This post by Larry over at OF Blog was interesting, and I thought I'd do my own list here. The idea is to list what age you were when you started reading certain books. Some of the below were books read for school, if I can still remember them.
Five
The Railway Stories by the Reverend W. Awdry.
Transformers (comics) by Bob Budiansky and Simon Furman.
The Beano and Dandy (comics) by various writers.
Six-Seven
A bit hazy, but lots of Roald Dahl, various children's books and I think I first picked up Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings and put it down again since I thought it was too boring. I eventually got back to it. I think I picked up Isaac Asimov's juveniles, the Lucky Starr books, around this time as well.
Eight
Various Star Trek novels, most notably Enterprise: The First Adventure and the Dreadnaught!/Battlestations! duology.
This Time of Darkness by H.M. Hoover.
Nine
2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (due to the fine BBC adaption airing in this year).
Most of the Doctor Who novels and novelizations over the next few years, reaching about 150 books in total.
Ten
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.
2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke.
The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov.
Eleven
Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings.
Twelve
The Tripods series by John Christopher.
The ColSec trilogy by Douglas Hill.
Thirteen
The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
Fourteen
The Rama Cycle by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee.
The Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore.
The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley.
Childhood's End, The Ghost from the Grand Banks and Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.
Fifteen
The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (Books 1-16).
The Shannara books by Terry Brooks (Books 1-7).
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
The Mission: Earth series by L. Ron Hubbard, still the worst books I have ever read.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
Sixteen
The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay.
Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg.
Startide Rising by David Brin.
Eon by Greg Bear.
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
Seventeen
Magician by Raymond E. Feist.
The Wheel of Time (Books 1-7) by Robert Jordan.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
The Lions of Al-Rassan and A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay.
Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton.
Hawkwood's Voyage by Paul Kearney.
King's Dragon by Kate Elliott.
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
Seventeen is when I really got into SF&F in a big way, and tracking the books I read after that point becomes very difficult.
Interesting. Lots I've forgotten or left off, naturally, but it's notable that it was comics and TV tie-ins that first got me into reading on a regular basis (I picked up 2010, my first adult SF novel, after seeing the movie).
2 comments:
"The ColSec trilogy by Douglas Hill"
ah this brings back memories, I had forgotten Douglas Hill, his last legionaire and huntsman series as well the above mentioned were the first steps along the road that would eventually lead to the worlds of Erikson, Martin, Hamilton et al, I write this with a big nostalgic smile on my face, in fact I may try to track them down.
Yup. Sadly he passed away last year when he was knocked down by a bus in London :-(
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