I remember it like it was yesterday, reading...

[hitmouse]

Emil and the Dtectives by Erich Kastener. Aged 8. Mid 1970s. We had arrived in baking hot Melbourne in an anonymous suburban house belonging to Monash University, from dull 1970s suburban Birmingham UK. Too hot to do anything. I started to read this book on the sofa and was gripped, reading it all the way through. In the same part of the world, I remember borrowing Starman Jones from Toorak library that year, the first SF novel I ever read, and A Wizard of Earthsea from my pimary school library. "You might be too young for that" said the school librarian.

 

[nixie]

A number of books spring to mind but the one that had the most impact was Magician: Raymond E Feist.
My introduction to fantasy as an adult, having a new baby, lack of sleep affecting concentration I picked it up, i was hooked within minutes and my love of fantasy was born.

 

[williamjm]

The Lord of the Rings (omnibus edition) - I read this while on a trip (wasn't the first time I'd read it) to Holland, Germany and France with my grandparents when I was oh, 14 or so. I was (and still am) painfully shy which was not something my grandparents could understand and they dragged me hither and yon and introduced me to everyone they met, old friends, distant relations...and expected me to converse with them and interact. While I did, very slowly and with much prodding, I escaped every night into the book. It was a giant paperback with all three books in one and it was my sanity.

I also remember reading that for the first time, but unfortunately didn't have the omnibus edition. My aunt had bought me The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring as a Christmas present, I think I would have been 10 or 11 at the time. For Christmas we went on holiday to Benidorm, and I remember being very frustrated after finishing FOTR halfway through the holiday that I couldn't find the sequels for sale anywhere, I ended up re-reading FOTR again.

A number of books spring to mind but the one that had the most impact was Magician: Raymond E Feist.
My introduction to fantasy as an adult, having a new baby, lack of sleep affecting concentration I picked it up, i was hooked within minutes and my love of fantasy was born.

I remember reading the first chapters of Magician while sitting in a car in the car park of Asda in Perth while my Mum was shopping in the supermarket. This was probably about a year or so after I'd read Lord of the Rings for the first time.

 

[Parson]

Great thread!!!

overlooking the beautiful lake in the Indian hill station of Kodaikanal. I was working as a teaching assistant at an international school there during a year out before university.

In the line of it's a small world .... I just finished reading Elephant Baseball by a Kodaikanal graduate Paul Heusinkveld, the book is about his high jinks as a missionary kid there.

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My own remembrance is very mild and not the world traveler sort of you all ..... Yes, I'm jealous .... I was in 7th grade and we got one of those Scholastic Book order things. I had read some Heinlein by that time, but I ordered Cat's Eye by Andre Norton and I was so excited when I got it in school one day. By the next morning I had the book read and was fully hooked on S.F.

 

[Bick]

Great thread!!!



In the line of it's a small world .... I just finished reading Elephant Baseball by a Kodaikanal graduate Paul Heusinkveld, the book is about his high jinks as a missionary kid there.

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My own remembrance is very mild and not the world traveler sort of you all ..... Yes, I'm jealous .... I was in 7th grade and we got one of those Scholastic Book order things. I had read some Heinlein by that time, but I ordered Cat's Eye by Andre Norton and I was so excited when I got it in school one day. By the next morning I had the book read and was fully hooked on S.F.

It’s interesting that Andre Norton has come up a few times - I guess the young age at which many will have read her books lends itself to vivid recollection.

I’m curious to hear about more recollections from adulthood too though. A bit like folk all knowing where they were and what they were doing at the time of the Kennedy assassination/9-11 (delete as appropriate), it may be that certain notable events also make that day in history clearer than others, and thus we can recall many details about it, including what we read that day. Only a thought, as for me, I far from prove the point - I can’t recall what I was reading on the day my son was born, or when I got married or on 9-11-2001 so perhaps books take a back seat on such days. Hmm, anyone have a better memory of their reading on days memorable for other reasons?

(Which is a slightly different question, almost a sub-thread. Please do keep coming along with the recollections to the original ask, I don’t mean to derail my own thread question; I’m loving the general recollections!)

 

[Boaz]

I remember it like it was last night....

When I was eight years old, I remember reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology in bed... and my mother came in and took my book away...

...now it's iphones and playstations.

 

[Extollager]

I'm pretty sure that I was reading the Ace paperback of The King in Yellow when my family was in Grants Pass, Oregon, for my grandpa's funeral. At any rate that's been my association of event and book for a long time. This would be almost 50 years ago.

 

[Extollager]

I had just been reading Trappist monk Thomas Merton's Wisdom of the Desert, which is a collection of stories and sayings of ancient ascetics. Some of the selections are rather striking. For Christmas, I gave the young woman I had l;ately been in love with a copy of the one-volume paperback of George MacDonald's fantasy novels Phantastes and Lilith. Along with (surely) something seasonal, I copied several passages from Merton's little collection of celibate desert-dwellers into the front and back of the book. I must have known by then that this one-sided romance wasn't going anywhere. But the funny thing is that I'm sure that, at the time, I did not intend an application to our situation.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

During the first time I was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I pulled it out in the middle of a debate at a high school tournament, to quote something -- the topic eludes me now, but the part I was quoting was the bit about doing away with grades in school. In his rebuttal, the guy I was debating reached into his briefcase, pulled out his copy, and quoted something back at me. After we finished, the judge asked if that was a commonly used book in the debate tournaments, and we both laughed and said we'd never seen anyone else use it.

Ironically, I've never managed to finish that book, despite trying many times over the years. I think the part he quoted back at me was past where I'd read.

I also remember reading Hitchhiker's Guide and the others at debate tournaments that year, but lots of people were carrying those around. Not for proving points, though.

 

[Boaz]

@Extollager You wooed her with Thomas Merton?!?! I have sought the assistance of William Shakespeare, Kevin Costner, and Marvin Gaye, but never from Merton.

 

[hitmouse]

Great thread!!!



In the line of it's a small world .... I just finished reading Elephant Baseball by a Kodaikanal graduate Paul Heusinkveld, the book is about his high jinks as a missionary kid there.

That is interesting. I haven't heard of that. Will look it up. Many thanks.

 

[farntfar]

On my twelfth birthday I was given a copy of the Lord of the Rings, (The well known yellow paperback edition) which I started to read just after supper. At 7 o'clock the next morning I finished it, having carried on without stopping until then.

It's the only book I've ever read in a single sitting other than Inish Carraig, which I read in one go on a flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam; once more neglecting to sleep, as planned.

There. Two memories in but a single entry.

 

[Toby Frost]

I’m curious to hear about more recollections from adulthood too though.

Sad to say, my list of books like this thins out in my mid-twenties. I think it's because, having read quite a lot by then, there wasn't that much which was going to have the same sense of amazing me. I think it becomes easier to read something and say "That's a bit like Titus Groan" or whatever. I wonder what I would have made of a book like The Night Circus, which just seemed a bit twee and overdone, if I had read it at 15.

I read a good book by the presenter and musician Mark Radcliffe a while ago, in which he used records to talk about interesting episodes in his life. I suppose that was the equivalent of books.

 

[BigBadBob141]

I can remember sitting up in bed getting over the flu, in those days if you had the flu it was a week in bed at least, reading "A Fall Of Moondust" by Arthur C Clarke.
I can some time later remember sitting on my bed reading the story "The Game Of Rat And Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith from one of the early "Best S.F." (either 1, 2 or 3) collections edited by Edmond Crispin and published by Faber & Faber, as mentioned before this one blew my socks off!!!
These were in the mid to late Sixty's as I was still in school.
P.S. Needless to say as mentioned in other threads, both of these copies were from good old Nuneaton Library!!!

 

[Boneman]

1. 1964 in a very repressive boarding school, one Sunday morning I was caught reading Angelique and the Sultan by a housemaster. Very disappointed I'd lowered myself to "this kind of rubbish" (I'd covered it in brown paper, so you couldn't see the cover) he forced me to read 'A Kind of Loving' by Stan Barstow, and to produce a report... It should be noted the housemaster was a Yorkshireman. I took myself off to the school library, where only the intellectuals went, and found a big windowledge to sit on. To my absolute amazement I loved it, and consumed it in one sitting! First book I'd ever read in 1st person. He thought my report was sarcastic, because I said how much I loved it.*

2. July 1968. Lying in bed with tonsilitis, my older sister was going to the shops, asked if I wanted anything. Daytime TV had not been invented back then so I gave her ten shillings (50p in today's money) and asked her to buy me a big book to read. She returned with DUNE. Two days later, I finished it.

* I was more careful about hiding Angelique books after this...

 

[AlexH]

I plan to read 1984 for the first time on the Isle of Jura (where Orwell wrote it), and I'm sure that'll be unforgettable. It was supposed to happen 3 years ago, but I didn't reach Jura.

I hardly read fiction at all between about 16-26, and I only tend to read before bed and on commutes, so not too exciting really. There are some scenes I remember vividly from books, but not so much when or where. I used to remember when and where I first heard every favourite band but those memories have faded.

Bick's travelling story reminds me of a non-fiction Terry Pratchett book. I'd spent 2 months travelling through the Outer Hebrides (the reason I didn't get to Jura to read 1984). I'd had an amazing time, mostly on my own. I took the ferry to Skye and stayed at The Lookout, which had a view of the islands I'd travelled across for 2 months, and mountains I was about to walk in the other direction. Amongst other books, someone had left "Shaking Hands with Death," and their note inside convinced me to read it. It was a poignant but optimistic read, especially with that incredible view I had. That day ended sharing the bothy with some cool people, an incredible storm and rainbow, plus one of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen. Pictured is The Lookout, but the views to Skye's Cuillin and the Outer Hebrides were even more stunning.

 

[Extollager]

@Extollager You wooed her with Thomas Merton?!?! I have sought the assistance of William Shakespeare, Kevin Costner, and Marvin Gaye, but never from Merton.

Well, by Christmas1976 I knew that we were not headed for a life together!

 

[Extollager]

I started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs in the second half of 1969 or, at latest, the first half of 1970. I seem to remember walking home from somewhere reading one of his books -- perhaps what I'm pretty sure was my first, A Fighting Man of Mars -- in the twilight. I'd have been 14. It may have been dark enough that I had to read just when I was close enough to the streetlights. This was in the then laid-back town of Ashland, Oregon.

But this is nearly a memory of 50 years ago, & I don't completely trust it.

It was not my habit to read while walking.

 

[Extollager]

I believe that I read the Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperback of Lord Dunsany's The Charwoman's Shadow during "recovery" from surgery for a pilonidal cyst, as a high school senior, in the first half of 1973. I would expect that's the kind of surgery for which you'd be sent home the same day, now. But I had one or two nights in hospital. Hospitalization was a lot less expensive back then.

 

[Extollager]

I seem to remember reading The Possessed (Signet Classic edition; the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation as Demons is the one I recommend) on the Greyhound bus from Seaside, Oregon, where I was a high school English teacher, to Portland, where I would stock up on books and LP records about once a month. This would have been in February 1979. In August 1973, I rode the Greyhound from Ashland to Coos Bay, Oregon, to see my best friend, and was reading Colin Wilson's The Philosopher's Stone.