In The Beginning there was Reading

Why start a blog? Well mainly as a sort of diary, to not only put down thoughts and things happening to me but mainly to reminisce about my past and in particular to have somewhere   to discuss my hobbies.

Some basic facts about me - Male, born in 1963, English, married, lovely wife, 4 great kids. Tending towards the geek/nerdy side of life.

So this blog is mainly about four of my hobbies, Collecting, Reading, Photography and Running (although I will post on other topics as well). I will go into more details on each of these topics in future posts, but I'll start at the beginning with Reading.

I should also say that I was a bit of a nerd as a child (still am!), which has influenced a lot of what came after.

As a youngster I used to read profusely. I have vivid memories of Enid Blyton, Enchanted Wood, Wishing Chair etc and then the Famous Five, but also many others The Three Investigators, Jennings, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc. An odd one that stands out was The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill (one of the great things about having kids is that it allows you to revisit the past and re-read old childhood favourites).

However there were two reading experiences which affected me a lot, and they both happened at school. The first was in Junior school when the class read Prince Caspian by C S Lewis, I was mesmerised and it was the start of my love for Fantasy (although the Enchanted Wood may make an earlier claim). Notwithstanding the whole Narnia series was devoured many times afterwards. The second was a similar experience at secondary school when were studied the Hobbit by J R R Tolkien, thus fanning the Fantasy flames even more. However it was not until the last years of secondary school that the Fantasy love was turned up to the max, when a teacher, Mr Hughes, gave me of The Lord Of The Rings (to be covered more fully in future blog entries). This led to a bit of a problem, I had pinnacled, I had read the best and didn't want anything else so I gave up reading (well almost as I did read LOTR every year).

I still read non fiction, I remember a fascination with history, and also spent a lot of time at the library. I was an early computer geek and spent a lot of time at that (Atari 2600, ZX80, Tandy TRS-80, Spectrum ...) which will also be the subject of a future blog entry. By the way computing ended up as my chosen career (another of my basic facts).

It was not until some years later, when a work college (David Ufton) recommended some other Fantasy books, that I really started reading again. First came the Dragonlance series by Hickman and Weis (a much underrated series), followed by the fantastic Mort by the great Terry Pratchett (and then the rest of the Discworld series, another passion of mine to be covered in the future) and then the more unusual The True Game series by Sheri Tepper (yes another obsessive favourite). This led on to a long period of total devotion, ok maybe obsession, with the world of Fantasy, and it was all I read for the next 25 years (ok there was also a bit of sci-fi in there as well).

Then in 2007, I decided to expand my horizons and branched into other genres of fiction. I now read quite a lot, 45+ books a year, and am a member of two book clubs (organising one). I read anything nowadays, although I do shy away from Horror, but must say that, true to my Fantasy roots, I do like books which are a bit quirky (such as the Time Travellers Wife), the newfangled Magical Realism genre! I don't get much chance to read Fantasy these days which is a bit of a shame.

A few of my favourite books include LOTR obviously, Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, 1984 by George Orwell, To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and Beauty by Sheri Tepper. I will give some more of my favourites in other blogs.

The last thing I'll mention in this opening blog entry on reading is the excellent Goodreads website where you'll find more details on what I read.

That's enough for now, a very brief introduction to me and my reading hobby. As has been mentioned, I will be covering more aspects of this in future blog entries.

Next up will be an introduction to my Collecting.