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For me it started quite sometime ago (for my short life, that is), about six years ago. At that time I was seven years old and my oldest sister was about fifteen. She liked to read me books and I loved to hear them. One time she brought this strange book called So you want to be a Wizard? from the library or somemthing. From what I remembered, and it was a miracle I remembered anything, was that it started with a girl running away from some kids who wanted to beat her up, and she runs into a library (the ONLY actual line I remembered was when Nita runs in and slams the door and the librarian understands why she was running). She hides downstairs and finds a book called "So you want to be a Wizard." At first she thinks that it's a joke, but she checks it out and reads some of it. Somehow she becomes a wizard and some stuff happens and she meets some boy, I didn't remember anything about him except that he was a wizard a while before her. I remember that she talked to a tree and the tree was rather annoyed and scornful to humans in general. I also remembered a white hole named Fred. I remembered Fred very clearly becuase I have always loved quantum/theoretical physics and black holes and my sister basically just told my that he was the opposite of a black hole and therefore very very dense. I remembered that for some reason the fact that Fred's name was Fred was funny. I also remembered that my sister told me semi-jokingly that the whole book happens basically because this nameless girl lost her pen that her grandfather had given her that she always did well on tests with. Fred tries to get it but swallows it by accident. The only other thing I remembered was that they were on top of a building and walked on air.
Anyway, I was in Ohio for a week or so with some friends while my parents were in Germany. Now, I'm a huge computer geek and spend lots of time online, but these friends were country people and hardly used their comp (thank heavens they HAD a comp with E-mail), so I was bored a lot of the time. At one point we went to a library and I picked out a Calvin and Hobbes book I had already read and a tiny X-Files novel to see if it was any good. Now, I love to read, but I always have horribe trouble finding anything I like. I often spend times in libraries trying to remember books that I wanted to get at some time in my life. While I was thinking about this at the library, absolutelyout of the blue I recalled the long-lost memory of a strange book called "So you want to be a Wizard?" Now, I only remembered what I've already written, but I seriously had NOT thought about the book AT ALL since my sister read it to me (she never finished it).I found this really old-looking rather battered and beaten solitary copy of the book. It was hardcover without a dustjacket and had an illustration on the front that I have never seen since, even when looking online, and it is still my favorite. It's a picture of Nita and Kit (both with their wands) in the Dark World (or whatever it was called) climbing into the sewer pipe, with off in the not-so-distant distance a whole bunch of Perytons and, in the middle of them, very tall, holding his long metal rod and sitting on his eight-legged steed, Starsnuffer. After the title there is a large star and there is a star before every chapter title. Anyone else seen this version?
Well, I read it, and... it's not just a great plot. It's not just a great story. I actually cared about these characters and think that they are some of the more realistic to ever grace the pages of a book. This book remains still, not only my favorite YW or DD book, my favorite book of all. It's indescribable. I practically cryed when Fred died. I'm thirteen! I'm a boy! I NEVER cry!
Ah, look what this has driven me too? Rambling! Shame on me! Anyway. Anyone else?
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a
thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am hero.
Anyway, I was in Ohio for a week or so with some friends while my parents were in Germany. Now, I'm a huge computer geek and spend lots of time online, but these friends were country people and hardly used their comp (thank heavens they HAD a comp with E-mail), so I was bored a lot of the time. At one point we went to a library and I picked out a Calvin and Hobbes book I had already read and a tiny X-Files novel to see if it was any good. Now, I love to read, but I always have horribe trouble finding anything I like. I often spend times in libraries trying to remember books that I wanted to get at some time in my life. While I was thinking about this at the library, absolutelyout of the blue I recalled the long-lost memory of a strange book called "So you want to be a Wizard?" Now, I only remembered what I've already written, but I seriously had NOT thought about the book AT ALL since my sister read it to me (she never finished it).I found this really old-looking rather battered and beaten solitary copy of the book. It was hardcover without a dustjacket and had an illustration on the front that I have never seen since, even when looking online, and it is still my favorite. It's a picture of Nita and Kit (both with their wands) in the Dark World (or whatever it was called) climbing into the sewer pipe, with off in the not-so-distant distance a whole bunch of Perytons and, in the middle of them, very tall, holding his long metal rod and sitting on his eight-legged steed, Starsnuffer. After the title there is a large star and there is a star before every chapter title. Anyone else seen this version?
Well, I read it, and... it's not just a great plot. It's not just a great story. I actually cared about these characters and think that they are some of the more realistic to ever grace the pages of a book. This book remains still, not only my favorite YW or DD book, my favorite book of all. It's indescribable. I practically cryed when Fred died. I'm thirteen! I'm a boy! I NEVER cry!
Ah, look what this has driven me too? Rambling! Shame on me! Anyway. Anyone else?
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a
thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am hero.
But as for SYWTBAW, I picked it up in the library halfway through last year, and loved it. *shrugs* nowhere near so complicated... 
I was in Oregon for a family reunion a few months ago... and we spent some time just driving around, looking at things, of course. Now every single person in my family is a bookwork to some extent, but my dad's at the level where there are books he can't remember getting and he can't pass a bookstore without going in. 
So, we were in Oregon, and my dad was driving and we saw this little shop called "Bob's Books" or something. It was absolutely picturesque. There were books everywhere, not really messy but just cluttered. All very good prices. Though you probably wouldn't find many newer things there, you find all these really rare really really old books that you thought you'd never see again there (though there was a newer Star Wars Amazing Cross Sections book in great condition that usually went for something like twenty or twenty-five buck for about eight dollars). The only person who worked there was Bob himself, and he alone new where everything (not exaggerating) was. There were also piles and stacks of books behind the counter. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, this was right after I had read SYWTBAW, so I was right in the middle of the series and I looked in Sci-Fi and found six books, none of which were YW books, and promptly got them all. They were... Starrise at Corrivale, The Door into Fire, The Door into Shadow, Star Trek: My Enemy, My Ally, SpaceCops: Kill Station and a novel based off of a TV-movie called "Sea Quest DSV." (The last two were DD and Peter Morwood)
I neeeeed!
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