I could not get past the hobbit party at the start of Lord of the Rings (several attempts, and I hadn't read The Hobbit) until I picked up the paperback of The Two Towers in the school library one day and started reading in the middle of a battle--I then read all the way to the end and starte over with Fellowship. Sometimes starting out of order can help.
Also, I'd been aware of Discworld for a while, but hadn't tried any of the books, because they looked like derivative fantasy satire. Then I picked up Small Gods, which was new in paperback in my local bookstore... and, well, I know there are those who recommend starting with Vimes or the Witches, but Small Gods was definitely a *far* better place for me to start than the Rincewind books.
Mmmm. I remember holding Wyrd Sisters in my hands, reading the back cover, thinking that based on the description, it could be stereotypes and cardboard humor, or it could be really good. I wouldn't have ventured even one dollar on it at that point.
Because it was a library copy, I took it home. Being able to try it out for free meant I became a fan and eventually bought the whole series.
Back in the days of alt.fan.pratchett and the Annotated Pratchett File (aka afp and apf), there were many conversations about how best to begin the series. Starting with "Small Gods" was a popular suggestion.
ha! I also started Tolkien with The Two Towers, though in my case it's because that was what the library had at the time. Worked out alright except for a lot of confusion over who Saruman was for the first half of the book.
I started Tolkien with the Silmarillion. This wasn't because I am hardcore but because I didn't own any, and the boyfriend I had moved in with at the time had a copy of Silm, but not any other Tolkien, for some reason (I think he got it from his dad). I remember liking bits of it but feeling very lost until I finally read LOtR a few years later.
When I was at university, various friends recommended Lord of the Rings so I ordered it from the public library, and also The Hobbit. I think they did send me The Hobbit First, but next they sent The Return of the King, which after The Hobbit did not make any sense. I finally bought the thing complete in one volume and read it that way.
I determined to read each of the subseries in their proper order and started with The Colour of Magic. I wasn't put off continuing because I had already decided to read them all anyway, but I could see why someone might be.
Aside from reading the Greenwich Village trilogy in reverse order, I had a habit of reading random chapters from any book I was starting on just to figure out how I should go about reading it, as I had a tendency to plunge on reading despite having lost the thread of the story.
As a teenager, on a family trip I ran out of reading material. Fortunately we were visiting a college town so there was a used bookstore. I picked up a fantasy novel named *Ara's Field* by Laurie J. Marks, based on the back cover text and the excellent cover art.
I didn't realize it was the third in a trilogy. Each of the three books featured a different protagonist, so it just seemed like the protagonist had a well-developed backstory. (She'd been a supporting character in book two.)
It's a fantasy novel where the world is under attack from an alien race that had recently arrived via magic. The world had multiple intelligent species- the Aerie (two legs, two wings, two arms), the Mer (six swimming limbs, the front two capable of find manipulation), the Auroch (centauroids), and the Walkers, who were the only intelligent quadrupeds. (Maybe there there some quadrupedal farm animals, cow and/or horses? I don't recall.) The protagonist was a Walker, and as an experienced SFF reader, it was obvious that the author was hinting that Walkers were humans, who had arrived via magic in the distant past and their origin had been forgotten.
Anyway, the novel goes along, and half-way through the heroine has sex during a Carnival-esque festival and gets pregnant. Circumstances force her to go on a journey even as her belly swells, and it's clearly not ideal. Until, after three months of pregnancy... SHE LAYS AN EGG. She's happy that Egg Day finally arrived, as it will make it much easier to travel because she can carry the egg in a pouch under her clothing to keep it warm in winter. Also she's taking herbal medicine to prevent her from going into winter hibernation like all the other Walkers.
I had to reread those pages about three times.
After the trip I got the first two novels and in the first couple of chapters of book one, it's quite clear that the Walkers aren't humans at all. Book one starts with the protagonist's childhood, which involves hatching, being a fuzzy toddler, then a winter of metamorphosis when during hibernation everyone at that age loses their fur, Walkers lose their wing buds, and everyone develops external genitalia, which is when they find out who's a boy and who's a girl. Presumably Walkers have some vestigial wing bones inside their shoulders, just like whales have vestigial pelvises.
It's a great series, I highly recommend it. It was written in the late 80s or early 90s, well before issues of gender identity were commonly discussed in SFF.
I read Eleanor Cameron's A Room Made of Windows in complete innocence as a standalone and, having been informed several times over a period of several years that there were other Julia Redfern books, I finally acquired and read them a month or two ago. Windows spoils various aspects of all of them, but it doesn't actually matter very much. The series grows up with the protagonist -- I was startled that the first book, Julia's Magic, is essentially a middle-grade novea, whereas Windows I guess would be called YA but is not really categorizible at all in current terms. Cameron is good. I did read the Mushroom Planet books in the proper order, at least.
I have read the "Hornblower" and "Narnia" books out of order, but for some reason I want to try and read Patrick O'Brian's Aubreyad in something approaching chronological order.
I started Asimov's Foundation trilogy with the third one ("the one with the Mule in it", as I think of it), went back and got the first book, got bored with it and never finished it, and will probably never read the second.
I started the Hugh Walters series with the second one, The Domes of Pico. It really depended as to what was available in my local library.
I think I read the Capt. W.E. Johns space series in a fairly random order. I finally found Kings of Space, the first in the series, which ends of a cliffhanger. I think I was an adult before I found the sequel, Return to Mars.
I started reading the Sandman collections in the order that I was able to find them at the local libraries, which let me tell you is not optimal for figuring out what the overall story is supposed to be about.
It was enough to get me to go buy the collections one graphic novel at a time, one every week or two, in the proper order. That's not bad; the series rewards several re-readings to spot things missed the first time through and it's much easier to follow developments.
I think I knew "in media res" before I was 10. Practiced it a lot too.
My city library had _Raphael_ by R A MacAvoy. The back cover mentioned a Damiano. Since my names include Damien and Raphael, of course I had to read. Never mind that it's the third book... it's actually pretty standalone anyway. I didn't find the first two until years later.
My first Vlad Taltos book was _Phoenix_, again because of the title. The Vlad series doesn't really have a tight reading order anyway, but this 5th book is kind of the sequel to the 3rd book. Still hooked me.
My first Bujold was probably Falling Free but my first Miles book was Mirror Dance. Which IMO works pretty well as a single-volume introduction to most of Miles's universe at the time. Like Pratchett and Brust, Bujold tries to write standalones even in her series.
My first "Buffy" episodes were the second season local maximum of "Surprise" and "Innocence". I may have needed some clues from friends, but it still hooked me. I managed to get another friend ("You're watching *what*?") to come try the finale, "Becoming", which hooked her. We then borrowed someone's tapes to catch up.
I've been watching the Railgun anime series. There are a lot of references to Index material, but if you don't mind not getting everything, the main story holds up fine on its own.
Horse and His Boy might have been my first Narnia book. I started Harry Potter with book #4.
I accidentally started reading Farseer 3 after Farseer 1, which was confusing ("wow, this is a massive time skip being recapped"), but I realized and found #2.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2020-09-23 10:03 am
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(Anonymous) 2020-09-23 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)Also, I'd been aware of Discworld for a while, but hadn't tried any of the books, because they looked like derivative fantasy satire. Then I picked up Small Gods, which was new in paperback in my local bookstore... and, well, I know there are those who recommend starting with Vimes or the Witches, but Small Gods was definitely a *far* better place for me to start than the Rincewind books.
Riderius
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Because it was a library copy, I took it home. Being able to try it out for free meant I became a fan and eventually bought the whole series.
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(Anonymous) 2020-09-23 04:47 pm (UTC)(link)I didn't realize it was the third in a trilogy. Each of the three books featured a different protagonist, so it just seemed like the protagonist had a well-developed backstory. (She'd been a supporting character in book two.)
It's a fantasy novel where the world is under attack from an alien race that had recently arrived via magic. The world had multiple intelligent species- the Aerie (two legs, two wings, two arms), the Mer (six swimming limbs, the front two capable of find manipulation), the Auroch (centauroids), and the Walkers, who were the only intelligent quadrupeds. (Maybe there there some quadrupedal farm animals, cow and/or horses? I don't recall.) The protagonist was a Walker, and as an experienced SFF reader, it was obvious that the author was hinting that Walkers were humans, who had arrived via magic in the distant past and their origin had been forgotten.
Anyway, the novel goes along, and half-way through the heroine has sex during a Carnival-esque festival and gets pregnant. Circumstances force her to go on a journey even as her belly swells, and it's clearly not ideal. Until, after three months of pregnancy... SHE LAYS AN EGG. She's happy that Egg Day finally arrived, as it will make it much easier to travel because she can carry the egg in a pouch under her clothing to keep it warm in winter. Also she's taking herbal medicine to prevent her from going into winter hibernation like all the other Walkers.
I had to reread those pages about three times.
After the trip I got the first two novels and in the first couple of chapters of book one, it's quite clear that the Walkers aren't humans at all. Book one starts with the protagonist's childhood, which involves hatching, being a fuzzy toddler, then a winter of metamorphosis when during hibernation everyone at that age loses their fur, Walkers lose their wing buds, and everyone develops external genitalia, which is when they find out who's a boy and who's a girl. Presumably Walkers have some vestigial wing bones inside their shoulders, just like whales have vestigial pelvises.
It's a great series, I highly recommend it. It was written in the late 80s or early 90s, well before issues of gender identity were commonly discussed in SFF.
--
Nathan H.
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P.
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F&E is two novellas. The first one is basically Belisarius In Spaaaaace. The second one is the rise of The Mule.
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I think I read the Capt. W.E. Johns space series in a fairly random order. I finally found Kings of Space, the first in the series, which ends of a cliffhanger. I think I was an adult before I found the sequel, Return to Mars.
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It was enough to get me to go buy the collections one graphic novel at a time, one every week or two, in the proper order. That's not bad; the series rewards several re-readings to spot things missed the first time through and it's much easier to follow developments.
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My city library had _Raphael_ by R A MacAvoy. The back cover mentioned a Damiano. Since my names include Damien and Raphael, of course I had to read. Never mind that it's the third book... it's actually pretty standalone anyway. I didn't find the first two until years later.
My first Vlad Taltos book was _Phoenix_, again because of the title. The Vlad series doesn't really have a tight reading order anyway, but this 5th book is kind of the sequel to the 3rd book. Still hooked me.
My first Bujold was probably Falling Free but my first Miles book was Mirror Dance. Which IMO works pretty well as a single-volume introduction to most of Miles's universe at the time. Like Pratchett and Brust, Bujold tries to write standalones even in her series.
My first "Buffy" episodes were the second season local maximum of "Surprise" and "Innocence". I may have needed some clues from friends, but it still hooked me. I managed to get another friend ("You're watching *what*?") to come try the finale, "Becoming", which hooked her. We then borrowed someone's tapes to catch up.
I've been watching the Railgun anime series. There are a lot of references to Index material, but if you don't mind not getting everything, the main story holds up fine on its own.
Horse and His Boy might have been my first Narnia book. I started Harry Potter with book #4.
I accidentally started reading Farseer 3 after Farseer 1, which was confusing ("wow, this is a massive time skip being recapped"), but I realized and found #2.