General Discussion Canadian Thanksgiving

[Kim K]

Thanksgiving greetings to my fellow Canadians!

I assume all of us are, or have been, voracious readers? Would anyone like to share the first book that really grabbed their attention and made them want to dive deeper into the world of literature?
When I was in high school, I read "Wuthering Heights" for the first time. That did it for me - I've lost track of how many times I've read it. It was a comfort book in my young adulthood, that's for sure.

 

[Kim K]

I will wish everyone else a very happy Thanksgiving in a few weeks

 

[seeker2000]

Very sweet of you. Thank you and a Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

Just to take it down a notch or 2, as a small boy, I fell in love with reading a series of silly little books that was about a pig named Freddy and his farm friends.
It had titles like Freddy and the Rocket Ship or Freddy goes to Mars.
Curious to know how the fire started for others.

 

[lynnmosher]

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, Kim!

 

[Westee]

As a kid, I wanted to play sports. Unfortunately, coordination is not my strong suit, and my dreams of being a star athlete never came to fruition. Fortunately, I loved to read. Of course, I mostly read sports stories at first. However, reading White Fang was the first time I was totally engaged with a character. I rooted for him through every trial and tribulation. I can't say that book made me want to write (that was decades before I started writing), but it was a shining example of how a character can pull you into a story.

 

[Lynae Fisher]

As a kid, I wanted to play sports. Unfortunately, coordination is not my strong suit, and my dreams of being a star athlete never came to fruition. Fortunately, I loved to read. Of course, I mostly read sports stories at first. However, reading White Fang was the first time I was totally engaged with a character. I rooted for him through every trial and tribulation. I can't say that book made me want to write (that was decades before I started writing), but it was a shining example of how a character can pull you into a story.

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Ah! You should have read Juggling for the Complete Klutz! That helps so much with coordination (if you actually try to practice what the book teaches) but it is a ton of fun even if you don't care about juggling.

Believe it or not, I used to hate reading. It was just a bunch of boring, worthless nonsense in school of words mixed with pictures of apples and whatever to fill in the words you weren't smart enough to read.

Then came the summer after 2nd grade. I discovered non-school books that were actually interesting.

I started reading a series of old children's books that my Mom had from when she was a kid. Not sure what the collection is called. One of the first ones was called "This is the House Where Jack Lived". It starts off something like "This is the boy that walked the dog that lived in the house where Jack lived" "This the the pail that fell on the boy that walked the dog..." "This is the man that held the pail..." And so on all the way back to "And this is Jack!"

Long story short, it tells the story of how Jack's spill-over bath water led to a series of events throughout the whole house that ultimately resulted in a pail of water getting dropped on the other boy as he was walking his dog. It is quite silly and a bit annoy to read, but it does show how seemingly unimportant things can cause enormous chain reactions.

But probably my first major favorite was Narnia or the Rush Revere series. I had watched one or two of the Narnia movies when I was about 5 or so.

 

[robwitty]

As a young lad... The Most Dangerous Game, Treasure Island, White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and SciFi books from Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury.

 

[Lynae Fisher]

As a young lad... The Most Dangerous Game, Treasure Island, White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and SciFi books from Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury.

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I've read Treasure Island too! I found an interesting message in that story though. One that I find often applies in real life too.
The pirates' song.
It was first introduced at the beginning with "Captain" singing it.
Then Silver's crew sang it. (all in harmless fun right?)
But one can soon find out that that song shows something very important.

I think there are plenty of people in various place today who "sing the pirates song" so-to-speak. They claim to be all on the level, but they are wolves in sheep's clothing. Listen to the song they sing and take warning.

So this leads me to an interesting question (maybe I should start another thread with this question?) what random lessons have you learned from unsuspected places in books? Books that were just fun, but you learnt something anyway?

 

[seeker2000]

Thanks to you all.

I had forgot about White Fang and Edgar Rice Burroughs. What treasures to inspire our imagination!

Lynae, to answer your question, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance taught me that quality is really a product of our interpretation and perhaps our sanity.

 

[Kim K]

As a young lad... The Most Dangerous Game, Treasure Island, White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and SciFi books from Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury.

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I believe Call of the Wild was a read-aloud in grade five. I remember feeling so much a part of that story. I would imagine that I was a husky.

 

[dLLmor]

We were living on Oahu. I was in second grade. It wasn't a book. Our teacher told her story of when her mother chased her and her siblings up the mountain because the tide was being pulled out way too far. She was experiencing her first tidalwave.
I became a good listener that day; wanted to hear everybody's story. Some I can't repeat. d÷/

 

[Quiet Spirit 2.0]

In elementary school, my third-grade teacher read us a story about the Bobbsey twins. This family had two sets of twins (a boy and a girl, each set). When I was in the sixth grade, I had the Asian Flu several times. My uncle's wife gave me all her Nancy Drew books. I was hooked on reading. The ones she gave me could have been the first ones of that series. I passed them on to a daughter of a friend of mine. The young girl had been diagnosed with childhood diabetes and I wanted to help her.