I was probably 20. I was sitting out on the balcony at my family's ranch west of Ft. Worth reading The Godfather for the first time. It was early in the book, just getting toward the end of Book I and I couldn't put it down.

I remember there were moths flying around since I had the light on and I stayed up very late. I think I made it to the end of Book I before I finally turned in.

As I write this I am sitting on a balcony in Varenna, Italy. A very pleasant evening and it made me think of that night back then.

I love to listen to books but there's nothing quite like having a copy in your hands.

I read "2 Years Before The Mast" while out to sea and that book discusses pulling on to San Diego harbor and what it looked like and felt like etc back in the 1830s I believe. It was a very good book. 2 days after I read about Richard Henry Dana pulling in to San diego, I pulled in and I could see the same things he wrote about and I was taken back to those early years and there just being a small mission and cow hide tanning facility and what the area looked and sounded and smelled like. I could see landmarks and it was just a very cool experience.

By the time I was in 4th grade I already loved reading. It was motivation to finish assignments quickly so that I could spend the rest of the period reading whatever book I had at the time.

Only a couple of other students did the same.

When the first dog diedin Where the Red Fern Grows I couldn't get out of the classroom fast enough. I knew I wasn't going to be able to withhold the tears and I also knew the teasing would be relentless. Most kids are mouth breathers at that age. My mom was teaching next door and my teacher let me sneak out to get her.

As much as I loved reading up to that point, I never could have comprehended the power a good well written story yields. I still remember crying in the hallway hugging my mom, praying the kids on the other side of the door couldn't hear. The pain from the book overwhelmed the fear of ridicule.

I was a 6th grader and my grandma was dying of cancer. I had to read a book for school and happened to choose the book, "There are two kinds of terrible" about a boy who broke his arm and after it got better his mom died. (Hopefully that didn't need the spoiler. The one review on Amazon has that same info). My grandma died soon after I finished that book.

I have thought back to that book so many times when I've lost family members and friends.

Great idea for a thread

Two come to mind for me.

First was burning through The Brothers Karamazov in four evenings one summer in college. A high school friend recommended it, I was interning in San Antonio and had no internet, no friends in town, and pretty much nothing to do. So I read 5 hours a night after work. About as simply as I've ever lived, and I ended up reading classics all summer. Pretty much gave myself a classical education on less than $100 at Half Price Books, and it was one of the best summers of my life. All I did was bike rides in the hills outside town and read amazing books.

Second is reading Open by Andre Agassi. He was a hero of mine as a kid, and I knew he had internal battles to fight. I was in public accounting at the time and working north of 90 hour weeks. The book arrived on a Friday afternoon, and I started late and finished at about 6 the next morning having only gotten up once to pee. Finished the book, took a shower, and headed into work.

It's still one of the most compelling memoirs I've ever read.

To kill a mocking bird

When Scout is on the porch of Boo's house and it talks about seeing things from a different or another person's perspective. It was in high school and I still keep that in mind when dealing with people.

The first time I read Jurassic Park(I've lost count how many times I've read it, but it's a lot) It was 30 years ago, but I can still smell the book and the see the places I where I sat and read it.

I remember reading it as a kid and getting so bored with Malcom's soliloquies. Like "come on, let's get back to the dinosaurs!"

I re-read it recently and I wasn't BORED with the dinosaur stuff, but I was always excited when we got back to Malcom waxing philosophically.

11 year old me read Nedry getting eaten at least 100 times.

I read Gone with the Wind when I was in high school, voluntarily. I had seen the film so basically knew the plot but the book describes the reality, the horror, the pain, and the societal implications of civil war times exquisitely. I don't even care if it is not totally accurate-it evoked in me a level of perspective and gratitude in me for our forefathers on both sides of the formation of America, deeper understanding of the importance of "context," grace, and sacrifice. It also evoked a hunger to hear the stories of what life was like day to day in the US prior to 1900.

I also read All Quiet on the Western front in the same time period. Lessons abound that need to be learned by "kids these days."

dad crewed a carribbean sailboat for a while (and did who knows what else). I was about to turn 7, he let me go see him. his girlfriend bought me dune. Read all through the carribean. His blonde dark tan gf was topless the whole time. Hell of a 2 weeks.

First blue water. First really, really bad sunburn. Blisters and puss all over.

She bought me lord of the rings for my flight back to mom and our ****hole slum in minnesota. Ice, snow, and trouble.

Braniff - stewardesses in short bright orange and pink skirts, so nice to me. Pilot gave me wings in the cockpit.

I loved reading. Tried to get my minnesota friends (i was in an almost all african american elementary school in a very poor area) to read it too. They never would. 'Books are for white folk'. No matter how hard i tried. I was sad about that even at that age.

Had a bit of a domestic issue, mom bought me some scifi- ben bova and heinlein. Starship troopers was the most memorable one, and forever war. Read them in a womens shelter and then into south africa with our missionary neighbors. 747 microphones had 3 channels - mozart, news, and abba. Abba. For like 22 hours.

Saw my first murdered people there my first day. Lived in basically a commune apple orchard. The most amazing bright yellow sweet apples. Missionaries wore suits and women in blue polyester dresses, white hose, all day every day, in the fields or shop or whatever. Taught me a lot of woodworking.

Life and books that year were transformational. Memories so vivid to this day. I can still see the pages turn and feel the sun and ice, and see hear and smell all those places.

I was 14.

The book was Letters to Penthouse Vol XVIII.

I definitely remember how I felt.

The water moccasin attack in Lonesome Dove creeped me the hell out when I read it.

I was quarantined for what seemed like 2 months in q far away land over nye 20/21 and was reading Endurance about Shackleton and his insane voyage, wreck and survival when I read the following passage, which kind of put my problems at that point in perspective and really kind of gave me hope for lack of a better word. Certainly it made me feel like the end of my confinement could be seen and that my family was really worth all that was going on.