Top Ten Tuesday: The Ones That Started It All

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the awesome ladies at The Broke and the Bookish. Apparently, they are overly fond of list-making and love to share their bookish lists with the rest of us book nerds.  =) We're game.

This week's list features the Top Ten "Gateway" Books/Authors In My Reading Journey. So your list could be a mix of a books that got you into reading, an author that got you into reading a genre you never thought you'd read, a book that brought you BACK into reading.

April's picks:

Anna and the French Kiss was my first YA Contemporary. I've been reading them ever since. 

Harry Potter,  I read all of them while I was pregnant. My friend Suzanne lent me her set and insisted I read them all. So I did. I then went on to read the Percy Jackson books. Harry Potter opened my eyes to Middle Grade.

Twilight... *sigh*. I know, I know, but before Twilight I didn't even know what Young Adult was. 

On The Island...When I first started blogging, I kept seeing review policies that said they would not accept self published books. So from the start, I had a bad taste in my mouth about them. I avoided them, but then I signed up for a blog tour featuring On The Island. Everything about the description screamed that I would love it, and I did. It's no longer self published, it was snatched up pretty quickly by a publisher, but I read the original. I will never look at self pubs the same again. Yeah, a lot of them are shit, but there is always a chance you'll read something amazing.

They Sky is Everywhere is a newbie for me! I've tried Audio books in the past, but I think I was just trying the wrong kinds. This was the first full audio book I ever listened to, and now I'm addicted. :o) 

Jen's picks:

The His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman was what I picked up to read when I was pregnant with Katie. I'd always been a reader, but I became a voracious reader once again when I had little else to do but sit around, waiting for Katie to join the world.

The first strictly contemporary novel I read since my tween years -- when that's all I read -- was My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick, and it's still a favorite. I had pretty much sworn off contemporary and anything close to realistic fiction, in favor of supernatural beings, but I'm finding myself gravitating to contemporary books more and more these days.

Thanks to SYNC's summer program, my first ever audiobook was a freebie of Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. I'd already read the book, so I knew I liked it and was fairly certain I'd enjoy the audio. I did. And I went on to pick up Linger and get myself an Audible account. (We'll be promoting SYNC's program again this summer. As soon as we have details, we'll pass them along. But if you click on the link above, you'll see the list of audiobooks for this year's program.)

- My first foray into New Adult was Losing It by Cora Carmack. That was such a fun book, and I went on to read the rest of the series -- and plenty more New Adult -- though I'm still rather picky about which ones I read. (You can read how April and I feel about New Adult novels in this post.)

- The first indie/self-published book I read that made me think I shouldn't discount them all simply because they weren't published traditionally was Torched by Andrea Colt. I'd read a couple others prior to this, but they just didn't grab me like this one. I've read several more now that have gone on to be traditionally published because of their popularity as self-published titles.

So, which were your gateway books or authors? :)  Share the link to you TTT post so we can visit!