Top Ten "Gateway" Books/Authors in my Reading Journey

Quick note before I get this blog post rolling... I'm having a link up for monthly resolutions so be sure to check out this post and link up! It's just a fun but helpful way to make some goals for the month.

So... "gateway books/authors... difficult to think about. I never wasn't in any genre (except sci-fi I guess) I never fell out of reading and I really can't remember starting reading. However, I will attempt this.

1. Dune by Frank Herbert... I guess you can say it got me into the sci-fi genre as it was the first sic-fi book I read. 
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen... It got me into reading Jane Austen's novels and really into the more adult classic novels. I read it when I was ten I think. I and already seen the 1995 film version multiple times as well as other film versions of Austen's novels so I wasn't unfamiliar with her works. 
3. Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare... This was my first Shakespeare that I read that wasn't a children's or abridged version. Through it I began to ease myself into the world of Shakespeare. 
4. Hickory, Dickory Death by Agatha Christie... My first Agatha Christie book and the book that introduced me to mystery novels. I love her books and I've read almost all of them now. 
5. Redwall series by Brian Jaques... I remember reading a lot of those as a kid and I think they really got me going more into reading. They were also some of the earlier fantasy I read. 
6. All books by G.A. Henty... I think I read The Cat of Bupastes first but I don't remember. They're really great historical fiction with Christian tones. Those are what first really got me interested in history. There was a time when I wanted to be a history professor because of those books. :)
7. Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse... Again I don't remember what the first one of those books I read was. They were the first books I read with British humor and I absolutely loved it! I can't recommend those quirky stories highly enough! 
8. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling... These were the first "modern" books I read. Before that I'd read pretty much exclusively classics. Those books will always have a special place in my reading world. They aren't perfect books, and I do have problems with them, but they're still good books. 
9. Bridge to Terebethia by by Katherine Paterson... As I mentioned in some previous post, this was the first book where a main character died. I'd never heard of such a thing! It is a good book though not despite of that but partially because of that. 
10. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens... First Dickens I ever read and let me tell you reading one of those I feel like I should have earned a medal. While his books are very good.... they are also very loooooong. I didn't even much care for Great Expectations, Mrs. Havishman just freaked me out. However, this was my "gateway" into longer novels. Quite the shock to the system I will admit. However, once you can get through one you can tackle the rest. :) 

Linking up with Broke and Bookish.

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