# Writers Who Made a Big Impression on You at an Early Age



## DaveinJapan (Jun 20, 2013)

Hey all. I was thinking about some authors who've impacted me lately, and Michael Crighton came out near the top of my list.

I remembered my first experience with his style, in Freshman H.S. biology class of all places. The teacher assigned "The Andromeda Strain", giving us like a month or so to read it, and I put it off as I usually did with homework of any kind. But then, the very last weekend before the test, I laid down on the couch and started in on it - and I was hooked! I read the whole thing that weekend, enjoying every minute of it.

It turned out that I was the only kid in the class who could stomach reading it (even the smart kids had given up!), and everyone failed but me. I was NOT the brightest kid in that particular field to say the least, but I earned my one and only "A" that day.  

And I've been a big M.C. fan ever since. Anyone have any stories, or thoughts on authors who impacted you in a similar way?


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## PhilRedhead (Aug 24, 2013)

Great thread idea!

It actually touches on something I was talking about with a friend earlier in the week. For me, I have two such authors - both of whom I got incredibly excited about at certain points in my life. But, strangely, neither of them led to an immediate love of reading.

The first is Roald Dahl. I was basically bullied into reading him as a pre-teen, and ended up being fascinated by the incredible inventiveness of his world.

The other was in my late teens - Elmore Leonard, who I picked up in an idle moment in the library (where I'd gone to "study"). I promptly used my library card more in the next couple of months than I had done in all my previous years. Then I got side-tracked by drinking and running after girls... 

My voracious years didn't come until I was twenty-one, and now I don't see them ever letting up. I guess I can thank those two guys for sowing those early seeds.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

As far as making an impact in my formative years, I'd pick Jack London and Lloyd Biggle, Jr., though not because I became a huge fan of either -- I didn't.

In 6th grade, for some reason I do not now recall, I decided to read London's _The Sea Wolf_ for a book report, even though my teacher tried to discourage me a bit. I ended up devouring it and learning that I could enjoy longer books not written specifically to please young boys. A few years later (maybe sophomore or junior year in HS?), I picked up Biggle's little gem, _The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets_, and was amazed to learn that science fiction could be about more than space ships, robots, and ray guns.


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## bordercollielady (Nov 21, 2008)

Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind) made a big impression on me... I grew up in the 50's - women were not independent yet and Scarlett's strength provided a role model.    Other authors I enjoyed were James Michener (wish they would Kindlelize Hawaii) and Ayn Rand.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

The writers that made the biggest impression on me back when I was 10 or 11 years old back in the mid - to late-fifties were mostly SF writers A. E. van Vogt, Clifford Simak, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein. And a few mystery writers such as Rex Stout, John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen.

My enthusiasm/esteem for van Vogt has dimmed quite a bit (I'll still read one of his works on occasion), but remains pretty much the same for the others.


Mike


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## bhazelgrove (Jul 16, 2013)

S.E. Hinton. The Outsiders was the first novel I ever read. Then I would say Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind which I read probably ten times. (Southern family) To Kill A Mockingbird  Harper Lee...The Hardy Boys...Tom Swift...Then of course Catcher in the Rye


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## Grace Elliot (Mar 14, 2011)

If you are going way back - then Anna Sewell and Black Beauty. I was a sickly child and spent many hours in bed, reading, re-reading (and crying) over Black Beauty.
Indirectly, Black Beauty is the reason I started writing. In my adult life I find myself living close to the cottage where the artist who illustrated the original edition of Black Beauty lived. This inspired me to write a fictionalised story of her life (unpublished, languishing on my laptop) - but it was sufficient to give me the writing bug.


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## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

I can't remember ever not being a reader.  Supermarket encyclopedias (anyone else remember those?), Little Golden Books, the Mowgli stories, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare in 6th grade, the Tom Swift Jr books, Oliver Twist, fiction and non-fiction from the library, ketchup labels and cereal boxes at the table, comic books (Classics Illustrated, Turok Son of Stone...), and almost anything I could lay my greedy hands on.

And then I ran across Robert Heinlein's THE PUPPET MASTERS on the rack at a local drug store and went quietly mad.  I thought it then (and still think it) the best invasion-from-space story anyone ever wrote.  I scrounged up a few bucks (ah, the days of 50 cent paperbacks) and bought all the Heinlein I could find, and branched out from there.  It was a nice time to discover contemporary sf -- Signet and Ballantine and Bantam were doing a lot of reprints at the time, so there was plenty of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, C M Kornbluth, Richard Matheson, and others.  The Ace Doubles were ubiquitous, so there was plenty of work by John Brunner, Jack Vance, and others.  A few years after finding THE PUPPET MASTERS, I stumbled across Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny...

But Heinlein pulled me in so neatly that sf made up almost all of my reading for pleasure for the next, oh, fifteen or twenty years.

Yep.  Robert Heinlein.  And I don't think I'm alone there.


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## Tstarnes (Sep 25, 2013)

As a young man I think I was most influenced by sci-fi, adventure, and fantasy writers.  The other stuff came much later in life.

My two biggest influences would be Heinlen (which I seem to not be alone on) and the combination of Margret Wies and Tracy Hickman.  Their Dragonlance stuff doesn't hold up for me as an adult, but pre-teen me couldn't read enough.  It is what turned me into a reader.


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

Many of my favorite authors have been listed but I have to go back to the author of the books that created my love of reading: Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss). *Green Eggs and Ham*, *The Cat in the Hat*, and *Hop on Pop* are the first books I read on my own. When I told my kindergarten teacher that I could read, she said that was not possible. Then I discovered in first grade that books could be boring (Dick and Jane). Fortunately my mom took us to the public library where I found L. Frank Baum, Hugh Lofting, C. S. Lewis, Anna Sewell, Madeleine L'Engle, etc. My mom got the librarian to let me check out books from the adult section where I continued to biographies, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, classics, etc.


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## DaveinJapan (Jun 20, 2013)

Great stuff so far, thanks for sharing everyone! It's awesome to read about such a variety of impactful writers, even in the first handful of posts, and I can't wait to read more (Seuss, nice! I'm working that angle with my daughter right now, who's learning to read in two languages (not to mention several alphabets  )).


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## Eric Zawadzki (Feb 4, 2011)

The Tom Swift books were an early love. My dad had a couple around the house from when he was a kid, and the library's collection was vast. I read lots of fantasy and sci-fi starting around 3rd grade. However, it wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" that I latched onto a specific author by name. The library had a 800+ page book of all his short stories, which I checked out in 4th or 5th grade. It took me easily a year to read them all because I couldn't take it out for more than 4 weeks at a time (including renewals), and it seemed like every time I had to return it someone would check it out before I got back to the library.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I would say the writers that made the biggest impression on me at an EARLY AGE was H. A. Rey and Dr. Suess.  They instilled a love of reading that has lasted all these years.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

I loved The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty White, Lloyd C. Douglas's White Banners and anything by Agatha Christie and JRR Tolkien.


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## jessicakaye (Feb 18, 2011)

I'm another Michael Crichton fan. _Jurassic Park_ was the first novel I ever read. I was ten, and I had to borrow it from the high school library where my mom worked. For some reason my mom told me I wasn't allowed to see the movie until I read the book. I loved it, and devoured every Crichton book I could find after that.


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## FURM (Oct 21, 2013)

At an EARLY age for me was Howard R. Garis - Ungle Wiggily's Story Book.










It was the first book I had read that transported me to a different place, where I found myself totally lost in the pages. From then on I understood the power of what a book could do. Later I have to say Tolken, L'amour, Norton, and C.S. Lewis. Most recently, Stephen Erikson - Malazan Book of the Fallen


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## FURM (Oct 21, 2013)

Mmmmmmm.... Dragonlance! 

That was me. Sci-fi, adventure, and fantasy... Books that took you to places that didn't exist anywhere else. That was what captivated me as a kid.



Tstarnes said:


> As a young man I think I was most influenced by sci-fi, adventure, and fantasy writers. The other stuff came much later in life.
> 
> My two biggest influences would be Heinlen (which I seem to not be alone on) and the combination of Margret Wies and Tracy Hickman. Their Dragonlance stuff doesn't hold up for me as an adult, but pre-teen me couldn't read enough. It is what turned me into a reader.


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## Rich Walls (Feb 4, 2012)

It's sort of like a timeline of important books for me--

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli was my first book and will always have a special place.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton was the first 'big person' book I ever read. Think I read it in a single rainy weekend.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers is probably when the light switched on that books can be very real and very relatable. It was also when I realized I might want to share a story of my own one day.

If Heartbreaking Work opened my mind, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace blew me away.

And somewhere in there along the way, I've read it 8-9 times, has been Fitzgerald's Gatsby. The perfect novel, to me anyway.


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## Clarketacular (Mar 3, 2013)

Really early on, Jules Verne and J.R.R. Tolkien. My dad and I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to each other at night, it's one of my first memories of reading at an early age. And as a kid I'd bring home Jules Verne books from the library and read them over and over, my favorite was Journey to the Center of the Earth.  In high school, Stephen King took over, and my favorite of all authors, Gene Wolfe. Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer remains my favorite novel and every so often I break it out and read it again.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

OMG, so many good ones!  

Roald Dahl (Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, James & the Giant Peach, etc.)
H. E. Rey (Curious George)
Munro Leaf (Ferdinand the Bull) - read this over and over as a child, not yet Kindelized, darn it!
Phyllis A. Whitney (Vermillion, etc.) - none are Kindelized, that I could see, unfortunately

For Phyllis Whitney, I took all of her books out that I could find at the library, and what a boon it was, being an often depressed teeanger. I could go thru these books and be taken away from all the troubles in my life. I'll never forget that. I just recently decided to buy a bunch of gothic romances, Ms. Whitney's books included, to see if I still like them.

Well, I'm going thru the first, and again I'm being taken away from all the troubles in my life. It's a beautiful thing.


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## dkrauss (Oct 13, 2012)

Eric Zawadzki said:


> However, it wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" that I latched onto a specific author by name.


Bingo. Mine was "The Martian Chronicles," which I read in 6th grade. After that, I grabbed everything of his. Favorite? Something Wicked This Way Comes.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Madeline L'Engle
Peter Benchley
HG Wells
Stephen King


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## brianjanuary (Oct 18, 2011)

I read Alexandre Dumas and Robert Louis Stevenson very early on and was captivated!


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## beccaboo75 (Sep 18, 2013)

Charlotte Bronte - will always love Jane Eyre
Stephen King - waned in recent times but still love him
John Grisham - always impressed by someone with such knowledge
Enid Blyton!!! Think I read them all as a child!!


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

I'm a little narrow-minded when it comes to what I read (all fantasy authors), but these are some of the ones I grew up on:

J.R.R. Tolkien
Terry Brooks
Weis & Hickman
Lloyd Alexander
Stephen R. Donaldson
Barbara Hambly
Anne McCaffrey
Robert E. Howard
Michael Moorcock
H.P. Lovecraft (ok, horror, but still...)


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## Brian Olsen (Jan 13, 2013)

"The Phantom Tollbooth" was probably my favorite book as a kid. It was certainly the first novel I read over and over. When I was in my early teens, it was all Heinlein, like many who have commented already. I read everything he wrote. I loved his early straight-up hard science-fiction adventure stories, and when I was a little older his more adult material, starting (for me) with "Job" and "Time Enough for Love," really expanded my horizons.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Beatrix Potter and the _Tale of Mrs Tiggy Winkle_. We had hedgehogs in our garden and the neighbour who gave me the book for Christmas put out some bread for the hedgehogs only to discover in the light of day the bread still there - sitting next to the scrubbing brush! 

I think it was the Beatrix Potter books that inspired me to write my _Leon Chameleon PI_ stories.


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## Ed Robinson (Oct 8, 2013)

The early sci-fi authors mentioned here ruled literature in their day, and I read them all as a teen. Later I discovered John D. Macdonald and the Travis McGee series. Travis shaped my world view.


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## Olivia_Devon (Oct 24, 2013)

Jane Austen and Robert Heinlein. Weird combo but definitely my two biggest influences. I also adore Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Dr. Suess, Andre Norton...Louisa May Alcott.

Loved this book when I was a kid, had to get it when it was the Kid's Daily Deal lately...



Betsy


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Well, if we're going _way_ back, I might have to say A.A. Milne. I'm pretty sure _Winnie the Pooh_ was the first "real" book I read all by myself.


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## S.A. Mulraney (May 20, 2011)

J.R.R. Tolkien - I remember being overwhelmed by the vastness of his world. It just seemed so detailed and thought out.

Stephen King - Scared the pants off me. He was also the first author I read where I critiqued the writing (at the ripe old age of 15).  

ETA: Ooo! And, how could I forget Clive Cussler (Tom Clancy Lite)! Like a fun, nautical 007.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

The earliest writers I can recall falling in love with? Stephen King and Margaret Mitchell. I know, I'm a complete freak. Reading _Gone With the Wind_ and _Salem's Lot _certainly twisted my mind as a young impressionable child. 
What was my mother thinking, letting me read that stuff?!


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## lmroth12 (Nov 15, 2012)

I loved Louisa Mae Alcott from the time I opened the covers of* Little Women*. It's still one of my favorites along with some of her other books that capture the innocence of nineteenth century America.

Mark Twain always kept me entertained with his folksy humor and characters straight out of your worst sibling nightmare scenarios. Think I'm exaggerating? Just try to LIVE with Huck or Tom.

I also was captivated by Isaac Asimov and Rod Serling in my teen years as they opened the doors to the world of the impossible.

Many authors have impacted me over the years, but I am limiting myself to listing only those in my formative years.


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## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

Henk van Kerkwijk.

Who?

Hey, I'm Dutch. And my father used to work for a publisher in children's books called Ploegsma. Through my father I got every book Ploegsma published, so I had shelves full of books. Henk van Kerkwijk wrote both adult and children's books, although I, being a child, mostly read the children's books, of course. I don't know if his books have been translated in English.

A couple of books that impressed me:
- Griezelgolf (the horror wave): Wave stands for wavelength. A young boy live with his inventor mother on a houseboat in the Amsterdam canals. The Centraal Station railroad station is beset by birds shitting all over the station and the people, so the inventor gets hired to chase them away. The inventor catches birds and holds them in cold water to record their shrieks of fear. The recording is played over a giant sound system and chases away the birds. Then the inventor is screwed out of her money by the railway director and vows revenge. She also made a recording to attract birds, but when she uses the luring wavelength, it lures more than just birds. A huge bat/vampire beast comes to Amsterdam and starts attacking everyone. Her young son and his girlfriend are trying to chase the vampire away.

- Meindert Swarteziel en het Bloed van de Duivel (Meindert Blacksoul and the Blood of the Devil). A good witch is lured by an evil psycho to make a love potion that allows him to marry the daughter. He returns after the wedding for a poison, and pays her a fortune. When the poisoning is discovered, the psycho has to leave empty-handed and the witch is captured by the sheriff. As she's burned on the stake, her sons and husband watch and see her soul escape, to be caught by the witch's teacher. Her body is kidnapped from the stake, but the witch is alive but soulless. The angry psycho starts hunting down her husband and sons, and tries to give them the Blood of the Devil, a 'poison' that burns the soul away. One of them perishes, one is saved, and one becomes the youngest pirate ever known...

- Schakelfout (switch error) An alien spaceship lands and kidnaps a police officer. While everyone surrounds the spaceship, the policeman's son and his girlfriend try to get his father out. 

Henk van Kerkwijk wrote scores of other books, but they were all original and quite 'dark' for Young Adult readers.


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## RichardHein (Jun 8, 2011)

David Eddings. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of books I read before his works that were good, and are on my book shelf. His works turned reading from something I did because I enjoyed it to a _passion_. I read a lot when I was young, but mostly when I was bored. Eddings turned me into a reader, a guy who carried a book in a coat pocket and slipped it out any time I wasn't walking or talking, a guy with a primary hobby of sitting quietly and reading. For a lot of people that don't read voraciously, no one really sees the difference, but for those of us that really, truly read, you know the difference between merely reading books and consuming them. It's not even that his works were exemplary, or unique. They just found me at a perfect time and swept me up in a way that made me wonder: what else is out there to read?


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## StephenLivingston (May 10, 2011)

Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory books and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth books.


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## Dina (May 24, 2013)

Marguerite Henry. I was horse-crazy and her stories fulfilled that yen and captured history as well. Her books prompted family road-trips and I still have the three letters she wrote to me. I was seven and asked the stupidest questions but she made me feel like I was part of her world. She was my first inspiration. Henry Rollins, when I grew much older, was my second.


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## Sandra K. Williams (Jun 15, 2013)

Grace Elliot said:


> If you are going way back - then Anna Sewell and Black Beauty. I was a sickly child and spent many hours in bed, reading, re-reading (and crying) over Black Beauty.


I have the Gutenberg version of _Black Beauty_ but haven't been able to get past the first few chapters. As a child I probably didn't even catch the bit in the beginning about horses breaking their legs while fox hunting, so there are probably other upsetting bits that I don't remember. Gotta go pet my cat now.


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## RLC (Mar 19, 2013)

Tolkien.


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## SkyMama (Sep 26, 2012)

I never really thought about how the Golden Books impacted me until someone mentioned them in an earlier post, but yeah, they had a big impact on me, fostering a love of the written word before I even knew how to read. 

As a grew older, although I wouldn't call any of these great literature, these authors and/or books captivated me when I was in grade school: Beverly Cleary (the Ramona books), Judy Blume, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (my first real intro to of sci-fi outside of television and the movies). 

When I was about thirteen or fourteen I read the Lord of the Ring Trilogy. Although I enjoyed it, I found long stretches of it to be wordy and dull (mind you, I was just a kid at the time). That same year I read the Sword of Shanara by Terry Brooks. Even though I knew nothing about it, I realized really quickly that it was a ripoff of LOTR. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed Shea and Flick's adventure with the mysterious Druid. Shanara captured me in a way that LOTR failed to do. I attribute that to its faster paste, less flowery language, and streamlined plot. 

The biblical author, David, also made a big impression on me. I wasn't a religious kid, in fact I was quite the troublemaker and got suspended from school a few times, but every night before I went to bed I'd read one of his Psalms. They were so beautiful, and even though the events depicted within them were often wrought with violence and sorrow, the hope and love exuding from them filled me with peace, which I needed very much at the time.


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## lorezskyline (Apr 19, 2010)

The strange thing is the first book that had an impression on me and I remember passionatly reading again and again I don't even know who the authour was.  I know what book it was based on as it was a heavily I would imagine abridged version of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.  I was perhaps 8 at the time I remember the book was maybe 3/4 standard book height but around 200 pages with half being black and white illustrations.  The book was dog eared and 2nd hand when it came to me and i don't remember even from where it came, it may have been a boot fair as my parents used to drag me along to many of them.  All I do remember is sitting in my room reading it, then re-reading it and anytime I was unhappy at school (which was often) or with anything else I would go back to my favourite scenes or re-read the whole thing.  Thats where it started and from there it was on to Biggles, Jules Verne then into Sci-Fi and Fantasy before opening up to all sorts of other genres.  But I wish I knew where my copy of the Three Musketeers abridged was like it came into my life from an unknown source where it went I have no idea nor do I have any clear memory of the last time I read it or why it was lost to me.


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## Daniel Harvell (Jun 21, 2013)

Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, Martian Chronicles) and Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities) did quite a number on me. As a very young child, though, I loved the Bunnicula series and got to meet the author James Howe, which was a HUGE deal.


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## J. William Latimer (Aug 15, 2013)

There are two and they are quite different:

Stephen King - one of my favorite books as an adolescent was The Talisman!
J RR Tolkien - The Hobbit probably changed the way I interacted with books and defintitely made me want to read!


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## DS5408 (Oct 29, 2013)

I'll freely admit the initial curiosity came from growing up in Southern Ohio, but Allen Eckert was a big early influence for me. _The Frontiersman _ was the first major novel I ever tackled, and despite it taking me a month to get through, I was never sad I did.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Ernest Hemingway. I picked up _The Old Man and the Sea_ aged about twelve, thinking from the cover it was just a fishing yarn, and was totally blown away by it.

And then I discovered the two Rays, Bradbury and Chandler, who blew me away a second and a third time. It's a miracle that I'm still standing.


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## PaulLev (Nov 2, 2012)

Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, James Blish, Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clarke, Agatha Christie, Mickey Spillane, Ian Fleming, Erle Stanley Gardner


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

Gordon Korman
Marguerite Henry
Jane Austen

Rue


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## Sean L (Oct 30, 2013)

Three immediately come to mind:

Wilson Rawls' _Where the Red Fern Grows_... just wow. Read for a school assignment. First author and book to evoke some serious emotion. Couldn't stop thinking about it.

Stephen King (of course). Especially _Pet Sematary_ and _Skeleton Crew_. Those stuck with me.

Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ really stuck with me, too.


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## Joseph J Bailey (Jun 28, 2013)

Despite being somewhat reluctant to do so, I read _Animal Farm_ in fourth grade and the story captivated me. Funnily enough, Hugh Howey and I were in the same small break-out group that was required to read this in addition to our normal course work. However, despite my ready immersion, the book did not inspire me to read more.

I read _Lord of the Rings_ shortly thereafter and the world literally expanded before my mind's eye as the words leapt from the page. From then on, I became a voracious reader... first of fantasy and then science, philosophy, and assorted esoterica.

My love of reading continues to this day but, in the end, it all comes back to Tolkien.


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## Debbie Bennett (Mar 25, 2011)

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World did it for me...



A short piece in an English Book in school when I was aged nine and I was hooked. Went off to get the book out of the library and probably didn't understand what I was reading at the time, but I was reading John Wyndham and Robert Heinlein by eleven, so clearly it had an impact!


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## 67499 (Feb 4, 2013)

Hey, I was a primitive - Alexandre Dumas' *The Three Musketeers!* No boy could read that and not hunger for wild adventure.


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## KindleGirl (Nov 11, 2008)

I read a lot of books in middle school & high school (except the classics I was supposed to read!) and the only author that really stands out is V.C. Andrews. Loved her books and saved my money to buy new ones when they came out.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Oh what a great thread. 
I always had my head buried in a book, to the point that my mom's friends would worry about me- is she ok? I mean she is ALWAYS reading...
But I immediately thought of two- 1) Judy Blume, especially Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I remember when I had my very first period- I was shocked that maxi pads weren't attached in the front and back by clipping them to a belt like in that book. 
And 2) Madeleine L'engle. Especially A Swiftly Tilting Planet, my favorite of all the Wrinkle In Time books. I used to quote the poem by heart:
        In this fateful hour	
  All Heaven with its power	
  The sun with its brightness	
  The snow with its whiteness
  The fire with all the strength it hath
  The lightning with its rapid wrath	
  The winds with their swiftness
  The sea with its deepness
  The rocks with their steepness
  The earth with its starkness	
  All these I place	
  Between myself and the powers of darkness
(I just had to look that up) I mean riding unicorns thru time to save the world. How cool. 
I was checking my email one day in what? 2007? When Yahoo told me she had died. I cried. Literally broke down and cried. I was 33 years old and cried like a baby when I saw she'd died.


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## RAFarmer (Nov 12, 2013)

For fiction:

Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and his Robot novels.
Robert Heinlein's juveniles
Frank Herbert's Dune
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books.
Anne McCaffery's Pern books.

For non-fiction:
Toffler's Future Shock
Santillana's Hamlet's Mill
...and far far too many biographies.

RAFarmer


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## Paul Reid (Nov 18, 2010)

Roald Dahl - his stories really stirred my imagination and sense of adventure.


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## stevene9 (Nov 9, 2008)

Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. And to this day I'm still reading science fiction.

Steve


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## sighdone (Feb 4, 2011)

Douglas Adams was probably the author who most made an impression on me at an early age.


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## Gabe (Oct 9, 2013)

I really loved Black Beauty when I was a kid. Also Three Men in a Boat. Later on, I really liked Sherlock Holmes, then Gone With the Wind.  But there are many other books that have made a big impression on me. The list is long.....


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## Issy (Aug 25, 2013)

Alan Garner's The Owl Service and Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence (specifically, The Grey King) led me to go to university in Wales because I thought it would be stuffed with druids. (It wasn't.)

I re-read The Dark Is Rising lately and I was disappointed. Some books should stay as half-remembered influences.


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## lee27 (Mar 3, 2011)

A book that made a big impression on me when i was very young is THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF POETRY, edited by Louis Untermeyer. A couple years ago I chased down a used copy because I missed it. And you know something? Those are good poems, beautifully introduced and illustrated. And they are well chosen for a young audience.


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