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14 January 2007

Your favourite book?? What was the first book that you read that made you feel like it was you that you were reading about, or that made reading fun for you, or just brought a smile to your face… (hi, I’m new here, and thought I’d introduce myself:)).
post by: hadjiboy at: 07:29 | 42 comments
My favourite’s The Catcher in the Rye, and the first time I read it I wanted Salinger to be a “terrific friend of mine”!
posted by hadjiboy 14 January | 07:32
I dunno about my first book, maybe A Friend is Someone Who Likes You. My mom bought it for me before she even knew I was a girl. :) But I am still in love with The Master and Margarita.
posted by youngergirl44 14 January | 07:43
And hi!
posted by youngergirl44 14 January | 07:52
Hi! Welcome to MeCha! Did you bring carrots?

I don't know, really. Reading has always been fun for me -- even reading the books everyone else hated. But the first book I really liked was Mr. Boo by Hannu Mäkelä.
posted by Daniel Charms 14 January | 08:08
Hey hadjiboy. I think the first book that I read that I both picked out myself and really enjoyed was a prose translation of the Iliad and Odyssey written for elementary school kids. Man was that a good book, at least in memory.
posted by sciurus 14 January | 08:51
I was an odd kid - I never ever read fiction books for fun. I used to check out huge amounts of non-fiction books at the library (usually about "early man" or the european history or science). When I was about 8 or 9 I didn't have anything to read at home and found Alice in Wonderland. I can still remember my amazement as I found out that something so imaginative ("why would I want to read about something made up?") could be so wonderful.

It really was a moment of clarity for me. And I never looked back. Probably why I still love absurdity as well.
posted by gaspode 14 January | 08:54
Hi hadjiboy.

sciurus, I also reading a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey in the 5th grade. That was one of my most memorable experiences from grade school.

The first book that really "moved" me was The Dungeon Master.

I checked it out from the library in the seventh grade. I remember asking my art teacher how I should go about contacting an author and she told me how. I wanted to write the author a letter but never did.
posted by LoriFLA 14 January | 09:20
The first book I read that really moved me was called (I think) Bel Rea. I can't find a link.
posted by seanyboy 14 January | 09:28
The first book that put a smile on my fave was Blubber by Judy Blume. I had this fabulous substitute teacher for a few weeks in the fourth grade. She read Judy Blume's Blubber out loud to the class each afternoon and I remember being riveted. :) So, of course I read all of Judy Blume's books after that. I even read Wifey as a pre-teen, Blume's novel geared for adult readers.

In the eleventh grade my English teacher suggested that I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I couldn't put it down and remember staying up all hours reading it. I read everything by Atwood I could get my hands on after that.

Sorry for blathering on, books are one of my favorite things to talk about.
posted by LoriFLA 14 January | 09:43
Hello everyone:)
No please go on, I love it when people talk about books; I’m not a very well-read person, but I admire those who are.
I saw Les Miserables a couple of months back, and had the same Aha moment that gaspode did.
I hope to pick up the habit if I can, or at least make sure my children do when I have kids.
posted by hadjiboy 14 January | 09:49
i can't really remember but The Little Prince made an impression on me and i still have great affection for it.
posted by ethylene 14 January | 10:00
I remember really loving Encyclopedia Brown and The Great Brain. They made me feel like being smart was cool.
posted by jonmc 14 January | 10:13
I really should proofread more.

And hadjiboy, I am not well-read either. Far from it. I am seriously lacking in the classics department. I read what I think I will enjoy and that includes a lot of fluff. :)
posted by LoriFLA 14 January | 10:26
Wow, this is bringing back memories! I also loved Encyclopedia Brown AND the Great Brain. I also remember a book about a land called Og that I really liked. I have always devoured both fiction and no-fiction. Like 'spode, I can recall taking out 14 books for 2 weeks, as that was the most they would allow. Books on ancient Egypt, the (American) Old West (I have long loved the romantic notion of the knave with character).

Books that really spoke to me as I got a little older, included On The Road (which I read at 17, just about the best time) and Franny and Zooey (I like CitR enough, but to me its the weakest of the 4) which taught me that fiction could also teach philosophy. I still have fond memories of a Eureka! moment when I read the part about Seymour wandering by and asking Buddy, who was playing marbles, "Could you try not aiming so much?".

There are many more, but I think I've rambled enough. Suffice it to say a) I am STILL finding books that make me love reading and b) hi hadjiboy!
posted by richat 14 January | 10:28
I've always enjoyed Marguerite Henry's books like "Misty of Chincoteague" and "King of the Wind". The first one that really stuck with me was "Waterford Down". And as an early teen, I picked up a battered copy of Stephen King's "The Stand" and was hooked. (Not so much on his recent stuff, though.) I am a bookaholic, though, I'm not happy without at least two or three nearby.
posted by redvixen 14 January | 10:49
Wow, this is bringing back memories! I also loved Encyclopedia Brown AND the Great Brain.

Yeah. What I dug about both characters is that they were soopah-geniuses but they weren't stereotypical dorks. They were cool and brainy.
posted by jonmc 14 January | 11:03
One book that really spoke to me as an 18-year old was The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Looking back I can see a lot of similarities between me (bookish classicist) and Richard Papen, the narrator of the book, for quite a bit of my time through university. (I didn't kill anyone, though, I hasten to add...!)

It's still a book that can bring me out in goosebumps just for the sheer quality of the writing.

posted by greycap 14 January | 11:12
One book that really spoke to me as an 18-year old was The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

The Secret History is one of the few 'Generation X' books that I've never actually read. I like Coupland's stuff and Jay McInerney's too. I remember Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries blowing me out of my socks at 16 since it was one of the few books about adolescence that didn't revolve around 'the big dance' or 'the big game' and acknowledge the underbelly of teenage life.
posted by jonmc 14 January | 11:17
Hi Hadjiboy,

I've enjoyed your posts on metafilter so glad to hear from you. I was discussing the recent foot fetish post with a friend from Peshawar and we were practically tearing out hair out until we saw your posts!
On the book front, the very first book I could read myself was The Children of Lir one of the most famous Irish legends, and it wasn't the haunting story so much as the fact that I could finally do it myself. After all, reading opens up the world
posted by Wilder 14 January | 11:53
Hey Hadjimaladjiboy:

In no particular order, but some I remember as being profoundly great:

1. Dune, by Frank Herbert. (The Illustrated Dune is the best way to go for this one.)

2. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. (with great illustrations by Jules Feiffer, who I'm still a big fan of to this day.)

3. The Chronicles of Narnia

4. Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh.

5. The Pigman, by Paul Zindell.

6. Max's Delicatessen, by I can't remember now...

7. and of course, anything by J.D. Salinger.

Cheers, and welcome!
posted by Lipstick Thespian 14 January | 12:03
I remember when I was 7 or 8 reading a book called 'Janny' about a little Dutch girl. I can't remember anything the book was about, but I know I was captivated it.

I also read 'What Katy Did' when I was about 10, and really loved that book. I wanted a Cousin Helen.

I read 'The Secret History' a few years ago and I think it's a masterpiece. I was desperately disappointed with 'The Little Friend' which I waited so long for.

And although I'm probably 10 years too old for the demographic, Jonathan Tropper's books resonate with me in the same way that The Secret History does.
posted by essexjan 14 January | 12:22
Interesting question, hadjiboy, from someone who says they aren't well read.

Give us the scoop, what have you read lately then¿ You're looking for clues huh¿ ]Nothing wrong with that BTW[

I think it all depends on one's age. I remember reading many Zane Grey ]Westerns[, but can't imagine reading them now. Later I remember lots of sci-fi to Gormenghast ]Mervyn Peake[ to the many mentioned here. Little Prince, yes, Frank Herbert, Salinger, Atwood...I could go on. But I shan't.

At different stages of one's life or current interests maybe determine what one would choose reading.

So lately it's been "Tipping Point"— Malcolm Gladwell, "Deep Survival"— Laurence Gonzales, "An Unquiet Mind"— Kay Redfield Jamison and "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"—Dave Eggers. Some are ones I've been catching up on.

I'm afraid of going into bookstores because I drop waaaaay to much $$$. Not that it stops me, but I try to limit myself.
posted by alicesshoe 14 January | 13:17
I realised I never said hi and welcome, hadjiboy!

You will certainly endear yourself to most bunnies by kicking off with a reading thread :)
posted by gaspode 14 January | 14:03
The Ramona books - kids books. Ramona the. . .crumb? I don't remember.
posted by rainbaby 14 January | 14:04
heh, Atlas Shrugged for me when I was 11. For the first time I read in words the world view I had already developed.
posted by mischief 14 January | 14:20
    I think the first book I really found a personal connenction with was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. A lot of that book hit home with me, from the fence white washing scene, which seemed über clever of Tom from my 8 year old perspective, to the descriptions of having to memorize Bible verses for Sunday School prizes, and I too, longed for the easy freedom of a shared corncob pipe of tobacco with the disreputable but fascinating Huck Finn.

    I read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by age 10, and begged my mother for a trip to Hannibal, Missouri the whole year I was 11. I'd seen the mighty Mississippi River a lot during the years we lived down near Memphis, but I wanted to see it as Mark Twain himself first saw it, and I remember the weekend that Mom and I went to Hannibal from Kansas City as one of the best of my boyhood, although it was hardly what I expected, and we wound up spending only Saturday afternoon in Hannibal.
posted by paulsc 14 January | 14:57
I don't have any conscious memory of learning how to read--I think I knew in utero.

Nthing lots from the above list...but I think the first character with whom I identified was Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn--my favorite book when I was twelve.
posted by brujita 14 January | 15:15
I think The Secret History is the best of the Bennington (i.e., set at) novels.
posted by brujita 14 January | 15:16
Pretty early, Black Beauty, then The Once and Future King.
posted by theora55 14 January | 15:27
Holy crap mischief! Atlas Shrugged at 10? I could barely slog through that at 24 or so. I found the first 400 pages tedious, but then, the last 700-800 really came together!

But man...reading that at 10? Wow. Mrs richat and I used to go back and forth about our early reading skills. We ended when she claimed to have read the LOTR trilogy in the womb...
posted by richat 14 January | 16:21
I had the same reaction, richat!

I remember trying to read Wuthering Heights when I was 10 or 11 or so, and just putting it aside in boredom and frustration. Picked it up again for high school english class a few years later and it was much easier.
posted by gaspode 14 January | 16:23
I had a fairly advanced grasp of written language very early. I had been writing short stories since I was five, the year before I entered school, and by fourth grade I was writing novellas.

Then I discovered my cousin's copy of Atlas Shrugged and I devoured it. The wedding of ethos and plotting was a revelation, especially since that ethos was one for which I had pretty much developed the basics on my own, and so I recognized its use without having to figure out the underlying mindset. By sixth grade I was writing 40,000 word novels.

Then I discovered algebra, geometry, calculus and physics...
posted by mischief 14 January | 16:39
The Ramona books - kids books. Ramona the. . .crumb? I don't remember.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (and all the rest by Beverly Cleary) for sure. I especially loved Henry and Ribsy. That's very young though. By 4th grade, it was Lloyd Alexander's Chornicles of Prydain, and then onto the LOTR trilogy. Oddly, that about the only fantasy stuff I've ever read.

My big "whoa" moment in college came when reading Camus' the Fall. Now, if there is a hell, I'm probably damned there. Thanks, Al.
posted by ufez 14 January | 16:46
"...Then I discovered my cousin's copy of Atlas Shrugged and I devoured it. The wedding of ethos and plotting was a revelation, especially since that ethos was one for which I had pretty much developed the basics on my own, and so I recognized its use without having to figure out the underlying mindset. ..."
posted by mischief 14 January | 16:39

I don't know how practical it might be, but have you considered banding together with other child victims of Rand, and suing her estate in some kind of class action proceeding?
posted by paulsc 14 January | 17:20
Hell, I tried to read Atlas Shrugged in my twenties and never got past the first couple of pages. But I'm a bonehead, what's your excuses?
posted by jonmc 14 January | 19:36
paulsc made me laugh. The institute may appreciate it.

i read it trapped in a sweltering laundry room in a ridiculously hot summer in union square park at sixteen, because i was trapped in a sweltering laundry room in a ridiculously hot summer in union square park.
i still like the cigarettes in it and the diy aspects of it.
posted by ethylene 14 January | 19:53
Ah, but paulsc, unlike the Randroids, I was not a victim; I already had a similar mindset before I read her. Later in life, I realized that my pre-adolescent views were more animalism, which closely parallels objectivism.
posted by mischief 14 January | 20:14
ethylene: Please sir, draw me a sheep.

The Little Prince holds a special place for me too. My mother received a copy of it from Witold K, an artist she was engaged to before marrying my father.
posted by youngergirl44 14 January | 20:15
If you liked (or hated) Catcher in the Rye, might I suggest the recent King Dork, by Frank Portman?
posted by Rock Steady 14 January | 21:39
"made reading fun for you" The Dr. Seuss books and the PD Eastman books. "the first book that you read that made you feel like it was you that you were reading about" The four Winnie The Pooh books and Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses were just so cool.

Also, welcome hadjiboy!
posted by arse_hat 15 January | 00:13
John D. Fitzgerald wrote several adult memoirs before he did the Great Brain books--what he doesn't say in the children's books it that his mother was Mormon.
posted by brujita 15 January | 01:02
Probably Robot Dreams by Asimov.

And I loved the Great Brain books.
posted by drezdn 15 January | 12:08
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