My mother tricked me into loving reading... When I was little, she'd read to me every night before bed. ERB's Tarzan and Mars series, CS Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planes" series, and Jules Vern. We'd cuddle while she read, and she'd have me follow along. Eventually she'd have me "help" her read, and as I began to read more and more, eventually I wound up reading to her.
According to my private Hebrew Day School achievement tests, I was reading at a 12th grade level in 5th grade.
I still love reading, but rarely have time to read for pleasure: I spend far too much time reading technical and training manuals for work (network administration and management.)
But one day soon, I'm going to re-read Terry Brooks' "Sword of Shanara" trilogy (I have to admit, the MTV series made me want to re-visit those books!)
Mark
We'll take that as a typo :-)
When I was a kid, I devoured "Juvenile Science Fiction", the memories of which are still vivid to me. My dad touted The Sea/20K Leagues to me, as that was his version of the genre. One year at the shore I read his actual copy. I eventually read the whole thing, but I may have stalled once or twice. The passage I remember in that regard is as follows:
From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve certain fish from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas: southern puffers with red backs and white chests distinguished by three lengthwise rows of filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long, decked out in the brightest colors. Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish, genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles; seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula–shaped paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws, excellent animals twenty–five centimeters long and gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids; finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of water.
I'm sure their are other such passages, but I choose to believe this is it. I think it was "the genus Tetradon" which transfixed me. Just now I expected to find a passage peppered with such nomenclature. Maybe it's there somewhere, but I think this was too much for me, anyway.
Have you ever read the follow-ups to the trilogy? I’m blanking a bit on Titles (and too lazy to run downstairs and check) but the First Queen and Druid of Shannara books were pretty good, too.