Cordelia ,'The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Dear Andre, my gateway drug.
Me too. I think I read Daybreak, 2250 and then the Moonstone first.
My folks weren't readers so I backed into fantasy through comic books. In the early seventies, DC published comic book versions of John Carter, Warlord of Mars and (more importantly) Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
Then I crossed company lines to buy Conan and soon I was haunting the used bookstores for ERB, Howard and Leiber.
hm ... it just struck me that I was reading '50s SF magazines, but comic books were not allowed (except for Junior Illustrated Classics). My father also had various ER Burroughs books, E.E. "Doc" Smith, the Conan books, Ace SF Doubles ... all of which I was reading. But no comics.
connie and David are me. Daybreak 2250 AD was my maiden voyage, quickly followed by several years' collections of The Year's Best Science Fiction, plus Analog. Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Bradbury, Ellison, E.E. "Doc" Smith, so much social commentary at a time my social conscience and consciousness was burgeoning. I don't think I read outside the SF/F genres for several years, only branching into gothics as an offshoot of some of the more romantic fantasies. And from thence into historical romance, always with one foot firmly in space/otherworld. It wasn't until my late thirties that non-fiction even registered on my radar.
At twelve, I read Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and some of my mother's procedurals when I thought she wasn't looking.
Poul Anderson, Alfred K. Bester, Herbert, Brian Aldiss, Alan Dean Foster, Niven, Gordon Dickson, Delaney, Zelazny, Clarke, the list is endless.
Oh, I'd forgotten, I also devoured Christie, Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, PD James, Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter, Barbara Michaels(Mertz)/Elizabeth Peters, the last two being mystery-romance-fantasy crossovers or "fusion" as the kids are calling it these days.
I haven't had the same sense of discovery with authors or genres as I had discovering all these people. You think this means maybe I'm jaded?
I was reading SF almost as soon as I could read, but could never get into Foundation for some reason.
Jessica is me. I've read Foundation, but it wasn't my first, and I never caught the bug of it.
Did the Tolkien fans know there was a Shire Radio on Live365 that plays nothing by Tolkien inspired tracks?
YES.
However, streaming media is verboten at work, and at home...I own almost all of it. (hands head in shame)
heh ... we've been TOLD not to link to any streaming media, but I think that depends on who you are. The woman in the office next to mine tends to link to an online radio site and leave it going all day ... sometimes for several days.