Cosmos by Carl Sagan
The original tv series opened my eyes so much, i really wish it was made available somewhere.
Arr it be available if you look in the right places
The Lord of the Rings, for sure. But then I did not read for a few decades, and recently got back into reading thanks to audiobooks. Since then, the first book that I loved every moment of was The Lies of Locke Lamora.
My parents gave me that book when I was 9 because they thought it was a collection of fairy tales. I fell in love with the first sentence.
The Velveteen Rabbit
I remember being 12 or so and when I finished The Lord of the Rings, I felt a sense of loss. I just wanted the book to go on forever. I suppose that is the first book I truly loved.
Illuminatus!.. At the age of 11.
Adolescence felt pretty straightforward after a book like that.
Still one of my all time favorites. I’ve tried suggesting it to a few people, but none of them can get past the first page. I think that says more about my friends than anything else though.
They sound exciting.
The Little Prince.
Read it as a child. Cover to cover. Painstakingly sounding out each word. Repeatedly. Then for years I forgot about it.
As an adult I came across it in my bookshelf, buried deeply (it having fallen down the back a bit) and read it again. It is a completely different book when you read it as an adult…
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Bridge to Terabithia. Yeah, I was a kid, but I cried when a main character died.
The Six Bullerby Children by Astrid Lindgren. I was maybe 9 at the time. I should reread it someday.
2nd time I see this question, so my answer is my second book:
The color of magic by Terry Pratchett
“So you want to be a wizard” by Diane Duane. Opened my eyes to magic systems that just aren’t just hocus pocus and wand waving. Remarkably well designed for YA.
Urban fantasy with well thought out magic systems are still my favorite type of books to read today.
First? The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree. I read the Oz books pretty early. I read all the Sherlock Holmes books in junior high, I think.
War of the Worlds
Probably Northern Lights (the first of His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman or maybe Bloodtide - Melvin Burgess. I’m a sucker for alternate/near future reality and world building and these both did it really well.
As a child my favorite books(and thus the first ones I remember loving) were:
Harold and his Purple Crayon
The Monster at the End of the Book
and The Giving Tree (which admittedly has a much different meaning to me now)The first “grown up” book I remember reading and loving (at ~11) was Watchers by Dean R. Koontz
My favorite books as an adult are:
Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
and The Watermelon King by Daniel WallaceAh, I was going to say the Monster at the End of this Book too! Such a brilliant bit of writing for kids, Grover’s expressions are priceless 😁
