How were you introduced to reading?

doctor evil

With me it would have to be my mum who took us all from an early age to the library each week. We`re also a bookish family and have a lot of books stored in boxes! as there in not enough space. Influence of others is paramount, I was introduced to Terry Pratchet and others years ago by my brother who brought the books home. The colourful cover also helped, made the book very pretty .
Also read Jane Eyre(spelling? ) when I was eleven, the remedial teacher(I`m dyslexic) I had read passage from it about the red room where her uncle died in (havent read the book in years so could be wrong) and I was hooked!. There are alot of other authors that I was introduced to by others, very few authors I have discovered by my self.

Tar.Aldarion

library at a very young age,used to get 8 books out of the library every two weeks to read using my and my siblings cards.reading that much in bad light has damaged by eyes a lot though....

monkeyfudge

To be honest, I can't remember a time when I coulndn't read.

Earrly books that I remember reading by myself were the Bottersnikes and Gumbles books.

grimloch

Parents introduced me to the library when I was young. They encouraged me to read instead of just plonking me in front of the television for hours on end. Definatley one of the things I'm very grateful for.

tman

I remember having the Lord of the Rings read to me as a nipper (and being scared ****less of Shelob )
First book that i can remember reading was a "Wonderful world of Richard Scarry" one... i have fond memories of my older bro teaching me to read with that.
Was introduced to Iain Banks - my favourite author - by my mother iirc... Whit was the first book of his that i read.

Kenshi

I started when I got a goosebumbs book at a book fair in primary school.

simu

Parents buying me books - had hundreds of Enid Blytons!

Steveire

Started by taking my bigger sisters Roald Dahl books. Remember The Twits? Georges Marvelous Medicine? The BFG? Esio Trot? << Maybe my favourite.

From there i jumped to secret seven. Don't think i read much famous five. Or maybe vice versa. Which had a girl called Georgie? They seemed always to be having picnics and cakes.

I must say that the habit went dormant for long periods since then, in between which i read things like Hitch hikers guide series, James Herriot books, and LOTR. The usuals. Very recently i've become re-interested in reading. I want to read the one's i've always heard of, but never read myself. Including things like War and Peace if it's any good. I read 1984 recently. Terrific. And just today i finished Schindlers List. Also fantastic. I don't know if any of the places described in it are still there, but i'm going to Crakow later in the summer, so i'll be trying to find his camp and factory. Next on my list is a WW1 factual book. It might turn into a flick-through, and if it does, i'll maybe start Star of the Sea. Thank you Roald Dahl.

nesf

simu wrote:

Parents buying me books - had hundreds of Enid Blytons!

Same here.

Anyone else remember the little Ladybird books? Mom used to buy books constantly for me when I was a kid. I was always encouraged to read and given money for books.

My gifts from my aunts and uncles were always vouchers for book shops.

Was very good of them considering most of my extended family don't read much beyond the newspaper. So there wasn't a literary tradition in the family to spur them on.

dudara

Like everyone else here, it was my parents, and especially my mom, a national school teacher. I was an only child until I was 10, so I read lots. And I read everything!! I used to buy so many books at the local second hand shop, at jumble sales. I owned every Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and so many more. My mother and I had library subscriptions for the local library in macroom as well as the mobile library that called to the village. If she didn't want any books I would use her tickets as well as my own. I'd say that in the summer, when things were quiet that I easily read 10 or more books a week. Our attic at home is packed full of boxes containing my books because my parents can't throw anything awy. At one stage, I even read my Children's Encyclopaedia Brittanica, starting at Volume 1 through to Volume 20. I read books called "1000 questions and answers", as well as the Guinness Book of Records. As you might guess, I was pretty good at table quizzes.


Once you read as a kid, it's a gift you never lose, even if other things reduce the reading time available to you. These days I still read 1-2 books a week, more when I have free time.

LadyJ

I was about 2 or so and my mom would hold up flash cards and I'd repeat the word.
Then she got me Anne and Barry books and Peter and Jane books etc.

Scarinae

I learned to read as a child when my older brother and sister read me stories, I would follow the words that they were reading and I taught myself that way. By the time I started school I could already read perfectly, so the teachers had to find some way to occupy me while the other kids were reading 'Tara and Ben'. They used to send me to the school library and let me choose whatever books I wanted, and I'd read them at my desk during class. As well as this, my mother didn't give me pocket money as a child, but she would bring me to the local bookshop every week and let me choose a new book. When my mother went back to work, I used to walk to the local library after school and wait for her there - she's generally pick me up at about four, which would gave me enough time to do my homework and then get stuck into some books. I absolutely adored reading, so I didn't mind. And I loved (and still love) getting book tokens as presents! The first time I did the MS Readathon, I read 53 books in the allocated time - after that, people learned not to sponsor me per book anymore!!

Tar.Aldarion

my parents never encouraged me,ye ****! :P

grimloch

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

my parents never encouraged me,ye ****! :P

Well fair play to you that you got into it yourself. Some of the kids these days have no imagination and are absolutely restless unless they're plonked in front of the T.V.

Tar.Aldarion

hmm always preferred books to tv but there were some classic cartoons when i was like 4!

defiantshrimp

For as long as I can remember I’ve been an avid reader but I don’t remember learning how to read in the slightest (just vague memories of writing my name in junior infants!), though I’m pretty sure I learned in school. I do remember my parents used to read to me a lot when I was very young and when I could read they bought me loads of books. I used to devour the Usborne Science books and Noddy books if I recall!

doctor evil

I feel so bad now!, I`m not reading as much books as I could, personally I blame boards hehe.

GUBU

Fishie wrote:

By the time I started school I could already read perfectly, so the teachers had to find some way to occupy me while the other kids were reading 'Tara and Ben'. QUOTE]

I was exactly the same - I got moved up a year after a few weeks for that very reason! I can't remember a time when I didn't read, and my parents always encouraged me, taking me to the library from a young age and letting me read just about anything in the house. It's something that always stays with you, and I find it impossible to walk past a bookshop without going in for a look around.

Geiger

It was a mixture of the library and Roal Dahl books we had at home. We got too many fines from the library though so that stopped. Ahh...George's Marvellous medicine, good stuff!

scorpy

I can't remember ever not reading everything and anything I could get my hands on. I devoured dahl at an early age, all of those 'animals of farthing wood' books(actually I was big into the talking animals genre, looking back on it)... I picked up the hobbit from my parent's room because the cover looked interesting! so very glad that I did. later, learning that there was a sequel to the hobbit, I was desperate to read the dusty old copies of lord of the rings I discovered on a shelf, only to have them taken off me for being 'too scary'. obviously I read them as soon as my mother's back was turned!

I remember we went through a dry patch wherein I had read every vaguely diverting book in the children's section of the local library, everything in the house... and now I had nothing to read. so I picked up an old copy of wired from the stacks in the study, and read that. read all of them, actually. several times. I was a very bored child that summer ^_^;

Fenny

Fishie wrote:

By the time I started school I could already read perfectly, so the teachers had to find some way to occupy me while the other kids were reading 'Tara and Ben'.

Again, exactly the same here! Although I have very vague memories of learning to read, I do remember everyone else reading Tara and Ben and the teacher giving me the first class book to read.

My sisters used to read me books all the time at bedtime and I remember having their tattered copies of Enid Blyton's Famous Five and things like that. I also visited the library fanatically and loved Roald Dahl (especially The Witches - my favourite Dahl book). I think once a love for reading has been instilled in you, you never really get out of it. To this day, I can't sleep unless I read a book at night.

So really it wasn't my parents as such who encouraged me, but my siblings.

Breezer

My Mam used to read to me every night when I was little - I'm sure she didn't do it when I was just born or anything but as far back as I can remember. I used to keep her there for hours especially with "Rumples and Tumples go to the Country" (two stuffed rabbits go out and get scared of a real rabbit as far as I remember) and "Chicken Licken" (a horrible story where a load of farm fowl think the sky is falling down and end up asking a fox for advice - the fox then tricks them and eats them. I must have been quite the little sadist because I could never get enough of it! ).

I used to read everything - Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, the "Garden Gang" books (who doesn't like walking, talking fruits and vegetables?!) - everything.

I think school and exams tend to turn you off a bit though - in the last few years I've found it hard to dissociate reading from studying and I'm only really getting back into it now - reading Jung Chang's new book "Mao - The Unknown Story" - anyone else read it? Interesting

Dar

Firefox was on tv one night and afterwards my dad threw me over the book. Ended up reading all of Craig Thomas' books followed by Tom Clancy's (hey I was 10, give me a break ).

nesf

Dar wrote:

Firefox was on tv one night and afterwards my dad threw me over the book. Ended up reading all of Craig Thomas' books followed by Tom Clancy's (hey I was 10, give me a break ).

Tbh mate, so long as a person is reading books I will respect them for it. I don't care if they are reading Wittgenstein or Dan Brown. As long as they are reading, that's all that matters to me.

Then again, I'm a nazi who thinks that everyone should read books at some level. Maybe I'm just deluded or something.

dudara

Dar wrote:

Firefox was on tv one night and afterwards my dad threw me over the book. Ended up reading all of Craig Thomas' books followed by Tom Clancy's (hey I was 10, give me a break ).

Hey, the older Tom Clancy books rock. He was a seriously good entertaining writer.

delly

I started reading 'The Beano' when i was about 6 or 7. My first real book was 'James and the giant peech'. Currently reading Bill Clinton's book in paperback.

grimsbymatt

Have always been able to read (well, as long as I can remember) - my Dad says I just worked it out. I remember when I first started school and they had us learning to read from cards you could swipe through a machine that would read it out to you. I could already read and write and was so bored by this, so I just started reading books from the reading shelf - luckily the teacher let me go ahead and read above my age level, otherwise school would have been so sh!t.

Used to absolutely love Roald Dahl, I read Matilda so many times. I would read 2 or more books a day when I had the time; I'd sometimes sit down with a book and not look up again until it was finished, thinking that only about 20 minutes had passed! I also remember getting quite heavily into the Hardy Boys books (shot to the solar plexus, anyone?!) and the Enid Blyton mystery novels (not the Famous Five, though. I never liked them for some reason).

I let my reading slip, until quite recently. Spent too much time at sixth form and university drinking and smoking weed, so would take 1-2 months to read a book. I've sorted it out, though, and have recently been reading some great modern fiction and am planning to read a load of the 'classics'.

lacuna

My parents encouraged myself and my brothers to read from a very young age. I don't remember ever going to bed as a kid without reading (or being read to when I was tired!). We went to the library every week and sat there for ages reading and looking through books and then leavng with as many as we were allowed take out.

My dad always tried to get us to read more and more advanced books to increase vocabulary etc. When he gave out to us he'd use the most complicated words he could think of and part of the punishment was looking them up in the dictionary to find out what he was talking about.

Scarinae

GUBU wrote:

I was exactly the same - I got moved up a year after a few weeks for that very reason!

My parents tried to get me to skip a year, but the headmistress in my primary school wouldn't let me, grrrr! Having said that, the school were very good about letting me read whatever books I wanted, even ones from the fifth and sixth class section

growler

dudara wrote:

Like everyone else here, it was my parents, and especially my mom, a national school teacher. I was an only child until I was 10, so I read lots. And I read everything!! I used to buy so many books at the local second hand shop, at jumble sales. I owned every Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and so many more. My mother and I had library subscriptions for the local library in macroom as well as the mobile library that called to the village. If she didn't want any books I would use her tickets as well as my own. I'd say that in the summer, when things were quiet that I easily read 10 or more books a week. Our attic at home is packed full of boxes containing my books because my parents can't throw anything awy. At one stage, I even read my Children's Encyclopaedia Brittanica, starting at Volume 1 through to Volume 20. I read books called "1000 questions and answers", as well as the Guinness Book of Records. As you might guess, I was pretty good at table quizzes.


Once you read as a kid, it's a gift you never lose, even if other things reduce the reading time available to you. These days I still read 1-2 books a week, more when I have free time.

Are you me ?

that's what I would have said, verbatim. spooky. Saves typing though.

except for Macroom, substitute Glanmire

Cathy

When I was very young, my dad and I would read the newspaper together every evening after tea. I could read by the time I started school, and went through the library in our classroom very quickly, so I'd take in my own books and read them.
Every lunchtime, the principal used to take me out a brown paper bag of books from the 5th and 6th class libraries, and I'd sit on the kerb and read.
I did the MS Readathon every year too - I remember getting a red camera and binoculars one year, which I think was the highest prize.
I went through all the Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, Roald Dahl, Saddle Club and Babysitter's Club books... I think I have them in boxes in the attic.