>be me
>be ~14 yo and get bored of vidya every day all day
>mom gives me her old Dean Koontz novels and dad gives me his old Sci-Fi stuff
>read it without a problem
>think to myself “well now it’s time to read something harder I guess”
>ask dad for something harder and he hands me Blood Meridian
>sounds like a badass cowboy novel so I’m into it
>it takes me ~4 months but I finally finish it and decide for something even harder
>go to B&N and pick up Moby-Dick
>it takes me ~4 months as well but I finally finish it
>gradually build up a larger library and start reading more and more each day
>start using Jow Forums at around 15 yo becuase of /mu/
>one day I saw the /lit/ tab and clicked it
>been here ever since
/lit/ origin stories
Kevin Gray
Brody Rodriguez
>be me
>babby
>have mommy show me the picture book
>YES YES YES
>fast forward 20 years
I fucking love Japanese doujins.
Ayden Campbell
Abusive father made me read the bible out loud, memorize passages, and quizzed me regularly on my biblical knowledge. If I fucked up, he would beat me up.
So I guess that's how I got into reading.
Hunter Rodriguez
Why the Bible? Was he actually retarded? Did he think that what he was doing was right?
Jaxson Edwards
He was an alcoholic christcuck and a failed law student who had studied a bit of theology. This was probably his idea of how a child should be properly educated. Obviously he wasn't 100% right in the head.
Mason Hill
My dad said I could only read an animorphs book when I read a book he deemed educational, so a read a lot of the easier canon as a kid as well as some of those fucking 1850s type "literature for young men" pieces so I could read about kids morphing into hawks and stuff.
I definitely didn't take enough away but I got through enough to answer his questions verifying that I was at least paying attention to plot, characters, details, and was forming my own opinion.
One time my mom, administering one of these quizzes, caught me lying about having read The Red Badge of Courage so I could read the next animorphs book, and when I came home from school that day he'd printed out like 25 copies of that fucking Scott quote about tangling a web and used double sided tape to put them around my room, like on every door handle and mirror, pretty much every obvious surface and then hidden in random places like under my bed or in the bottom of my drawer or something.
Never really thought about it but I realize now I know him as an adult that he must have been splitting his sides laughing when he wasn't putting on his serious discipline dad face. Fucking bastard, I must have been younger than 10 based on the house I remember this happening in.
Cameron Stewart
It’s going to be pretty basic /lit/fag stuff I think.
You could say I was read to a lot as a child. My grandmother took care of me while my parents worked and she read to me a ton. I also was a pretty good reader as a kid, but nothing special, I read Redwall and Alex Rider, etc. in high school I read To Kill a Mockingbird and really loved it and felt a connection because my family is from the South. I enjoyed the way she captured the culture and described different details, like the red clay that lined dirt roads, or the experience of going to an all black gospel church.
Then I read the Great Gatsby probably sophomore year and I really attached to that as well. Never was much of a student but my teachers always pegged me as one of the good writers, and I wrote for the school newspaper. When I went to college, I was working a summer job after my freshman year, (which was disastrous due to depression and laziness) and I decided I would read Fitzgerald’s other work. I loved the way that he wrote, even from the first few lines about not criticizing people because “they haven’t had all the advantages you did.” I admit I admired Gatsby first, but then I recognized that the true talent was Fitzgerald, who could imbue characters with beauty and charisma and make a story feel like the good old days that you always looked back on with nostalgic feelings. So I read This Side of Paradise and then Tender is the Night. I then read some Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men and East of Eden, and then As I Lay Dying, and that summer I decided it was really writing that I wanted to do, and I’d always been wishy washy with other stuff but writing was what I was too afraid to try.
Eventually I found /lit/, I don’t remember how, read a lot of Russian literature, Hemingway, some magical realism, some Joyce, and now I’m here, and it’s my last year of college.
I’m sure many of you have a story much the same.
Michael Young
Damn user, sorry for you
Oliver Roberts
Sorry bro, that sucks. May the rest of your life go smoothly and pleasurably.
Jaxon Collins
>socially abandoned by the only friend I ever had at 4
>put my ""advanced"" intellect to good use by reading above my age level instead of making friends
>never stopped because reading is fun