Tolkien first for me. When I was seven my Dad started reading The Hobbit to me as a bed-time story, with voices in character, one chapter at a time. I got so impatient at the pace when we were in Mirkwood that I picked up the book and finished it myself. That was my transition from picture books to text-only books. Then I received a volume of The Lord of the Rings each birthday after that. I re-read them all about once a year. I tried to read The Silmarillion when I was 13, but couldn't maintain interest. Picked it up again when I was 16 and devoured it.

Other early authors: H. Beam Piper, then Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov all made big impressions on me. Foundation was okay, never much cared for the sequels. I liked his other stuff better. There's certainly plenty to choose from. My favorite Isaac Asimov joke (I think originated with Harlan Ellison): Isaac Asimov had writer's block once. It was the scariest ten minutes of his life.

I tried to read The Silmarillion when I was 13, but couldn't maintain interest. Picked it up again when I was 16 and devoured it.

You have greater fortitude than I; it took FIVE tries (as a teen) to get through Silmarillion. I got terminally confused (literally! I'm dead as I type this!) by all the similar names - Finrod and Finarfin and Fingolfin and so on. And it's important to keep that all clear. Stupid Greek tragedy of Elf angst.

(Of course, OCD that I am, I have the Ainulindale memorized. It makes great campfire recitation, especially Morgoth smashing things up like a testy 3-year-old.)

I feel like a total outsider in the cool kids club. I don't read scifi and only very limited fantasy. I cut my teeth on historicals and mysteries and of course, romances and the big glitzy, smutty roman à clef novels of the late seventies and eighties.

I cut my teeth on historicals and mysteries and of course, romances

Have you read any Jane Aiken Hodge? I adore her.

Historicals and historical fiction, all I remember from my early teens is Kipling and Wilbur Smith. Does Gerald Durrell count as historical?

Mysteries, I went from Hardy Boys and Tom Swift to Desmond Bagley and Dick Francis.

Have you read any Jane Aiken Hodge? I adore her.

Not that I recall, connie. I take it I should look her up? (Not that I don't have a HUGE stack of books waiting for me already.)

Speaking of mysteries, anyone wanting to pick up a Regency-set with a wonderful lead, the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries by C.S. Harris are a lot of fun. I was sent the fourth book in the series to judge in the RITA finals and loved it so much, that I went back and ordered the first three and am currently mainlining.

I read Hodge, and remember liking her. Has anyone read Charlotte Armstrong? She's delicious, but very very dated--late 50s to early 70s, I think. She's sort of a counterpart to Christie for me, though she's a bit creepier.

Also?

Stupid Greek tragedy of Elf angst.

Anyone in need of a new tagline?

One of my favorites of the old skool romance authors is Mary Burchell-- she was a huge opera fan and her love of music was featured prominently in many of her novels.

Her real-life persona was every bit as impressive as her heroines, if not more so. She and her sister Mary used their positions as avid opera fans to help rescue Jews in the late thirties. Her autobiography has recently been reissued by Harlequin. [link]

I will have to look up some of Burchell's work, Raq. She sounds intriguing.

I was just reminded rather sharply that the best class in how to write a tortured, turgid, painfully subjectve and bloated novel was the brief fling I had with Frances Parkinson Keyes.

Hodge is a very '70s writer, re: heroes rescuing heroines etc., and at the age of 48 I'm remembering her "middle-aged" mid-30s heroine in one book with amusement. Her big focus is the Napoleonic era, especially in Portugal, but she also has modern stuff.

One of my favorite books is a recent one. She'd started a book several years ago, and it was typical of the rest. She never finished it at the time, and she picked it up again in the late '90s. Instead of picking up the original story line, she projected it forwards, showing what happened to our hero and heroine and adding some very modern twists to the plot. I wish I could remember the title.