Happy Friday! This post is pre-scheduled so I have no idea what I am doing, but hopefully it’s sunny!

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish discussion meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits and Dini @DiniPandaReads. Each Friday, bloggers will write posts about a particular topic and share on their blog.

Today marks six years of LTB! I have only been joining in with it this year, but it’s been amazing and I am so pleased that it’s still going! To celebrate, it’s a freebie week, so I have chosen a topic from July 2024, to talk about my reading origins.

How did you get into reading? Did you immediately love it, or did it take you a while?
Who first introduced you to books – parents, friends, teachers?

I’ve said it before, but I have always been a reader. My parents read to me from pretty much the day I was born, and I am so grateful to them for it. Neither of them were huge readers themselves, but for whatever reason, they decided to read to me every single night. By the time I was a toddler, I was ‘helping’ my dad read me the books, though of course, I made sure he still did all the character voices!

I guess the habit stuck after I was able to read by myself, and the pre-bedtime book was something I continued all the way through to the time I left secondary school. I read at such a fast pace that I managed to out-read my primary school library (though to be fair, it was absolutely tiny) and was reading at 2 grades higher than my age, and they had to get books in for me from the closest secondary school.

My parents and grandparents (when they were still here) have encouraged my love of books my whole life. Going to the library (when we lived near one) was a weekly trip and they would let me roam and pick out whatever I wanted with no restrictions. My 5th and 6th year teacher (my school was so small that grades shared teachers) would choose books for me from the senior school and let me take reading tests that were meant for students much older than me. I am so grateful that the adults in my life encouraged all of this because reading has changed my life in so many ways, and I know I wouldn’t be who I am today without it.

Extra shout-out to my mum here, as she is still my number one champion when it comes to reading, even though I am well into my 30’s now. She is always excited to see what books I am being sent (she has no interest in reading fantasy, but she is just happy for me haha), and keeps telling me to start a book YouTube (I am not convinced here!).

Did you grow up around book lovers, or did you find a love of reading on your own?

As I said, my parents weren’t actually readers in their own rights; they just read to me. I was the reader in my first friend group, too. Some of my friends did read, and we would share books, but I was the only one going through them as if they sustained me! Before I went to secondary school (age 11 here in the UK) I wouldn’t have said I had any reader friends. I developed my love of reading myself, aided of course, by the adults I have spoken about before.

In secondary school, at about age 14, I met one of my best friends, and she turned out to be a fellow book nerd, and a fantasy one at that! We would go book shopping in WHSmiths and Waterstones together, and we would stay up all night reading at each other’s houses. She was the one who gave me my true love book, Green Rider.

The rest, I guess, is history! I have a fab group of friends these days who are just as in love with books and reading as I am.

Which books started your love of reading?

This is difficult to answer, as someone who has been surrounded by books for as long as I can remember. I’ll talk about some books that I feel are formative to me as a reader, because no one book started it, my dad and his silly character voices did.

When I was very small, my absolute favourite stories were the Winnie the Pooh books by A.A. Milne. I was obsessed with Tigger. Like, truly obsessed.
I also adored Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem. I still have my original copy and I am certain that these books set me on the nature path I walk now, and kicked off my love of mice.

At school, I was, of course, very into a certain boy wizard, along with the rest of the world. No more details here for obvious reasons.
My dad gave me a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring when I was 12. I was a bit young for it really, but it is one of his favourites, and I enjoyed the journey of it even if I didn’t really understand it. That was my introduction to larger-scale book series, and it was very exciting.
This was also the period where I read Green Rider for the first time. My friend had it, I saw it and liked the cover and she let me borrow it even though she hadn’t read it herself yet. We all know what happened next!

In my adult life, I had periods where I was ‘too busy’ to read much, but I happened across a book called A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan in a bookstore one day in my early 20’s, and the obsession with consuming stories was reignited with it. One of my favourite series to date.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is another beloved book that spurred me onto the career path I am on now and gave me a love for nature non-fiction.
And while I don’t read his books so much anymore, Brandon Sanderson in general really cemented my love of fantasy books, first with Mistborn, and then with his Stormlight Archive series. They will always be special to me for that, though I have moved away from it in recent years.

YOU tell me – Who or what gave you a love of reading?