First Book You've Ever Read Challenge

I was unofficially tagged by S. M. Metzler on her blog Tea with Tumnus. At first, I wasn’t sure where I would fit it into my schedule, but then I realized July has five Sundays this year. One extra blog post coming right up!

I’ve read so many books, I’m sure Goodreads doesn’t have them all listed. According to the site, since I first started tracking the books back in 2011, I’ve read 471 books. The first book I kept track of the dates from start to finish was A Study in Scarlet, but it’s far from the first book I’ve never read.

Let me think.

Hahaha!

What is this madness?

Challenge rules:

• Challenge at least one person.
• Share the first book you’ve ever read.
• Why did you read it in the first place?
• How did it inspire you to become a writer?

From reading The Stinky Cheese Man and The Roly Poly Spider to Amelia Bedelia and listening to White Fang and The Chronicles of Narnia, I remember reading many children’s books. But if we’re talking about the first novel I ever read, well, I’d probably have to say Methuselah’s Gift.

Anthropomorphic animals. Forest fires and traps. “Uprights” aka humans. A story of redemption. What’s not to like? (Maybe the traps and fire?)

My third-grade teacher had the class read this particular treasure. I remember being read to in class, but I also remember reading this one silently. I went on to read the sequel, Methuselah’s Heart. Then my teacher took our class to go meet the author, and she talked to us about stories and the racoon under her porch who inspired her to write the novel and how to craft a plot.

That’s when I knew I wanted to become a writer.

I had taken interest in writing stories before, the first ever story I remember writing being a paragraph about an octopus with shoes. Don’t judge. Writing prompts for children are weird.

When I met my first ever author, my teacher encouraged me to write. Even when I wrote a story for class about a guy biking into outer space to meet space penguins (wait a second…), she encouraged me. Even though I went on to write many more awkward stories and to try reading above my grade level, I was determined to become a published author.

Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I’ve read Methuselah’s Gift. Time for a reread!

As for the tagging, I challenge the following bloggers:

Faith René Boggus (A Boggus Life)

Melissa Gravitis (Quill Pen Writer)

And you! (Mwuahaha! Thought I’d cover you all.)

Let’s chat! If you don’t have a blog and/or don’t want to write a post, what’s the first novel you’ve read? Have you read Methuselah’s Gift before? If so, what did you think of it?

***

Similar posts: The Bookish Q&A Tag, 5 Fantastic Children’s Books That Broke My Heart, and Treasured Books

Literary references: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, John Scieszka and Lane Smith’s The Stinky Cheese Man, Jill Sardenga’s The Roly Poly Spider, Peggy Parish’s Amelia Bedelia, Jack London’s White Fang, C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, and Mary Elizabeth Edgren’s Methuselah’s Gift and Methuselah’s Heart.