I don't know why. I should pick that up.

I started LOTR for the first time when I was 10 and I was 13 or 14 when I started Wot. I remember reading The Tommyknockers by Steven King when I was like 12 (probably not appropriate looking back). My dad always had books around and encouraged me to read whatever I liked.

During middle school/high school I made it through DragonLance, Forgotten Realms, Asimov, Carl Sagan, and many others. My dad had this cool book full of sci-fi short stories written in the "Golden Age" of Sci-fi (the 1930s and 40s). It had some great stories in it. I recall this one story that took place in the future where a detective was tracking down "organleggers", people that stole people organs to sell on the back market. I was like wow, they completely predicted that.

I know i probably didn't get as much out of the stories then as I do now, but I still have fond memories curling up in random places with a good book