How you found out about WOT

[greig]

i have been coming to this site for around a year and a half now after learning about these books on a video games teletext site which described them as tolkienesque. /when i read them i was hooked immediately and i was wondering how everyone else discovered these books.  sorry if this topic has come up before please don't balefire me(!)

[Kadere]

I found out about it by browsing my local bookstore's fantasy section. It had the biggest books, with covers I find very pretty. I then spent probably 8 years being too intimidated by their size to read them until I was 14 and figured the series was over because Path of Daggers had been out for, what seemed to me, forever (HA!). It wasn't until after I read the entire series that I realized a) it wasn't finished, and b) that it had a huge online fandom. I got to enjoy the whole series without spoilers or other people's crazy theories.

[greig]

eye of the world took me about a month to read (slow for me but it was xmas time) but the others roughly a week each and once i'd finished KOD i gave myself a couple of months break before i started again ready for TGS. Now i'm repeating it all again ready for TOM but i can't stop myself cos every time i read through i notice that little bit more and it makes me wanna start over again, but i know i'll never get to the indepth knowledge most of you guys show

[DaughterOfNight]

i have been coming to this site for around a year and a half now after learning about these books on a video games teletext site which described them as tolkienesque. /when i read them i was hooked immediately and i was wondering how everyone else discovered these books.  sorry if this topic has come up before please don't balefire me(!)

 

The mention of Teletext caught my eye and I had to google it.  Had no idea what it was but now that I know, I think it's a pretty interesting feature... in a primitive sort of way, haha!  Looking at screenshots took me back to the 80's.  ;)

[greig]

it was that primitive and it's not available anymore but it was what piqued my interest, just comparing books to lord of the rings and i just had to read them

[Ban thBomm]

It all started for me around '93.  By and large, I didn't read much sci-fi/fantasy, but a girl I was really keen on read heaps of that stuff... she was actually reading the Tamuli at the time, and I started thumbing through them as she finished them... and that got me started.

 

When she moved into WoT, I followed, and eventually, I think my interest outstripped hers.

[Lynander]

Was reading the "Legend of the Seeker" series by Terry Goodkind and the bookstore didn't have the book I was looking for at the time ("Chainfire" I think)  Started looking at random fantasy books.  Saw the words "Robert Jordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal."  And being that he is one of my favorite authors, I decided to try it out.  That was a few months ago.  Now I'm halfway through tGS and will start my re-read soon.  Glad I picked it up that day. 

[PatsNats28]

Recommended to me at a bookstore that has now closed :(

 

It was one of those small ones that wasn't a chain, not exactly Mom and Pops (there were like 3 locations), but the people there actually knew everything in the store. Now you have to go to Barnes and Nobles or something.

[The Watcher and Wanderer]

I had a 20 hour bus ride ahead of me so I went to Walden Books and more or less picked out a fantasy book at random.  That book just happened to be EotW. 

[Snarf]

Summer vacation, between my sophomore/junior years of high school, 1992.  By best friend gives me this book, tells me I have to read it.  At the time, I had read Tolkien, was getting into Star Wars stuff, and had just downed War and Peace.  (Truth be told, I still don't understand almost half of that book.  I'm American, which means I have virtually no expertise in any language, let alone French or Russian.)  Tolstoy was such a daunting work, that I was intimidated by the size of this new book, so I put it off.

Between summer and winter, I get into Marvel comics.  Namor, the Sub-mariner is where I opened that can of worms.  But, I got myself grounded by winter time, and my friend drops tEotW on me again.  After chapter 5, I was hooked.  If I remember correctly, I believe up to tDR was already in print.  When tSR released, my friend and I raced each other through the mall to the B. Dalton's Bookseller.  He won, and he still has the receipt, his time-stamp is one minute before mine.  I lost mine in a fire. :'(

[Elend]

Hahah, I read <i>War and Peace</i> right before WoT too.

[Random Man]

When I was 12, my dad's friend gave me a paperback copy of the Eye of the World completely out of the blue. I guess he thought I'd like it. (I also got The Elder Scrolls: Arena from him, too -- he was the coolest.)  This was back in 1994. I was hooked. I remember using the flyswatter to smack flies when we barbecued outside, pretending they were trollocs, and holding my hand up in the shower so the water ran off my fingertips as if I was channeling Water. Good times.

[torrente]

It was always on the shelves at the library.  I couldn't get an idea of what it was about by the blurbs so I had to read it!  By the blurb description I thought Rand was a half-man half-dragon.

[sleek]

it was funny, i just just picked the book up at my local library because it looked good. After i finished book 1, I couldn't believe the luck i had to have stumbled upon such a treasure.

 

The dark one's own luck, hehe.

Or Mat's ahaha.

[SuperFade]

I stumbled across its page on TVTropes. When I escaped hours later, I decided I had to read it all. This was about two years ago.

[MikeRiley]

I used to spend a lot of time at the library and they have this shelf with old/damaged books that they give away for free. The Eye of the World's cover caught my eye and I brought it home. It sat on my bookshelf for some years before a friend from GameFAQs recommended the series to me. He mentioned the first book and I went upstairs and took a look to see if that's what I had. Without actually having the book already I likely never would have bothered. This was right after The Path of Daggers came out. Not sure when that was now.

 

Also, during my visits to the library I always saw a paperback copy of The Lord of Chaos sitting on a rack. It was the biggest book I ever saw and the binding was ripped up, taped and even the tape was wearing out. I assumed it was old and well-read. Knowing what I know now about the binding with those books, it was probably half a year old. Anyway, I always vowed I'd read it one day because of its size. Didn't know it was in the Wheel of Time series.

[Shimmer]

My friend recommended it to me when I was in my primary school library. For a week or so, I couldn't get past the prologue of TEOTW but then I decided to persevere (cos I had never read such a huge book before)and pretty much straight away, I was hooked. I never even found out about Dragonmount until last year when I was looking for WoT forums and lo and behold - an entire WoT fandom!  ;D

[Natrix]

I didn't start reading fantasy until I was 19. I read the Hobbit when I was 17 but didn't really pursue much more than that. I guess you could say the LOTR movies sparked my interest. I read through that trilogy and the Silmarillion. Once I finished I read a couple more series like HP, and The Inheritance Cycle. I wanted something more in-depth and serious. My brother-in-law told me about WoT. That day I went to B&N, picked it up and started reading. I found it difficult for the first 3-4 chapters but after that the book went well. Been hooked ever since. After reading I realized there were a lot more books, like 10! Read all the way up to Knife of Dreams then waited for tGS.

[Ishmayl]

When I was in 7th grade ( I guess 13 years old), my older brother was re-reading Eye of the World on one of our family trips to Florida.  He got done, and I was bored, so I picked it up and started reading, and literally didn't put it down until I was done.  While in Florida, I couldn't wait to get home to read books 2 and 3 of my brothers' (those were the only two out yet), so I bought 2 new copies so I could read in Florida.

[Coraxian]

I didn't start reading fantasy until I was 19.

 

About the same here.  I spent a lot of time in the library and had already read every non-fiction book that halfway interested me a couple of times.  So I decided to move over to the fiction section.  My thought was: "If you're going to make stuff up, make it interesting and mess with the rules while you're at it".  So fantasy it was.  First Lord of the Rings, then some other, lesser works (but interesting nonetheless).  And then one day I saw this nice series standing there.  Considdered it for a few minutes, read a few covers and took the first one home.... Hooked.

 

Little did I know that picking up that book would change my life to such an extent, having traveled all over the world because of it, or having parts of the world over in the same way. 

[-ZanMgt- OneNight]

My brother had been reading the series for about a month, and one day when I was trying to find a interesting book to read I found tGH on my brothers desktop, so I picked it up and have been hooked ever since.

[aggs4life]

For me it was about 4 years ago, back about the time the Mavericks were in the finals (I live in Dallas).  I was at training for the new job I had just started and one of the guys I was there with was reading LoC.  He recommended the books highly, and since I was a Tolkien fan and Weis/Hickman fan I decided to jump in at tEotW.  One of the best decisions I ever made!!

[aunt_pol]

I was Reading the Tamuli at the time, too. My boyf got books 1-8 in a second hand bookshop, figured I'd like them. I think that was 1999-2000. Haven't stopped readng them since- number of rereads is embarrassing, really.

[Otarin]

I picked the book up at an airport on my way home from a Ski Trip.  This was just after The Eye of World came out in paperback (yes I have been reading them that long).  I picked the book cause it was long and looked somewhat intresting.  I also thought it wasn't a series (boy was I wrong); which I wanted at the time becuase I was in the middle of one and didn't want to start another until that one was done.  I got home and found the Great Hunt in hardcover at the bookstore.  I've been waiting for the next one to come out ever since.

[Fains nose]

I was ten or eleven and me and my Grandpa had gone to watch a movie and we went to a bookstore after. I liked the cover and blurb of a book (tEotW), so i got him to buy it for me. Im 19 and hes still buying the books, the last one being TGS, and he will buy me TofM.