In this post, Olga Godim says:
"Periodically, BL explodes with questionnaires. It could be 50 questions or 5 or 12, and everyone pitches in, because we all want to talk about ourselves, express our struggles and thoughts and quirks. We want to share ourselves with our friends.
One of my online friends, Michael D’Agostino @ A Life Examined, came up with a blog hop Question of the Month. Once a month, he makes up a question, sends it to all the participants, and we answer on the first Monday of the month. This month, his question was:
What was the first book (or book series) you really fell in love with?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My answer (as already set out in the maxi version Bookish Q&A that made the rounds a while ago):
To an equally great extent:
- The various collections of Greek mythology that we owned (they taught me to value courage and intelligence -- my favorite hero was Odysseus; my favorite deity, you've guessed it, Athena -- and they gave me a first inkling of just how far the history of mankind actually goes back);
- The books by German adventure novelist Karl May (they taught me to respect all people equally, regardless of their national and ethnic origin, as well as to value friendship and, again, courage, and they fed into my curiosity about countries and cultures other than my own),
- Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books (they taught me that girls can go absolutely everywhere they want to), and
- Otfried Preußler's Die kleine Hexe / The Little Witch (it taught me that in the face of a setback, perseverance and cleverness equally pays off; if you stick to your guns and use your head you will still prevail in the end -- even if you are seemingly outnumbered and outranked).