved the Peanuts as a child and still adore them.
This is one of my favorite novels & I actually highly, HIGHLY recommend re-reading it as an adult.The reason is for the 2nd half, when Bastian goes into Fantastica. As you may recall, the 1st half is Atreyu's story; it is a quest adventure, and is intended to pull both Bastian & you into the book. But the 2nd half somewhat abandons this genre & the book then switches to the mode of a spiritual odyssey narrative: there is much to learn about the nature of our desires, and how do we know what we want, the nature of our memories, the meaning of youth & aging, the meaning of true friendship...there are many lessons of wisdom in it. It is certainly not only a novel for children: if anything, more adults I know really, really need that 2nd half of "The Neverending Story." I reread it frequently & recommend it to adults frequently!
For a while I taught first-year literature students at a British university, and Gatsby was by far the most widely beloved book among them :) I think it resonates very strongly with young people, and showcases what literature can achieve (and the ways it can play with language) within a very engaging package - a great story with unforgettable characters.
After reading and re-reading popular fantasy all through middle school - C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, JRR Tolkien - I stumbled on a copy of “Julian” by Gore Vidal in the library (looking at the Tolkien in the T, U, V section). I subsequently read virtually everything Vidal ever wrote after that.
"Earth Abides," be George R. Stewart. The final words of that novel are so mundane, and completely magical: "Men come and go, but earth abides." The way that the protagonist's trusty hammer becomes revered, god-like, in the eyes of the children of this post-apocalyptic novel shattered my expectations of what religion is, and how reverence and belief can come into being in the most unexpected ways.
Amazing video! I caught myself remembering about the books that made me fall in love with reading right after seeing your list and it was wonderful. Appreciate all your recommendations tho.
The books that really brought me into ecstasy when I was young and made me love reading were Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" (a bit more even than On the Road), Richard Brautigan's "Watermelon Sugar", Marguerite Dura's "India Song", Le Clezio's "War" and Clarice Lispector's "The Passion of G.H". Last year, almost 50 years after I read Watermelon, I - finally - travelled to Bolinas, California, where the story of the novel takes place and where Brautigan lived when he wrote it - and where he killed himself. A man there I met on the street - Americans are really nice and helpful people - led me to the house. It's private, you cannot go inside, anyway ... And I could drive up and walk on the mountain Tamalpais, not far from Bolinas, where Kerouac used to hike. So you see, how important some books can be for you.
The Trial by Franz Kafka. It was the second book I read as an adult and left me absolutely stunned. I later had similar experiences later on with other works by Kafka as well as Joyce, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky but it never quite compared to the first time
I love the idea that great literature helps tells us things we already knew but didn't know how to put into words - this is why my favorite books always kind of feel as if I had known them forever, even when I just discovered them recently. It's like they are a three-dimensional extension of my brain, somehow. :D Looking back, Goosebumps & Fear Street are definitely books that made me as a reader. I read them obsessively in my late childhood / early teenage years. Then, I didn't read any horror for almost a decade, but during the last couple of years my interest in the genre returned, and now I'm doing a PhD on horror fiction and are thereby returning to one of my earliest passions, which is a nice feeling. :) (Edited for typos.)
Looking back i started my reading experience with science fiction. It was primarily with a fascination with everything about Arthuc C Clarke. Chilldhoods End was a big book for me. At high school we read Jorge Luis Borges which initiated my passion for literature with El Jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan and all of Ficciones. Borges was a challenge to me to understand this intricate stories that he was telling. Then came less sci fi and more literature. To a fascination with Thomas Pynchon.
Thomas Pynchon was for me the gateway drug to a higher form of literature. Through his work I was able to seek out other authors such as William Gass and Gaddis, Roberto Bolano etc. Gravity's Rainbow remains a truly astonishing piece of fiction
as a young'un, the books in the _His Dark Materials_ series were the books i first read that showed me the extent of what some books were capable of making me feel. so i'd prolly say those marked the beginning of my ongoing adventure through the joys of reading in terms of the more "serious"/"grown up" (kinda hate using terms like those, but ya know what i mean) stuff i read in my teens, the books i'd name which had the profoundest impact on me & my tastes would probably be _Les Misérables,_ _Pale Fire,_ _Cloud Atlas,_ _Catch-22,_ & _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_
It's odd because I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite novels or anything, but I remember at 15 randomly picking up Brave New World, reading it in one sitting (unprecedented, I never really read before that), and I thought to myself, "Well, I didn't know you could do that with words..." and that's where it all started.
I only started reading books of my own volition when I got out of school at around 20; up until then it was all video games. I don't think there is one book that got me hooked. I just found an easy entry with straight forward fantasy novels and moved on from there. The books that stick with me are mostly the ones that kindle my imagination; Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories are more or less frivolous and boring, but increadibly evocative; anything by Ursula Le Guin I've read was both profound and beautiful, and most recently Robert Jordan's wheeel of time series has stolen my heart. There are more books, some of which make me dream, some of which make me think, ranging from novels to philosophy, but few do both for me, sadly. The best example of that I can think of spontaneously would be The Little Prince. Stories can give us so much, emotionally and intellectually, which is why I love them so much. Books just happen to be my preferred medium, I think.
I wasn't very much into reading as a kid. My favorite one back then was Watership Down by Richard Adams. I liked reading The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton as well. In my early adulthood I got interested in astronomy and sci-fi (mostly through tv and games). I picked up Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and it blew my mind. The book itself was excellent and then I also realized there's a whole world of sci-fi literature waiting for me which got me really excited and that's when I really got into reading.
James and the Giant Peach, The Children's Illustrated Bible, The Black Stallion series, IT(Stephen King). This book, in particular, absolutely propelled me into reading at 10 yrs old and I've never stopped.
Prometheus Unbound is the poem that made me decide to focus on Literature and writing. At the time, I was on the fence between dedicating to philosophy or Literature/poetry, but the power and philosophical elements ignited a Promethean fire inside me.
One hundred years of solitude and kafka on the shore Both delivered me out of reality and into another dimension that ill never forget And of course the great Dickens "a tale of two cities."
Genre books are so very important to kids as to introduce them to the world and most likely to connect them with 'adult' literature. People reading detective novels might start with Dan Brown and later introduced to Raymond Chandler. People reading Stephen King might get to read Lovecraft later. Sci-fi fans might get to know Philipe Dick and later, Vonnegut or Pynchon. No one start their literature journey with Joyce or Faulkner.(well, at least not much) I just feel sorry how our education keeps draws the line between different kinds of books.
My memory is defective, but my earliest memory of reading was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett which I read at about age 7 in 1966. I spent the next 4 years reading Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, alone with dozens of other books which I can't remember. Somewhere in there I read The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie books, Little Britches series and my father's Zane Grey collection. I spent the 70s & 80s reading whatever novels I could get my hands on, mainly science fiction. Then I got sidetracked by computer programming, for 30 years but still managed to read a few science fiction novels. Greg Egan and Alastair Reynolds among my favorites. These days I am reading more classics and philosophy. I don't recall ever reading any Lovecraft. I am about to embark on reading some Chinese novels. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Story of the Stone, and The Journey to the West. I did try Gravity's Rainbow, but set it aside after about 80 pages.
My tastes have changed considerably and there have definitely been works that did and meant more to me than it but I think it was Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” when I was about 13. I grew up to dislike Poe but I remember that reading being one of the first cases where I saw genuine craft in literature and couldn’t help but be in awe
Well i remember reading basically all my life. And before i could read my parents used to read me fairy tales for 2+ hours each night. So probably the first books that changed my world view and made me love books as objects and for what they contained was many of these fairytales. Then came the endless Harry Potter re-reads. I think re-reads reaching mid- double digits. I dont think i can evaluate the enflouence all those had, because i wasn't mature enough to assess the changes they induced. Around 19, I read for the first time Lovecraft and it was magnificent, i simply couldnt stop till i read everything. It was the typing point for a persuit in reading books in the original language they were written. Two others i read early in my adulthood that set me in the reading and philosophical path i am today i think were "what is man" by Twain and Epicurus by Theodorides (I am Greek). After that the books I love are too many to mention, but highest of praises to Count Montecristo, Moby Dick, Huck Finn and Don Quixote. Also some excellent greek writers which i think are not translated in other languages, so i dont know if there is a point mentioning.
For most of elementary school and prior I read a ton of nonfiction. I would always check out the maximum number of books from my school's library, but they were all short books about history or animals. There were a couple fiction books I enjoyed (I'm actually surprised I didn't become a bigger fantasy fan at the time with how much I loved The Amulet of Samarkand), but I didn't really come into my own as a fiction reader until jr. high when I read Stephen King. I kept reading through jr. high and high school but I was playing video games and watching youtube videos a lot more. I finally became a more avid reader after I read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Towards the end of high school I got into postmodernism with Slaughter-House Five and The Crying of Lot 49, but House of Leaves just hit different lol. I read more books each year up until this year, when I graduated from college, and I think I need to cut back so I can actually focus on my career lol. It's really ironic that video games probably made me read less in high school, but now reading's distracting me from my game development goals.
Although I have an MA in Eng Lit, the (mostly classic) works I studied didn't really make me passionate about literature. The ones that did are: The Brothers Karamazov, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, Ulysses, The Good Earth, The Great Gatsby, The Sea Wolf and 3 works by Chinghiz Aitmatov.
I read a lot as a kid so the first books that made me fall in love with reading were not very "good" books: I remember loving the school tales of Enid Blython St Clare's und Malory Towers in the german translations. I learned about 20 years later, that most of the so called "translations" were written for the german market by german authors. Even in the translated books they changed names, which game was played by the students (lacrosse was not very well known in Germany) and part of the plot. So I never really read Blython. ;) The book that really changed me as a reader and brought my reading to the next level was "Der Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse.
I had a personality that did not inspire confidence. Meaning, if I chose a quality novel in school, the teachers took it away or just laughed. It was many years before I read seriously. I read lots of Russian novels. I read some of those Indian novels, the kind where nothing happens.
It all started with 2666 by Robert Bolaño. Edit: Hadn't seen the video yet. So... how dare you, The Bookemist?! I'm kidding, of course. The first book I ever read for pleasure was probably The Catcher in the Rye. That thing you mentioned about loosing interest happened to me, where I lost all interest in reading only because I wasn't reading the right books. Bolaño had course correction effect on me about 4 years ago. The seedy guy at the bookstore put 2666 on the counter and sold it to me as if it was a bag of heroin: "You want some of the good stuff? You'll be back next week for more."
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Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five! I couldn't believe at the time it was humanly possible to write so beautifully. It still remains one of my favourites.
Apparently it's a common favorite among the people watching the video :) and for good reason, it's a perfect novel!
@@TheBookchemist Oh yes! I was on the first page and there is Lot's wife who looks back and the author thinks it's the most human thing to do! That bowled me over! I have had several favorites since then but Vonnegut was a trailblazer :D thanks for your videos!
For me it was Dostoyevsky and Joyce that made me fall in love with literature. I read Crime and Punishment at 15 and proceeded to read Notes about the Underground. The philosophical and religious elements really resonated with me. I think it's quite easy to see how a teenager my take to Dostoyevsky's work. It shaped the way I saw the world, and it was the catalyst for my love of Russian literature. As for Joyce I tried reading Ulysses initially because I had heard how hard it was and wanted to prove myself, but I failed. When I had talked to my librarian about it she pointed me to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I managed to finish. Part of Stephen's situation in the book were somewhat relatable, though I can't fully relate or justify some of the worse things. But Stephen's conflict between how he was raised to who he becomes as an adult was relatable, it also introduced me to poets like Byron and Tennyson. My journey to finish Ulysses makes it hold a dear place in my heart. I liked this girl but was really shy and had told myself that I'd talk to her if I could finish Ulysses because if I'd be able to conquer it's difficulty, then asking her out wouldn't be as bad. I failed multiple times, the furthest I ever got was to the cyclops section. I wouldn't finish reading Ulysses until after I had graduated high school. I'd be lying if I said I understood everything I read, but Joyce's prose and certain sections were really intellectually stimulating, my favorite parts from that reading were Proteus and Scylla and Charybdis. It taught me alot, it was probably to me what infinite jest is to other people, it taught me a different way to read and look for references. Ulysses also made other reading experiences alot easier in comparison. Because of it I would seek to read the classical works it references and I can't thank it enough. I don't reread it often but it it's the Joyce work I re read the most. I think some of the hate is warranted, but there are certain passages that make up for the bad ones.
The summer I read Pedro Paramo, Cien años de Soledad, and Rayuela back-to-back.
Books that really left marks on my mind and that keep circling around it are:
1. The Business of Living by Cesare Pavese
2. The Tunnel by William H. Gass
3. The Trouble with Being Born by Emil Cioran
4. A Short History of Decay by Emil Cioran
5. White Noise by Don Delillo
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
8. The Poems by Joseph Brodsky
9. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
10. Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
One hundred years of solitude and Slaughterhouse 5 . Such gems🌸
At various points in my life these books had a profound impact on my life: Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, Absalom, Absalom, and Beloved. They changed my intellectual vision, my mind and my spirit. I'm currently reading Charlotte Bronte's Villette; it's a slow, sprawling but satisfying read, and an amazing book in English translation by Mexican Writer Fernanda Melchor titled Hurricane Season. Pure Brilliance!
Not really the first books that made me fall in love with reading, but Thomas Pynchon's novels probably made me the reader that I am today.
I've been a reader for most of my life but what propelled my reading was reading all of Jane Austen. I fell in love with how cleverly woven Austen's words are and the backdrop of history and the theological and philosophical implications therein. Pride and Prejudice continues to be my go-to book any time I need a comfort read. I moved from Austen to the Bronte sisters which I also loved because of how enticing and dark the novels are. Then I Dickens, then Hardy, then Dostoevsky. Once I hit Dostoevsky, I was a goner.
Paradise lost by John Milton and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, how they use the English language is on another level.
The books that made me fall in love with reading:
- “Helter Skelter” - Vince Bugliosi’s true crime recounting of the Manson/Family murders captured my imagination and love for reading.
- “The Hunt for Red October” - Tom Clancy’s early spy novel, hooked me on the Spy Thriller and Hero Series.
- “Pillars of the Earth” - Ken Follett’s novel on early English church building and societal conflict thrilled me.
For me, even though I'm in my early forties, my keen interest in literature never really kicked off in earnest until the last few months of 2019. Prior to this, I always read voraciously but focussed my reading on non-fiction almost exclusively. So, since this 'kick-start' I've discovered rather a number of authors who stand out for me; Colm Toibin (initially upon reading Nora Webster), Julia Barnes (The Sense of An Ending), Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance) and E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime). Anyway, keep up the excellent content. It's very insightful and informative.
Probably reading Lord of the Rings as a kid but I only became serious with literature after reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five, an absolute masterpiece...
I loved this video! I find it so interested to think about reading on a more meta level. In my book podcast we do this series called My Life in Books where we interview someone about their life as a reader - we talk about the books that got them through dark periods, the books that changed their opinion on something, the books that made them love reading. I love talking to people about this stuff. I totally agree with you about your favourite authors and how they ignite something in you. For me this is Donna Tartt's novels, they just do something for me in another level.
The books that made me fall in love, and to continue falling in love with reading, are the ones that enter my life at the right moment. They usually mirror my life in some way, and similar to how you said, they articulate a truth I have never heard, but know to be true when I read it. Three memorable books from when I was becoming a serious reader:
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I was experiencing my first death in the family.
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was falling in love.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. It diverges from my blurb above, but it unlocked the musicality of language for me, which then helped when I returned to Shakespeare, poetry, Nabakov, and other writers who have a musical ear for language.
Got recommended your channel on reddit and you really motivated me to pick up reading again and taliking about the book in my language
You are awesome, hope you continue making content
I loved reading from a very young age, but over time, reading books in school sucked a lot of the pleasure out for me (even books I actually liked). I didn't read much outside of school during undergrad. I always felt like I didn't pick up on the nuances we were meant to, or I didn't have the correct interpretation of books we read in school.
Then I found a copy of Crime and Punishment left in the breakroom of a job I had working 3rd shift when I was about 20. I always thought of that book as "too hard," but I picked it up and found it surprisingly readable and compelling. I finished it in a couple of days and it opened a whole new world to me of reading classics and other "difficult" books on my own for pleasure, and not worrying so much if I was getting the right message out of the book. I still love C&P and Dostoyevsky (and Russian classics) today.
Vonnegut, because until then, I seriously didn't realize books could make me laugh! I was a teenager bored in a holiday resort in Portugal, I packed Vonnegut because somewhere on the internet said Breakfast for Champions was 'a good book for guys to read'. It made that holiday so much more enjoyable, I was reading it everywhere we went, I think I remember finished it sitting on the ground outside a gas station thinking how much this book shattered everything I thought books could do. It was amazing. I immediately gave it to my cousin, and he also read it on the same holiday in two days!
I think for me it's One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. It felt so weird I recognized something so similar to the environment of my hometown from the book written from someone from the exact opposite side of the earth. It's so shocking and opened a whole new world to me. I mean I read a lot of book before that, but that was the first time that I really felt like books connect people regardless of space and time and cultural background to some extent. It's unbelievable.
I began with the seismic impact of Lord of The Rings and Roald Dahl and the comics of Pat Mills and in my teens progressed through more radical writers like Alan Moore and William Burroughs and HP Lovecraft, like yourself. a huge influence, but there was a huge amount of writers who had a powerful effect on me, from Anne Rice, Thomas Harris, Thomas Pynchon, Johnathan Swift, Michael Crichton, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Angela Carter, Apollinaire, Lynd Ward, Clark Ashton Smith, Phillp K. Dick, Iain Sinclair, Robert Bloch, Mark Danielewski, Henrik Ibsen, Lord Dunsany, Cormac McCarthy and still more, hundreds more, into today. All these books changed my worldview or expanded it.
twilight
I didn’t know Ted Cruz could read.
As a kid, I had a lot of trouble learning how to read. Really, it was because of a lack of motivation. So many people in my family handed me their favorite books promising me "you'll LOVE this! It's great". And every single time, it was exceptionally boring. Why would I want to bother learning how to read when everything out there, as far as I knew was so, so boring and not worth my time? I have no idea why the people in my life gave me so many historical fiction and non-fiction books to read when I was clearly a fantasy child. I loved anything with castles and dragons and magic, but everyone in my life was so busy giving me the books they liked that no one ever stopped to consider what I would like in a book. The first book that I ever truly enjoyed reading, and read to the end just because I wanted to, was Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. I didn't learn the word to describe the "Fantasy genre" until literally high school. But until I got to high school, this was the one book I had that proved to me that there were books out there that had things in it I would like. Not every book out there is boring, and there's a reason to keep reading to find the far and few between that I'd end up loving!
It's so important for people, kids especially, to develop the language to describe the things they like and don't like in stories so that they can ask for the books they're interested in reading. I didn't know how to tell people that the books they were giving me were boring other than "this is boring!" and so more and more boring books kept piling up.
My Mom was a teacher and a lot of days I would ride back home with her instead of walking or taking the bus.
One autumn evening in 6th or 7th grade (11/12 years old) we were in our school library long after everyone else had left. I had nothing better to do so I picked up books at random and flipped through them.
One was a Tolstoy short story collection. I got stuck on The Death of Ivan Ilyich. 16ish years later, I graduated with an English degree.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle started my love for Science Fiction, The Lord of the Rings, kicked off my love of Fantasy. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte put me on the path for reading classics, and The Good Earth ignited my love for reading literature set around the world.
I loved the Harry Potter books, classic answer. Then, I read in my high school years Wuthering Heights and I was absolutely blown away by it, I fell in love with the Victorian era and books from that time :))
For me it was Catcher in the Rye. I read it for the first time in the summer between 8th and 9th grade and to this day (while I have read books since that are probably better) I have never been so enamored with every sentence as that first reading. I will always be indebted to it
Thank you for your videos!
1. Umberto Ecco. "Name of the Rose" in particular, but all of his works
2. Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Cemetery of Forgotten Books
3. Mika Waltari (a Finnish writer, known best by his beast of a novel "Sinuhe")
It's impossible for me to not mention " the book thief" by Markus Zusak.
Told from the perspective of death ,it draws u in n takes u on an unforgettable ride of human emotions n power of 'words' and a string of beautiful characters.
Great and stimulating discussion as always. My first book-love was the Wizard of Oz, but what really made my eyes and mouth open wide with the stunned realization of how much beauty there could be in books was reading the best science fiction from the golden age of sci-fi (Arthur Clarke, Asimov, Silverberg, etc.). That was an injection of steroids into my imagination. “Childhood’s End” is my favorite sci-fi book ever.
I would say three authors (technically five I guess) made me fall in love with reading.
Erin Hunter with the Warriors series was sort of my Harry Potter, the fantasy series that got me hooked on fiction in elementary school and middle school.
In high school and undergrad I lost interest in reading since it felt like an obligation, turning more towards movies as my favorite art form. The big exception to this was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which I was assigned for a history class and absolutely adored, the first book I read in full in years.
Finally I have to give my thanks to Mark Twain for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which I read for fun/curiosity in grad school and has set me on the literary fiction addiction I am currently in today.
The two authors that as a kid I just devoured everything they wrote were Eva Ibbotson and Derek Landy. The books by other authors that really made an impact on me were The Illustrated Man, Looking for Alaska, Annie on My Mind, The Shadow of the Wind, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
It all began with the Lord of the Rings. My sister, being 10 years older than me, was trying to read it when I was in either 1st or 2nd grade but gave up. I picked the book up and it was the first time I lost myself in a story. I consumed dozens of fantasy novels as a result.
What brought me out of just being a fantasy fan to loving literature as a whole was Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Robert E. Howard's Conan stories for me. My Dad bought them in the 70's when he was a teenager. Stunning set of stories and they've lingered in the mind ever since.
"Green Eggs & Ham" by Dr. Seuss. It was the book that taught me how to read. I was obsessed with it.
At the young adult level, "Hatchet," "The Foxman," and "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler" kept me reading, along with Twain and Poe. At around 12-16, I read "Dracula," Michael Crichton. Ray Bradbury, and Dean Koontz.
Eventually, I became obsessed with C.S.Lewis (especially his Space Trilogy, and the Screwtape Letters) , Peanuts, Tolkien, and Calvin & Hobbes comics.
The only book I read in High School which surpassed my being forced was "Jane Eyre."
My first Literature books that I discovered as an adult which I blame for sending me into "the next level" as you say were "Lolita," "Anna Karenina," "Ada, or Ardor," and "The Stranger." They expanded my skills as a reader, and made me think about not only the story being told, but why it was told in that manner. I don't think I could have attempted Gravity's Rainbow if I didn't have some confidence obtained from Nabokov, Philip K Dick, and even some T.S. Elliot poetry.
The books that made me fall in love with reading were Little Women (an abridged version, when I was 10), The Myths of Cthulhu, Werther, Demian (all these in high school). I'm not really a rereading person, although now I'm getting old I started feeling the desire to go over a few books I loved in my childhood and adolescence and recently ordered most Lovecraft's works and Little Women in a full uncensored edition, and would really like to get a good translation of Werther (I'm a Spanish speaker, from Chile) and Demian. Other foundational texts came in my university years: Frankenstein and Matilda by Mary Shelley, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Orlando and A Room of One's One by Virginia Woolf, among others.
Big hug
This has definitely been The Neverending Story by Michael Ende for me. I will never forget when I received this book for Christmas and only left my room for something to eat for two days. I love Michael Ende in general, but this book showed me what literature is able to achieve in your head. Also the German edition is written in two different colours, depending on in which world you are. I never reread this book as an adult and never will, because I will keep the feeling sacred I had back then. Michael Ende wrote also for adults and I love these stories as well. I am quite sure you would also like them.
I loved the Peanuts as a child and still adore them.
This is one of my favorite novels & I actually highly, HIGHLY recommend re-reading it as an adult.The reason is for the 2nd half, when Bastian goes into Fantastica. As you may recall, the 1st half is Atreyu's story; it is a quest adventure, and is intended to pull both Bastian & you into the book. But the 2nd half somewhat abandons this genre & the book then switches to the mode of a spiritual odyssey narrative: there is much to learn about the nature of our desires, and how do we know what we want, the nature of our memories, the meaning of youth & aging, the meaning of true friendship...there are many lessons of wisdom in it. It is certainly not only a novel for children: if anything, more adults I know really, really need that 2nd half of "The Neverending Story." I reread it frequently & recommend it to adults frequently!
@@matthewjonassaint440 Thank you, Matthew, I will consider it.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys...great read
I love that book.
For me, it was ''The Great Gatsby'' by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Seeing a lot of Gatsby and Vonnegut love in the comments! Mine was Picture of Dorian Grey, Gatsby, and Sirens of Titan
For a while I taught first-year literature students at a British university, and Gatsby was by far the most widely beloved book among them :) I think it resonates very strongly with young people, and showcases what literature can achieve (and the ways it can play with language) within a very engaging package - a great story with unforgettable characters.
After reading and re-reading popular fantasy all through middle school - C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, JRR Tolkien - I stumbled on a copy of “Julian” by Gore Vidal in the library (looking at the Tolkien in the T, U, V section). I subsequently read virtually everything Vidal ever wrote after that.
"Earth Abides," be George R. Stewart. The final words of that novel are so mundane, and completely magical: "Men come and go, but earth abides." The way that the protagonist's trusty hammer becomes revered, god-like, in the eyes of the children of this post-apocalyptic novel shattered my expectations of what religion is, and how reverence and belief can come into being in the most unexpected ways.
Amazing video! I caught myself remembering about the books that made me fall in love with reading right after seeing your list and it was wonderful. Appreciate all your recommendations tho.
The books that really brought me into ecstasy when I was young and made me love reading were Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" (a bit more even than On the Road), Richard Brautigan's "Watermelon Sugar", Marguerite Dura's "India Song", Le Clezio's "War" and Clarice Lispector's "The Passion of G.H". Last year, almost 50 years after I read Watermelon, I - finally - travelled to Bolinas, California, where the story of the novel takes place and where Brautigan lived when he wrote it - and where he killed himself. A man there I met on the street - Americans are really nice and helpful people - led me to the house. It's private, you cannot go inside, anyway ... And I could drive up and walk on the mountain Tamalpais, not far from Bolinas, where Kerouac used to hike. So you see, how important some books can be for you.
The Trial by Franz Kafka. It was the second book I read as an adult and left me absolutely stunned. I later had similar experiences later on with other works by Kafka as well as Joyce, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky but it never quite compared to the first time
I love the idea that great literature helps tells us things we already knew but didn't know how to put into words - this is why my favorite books always kind of feel as if I had known them forever, even when I just discovered them recently. It's like they are a three-dimensional extension of my brain, somehow. :D
Looking back, Goosebumps & Fear Street are definitely books that made me as a reader. I read them obsessively in my late childhood / early teenage years. Then, I didn't read any horror for almost a decade, but during the last couple of years my interest in the genre returned, and now I'm doing a PhD on horror fiction and are thereby returning to one of my earliest passions, which is a nice feeling. :)
(Edited for typos.)
Looking back i started my reading experience with science fiction. It was primarily with a fascination with everything about Arthuc C Clarke. Chilldhoods End was a big book for me. At high school we read Jorge Luis Borges which initiated my passion for literature with El Jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan and all of Ficciones. Borges was a challenge to me to understand this intricate stories that he was telling. Then came less sci fi and more literature. To a fascination with Thomas Pynchon.
R.E. Howard's Conan stories, HG Wells had an impact but Lord of the Rings really got me. That was it.
Actually, I think it was 70's era Marvel comics that really got me going.
Thomas Pynchon was for me the gateway drug to a higher form of literature. Through his work I was able to seek out other authors such as William Gass and Gaddis, Roberto Bolano etc. Gravity's Rainbow remains a truly astonishing piece of fiction
as a young'un, the books in the _His Dark Materials_ series were the books i first read that showed me the extent of what some books were capable of making me feel. so i'd prolly say those marked the beginning of my ongoing adventure through the joys of reading
in terms of the more "serious"/"grown up" (kinda hate using terms like those, but ya know what i mean) stuff i read in my teens, the books i'd name which had the profoundest impact on me & my tastes would probably be _Les Misérables,_ _Pale Fire,_ _Cloud Atlas,_ _Catch-22,_ & _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_
One of the first adult authors I really got into was Neil Gaiman he is auto buy author for me. Neverwhere is the one that I constantly go back to .
Definitely Stoner by John Williams!
Yes!
@@jackfrancis2387 This is the first time I have ever seen anyone (other than wikipedia) reference that book. What did you like about it?
@@btetschner I like the honesty. There are certain times in my life where all I have is literature. It’s like a constant friend.
@@jackfrancis2387 I will have to read this sometime. I used to be a student (and a teacher's assistant) at the University of Missouri.
The British veterinarian James Herriot's books took me into the world of Yorkshire.
I was very young when I started to love reading. But clearest in my early memory were the Dr. Suess books and A Wrinkle in Time.
It's odd because I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite novels or anything, but I remember at 15 randomly picking up Brave New World, reading it in one sitting (unprecedented, I never really read before that), and I thought to myself, "Well, I didn't know you could do that with words..." and that's where it all started.
I only started reading books of my own volition when I got out of school at around 20; up until then it was all video games. I don't think there is one book that got me hooked. I just found an easy entry with straight forward fantasy novels and moved on from there.
The books that stick with me are mostly the ones that kindle my imagination; Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories are more or less frivolous and boring, but increadibly evocative; anything by Ursula Le Guin I've read was both profound and beautiful, and most recently Robert Jordan's wheeel of time series has stolen my heart. There are more books, some of which make me dream, some of which make me think, ranging from novels to philosophy, but few do both for me, sadly. The best example of that I can think of spontaneously would be The Little Prince.
Stories can give us so much, emotionally and intellectually, which is why I love them so much. Books just happen to be my preferred medium, I think.
The Hobbit, Roverrandom, the Redwall series, the Harry Potter series, The Hatchet, there are quite a few now that I think about it.
I wasn't very much into reading as a kid. My favorite one back then was Watership Down by Richard Adams. I liked reading The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton as well.
In my early adulthood I got interested in astronomy and sci-fi (mostly through tv and games). I picked up Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and it blew my mind. The book itself was excellent and then I also realized there's a whole world of sci-fi literature waiting for me which got me really excited and that's when I really got into reading.
James and the Giant Peach, The Children's Illustrated Bible, The Black Stallion series, IT(Stephen King). This book, in particular, absolutely propelled me into reading at 10 yrs old and I've never stopped.
Prometheus Unbound is the poem that made me decide to focus on Literature and writing. At the time, I was on the fence between dedicating to philosophy or Literature/poetry, but the power and philosophical elements ignited a Promethean fire inside me.
One hundred years of solitude and kafka on the shore
Both delivered me out of reality and into another dimension that ill never forget
And of course the great Dickens "a tale of two cities."
Genre books are so very important to kids as to introduce them to the world and most likely to connect them with 'adult' literature. People reading detective novels might start with Dan Brown and later introduced to Raymond Chandler. People reading Stephen King might get to read Lovecraft later. Sci-fi fans might get to know Philipe Dick and later, Vonnegut or Pynchon. No one start their literature journey with Joyce or Faulkner.(well, at least not much) I just feel sorry how our education keeps draws the line between different kinds of books.
Deltora Quest me too 🙏
My memory is defective, but my earliest memory of reading was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett which I read at about age 7 in 1966. I spent the next 4 years reading Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, alone with dozens of other books which I can't remember. Somewhere in there I read The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie books, Little Britches series and my father's Zane Grey collection. I spent the 70s & 80s reading whatever novels I could get my hands on, mainly science fiction. Then I got sidetracked by computer programming, for 30 years but still managed to read a few science fiction novels. Greg Egan and Alastair Reynolds among my favorites. These days I am reading more classics and philosophy. I don't recall ever reading any Lovecraft. I am about to embark on reading some Chinese novels. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Story of the Stone, and The Journey to the West. I did try Gravity's Rainbow, but set it aside after about 80 pages.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Tootle. Didn't know I could love a book with a really hateful character so much.
Currently reading it and oh boy, do I hate Ignatius
Definitely Brave New World -that book spoke to me. As you said in that quote. I was an angry 15 year old and BNW helped express that anger.
My tastes have changed considerably and there have definitely been works that did and meant more to me than it but I think it was Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” when I was about 13. I grew up to dislike Poe but I remember that reading being one of the first cases where I saw genuine craft in literature and couldn’t help but be in awe
Well i remember reading basically all my life. And before i could read my parents used to read me fairy tales for 2+ hours each night. So probably the first books that changed my world view and made me love books as objects and for what they contained was many of these fairytales.
Then came the endless Harry Potter re-reads. I think re-reads reaching mid- double digits.
I dont think i can evaluate the enflouence all those had, because i wasn't mature enough to assess the changes they induced.
Around 19, I read for the first time Lovecraft and it was magnificent, i simply couldnt stop till i read everything. It was the typing point for a persuit in reading books in the original language they were written.
Two others i read early in my adulthood that set me in the reading and philosophical path i am today i think were "what is man" by Twain and Epicurus by Theodorides (I am Greek).
After that the books I love are too many to mention, but highest of praises to Count Montecristo, Moby Dick, Huck Finn and Don Quixote. Also some excellent greek writers which i think are not translated in other languages, so i dont know if there is a point mentioning.
Goosebumps was it for me when I was young.
For most of elementary school and prior I read a ton of nonfiction. I would always check out the maximum number of books from my school's library, but they were all short books about history or animals. There were a couple fiction books I enjoyed (I'm actually surprised I didn't become a bigger fantasy fan at the time with how much I loved The Amulet of Samarkand), but I didn't really come into my own as a fiction reader until jr. high when I read Stephen King. I kept reading through jr. high and high school but I was playing video games and watching youtube videos a lot more. I finally became a more avid reader after I read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Towards the end of high school I got into postmodernism with Slaughter-House Five and The Crying of Lot 49, but House of Leaves just hit different lol. I read more books each year up until this year, when I graduated from college, and I think I need to cut back so I can actually focus on my career lol. It's really ironic that video games probably made me read less in high school, but now reading's distracting me from my game development goals.
The Trial by F. Kafka
Foucault's Pendulum by U. Eco
Crime and Punishment by F. Dostoyevsky
My first "grown up" book, that made me interested in books again, was The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Hardy Boys, then Treasure Island and The Hobbit, then Jurassic Park.
Honestly, i was reading only here and there for a long time , since i've played Pillars of Eternity which got me into books again.
I was such trash for the Blob that Ate Everything from when I was 5 years old or something, and that typewriter.. Love it 😂
Not sure which was the first one, but The Three Musketeers was one of them.
Although I have an MA in Eng Lit, the (mostly classic) works I studied didn't really make me passionate about literature. The ones that did are: The Brothers Karamazov, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, Ulysses, The Good Earth, The Great Gatsby, The Sea Wolf and 3 works by Chinghiz Aitmatov.
Difficult Death by Rene Crevel, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Hobbit & LOTR by JRR Tolkien when I was younger.
I read a lot as a kid so the first books that made me fall in love with reading were not very "good" books: I remember loving the school tales of Enid Blython St Clare's und Malory Towers in the german translations. I learned about 20 years later, that most of the so called "translations" were written for the german market by german authors. Even in the translated books they changed names, which game was played by the students (lacrosse was not very well known in Germany) and part of the plot. So I never really read Blython. ;)
The book that really changed me as a reader and brought my reading to the next level was "Der Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse.
For me it was, of mice and men
Catcher In The Rye
Slaughterhouse Five
The Sound and the Fury
Treasure Island, Sense and Sensibility, Crime and Punishment.
For me, it was 'Hyperspace' by Michio Kaku
I can still remember the first "real" book I ever read. 9 years old. "The Whipping Boy" That was the start. And the rest, as they say, was history.
You read S&M when you were 9??? Interesting.
I had a personality that did not inspire confidence. Meaning, if I chose a quality novel in school, the teachers took it away or just laughed. It was many years before I read seriously. I read lots of Russian novels. I read some of those Indian novels, the kind where nothing happens.
Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver are not too bad.
Carson McCullers is genius: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories are masterpieces!
Agreed, McCullers is underrated for her compassion, and Carver's short stories are pretty hard to dislike
A Brave New World by Huxley. In poetry Garcilaso de la Vega and Lord Byron😍
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Oliver Twist and Martian Chronicles. Oh yeah and All Jules Verne and Stranger in a strange land
Would love it if someone could mark where he brings up each book
Catch-22
Lord of the rings->1984->shadow of the wind->blood meridian-> now I’m in a fractal of everything Faulkner
For me it was Nancy drew
It all started with 2666 by Robert Bolaño.
Edit: Hadn't seen the video yet. So... how dare you, The Bookemist?! I'm kidding, of course. The first book I ever read for pleasure was probably The Catcher in the Rye. That thing you mentioned about loosing interest happened to me, where I lost all interest in reading only because I wasn't reading the right books. Bolaño had course correction effect on me about 4 years ago. The seedy guy at the bookstore put 2666 on the counter and sold it to me as if it was a bag of heroin: "You want some of the good stuff? You'll be back next week for more."
Factotum by Charles Bukowski
Goosebumps books. And then came Stephen King.
The Hobbit and The Road.
The Hobbit and Harry Potter
Robinson crusoe and the hobbit
Edgar Allan Poe