The first was a comic from a series called Daga (Rainbow). My first Daga was number 14, and I don’t think I was able to read when I got it. The Daga series featured stories from popular books, including the entire Hobbit, from start to finish. There were also lots of space stories, things you can try to draw yourself.
Then came children’s books, like Pinocchio, Alice, Pippi, and so on. Then came pirates, adventure, the Wild West, Dumas, and Jules Verne. By the age of 10, I was already in the hundreds of books finished, but there was no Goodreads, and it’s difficult to say for sure. My mom would frequently bring me fresh books from the library.
There were several milestone books that had a big impact on me:
- Pippi Longstocking – for its unlimited re-readability and for showing true friendship.
- Winnetou – it’s difficult to say what I saw in this one. I guess it was a certain moral superiority in the main characters that looked appealing at the time.
- The Three Musketeers – the first half is just so satisfying, with imperfect characters following their paths and accepting the present.
- The Lord of the Rings – for the depth of its world-building.
- Foundation – for introducing me to the world of truly great science fiction.
Now that I look to my book reviews, I still read Fantasy and Sci-Fi, occasional adventure/pirates, and some of the folks who published Daga keep impacting the gamebook genre to this day. Lost interest to the Wild West.
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