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How did you get your love of books?

K

Karina42

New Member
Just curious: what instilled in you all your love of reading/books? I don't even remember even how I got started loving to read, but I can remember always prefering to read rather than do anything else. But then again, I was always the "weird" kid who finished the book the night the teacher assigned it, and would get in trouble during class for reading while the teacher was lecturing. But I don't know how I was introduced to reading, because I am the only avid reader in my immediante family. Maybe it was just because I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a kid, and reading was a good alternative. :)
 
I thank my mother for reading to me & teaching me how to read. Every book I read in school, she would read it too and discuss it with me.
 
My parents are readers, my mother a writer as well, and they instilled in me a love of the written word. They taught me the alphabet by the time I was 2. They bought me books constantly ever since I can remember. When I was older, my father used to buy me the top 2 of the New York Times best seller list for every occasion. He introduced me to authors I probably wouldn't have found on my own given my age at the time. Chiam Potak, to name one (I hope I am spelling that correctly).

On top of all that, they NEVER told me what a word meant ("Look it up") and I read encyclopaedias when I was quite young. I was a nerd!
 
:cool: Discovered some wonderful old scented and yellowed books that had been dumped in a suitcase! They were all SF and Fantasy novels. I read them all and enjoyed them a lot! Later I read the Hobbit! After reading the Hobbit, I wanted to read more books like this so searched for other fantasy titles... rest is history
 
My grandmother was a librarian at our local library for a long time, and she passed the reading on to my mom who later passed it on to me. It probably had to do with my other grandmother being a second grade teacher too :)
 
I think I got my love of reading from my mother. She was always reading, and taught me to read before I started school. Nice one, Mum! :)
 
I've been reading since the age of three. In school, for a while, I was the nerd that was too nerdy for the nerds, so books were my friends. I still love books, they take me places, introduce me to people, teach me things.
 
Geenh said:
On top of all that, they NEVER told me what a word meant ("Look it up") and I read encyclopaedias when I was quite young.
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You too?! My mother had this big blue dictionary that was the be-all and end-all. I couldn't ask her any spelling without being told to 'look it up'. We also had these really old Funk 'n' Wagnells Encyclopedia that were the other 'look it up' destination. My brother and I used to whine about this, but I think it was just because we'd ask a question and it'd get mum interested.

Needless to say it was my mum who was principally responsible for my reading obsession, not least because she was a school librarian and could get me anything my heart desired!
 
It's in my genes, like black hair and brown eyes. ;) Seriously, I've been reading as long as I can remember too. Library trips were one of the best fun parts of childhood.
 
Robert Jordan's Wheel of time series. :) They where the books that made me realise that I like to read and I read the 10 books in one month which was very fast for me then.
 
I have my father to thank. I used to be read to at bedtime every night from when extremely tiny until I could read for myself, and I still get books for birthdays etc. and always give him books. He's had a lot to do with shaping my tastes over the years and we talk books when we see each other.
 
Something else that got me into reading was that our library would hold summer reading programs to encourage kids to read. I think it was something like for every 10 hours of reading you would get a book to keep. So anyway I would push myself to read as much as I could. Also, from the time I was little my mom would take my sister and I to the library and tell us to find books that we wanted to read, and then every night she would read to us. So reading was always encouraged.
 
cajunmama said:
I've been reading since the age of three. In school, for a while, I was the nerd that was too nerdy for the nerds, so books were my friends. I still love books, they take me places, introduce me to people, teach me things.
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Wow! You wrote my reply for me! My parents read to me from Day 1 and I had a large collection of childrens books.I remember being shocked in kindergarten that the other kids couldn't read much of anything. I loved going to library in school, and the public library was my idea of heaven! Books were my friends during the teen nerd years, and considering the directions some of the"cool" people went, I know books were the better choice! :)
My dad reads mostly Science Fiction-he let me read his 'I Robot' by Isaac Asimov when I was 10. That hooked me on Sci-fi. And we always watched the classic horror films on TV, as well as OuterLimits and TwilightZone, which is where my taste for horror comes from too! Thanks Dad!

We were also told to "look it up" when we needed and answer. Now I have that automatic reach-for-the-reference-book reaction to any questions that come up.
My mom never read novels because she called herself a "slow reader", but one day she decided she was missing out and started reading one book after another, and found she liked it and was even improving her skill! Shes been at it at least 20 years now and shows no sign of stopping! She's just decided to read 'ATale of Two Cities' by Dickens because she never read it in younger years! Yay Mom! :D
 
When I was 8 or 9 I read a lot of comics. One of my favorite characters was Conan the Barbarian, so naturally I just graduated from the comics to the Conan paperback novels. From there it was the Hardy Boys and then onto Stephen King. I think the 1st one I read by him was Cujo when I was about 12. Since then I don't think there hasn't been a period where I wasn't reading some book.
 
lenny nero said:
When I was 8 or 9 I read a lot of comics. One of my favorite characters was Conan the Barbarian, so naturally I just graduated from the comics to the Conan paperback novels. From there it was the Hardy Boys and then onto Stephen King. I think the 1st one I read by him was Cujo when I was about 12. Since then I don't think there hasn't been a period where I wasn't reading some book.
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That is an excellent testimony for comic book reading! :) It was and still is frowned upon by some as "not real books", yet most men and boys I know,( including my son who hates to read :confused:) read comics, or got thier desire to read for pleasure from comics. And if my Alex will read it-I'm all for it! Maybe schools should consider using some comics to get non-readers interested. Alex seems to find it easier to read sets of words in bubbles as opposed to pages of words where he loses his place or starts yawning like he hasn't slept in days! He never does that with a comic book! :cool:
 
I remember being so bored in third grade reading group. I was done reading the selection in a snap and I had to wait for what seemed like forever for my classmates to finish.
 
I got my love of reading from my parents, although they're not avid readers themselves, since I was young they've encouraged reading. The library was around the corner from our house and that's just about where I spent most of my time in my pre-public school days. My parents always implented reading especially since I had no siblings to play around with. And I remember when they gave me my children's dictionary, I spent weeks flipping through it and I still have it.
But I like to say that my love of books is genetic since my grandfather read a lot. I never spent a lot of time with him, and it just gives me a feeling of connection to him.
 
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