The First Book...

[Ein]

Think back, what was the first piece of adult fiction you ever read? How old where you? What did you think about it? Did you "get" everything about it? Did it change you in someway?

For me the first piece of adult fiction I read was "Interview with the Vampire". I was eleven years old and it was shortly after my grandmother's death, which was the first death I'd ever experianced. I spent the summer locked in my room cause I was convinced I was a vampire,lol.

Anybody else?

[Lumiere]

Great question!
(When you say "adult" fiction . . . :smilewinkgrin:)

My first book was Jane Eyre. I was 12 or 13.
I fell entirely in love with Mr. Rochester.
For a couple years after, I read only Victorian romances, trying to recapture that feeling.

[IceM]

I was seven when I first read Oliver Twist.

[spookymulder93]

Animal Farm.

It was for my 7th grade English class. We had to pick 1 book to read and I don't remember if we had to write a report or not. There was a big box full of different books. I picked it because I like talking animals. It was NOT what I expected.

To this day, and I'm 21 now BTW, it is still my favorite novel. Who would've guessed.

[mayneverhave]

I'm relatively young, as these things go, so I had read pretty voraciously as a child - mostly crap like Goosebumps, and slightly superior crap like Harry Potter. Although I had read Interview with the Vampire, the Lord of the Rings series, Dune, etc., the major turning point was reading The Great Gatsby my freshman year of college on recommendation by a girl I was seeing at the time. After that, I went to Faulkner, Hemingway, and the rest is history.

[spookymulder93]

I'm relatively young, as these things go, so I had read pretty voraciously as a child - mostly crap like Goosebumps, and slightly superior crap like Harry Potter. Although I had read Interview with the Vampire, the Lord of the Rings series, Dune, etc., the major turning point was reading The Great Gatsby my freshman year of college on recommendation by a girl I was seeing at the time. After that, I went to Faulkner, Hemingway, and the rest is history.

Goosebumps is not crap!!!!

I have yet to have as much fun reading these "adult novels" as I had when I was reading Goosebumps. Remember the ones where you got to a certain page and then they ask you what do you want the character to do and then either you kept on reading or you turned to another page and got a completely different storyline. Now that's active reading.

Those were the good old days when reading was fun. Now it's just interesting. With the exception of The Zombie Survival Guide I haven't had fun reading a book since Goosebumps.

[Babak Movahed]

I read Hamlet when I was in 4th grade and no I didn't get it

until I read it again in 6th grade.

[blazeofglory]

The first book I remember I read as a child was the Mahabharata, an epic in its adoption from Sanskrit. It was a very difficult read but it fascinated me as it has so many allegorical stories. As a child I read it for its stimulating stories and later on even now I read it as a book of philosophy. This book never stopped inspiring and hardly have I come across any book that can compare with this

[Thom Holliday]

The first book that I really remember reading, finishing, and enjoying was Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. I had read before that, though I guess The Virgin Suicides was the first book I really read for kicks.

[dfloyd]

Oliver Twist or Conan Doyle's a Study in Scarlet. I forget which was first; I was 8 years old. I got them both for Christmas that year.

[minstrelbard]

I read a lot of science fiction as a young kid, and I forget which of it was originally intended as "adult" fiction. I do remember digging 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne out of my father's bookcase and being fascinated by it when I was nine or so.

[Alexander III]

The picture of Dorian Gray

[PeterL]

That's going back a ways, but I was reading only adult books, both fiction and nonfiction by the time I was ten. Some of the earlier fiction that I recaal included Arundel and Rabble in Arms by Kenneth Roberts and some of his other books. I mostly read nonfiction, science and biography for several years.

[Esoteric_Muse]

I can't remember. Unbelievable. What was the first piece of adult fiction I ever read?

This is going to drive me crazy the rest of the day....

[ElanorGamgee]

I loved stories about animals in the wild when I was a child. That interest naturally led me to The Call of the Wild. I was probably 11 or 12 when I read it. I understood the plot well enough, but I didn't not catch some of Jack London's other messages until I was older.

[Jive One]

Animal Farm.

It was for my 7th grade English class. We had to pick 1 book to read and I don't remember if we had to write a report or not. There was a big box full of different books. I picked it because I like talking animals. It was NOT what I expected.

To this day, and I'm 21 now BTW, it is still my favorite novel. Who would've guessed.

Interesting as my situation was exactly the same as yours except I chose to read 1984 instead(from a "top 100" novels list). We did have to write up a book report on it and I remember picking up on the anti-authoritarian themes and focusing on that. Got an A+ and still remember certain details from the book over ten years later.

[TurquoiseSunset]

I can't be sure, but I can remember being 11 or so and watching Wild Justice on t.v. one afternoon. I really liked the movie and just as the credits rolled I looked over to my our bookshelf and there it was...so I read it and loved it. It might have been something different though, like this one Afrikaans romance novel set in 18th century France...or a collection of short stories by Herman Charles Bosman...they were all on the bookshelf. I guess once I got stuck into that bookshelf there was no stopping me :D That's also the reason why I will make sure I have a mini library by the time I have kids, stocked with loads of great books.