[QuickTidal]

UseOfWeapons, on 20 July 2011 - 01:45 PM, said:

IME, people only get bored of traditional fantasy if they're reading shit traditional fantasy.

But this is totally subjective, so kind of mute isn't it? What you deem shit traditional fantasy, the other person doesn't and getting bored with it doesnt make it less good. Case in point I moved on from Dragonlance because I was bored with the particular style after 6 books in the series. I still recco it to people though as GOOD traditional fantasy, as that fact didn't change...merely my perception of what I wanted to read changed.

Anyways, my list is short too:

Dragonlance
LOTR
Jack Whyte's Camulod series (historical fiction)
Ignulden's Rome series (also historical fiction)
Robin Hobb's Farseer series
ASOIAF by Martin
Malazan

[acesn8s]

King Kazma, on 20 July 2011 - 04:27 PM, said:

UseOfWeapons, on 20 July 2011 - 01:45 PM, said:

IME, people only get bored of traditional fantasy if they're reading shit traditional fantasy.

But this is totally subjective, so kind of mute isn't it? What you deem shit traditional fantasy, the other person doesn't and getting bored with it doesnt make it less good. Case in point I moved on from Dragonlance because I was bored with the particular style after 6 books in the series. I still recco it to people though as GOOD traditional fantasy, as that fact didn't change...merely my perception of what I wanted to read changed.

Anyways, my list is short too:

Dragonlance
LOTR
Jack Whyte's Camulod series (historical fiction)
Ignulden's Rome series (also historical fiction)
Robin Hobb's Farseer series
ASOIAF by Martin
Malazan

I enjoyed the heck out of Jack Whyte's series. If you liked that, check out Bernard Cornwell's "The Arthur Books" starting with the Winter King.

[QuickTidal]

acesn8s, on 20 July 2011 - 05:49 PM, said:

I enjoyed the heck out of Jack Whyte's series. If you liked that, check out Bernard Cornwell's "The Arthur Books" starting with the Winter King.

Yup, read it, and his Saxon series as well.

If you haven't read it yet, Robyn Young's Templar series (starting with BRETHREN) is excellent and in the same vein.

[acesn8s]

King Kazma, on 20 July 2011 - 06:29 PM, said:

acesn8s, on 20 July 2011 - 05:49 PM, said:

I enjoyed the heck out of Jack Whyte's series. If you liked that, check out Bernard Cornwell's "The Arthur Books" starting with the Winter King.

Yup, read it, and his Saxon series as well.

If you haven't read it yet, Robyn Young's Templar series (starting with BRETHREN) is excellent and in the same vein.

Added to my book list.

[JLV]

This thread, I like it. So I'm pulling a Gust Hubb

my list:

From -Harry Potter (because everyone read it)- to -Lord of the Rings (because that was the next logical step to my 5th grade mind) - to -Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms (because it was like LotR)- to -Wheel of Time (I thought it was the greatest series ever, after all the Dragonlance)- to -Sword of Truth (because it was like WoT)- to a Song of Ice and Fire (My English teacher recommended after he saw me reading Wheel of Time) - to Malazan (Random gift from my mother's boyfriend a few years ago. God bless him).

edit: I remember reading a TON of Redwall, actually. It was either before or after LotR. Probably before.

This post has been edited by JLV: 20 November 2011 - 03:56 AM

[Ain't_It_Just_]

Welllll, I was reading David Eddings when I was a few years younger, saw the Malazan adverts on the back inside cover...and I thought, "Why not?"

[Captain Beardface]

JLV, on 20 November 2011 - 03:55 AM, said:

-Harry Potter (because everyone read it)-...

Actually not everyone has, I for one have not, it is currently loaded on my Nook but it will have to await my reading of the WoT.

Now then on to my list...

The Hobbit - JRRT
The Lord of the Rings - JRRT
The Golden Fleece - can't remember the author
The Once and Future King - T.H.White
The Silmarillion - JRRT
The Star Wars EU - everything up until the publication of Darksaber... I think that's the last one I've read
The works of Tolkien, in timeline order
The Dark Tower (the first 4 books as they where the only ones out)
IT - I freaking hate clowns
Tommyknockers
Salem's Lot
The Stand
The Jack Ryan Series - Tom Clancy
The Darkness Series - H. Turtledove
David Gemmell
The Book of the New Sun
the Ender Series
The Pendragon Cycle - Stephen R. Lawhead
The Camulod Chronilces
R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels
Dune and all the sequels by Frank Herbert
Edit: William Gibson's Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive
Edit: Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon
The works of Tolkien, in timeline order - again
The Dark Tower - all the way through since it had been finished
A Song of Ice and Fire - GRRM...

Then I finally picked up Gardens of the Moon in March 2008 and finished Toll the Hounds in November of 2008, needless to say I was hooked...

I've read several of the above multiple times more then mentioned but I'm sure I've left some out...

This post has been edited by MuttonChops: 10 December 2011 - 01:25 PM

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

1. Bought the E.T. novelization at my 5th grade book fair.

(And the sequel 3 years later. Yes, there's a sequel.)

These books whetted my appetite for reading in general, and SF/Fan. in particular.

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2. My 5th grade teacher read us The Chronicles of Narnia. I got the books for Christmas that year.

3. Two years later I got The Hobbit / LOTR for Christmas. I began devouring every middle-earth related book I could get my hands on.

4. During the mid-80s I read a lot of movie tie-ins and BSG novelizations.


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5. Then I moved on to some of the sillier SF/Fan. of Alan Dean Foster and Craig Shaw Gardner.


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6. In the 90s I started reading the new Star Wars novels, along with many SF/Fan. anthologies, such as Dragon Fantastic by Martin H. Greenberg.


7. In the early 2000s I reluctantly joined the HP craze. Book 5 hooked me for good.


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8. After GoT began on HBO, I started to actively look for well-known fantasy series that I hadn't read before.

I enjoyed / am enjoying:
Game of Thrones
The Dragonbone Chair
The Name of the Wind
The Eye of the World

I did not enjoy:
Lord Foul's Bane
The Magic of Recluce
Pawn of Prophecy
The Sword of Shannara

I have purchased, but not yet read:
Acacia
Mistborn
The Red Wolf Conspiracy
The Way of Kings

And, of course, GotM blew me away...

But I must have read hundreds of books in my lifetime, so there is so much I'm leaving out.

[JLV]

KSC, I approve of your use of pictures in many of your posts.

And the Thomas Covenant series goes from bad, to good, to FUCKING AWESOME. In the first 4 books. And I haven't read farther than that yet. So I encourage you to keep reading. After you finish off the entire Malazan collection, of course. Twice.

Edit: I also approve of your name. Have rep.

This post has been edited by JLV: 30 December 2011 - 10:00 PM

[MillionSpots]

Most of the books I have on my shelf are from used-book stores. Back then there was only one bookstore selling the newest novels.
So, I read a lot of Dean Koontz, some John Grisham and Mary Higgins Clark, some historical fiction, some romance, fanfiction...


As for books in the fantasy and sf genre, these are what I read before Malazan:
Harry Potter
A novel about Drizzt
Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide
Dragonlance - Autumn Twilight, Winter Night, and Spring Dawning, and Test of the Twins because my sister found it in a used-book store
Sword in the Stone by Gemmell
The Time of the Dark by Hambly
Except for the Potter and Hambly book, the rest were lent by my sister's boyfriend, who also sent her eight hardcover MBotF books which had been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years.


And then my sister urged me to read MBotF, which I finally began reading September 2010. I finished eight books in eleven days. Needless to say I had to reread.
It was Malazan which made me read more fantasy.

[Studlock]

Everyone else has just big lists, mind you I only started to really read in high school. I read Harry Potter, which I enjoyed but it was missing something so I went full second world fantasy with the WofT but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Now that I look back it's kinda of funny but I felt WoT didn't reflect the 'mood' of our reality with all it's terrible terrible things, so I jumped over to Malazan and as they say the rest is history. I have tried to read LotR but I can never get past the second book, but I have read the Hobbit and very much enjoyed it.

[worry]

I've always had a natural attraction to fantasy (and its relatives), from even before I was reading, so I suppose it started with cartoons/movies. The Secret of NIMH, Pete's Dragon, The Hobbit, The Last of the Red Hot Dragons (which I think was somehow religious), The Last Unicorn, Watership Down, the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, etc.

In elementary school, my 3rd grade teacher read us TLTW&TW and Prince Caspian, and I instantly requested the series from my mom, who got me the box set for my birthday that year. Loved it (except for the Santa Claus cameo which I've always hated). Soon after, my mom bought The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander from a yard sale, and I started making trips to the library to finish that series. Still one of my all-time favorites. I was still not particularly cognizant of fantasy as a genre though, I just knew I liked stories that could broadly be called supernatural or imaginary. Stuff like Bunnicula, the Phantom Tollbooth, etc. I avoided outright stuff like the Hardy Boys, which just didn't have that extra something.

I didn't actually get to reading LOTR/The Hobbit until middle school, and that's where reading for fun really took off for me. Mostly Stephen King though, since we had a bunch of those already. I still wasn't going out of my way to find stuff. I was mostly playing video games those days, but it can't be underestimated what an impact The Legend of Zelda, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and those SNES Final Fantasy games had on me. Then in high school I actually met a couple people who also read fantasy, and so I actually received some recommendations. I read the entire Shannara series up to that point (through the Heritage books and the prequel thing), Brooks' Magic Kingdom For Sale series too, The Belgariad/Mallorean which I loved and a Sparhawk trilogy that sucked balls, Dragons of Autumn Twilight (never finished that trilogy though), the Silmarrilion, and the first few Elric novels which is all my library had. I was never one to skip around a series...for instance if the library had books 1-3 and then 5 and 6, I would stop at 3 and just forsake the rest.

College was basically the first time I had disposable income, the internet, and a worthwhile library so that's when I started seeking out series/authors for an actual collection of books of my own. I read stuff I had missed out on (A Wrinkle in Time quad, Earthsea first three, Watership Down the novel), found stuff I had never heard of like Ender's Game, His Dark Materials, and probably most importantly, discovered Robin Hobb and George RR Martin, who both threw me for a loop. There's definite through-lines between these two and my love of Malazan (regardless of all the insistence that they're doing very different things).

But I still wasn't there. Those two kinda ruined me in terms of my expectations of fantasy for a while, and I was disappointed in a lot of the stuff I read post-college (fair or not). I didn't like the Drizzt books, Terry Brooks had gone to crap with the High Druid trilogy, I read some JV Jones series that was mediocre. And then I decided to do what I was avoiding and finally read Harry Potter which was at Order of the Phoenix at that time. I had been annoyed by names like Dumbledore and resisted the hype, but was soon hooked anyway and got through those first five in a couple weeks. I was kinda back in fantasy mode after that, read the Paksennarion books, Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, and finally Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn and was at least enthusiastic if not in love with them (as I had been with Hobb and Martin).

It was also around this time that I happened to read a few non-fantasy novels just as much paved the way to Malazan as anything else: East of Eden, Lonesome Dove, and Moby-Dick. Each of these feels epic in its own way, and it made me want to take on something really on that kind of level. I had been a (somewhat passive) member of the sci fi book club for a while (it's where I got that lousy Drizzt omnibus thing, for instance), and had seen the MBOTF series growing and growing, but with a definite end in sight. This was already 2007, so Reaper's Gale had just come out, and I decided to jump in. I bought them as I could afford them, which was fast enough to get to TTH as it came out. So really I'm a latecomer, and I only had to wait for DoD and TCG. When I finished those two, I was finally able to heave my aching body into bed, close my eyes, break into one small satisfied smile, and gently pass away. The End.

[Binder of Demons]

My route to Malaz was lucky to be honest.

First genre book i remember reading was an omnibus of Isaac Asimov short stories, and when i read "Nightfall" it blew my mind. I think i was about 8 years old. Read all his short stories after that.
Read Lord of the Rings when i was about 11, and then pretty much gave up on reading for several years. Don't know why?

Not sure when exactly, but i got into reading Arthur C Clarke stuff when in secondary school, and gradually read everything he published. Was a huge sci-fi fan by then.
First fantasy book (more of a horror though) was Clive Barker's "Cabal". This eventually brought me to his other books, like Weaveworld, and Imajica (which if fucking nuts).
Returned ot the familiar world of Sci-fi after that and made my was through most of the headline science fiction writers, like Frank Herbert, Iain M. Banks, Greg Bear, David Brin, and a host of others I can't think of. I had the good fortune to Read DUNE while working in a desert which certainly added to the experience.

After college a friend gave my a box of books he had read (mostly fantasy novels), and I ended up only reading Anne McCaffery's Pern series which i enjoyed as light and easy reads.

While i was working overseas and had no money to buy books, i had to make do with a mobile public library, so i got through Terry Brooks' Shanarra series, which i found to be quite entertaining if a bit repetitive (ok, very repetitive).

I think at this time i had already started George R.R Martin's "A song of Ice and Fire" and loved it. Also read Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" which is also excellent. These were only minor detours from the Hard Science Fiction section though at this point. Loved Neal Stephenson as well at this point, along with Richard Morgan and Alastair Reynolds.

It was about 2006 that I was about to go working on an a remote island for 3 months with no electricity for 3 months, and i went into my local bookstore and asked if there were any good long series available, preferably big fat novels since i'd need plenty to read (I read about a page a minute when i'm enjoying a book so they don't tend to last long). Well that's when i was shown the mighty Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, so i bought it and Deadhouse Gates, and Memories of Ice to take with me (i also had some good sci-fi as well). I had read no reviews of it, and had no expectations other than that the bookstore guy thought it was great and he liked GRRM's stuff, as did I.

Maybe it's from reading plenty of way out there Hard Sci-fi where i know i won't understand everything and sometimes have to trust the author, but I didn't have any issue with Gardens of the Moon in terms of complexity or "just being dumped into the story". Sure Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice are more accomplished works but GotM had such an air of mystery to it that I was instantly hooked. I finished all 3 in under a week, and probably re-read them each at least once before leaving the island.

When i got home i bought all the others available at that time. About 6 months later i found this site and joined up, and have since found numerous great Fantasy series from recommendations from people here. I am currently suffering from withdrawal as there have been no new Malazan books for a good few months now, and my other favourite series, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files is also many months away from a new installment. Me sad.

Maybe I would have found my way to here eventually but, if it hadn't been for that helpful recommendation I would probably be still reading my sci-fi novels while waiting for the next GRRM novel to come out.

[LadyMTL]

I can't remember the exact order because I've been reading since...I learned how. Plus I read a lot of non-fantasy / sci-fi stuff too, which I'm going to leave out because otherwise I'll be here for months.

I know that the first fantasy-ish book I ever got my paws on was CS Lewis' Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, we had to read it in grade school. Of course, a lot of the symbolism went way over my head back then but yeah, that was my first exposure to fantasy. After that, I read a few of my brother's Drizzt books and hated them, so I moved on to LOTR when I was about 16. After Tolkien came Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series when I was 17 and that's what really kick started my fantasy reading. So, as near as I can recall the lead-up to GOTM was roughly this:

- CS Lewis
- About two or three Drizzt books (can't remember the titles)
- LOTR
- WoT
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- The Belgariad
- Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" trilogy
- Harry Potter
- Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry"
- Terry Brooks' first four Shannara books
- Terry Goodkind (unfortunately)

I remember buying GOTM in paperback and the next two were already in PB format as well, so it wasn't as if I grabbed it when it first came out. It was a total fluke that I even found it, I was in the bookstore and browsing the fantasy section for something new to read and I liked the summary of GOTM so I got it. I bought that and some Jacqueline Carey at the same time, actually, and I was immediately hooked on the Malazanny goodness.

[Sapper JHall]

- Chronicles of Narnia
-The Hobbit
-The Wheel Of Time
-Part of the Dark Tower
- A Song of Ice and Fire
-Elantris
- The Way of Kings
- The Malazan Book of the Fallen

It went something like that anyway...

[Nyarlathotep]

This could be a big list.(And it isn't the whole lot, either!)
Asterix and Tintin
Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology
Narnia-C.S. Lewis
The Dark Is Rising-uh, Susan Cooper?
Elidor-No, don't remember who wrote that
The Hobbit-You know who! And that's where it started for real!
Lord of the Rings
1st 3 Shannara books
Book of the New Sun-Gene Wolfe
Thomas Covenant-Donaldson
Belgariad and Mallorean-Eddings
Saga of the Exiles-Julian May
Pern-Anne McCaffrey
Conan-Howard
Corum, Elric, Hawkmoon, Erekose and the Warhound and the World's Pain-Moorcock
Riverworld series-Philip Jose Farmer
It and the Stand-Stephen King
Riftwar and Empire series-Feist
Demon-John Varley
H.P. Lovecraft
Mythago Wood-Robert Holdstock
The Watchmen-Alan Moore
The Sandman-Neil Gaiman
Slaine-Pat Mills
Weaveworld and Imajica-Clive Barker
Vampire Chronicles-Anne Rice
Vampire World-Brian Lumley
And then I stopped buying and reading fantasy for a good few years. One reason was I was finding some fantasy quite juvenille and silly. Another reason was there was too much serious partying to be done. Hey, it was the 90s and I totally embraced that decade!!! My brain cells are a bit fried.
Anyway, about 2003, 2004 I was staying at a friend's who bought SFX magazine. I was flicking through it and there was an interview with some guy who was writing some fantasy series (oh, probably a trilogy, I thought. How predictable! Yawn). Anyway, I read on. At first it wasn't good. This guy role played and his fantasy world was based on his gaming. "Here we go again! I gave D&D up when I discovered alcohol. It's gonna be another Feist" Reading on the writer said he was an archaeologist, which made my ears prick up as I quite like ancient history. The writer also made some comment about how some fantasy is really stupid and the writers don't really invest in there worlds or somethin like that. Anyway, it was enough to make me think "Well, I've not read a fantasy series for a while and the partyin's beginning to wear thin. Ach, I'll give it a go"
As you've guessed, the writer was Steven Erikson and I got Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates....and it blew my mind!!! Adult, intelligent, realistic in the sense that the characters act like real people not cardboard cutouts, humouress, inventive, subversive, blah, blah, blah, you know what I'm talkin about! Totally got me back into fantasy.
There's been casualties, though. I'll never read Brooks or Eddings again. I'd already come to the conclusion that they were for teenagers. Now, I wouldn't even recommend them to kids! Conan is well dodgy and a bit boring. Also racist. Feist ain't impressive either although I'll stand by the Empire series.
I still rate Tolkien, Wolfe, Donaldson, May and most of the others. And you can add China Mieville, Guy Gavriel Kay and Bakker to that list but the Malazan books were a real turning point for me, kinda like LOTR was, way back when.
Hope that answers your question.

[VienKush]

Ahh great, good exercise for my brain.
Probably went something like this, bit hazy after 25+ years of proper reading. Let's try put them in stages.
The timeline may be a little iffy thanks to the drink, drugs and women

Pre Erikson.

Joe Dever - Lone Wolf Series
Jackson and Livingston - Fighting Fantasy Series

High School

Forgotten Realms - mainly R.S. Salvatore (Drizzt, need I say more?)
Ender's Game & others - Orson Scott Card. Really wished I had of read this a little earlier, might have made the 1st few years of High School easier.
Gaimen & Pratchett - Good Omens
Eddings - Just about everything
Feist- everything of his too
Gemmell - little unsure if it was before or after Eddings and Feist. Still one of my most re-read authors, his books are great for a quick read.
Gene Wolfe
Phillip Jose Farmer
Katherine Kerr - Deverry Cycle
Stephen Lawhead - Pendragon Cycle
Robert E Howard - could you not read at least one Conan novel?
C.S. Friedman - Coldfire Trilogy

University

Frank Herbert
Michael Moorcock
William Gibson
Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
Robert Jordan - In hindsight I probably should have spent more time attending Uni than reading the WoT
Sara Douglas
Robin Hobb - Liveship Traders
Hickman & Weis - Death Gate Cycle
John Marco
Donaldson - Thomas Covenant
Melanie Rawn
Clive Barker
Elizabeth Moon
Anne Rice

All grown up (apparently)

Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana
James Barclay
Cornwell - Sharpe Series
Allan Mallinson - The Hervey Novels
Simon Scarrow
Gary Kilworth - Fancy Jack Crossman series
Kate Elliot

Erikson - picked it up late 2000 iirc, was at a loose end on my way to work. So glad I got in at the ground floor
TGotM was difficult but still rate it as one of the best I have read, honestly, what a mind %^&*. Say what you will but I can't remember
another novel being as groundbreaking or influential on my reading as that.


Post Erikson

George RR Martin - never really quite sure why these two series are compared. Both brilliant in their own right and very different.
I wonder if I had of read him 1st would my view on Erikson be different?

Alexandre Dumas
Glenn Cook
Alastair Reynolds
Tim Lebbon
C.J. Cheryh
JV Jones - Sword of Shadows (very good series and highly underated)
R Scott Bakker - sooo much potential, what went wrong?
SM Stirling - Emberverse Series. This series still freaks me out when I have too much time to think. What would I do if the fires die?
Richard Morgan
Scott Lynch
Joe Abercrombie
Ian Banks
Brooks - World War Z
Donaldson - Gap Series
Rothfuss


A few randoms along the way

Lovecraft
Vonnegut
Asimov
Robert Steakley - Armor (read this on OSC's recommendation)
lots of military history
A lot of throw away authors/books in there as well.

My reading of Fantasy as a genre has died off as a result of Steve, I now find it hard to really get into most of them, due to me comparing them
to TMBotF. I would also say, if I had have been a decade younger and picked up Gardens as a young man I would have found a lot of those authors
a lot harder to read, Erikson is now my benchmark.
I will never understand the people who say the read halfway through TGotM and gave it up.
Saying that, I only ever made it through half of The Fellowship of the Ring. Never will finish it either, does not interest me at all. Nor Mr Potter!
Is that bad?

Jeez.....looking back at all that....what a geek

This post has been edited by VienKush: 04 February 2012 - 11:01 PM

[Orlion]

Juvenile reading:
The Wind in the Willows
Treasure Island
The War of the Worlds
*Lather, rinse, repeat* I kept reading these same books with the odd Oz Book until around third grade, when the odd children's book was read. Fifth grade is when stuff started 'changing.'
The Red Badge of Courage
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Divine Comedy
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion
A bunch of Tony Hillerman mysteries.

Thus leading up to "The High School Age"
Wheel of Time
Mithgar series
Foundation series
The Martian Chronicles
Edgar Allan Poe
Terry Brooks (original Sword of Shannara trilogy and Word and Void trilogy)
Then sometime around 11th grade, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, and the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. This shattered by first addiction to fantasy reading since everything I had read before seemed...terrible in comparison, lacking in substance. I read Wizard's First Rule after this, hated it, and stopped reading fantasy except for re-reads of Thomas Covenant and Lord of the Rings and Narnia (which would eventually lose its magic in time).

Science Fiction Era.
Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlein, Pohl, Kornbluth, A.E. VanVogt, and any science fiction short story collection from that era that I could get a hold on. I tended to avoid 'non-golden age' authors but have read some Greg Bear.
During this era, I also went on a Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and Plato rage.

Pre-Erikson Era
This Era came about with the publication of the first book in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. This is important, because it created a void in my reading enjoyment due to the three year waits between installments. As a result, I read all of Donaldson's other works (except one mystery novel that I'm saving for an emergency), but most importantly, I took a new sojourn into the fantasy genre for the first time in several years with Titus Groan my Mervyn Peake. It was amazing and I found the idea of a fantasy book to be quality reading return. I finished the trilogy and read Boy in Darkness. Other notable authors:
Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
Ford Maddox Ford (Some Do Not...)
William Blake (All of it)
Percy Shelley
John Keats

Erikson
On the recommendation of several other Donaldson fans, I read Gardens of the Moon. I enjoyed it, and would eventually continue reading, but not yet. First, I read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion and The Farseer Trilogy. That same year, Against All Things Ending (book 3 of 4 in the Last Chronicles) came out and a re-read of previous installments and the actual glorious book ensued. After that and when the void between Last Chronicles started up again, the World Fantasy Convention came to Ohio and I went to meet Donaldson but also met Erikson, who was just a pretty cool guy who had excellent tastes in scarfs. Because of that I started reading Deadhouse Gates, then was hooked with Memories of Ice. A few months later, The Crippled God came out and I was able to finish the Book of the Fallen.

Post-current Era.
Now, I've re-read Malazan and continue reading Esslemont. It's excellent for keeping the despair of the Last Dark still being almost a couple years away. I've also read a Game of Thrones (shrug) and plan on reading the Mistborn trilogy, Book of the New Sun, Chronicles of the Black Company, Mists of Avalon, finish the Wheel of Time, The Prince of Nothing trilogy, etc.
I've read the Count of Monte Cristo
Little, Big -John Crowley

Essentially, I blame Donaldson for introducing me to good literature and Erikson for revealing that there is more of it than there might appear to be on the surface.

This post has been edited by Orlion: 03 February 2012 - 03:46 PM

[rhulad]

Early childhood/Elementary Goosebumps
Animorphs
Desperation - Stephen King
The Regulators - Stephen King
Hobbit

Junior High/High school
Forgotten Realms (mostly Salvatore)
Merlin Trilogy - Mary Stewart (only the first three in this series. apparently there were more.)
Uther - Jack Whyte
Harry Potter series (I started this in junior high and finished it after graduating High school cause the series wasn't finished yet)
A Dream of Eagles - Jack Whyte series
First two of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (have yet to finish the series...)
Golden Eagle - Jack Whyte again
A fair amount of Michael Crichton (actually, almost every book that he's published. Started with Congo)
Hitch Hikers Guide
Dune trilogy

Post High School
Sword of truth
GoTM - I found it in 2006 at chapters and bought it cause I wanted something a little more complicated and needed a new series. I was hooked pretty much instantly.

I'm sure that I missed a lot of books/authors that I read in high school and just prior to GoTM. Since I first started the Malaz series though, I have probably read 200 or so books trying to catch up with all the fantasy that I missed because I lived outside of a little town with limited to no access to a good book store.

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

Ah yes, some of you are mentioning the Pendragon Cycle. I read those in the 90s. Neglected to mention them in my original post, though... I love how Lawhead took the King Arthur legend and flipped it on its head - among other things, making Merlin such a badass, in contrast to the cliche old man wizard role. And these books have some of the best quotes in all of fantasy fiction.

Question: "She is beautiful, is she not?"
Merlin's response: "Death wears many faces, but its stench is always the same."

I would also recommend Lawhead's Song Of Albion trilogy, which are very nearly as good as his Pendragon books.

This post has been edited by Kruppe's snacky cakes: 04 February 2012 - 08:29 PM