Friday, August 6, 2010

Booking Through Thursday: First Time

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What is the first book you remember reading? What about the first that made you really love reading?

Huh. A thinking question. Dang! I mean, how fun.

To be honest, I have no idea what my first book was. I've been reading for as long as I can remember (never mind that my parents have told me numerous times that I've been pretending to read for as long as they can remember). Plus, I also have a horrible memory. Oops.

Okay, I'll stop being a cop-out.

The first picture book I do remember reading was Cinderella (the Disney movie tie-in). How I loved that little picture book! I was an eager fan of the movie so obviously I'd love the storybook. Too bad I have no idea where it is now. It probably didn't survive that first flood.

But there were so many others! I had a Hans Christian Andersen storybook, a collection of nursery rhymes, an Arabian Nights storybook... I do remember being a colouring/activity book enthusiast as a child and those frequently included stories. The timeline's jumbled up in my mind so I'll just stick to mentioning as many as I can.

The first book that made me really love reading though? Huh. I have lots of those. As I grew older, I'd take "reading breaks"--I'd pretty much stop reading for a few months then rediscover the allure then come across a dud and so on and so forth. I think my very first i-love-love-love-reading-don't-want-to-stop book was the first book I really wanted to own: a Lola Basyang (Grandmother Basyang) collection of stories with rich, detailed illustrations. Whenever my family and I would go to the mall back in the Philippines, I'd always ask my parents to leave me in the bookstore. There were no libraries close to us (if there were any) so the bookstore was the next best thing. Usually I'd be content in reading a book once; but there was just something special about this book. Boy, were my parents shocked by my begging and pleading when they got back from shopping! I was beyond ecstatic when I got the Lola Basyang for my 9th birthday.

The first book that made me aware of the awesome power of reading at a slightly older age though? The King's Daughter by Suzanne Martel, hands down. A lot of my French Immersion friends hated reading it in the original French but the English translation captivated me. Coureurs de bois! New France! Thierry de Villebrand! Iroquois! Adventure! Romance! A dash of suspense! My sixth grade self just gobbled it up.

Actually, Suzanne Martel was the first author I wanted to track down just so I could read her other books. I couldn't find any in the library so I was extremely disappointed--so I sought a shoulder to cry on through other books instead.

Thanks to BTT for providing such an awesome question. Thinking wasn't so hard, wasn't it? :D

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