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Ask HN: What books did you read as a kid that inspired you?

10 points by titusblair ↗ HN
I was talking with family today at dinner and we were discussing books we read as kids and how they inspired us. I loved to read Tom Swift and I believe it helped inspire me to be the technology entrepreneur I am today. What did you read that inspired you?

11 comments

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tjr
Louis Slobodkin's Spaceship Under the Apple Tree series. (Sadly out of print!)
veddox
"Seven habits of a highly effective Teen" (Sean Covey) - probably the book that has influenced me the most in my life so far. Read it when I was thirteen or fourteen.

"October Sky" (Homer Hickam) - OK, I originally watched this as a movie and only read the book it's based on recently; but the movie was incredibly inspiring to me.

drakonka
I have two, read as a child in Ukraine:

Lesnaya Gazeta ("Forest Newspaper") - this was an old book that either my parents or grandparents had to stitch together countless times after it kept falling apart. It was in the format of newspaper articles and contained things like short stories and poems about nature, guides to identifying animal tracks, interesting tidbits about forest animals, etc. Most of my memories of it are from my grandparents' house and dacha, since I lived there until I was 5 and that's where it was given to me. My most early memory is getting up before everyone else in the morning and going out to sit on the couch and read this book. The first poem I ever learned was from this book - a long saga about a rabbit. I think it helped me develop a love and curiosity for animals and nature.

Narnia - the first series I have ever read, the Russian translation. I would lay in my bunk bed for entire weekends reading these stories. Only in recent years have I learned that people consider this to be a religious book. It was never presented to me that way and I didn't associate it with God or religion at all when I read it. I think this was the first "real" fantasy story I read and it inspired me to keep devouring more fantasy books over the years.

Both Lesnaya Gazeta and Narnia kindled a type of curiosity and fascination of the world in me that I don't think will ever go away.

mod
Came here to say "Narnia." I never felt like I was reading about religion--maybe that's a connection kids don't make. I read this series at 8-9 years old. (I think it's kind-of nuts that we read the first book as a group in first grade--it seems like it'd be too difficult!)

I also loved an old book called The Forest Runners. I guess it's part of a series, but I can never find the rest. It's about the old frontier days. Sparked, or at least helped fuel, a lifelong fascination with the outdoors & related activity.

Someday I'll own the whole series and have my kid read them.

taphangum
Rich Dad Poor Dad. Gets a lot of hate but it completely changed my whole outlook on life and money. Still influences me to this day.
MikeTV
I, Robot and other Asimov books inspired an interest in AI and taught me to explore all the ways a system could go wrong.

The Ship who Searched by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey introduced me to the stock market.

RUG3Y
I read Frank Herbert's Dune by flashlight when I was 11. The book absolutely blew my mind. I started at bedtime and turned the final pages at dawn and then went to school. Dune is still my favorite work of fiction, I've read it many times.
matt_o
S. Lem - The Tales of Pirx the Pilot.

I was all of 12 or so when I read it and I was expecting the usual sci-fi hero-space-disaster-monsters-ingenuity-victory thing.

About a third way in I realized it wasn't sci-fi, but a book about life. I few years later I realized that was my first encounter with philosophy.