How did YOU find the World of the Wheel ?

[fosterrl]

Compared to some I am kind of new to WOT. I found it probably within the last 7 years. I was looking for a new book to read and I kept seeing Eye of the World every time I was at Target. I finally got it and was hooked from then on out. I have read all the books including New Spring and I have been to the last two book signings. I really wish that I had found it sooner and been able to meet Robert Jordan.

[Lupy]

I started reading on Thanksgiving Day of 2009. A few days before that I was in Barnes and Noble looking for something to read over the break. I had just finished reading all the Discworld books and I wanted something serious. My mom is a big fantasy fan too, and when I asked her about WOT she said that it never ended and she had gotten bored with it in the nineties. I got tEotW anyway and spent all 3 days off school reading it. It took me about a week and a half total to read it because I had so much homework. I thought it was pretty good and got TGH. The ending of that book sold me, as I'm sure it did for many of you. I got to read up through TGS without a pause, which was epic until I had to wait for TOM. Not that I can complain. I don't know how some of you made it so long without exploding.

[Tollieman]

I was about 13 or 14, had just read Lord of the Rings and really enjoyed it. My parents took a chance and brought home Eye of the World. Think I finished it in around 2 days. Waited ages for The Great Hunt (don't know why it took so long!), finished THAT in 2 days.

 

The pattern was set, and continues to this day

[Erendis]

I was also about 13 or 14, by that time I was totally obsessed with Tolkien and wanted to read every fantasybook the small library in my town had. Since WoT was quite a large part of the fantasyshelf, I picked up EotW and was immediately hooked. I told my friends that they should absolutely read it and they did, so we raced eachother to WH, which was the last one published at the time. Instead of waiting for the books to be available in the library, I went and bought every one of them, and thus beating my friends :)

Though I couldn't wait for CoT to be translated to Dutch, so I bought the English version. Even though my English wasn't that bad at the time, it wasn't nearly good enough to understand the book.

I never thought about them since that time, until this summer Blind Guardian's new album came out, with two songs about WoT. I remembered how obsessed I used to be with them, and started re-reading them, now including CoT and the rest. By the time I finished tGS, ToM was just published and I finished those last two in about a day each. And since December, I have read them again in English (which is WAY better than the Dutch translations) and listened to the audiobooks. It is, once again, as bad as when I was fourteen :)

 

And now I'm trying to get my boyfriend into reading them, but he doesn't enjoy reading as much as I do, and only wants to pick them up when the entire series is finished...

[omer681]

Lol. Last year, when I was 13, my sister just bashed a giant pile of books (1-8) on my desk and said "Read". She knew I loved fantasy.

I started, first the beginning of the first book really bored me but after Winternight I got really hooked and read all of the series, and said to my dad to order the rest from Amazon so I had to wait another month to read 9-12. Took me about a quarter of a year.

[htarcan]

I was young and living in a little town. One day a short and beautiful girl dressed in blue came from a big city and brought me the first book. she was my sister :))

[Foamy The Master]

Hmmm well I started reading it only like 3 or so years ago so lucky me didn't have alot of time waiting for books.

As for how I got sarted on the wheel...........

 

Basically I just needed something to read. I finished with Feist and Eddings, read the dark tower series and James Clemens

Started on the discworld but the books are hard to come by here in SA.

 

So as I walked into the book store they had a whole shelf that drew my attention we get the UK covers I think black bindings with the numbers in color on the side

so basically that's when I started grabed the first 3 (all I could afford) and rad then in like 2 weeks couldn't put them down. then re-read as I saved up some money for the rest

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

saw the cover of EOtW at the bookstore and bought it. ahahahahhahagh cough cough... seriously.

 

i'm always surprised when other people have that answer, cause even i don't think it's a good cover. but it made me want to have the book.

[Incom]

WoT is literally older than I am.

 

I believe I picked up the series for the first time right before RJ died. Asked a family member for some reading recommendations and he recommended R.A. Salvatore and WoT.

(IIRC he also recommended Goodkind as well, so maybe he's hit-and-miss. <.< Said it was decent up until Jagang appears and then it sucks. Read the whole thing anyway. Not nearly as good as WoT and has a stupid ending, but at least better than Twilight IMO. Not that that says much.)

 

I enjoyed the whole series (yes, even CoT). Years later, I still haven't picked up Salvatore :P

 

I own EOTW in paperback and the Sanderson books in hardback. Patiently awaiting AMOL. Really need to reread TGH-KoD in the meantime though, I keep forgetting the plot details from them.

[Burnzy]

You would honestly not believe me if I regaled you with my entire story so long story short, I had read the first chapters of EOTW about 11yrs ago. I got about 4 pages thru the introduction and I could not get thru it it was so boring to me, about 3 years ago I got sick and needed something to do, I had read the prologue previously and it wasn't anything interesting to me, but now I had been sick I think that's what it was, I was drawn into the books It was like a movie playing in my head every word every description it was like my imagination just exploded into being and I have been reading ever since, I am currently on my 6th time thru the series I am refreshing my memory before I read T.O.M I cheated tho I bought it last week and couldn't help I started with the prologue but didn't finish...just a peak

[hankscorpio]

Not really terribly exciting. I had heard of the WoT from various sources online (around 1999-2000 or so I think). I was in high school at the time and wasn't much of a reader at the time but I enjoyed LotR and needed something to do during study hall so I ended up buying The Eye of the World.

[Agelmar]

I can't for the life of me remember. I feel like an old man though I picked up the series right around when The Shadow Rising came out in hardback (although I refuse to believe that cover sold me on the books). I picked up the first three in paperback, borrowed The Shadow Rising from the library and waited on the paperback to come out to buy it, and have bought the hardbacks as soon as released ever since. Since I started the Wheel of Time I have finished middle school, finished high school, finished undergrad, finished grad school, got a real job, got a promotion at said job, and gone BACK to school since I picked up the books. It's been a while.

[True Source Creator]

I've been reading fantasy books for years now. It was "Harry Potter" that actually got me interested in the genre. But I had rarely read epics, so I would never have imagined reading "The Wheel of Time." Thrice I have tried to read "The Lord of the Rings", but something about the beginning of the first book bores me to tears, so I've never been able to get far into "Fellowship" before dropping it and reading something else. I had read all of "The Hobbit", and it was incredible (pwns "LoTR" book-wise, althought he LoTR movies rock!). Anyways, my mom started dating a guy, and he was apparently a big fan of "The Wheel of Time." He had been reading all of them and was anxiously awaiting the twelfth book at the time. He recommended my mom get the first one for me, so on my fifteenth birthday, she gave me a copy of "The Eye of the World." I looked at it in somewhat of disappointment. It had a kind of "Lord of the Rings" rip-off feel to me, and as I said before, I didn't even like reading "The Lord of the Rings." So, I decided I'd check it out anyways, and a couple weeks later (because I had started reading other books at the time), I began to read it. I was reading it at a dilligent pace, but it wasn't until the Winternight chapter that things got interesting, and it became increasingly hard for me to put it down. After that, I was hooked, and that Christmas I got a box-set of Books 2-4 and another for 5-7. I never read them at a very fast pace. I usually only read on the weekends in the mornings, so it took me up to summer to get to the fifth book. But I think they are some of my fondest memories. In fact, last spring break (in March), I would sit out back and read "The Dragon Reborn" and now I'm extremely nostalgic for that...and it hasn't even been a year yet. I'm hooked now, and it's just awesome. I'm on "Winter's Heart" right now, but I have all the books up to number 13. I'm going to be so upset when I finish the 13th and have to wait almost a year for the 14th...and even more so when I finish that one, as that seems to parallel my graduating from high school and an "end to my childhood" or what not.

[BananaOnDrugs]

About one year ago I was on this Math olympics thingy for a few days in the capital with some other students and we hade quite a lot of free time(out of 72 hours total we had 65 free). So we went around...around...doing nothing until we reached a bookstore. I started picking up random books and while reading some random stuff from TEOTW I heard one of the seniors mention it was part of an enormous series. 23 books he said. That kind of stunned me (makes me lauph now though) but the other stuff I'd eather read already or just wasn't interested in. So I grabbed it and by the end of the second month I was waiting for ToM.

[Songstress]

I was there at the beginning. 1990 or 91. I'm not sure. I was attending Southern Illinois University at the time.

 

 

Go you Salukis! I'd have been at SIU myself 'round that time, but alas, I didn't discover WoT until last year.

 

Over the years I've dabbled a bit in reading fantasy (Terry Brooks was my favorite for a good long time) but my primary genre was mystery/thriller.

 

My late husband was a gamer geek, and he got me into playing World of Warcraft about 5 years ago. From there I started picking up the Warcraft universe novels just to pick up on some of the backstory of the game... and when I burned through as many of those as I could get my hands on, I asked some of my guildies in WoW for recommendations of other authors or series. One of my guildies at the time had named their character Alysandra after Lan and Moiraine's aliases, but I didn't hear as many recommendations for Wheel of Time as I did very vocal support for A Song of Ice and Fire, so a bit over a year ago I picked up Game of Thrones and got seriously sucked in. I joined the Westeros forums, and started following GRRM's blog for hints on progress on A Dance With Dragons... and I recall reading GRRM's version of the Jaime vs. Rand Suvudu cage match battle with some curiosity, being completely unfamiliar with WoT.

 

I was taking about ASoIaF with a good friend last year, and she brought up Wheel of Time - she'd only read EotW and part of tGH, but she was very impressed and was planning on starting over at the beginning when she had time (after she finished reading my copy of The Stand, which she's still poking through, she reads very slowly and has at least 3 things she's working on at any given time). In October of last year, being stuck waiting for ADWD and having no fresh reading material on hand at the time, I hopped on my favorite used book swapping website and ordered EotW for myself.

 

By the time I was 2/3 done with EotW I knew I wanted to read the next one, so I ordered tGH and had to wait a week or so after I finished for the next book to arrive. A third of the way into tGH, I said "why wait?" and ordered books 3 and 4, then by the time I finished book 2 I ordered 5... and by the time I was done with book 4 I said "oh heck" and requested copies of all the rest of them that were available. By the time I finished KoD, there was still a long wish list waiting for tGS, so I bought a new copy of the paperback. And I'm anxiously awaiting my new hardback copy of ToM which should be arriving any day. :)

[LatifahAbdul'laah]

Same a previous poster...the EoTW book cover in the store, I read the prologue and was hooked.

 

I laughed at another post referencing Goodkind...I discovered that series in between WOT novels and got so frustrated with Richard, but it was filler for awhile, until A Song of Fire and Ice lol...anyway, in the bookstore also lol

[yoshinobu]

It all started when my dad started reading them when they first came out. He got hooked, after he had me he got me hooked. So the only reason I read these is because my dad needed someone to talk WoT with so bad he made one! Luckly I did not start until CoT came out so I did not have to wait for to many books like my dad, who waited for all of them. In short Second Generation WoT addict!!

[HighWiredSith]

I saw an advertisement before a movie and still remember the phrase "Jordan has come to dominate the world that Tolkien began to reveal." Being a lifelong Tolkien fan and amateur Tolkien scholar I was intrigued and picked up EOTW the next day. I've been reading the series casually for the last three years or so and am struggling to finish Crossroads of Twilight at the moment.

 

BTW - I have at least a half dozen friends who've all started the series, none got past book five - most complained about too many characters to keep up with, too many plot lines, etc. As much as I enjoy the series, I have to admit I have not really recommended it to anyone in a long time. In fact, I've told a few that they may enjoy the first book or two, but to only tackle the entire series if they're a serious fan of fantasy fiction and the books are definitely not made to stand on their own, in other words, don't expect to jump in somewhere in the middle and have any idea what is going on.

[mb]

I also have been a Tolkien fan.

Read much of his fiction.

Only these I have yet to read (of his fiction)::

-Father Christmas Letters, Letters from Father Christmas

-Mr Bliss

-10 & 11 of the History of Middle-earth series

-Legend of Sigurd & Gudruin

 

Of his other works, read these::

-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/Pearl/Sir Orfeo

-On Fairy Stories

-his only play

Those last 2 through the Tolkien Reader

 

 

Though like I told in my first post of this thread, a nephew gave me the first book.

 

 

I seldom recommend any book. I only recommend if the other person asks me to recommend something.

[Leala Sedai]

About ten years ago, during my freshman year of high school, my English teacher told us that we'd have to make a project telling the rest of the class about a book on a list. It was kinda like a report, but more fun, I guess. He had seen me reading Harry Potter, so he suggested the Eye of the World. So, I read the book and did the project with my partners. I was the only one who read it, but it didn't feel like work to me. ;) I devoured the rest of the books up until that point. I actually dropped the series in my Junior year because someone ruined Crossroads at Twilight for me, but I picked it back up around 2008 when my friend invited me to a roleplay forum. I had to drop that too when grad school devoured my life. But I'm out of school, so now I'm here and re-reading the series. :)

[Kenny Simi]

I started reading Fantasy at age 9 with "narnia" then later "the belgariad" and LoTR. The "the horseclans"by Robert Adams(possibly the greatest fantasy/scifi ever) and "Elric". I found Janny Wurts' " The Master of Whitestorm" (fantastic book) and her "Wars of Light and Shadow", also Patricia Mckillips Harpist series. Then I stumbled upon TWoT by accident, love it. Fire and Ice is a decent series also. Love Janny wurts though. Any other Elric fans out there.I normally don't read sci fi , but the"Horus Heresy" series is great.