What’s the first book you remember loving?

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

Edit: by Douglas Adams (yeah, like that addition was needed)

I felt personally offended when my teenage son was like yeah it's OK.
- So that's why you gave him up for adoption ;)
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
As crazy as what we've discovered with physics and consciousness in the last two years, I legitimately think there may be something to it.
Like, maybe the scientific pursuit of measuring the tiniest possible details has a butterfly effect that makes everything in a level we notice completely fucking insane.
Like how Google maps when you zoom in it replaces all the pixels. Maybe zooming in anywhere causes a snowball effect where everything everywhere suddenly needs to also be determined at that level, and that's why shit at the "human level" isn't running right.
There's so much in those books that sound so stupid in the surface, but honestly aren't as far fet he'd as they initially seem.
Gives me Philip K Dick vibes but with some of the best comedic writing ever instead of meth induced paranoia like Dick.
+1

The Hobbit.

First "real" book I read at like 10 or 11 and I just went straight the the whole series after.

I still remember turning the page to start Chapter 5.

Redwall, by Brian Jacques I think. Basically medieval fantasy drama but with woodland animals if I remember properly. I loved the whole series, great books when I was a kid.

Oh my god I saw the post and immediately thought Redwall! Glad to see you, new friend!

Theres A Monster At the End of This Book

One of my earliest favorites too.

The Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time series. There were other books I really liked prior to that, but I distinctly remember reading that one on a long road trip I was stuck on with my parents, and being just completely enthralled by it. Made a 14 hour car ride feel like nothing.

The series ultimately led to discovering Brandon Sanderson as an author (when he took over for the last 3 books in the series), which led to a lot more really memorable, beloved reads, so that's a nice added bonus.

The climax of the eye of the world was incredible, I've never continued on in the series, is it worth it?
- The next few books are great, but around the middle of the series it really drug for me. There's a huge number of characters to keep track of and a lot of simultaneous storylines going on, and while some of them are great, some of them are rather dry, and the dry ones always seem to get brought up right when the good ones are reaching a climax. Once you get past those few books, it gets good again, and Brandon Sanderson's books at the end are excellent.
  If you're in the mood for a fantasy epic (with all the baggage that entails), it's worth the read. There's also audio books of the whole series and the readers are excellent.
- I'm a bit over halfway through the series right now, burning through them at a book every week or two.
  The series suffers from sprawl. There are 3-4 'a-plots' at any one time, which can be a bit frustrating. I'm loving them though.
- I only read it for the first time earlier this decade. The series goes through about four distinct phases. If you liked Eye, you'll almost certainly also like books 2 and 3, which are very similar in style. After that, it goes from being high fantasy adventure into more of a political intrigue. Then it expands into a much larger cast, fleshing out the world. Parts of this third phase are what's often referred to among fans as "the slog", because the pacing slows down a lot and it can really drag to read. Personally on my first read-through I didn't find this nearly as bad as I expected, but I did notice it a fair amount at times. Then the fourth phase happens after Robert Jordan dies and Brandon Sanderson takes over finishing the series takes it back to the feeling of phase 2, but wrapping up and pushing towards a dramatic climax and conclusion.
  I think it's reasonably likely that if you liked 1, you'll like the series as a whole. But it's possible that the shift from phase 1 to 2 could break the interest for you, if that's not a change that vibes with you.
I really enjoyed Eye of the World, and I faithfully read the next seven or eight books when they came out.
But I tried to read it again a few years ago and it didn't keep my interest.

A Wrinkle in Time.

One of the first big kids' books I read on my own. I should re-read the series as an adult since I might have been almost too young for it the first time.

Picking just one book is really unfair as I fell in love with various books at different times of my life.

But to answer your question, the very first book I remember falling in love with as a little kid is... two books. Jules Verne 'Michel Strogoff', and Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' which I read in French back then as 'Le monde perdu'.

But I insist, this is absolutely unfair to the many other books I've loved and still love to this very day :p

Everyone has always one favourite.. always :)
- Elfstones of Shannara

The cat was a bit of an asshole, but figured out how to fit in.

I really like the cover :) So so so cute :)
- Pickles, aka the fire cat, is born homelss and lives in a barrel before being adopted by a nice lady and then eventually joining the fire department and improving himself to become a better cat.
  Here is Pickles being an asshole by chasing a kitten up a tree, because that is something cats do.
  If I remember right Pickles wasn't able to get down either and had to be rescued by the firemen. It leads to his journey to learn how to be nicer to other cats and improve himself.

Hitchhikers Guide, my mom got me to read it really young. I was maybe 8.

Before that, Zoobooks obviously

Hatchet

Redwall by Brian Jacques. Introduced me to so many things like the fantasy genre, multi-book series, deep worldbuilding, archetypal races and probably way more. The food descriptions also stand out in my memory.

Haven't gone back to see how it stands up but I highly recommend it for kids whose reading level is improving and want to move up a tier in length/difficulty.

Redwall by Brian Jacques was probably the earliest one I remember loving.

The Black Cauldron Series.

There were books? I just remember the animated film.
By Lloyd Alexander? If so, those were great! I remember reading those to keep me busy at my older sister's girl scout meetings.

Something by Brian Jacques when I was ten. Probably Long Patrol or Mossflower. turned me from a book hater into a book fiend. Like, literally pissed off my parents because I would read at night instead of sleeping.

The Magician's Nephew
this was my first introduction to the concept of multiple realities and it blew my little 7 year old mind

That's the Narnia prequel, right? It was by far my favourite book in the series as a kid, though I was already familiar with the concept of multiple realities thanks to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I always hoped it would get an adaptation. I haven't reread any of them as an adult, but my memory of it still makes me hope for that one day.
- I mainly want to seen a screen adaptation of Jadis causing a ruckus in 1900s London lmao
  yeah like at that point as a kid I had the concept of "going to a fantasy land" stories but always sorta applied Neverland logic where the existence of the fantasy land was somehow tied to our own (e.g. via wardrobe door)
  The Wood Between the Worlds introduced to me the idea of multiple realities existing completely independently from our own. Ironically, given C. S. Lewis' intent with Narnia, this concept helped me challenge the Protestant beliefs that I was being raised with, and brought me some form of comfort in the idea that maybe I could someday escape Yhwh's reality.
  See, child me was NOT thrilled with the idea that my afterlife was going to consist of ETERNALLY WORSHIPPING GOD AND DOING NOTHING ELSE, even if the church claimed that was some sort of unbeatable joyous bliss. After all you can be happy but still be fucking bored and that sounded like just a slightly less shitty Hell to me...
  So I actually got really into mysticism as a kid to try to learn how to magic myself into a reality where you got to go to an Aslan's Country style afterlife instead of eternal sitting in church.
  This did not go over well with my religious parents, lol. Thankfully I eventually dropped all the magic and religion shit in favor of a love for science. Though I still love mystic aesthetics and high fantasy ofc
YESSS. I loved this as a kid and I was so angry it didn't get a movie adaptation. I think a lot about how the ground made everything grow because the world was new. I still think about the "you can't unring the bell" thing.
- the concept of the Deplorable Word spell that kills every living thing except the caster was also terrifying and amazing to me. Took a few years to realize it was probably a metaphor for nuclear weapons

I got really stuck into the Artemis Foul books as a teen. I always thought they'd make a great TV series.

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen hit me at the right time as a kid.

When I was very young, 10 or under, there was a book I read that I remember almost nothing about, just that there was a kid who found or built a bunch of robots to do various things. The only robot I really remember is the one made to row a boat, named (appropriately) Row-bot. It had a bell built in that would ring every time it made a stroke. At the end of the book all the robots have to leave the boy, and the last scene is him watching them rowing away and hearing the bell fade into the mist. That I even remember any of the book tells me I really liked it.

Besides that, I was gifted a copy of Ender's Game for my 15th or 16th birthday. I really loved it and it was the first time I can remember being really blown away by a plot twist.

Edit: The first book may be Andy Buckram's Tin Men.

Cujo

The Magician's Nephew

wait, I know that name. what WAS that book? was that fucking Narnia?

It was a lithuanian children's book. As far as I know it's not been translated to other languages, it was called "stebuklingas portfelis" by Vytautas Račickas

Can you tell us the story?
- It's a slice of life type of book, that tells the life of a kid living in a small village :3.. it's been ages since I read it, so I only remember bits of pieces of various acts, but it goes over various parts of life, like making friends, death of family, encounters with animals and others through the eyes and imagination of a kid.
  The name of the book translates to magic briefcase, which comes from the main character lying to his class that his briefcase is magic after they make fun of him cause it's old-fashioned to go to school with one :3

The first of the Dragonlance books. I loved that trilogy so much as a kid. With Raistlin and Caramon, Tika, and Riverwind, Goldmoon... Thirty years later I still remember it.

The first book I really enjoyed and got into after high school (as in it wasn't a required reading) was The Hunger Games.

When I was a kid I remember reading a Dragonfall 5 science fiction novel and enjoying it.

A few year's later I read To Kill A Mocking Bird for a school assignment and being impressed by Harper Lee's writing style and finding the story and topics really interesting. Around that time I also fell in love with Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

Damn it was good. Opened up the world of Star Wars and reading to me.

Since Disnep declared them null and void I refuse to read anything from the new canon.

half magic.

don't remember it at all, just that i was obsessed.

The other books in that series were also great.

The Mysterious Benedict Society was my childhood. I swear I read the whole series like 8 times. Got me into mystery novels and I've loved them ever since.

The one that really struck me was "Starstreak: Stories from space!" It was a collection of short sci-fi stories including The Haunted Spacesuit and Who Goes There.

Turned me into a lifelong SF reader.

Probably a Hardy Boys book, I used to devour those as a pre-teen.

I never read a book outside of school (which was all fiction books, which I never got into), and then I was gifted Zygmunt Bauman's Globalization: The Human Consequences and loved it and realized non-fiction is a thing

The Paul Street Boys. I still remember it fondly!

Fox in Socks, Dr Seuss.

So you want to be a wizard by Diane Duane.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I remember correctly is the first novel I remember reading. When we were kids, our parents bought us kid-friendly versions of the novels. I don't really remember anymore if they were condensed versions, or just the same length but with a couple of pictures added per chapter.

Watership Down

Richard Scarry’s "What do people do all day" is such a fun book that even now I wish I had again just to flip through the pages and see the intricacies of the drawings

The first one I remember really being moved by was Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. But the first one I truly loved was Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny.

Where the Red Fern Grows

I was a very sad child and that book gave me lots of excuses to be crying all the time xD

There was one early teen book series that my school library has where it was a town with weird things happening and kids investigate. Twice aliens came to get help from the kids. I can't remember the name of the series though.

I think mine would probably have to be the Darren Shan saga, starting with Cirque du Freak. I think I was 10 when I picked up the first book in the series at a random bookstore in Seoul, and I can't have been older than 12 when I finished the last one. I think that ending was the first time I cried at a piece of media.

Idk about "loved," but I'll put "I can fly" since I remember reading it a lot.

In case others don't know it, it goes a little something like this (each line is a page):

"I can fly

Up, up, up

Down, down, down

Up, up, up

Down, down, down

Up, up, up

Down, down, down

I can fly"

Almost any Golden Book (Pokey Little Puppy) or

My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George),

Paddington Bear books.

Along with titles others have mentioned (Scarry, etc.). These are firsts

Soup & Me

House of the Scorpion. Pleasantly surprised to look it up and see it has pretty good ratings

My earliest remembered favorite is The Little Red Car by Bernice Orawski. Cute little kids book with lovely illustrations about a car having the worst day of its life.

Kingdom of Shadow by R.A. Knaak.

I played lots of Diablo 2 back then and a friend once went into this small nook with books in a local games shop and showed me they have Diablo books. I wasn't much of a reader. I read some books that I enjoyed, but moat of them I was made to read.

I wanted to know more about the world of Diablo so I bought it. I mever expected it to grab me as it did. When I came home, I was like "let me read a chapter and go to actually play after". The boom jumped right into action with the first sentence and the PC was not turned on for 3 days (unheard of until then) as I used every free moment to read the book.

I bought other books in the series right after and then started to branch out to other fantasy series. This is the book that made me a reader. And I can thank a videogame for that.

Maniac Magee. I read it again recently and it really holds up well.

It’s basically a book about racism. This orphan kid doesn’t understand why this town is segregated, so he keeps going on the black side of town even though he’s white. He makes friends with all the kids and eventually the adults start to understand they’re not so different. The ending isn’t unrealistic, like the town immediately desegregating or something, but it’s very charming. It’s the little impact that one kid can have on the town that leaves a lasting impression.

I legitimately cried as an adult at one point in the book, because it has a way of getting you so invested in the characters, and I won’t spoil it but something happens to one of the characters. It hits hard.

It.

I read most of Dan Brown's books as a child and I really liked The Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, but the one that marked me the most in my prepubescent years was probably Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho.

The Planet of Adventure series (it came as a single book) by Jack Vance.
It was more of an adventure book than sci-fi. Light on the science but amazingly descriptive with the details of its world building. It was the first time I could read a book and really experience it like I was there. I dug it out of my dad’s sci-fi collection when I was about 11 I think. It was a Dutch translation and came with a separate map. I loved that map so much, you could follow the journey and fantasize about all those other parts that weren’t mentioned in the book.

So yea, it’s the book that opened a whole realm of imagination for me.

The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O Shea. Pure Irish fantasy set in real locations I know in Ireland.

The 1982 version of "The Amazing Adventures of Hercules". They re-released it in I think 2004, but butchered it.

The Green Odyssey by Phillip José Farmer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Odyssey

Can't remember which came first, but it was either The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley or The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander.

The King, by Dick Bruna. I can still recite it by heart 53 years later.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (because it was read to me)

Pirate's Promise (first full book I read on my own)

Old Man and the Sea, the first reading assignment I actually enjoyed. Sure it took 5 years after being weaned off of picture books to seriously get into reading, but hey I'm thankful because there's no adventure quite like the kind that comes from a good book.

The Phantom Toll Booth!

Weren't they making a live action movie of that? I swear I saw a teaser trailer for it like almost a whole decade ago but don't remember the movie ever actually coming out.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Star wars bane books and Kevin Mitnik's ghost in the wires. I couldn't put them down.