I often joke about being stuck on recapturing my childhood, but it just occurred to me that I first came across most of my favorite authors before I was 10 years old. Is that weird?

The dead ones, anyway. Oscar Wilde, the German Romantics, Victor Hugo, etc--my mother used to read me all of these for bedtime stories when I was little. The only new favorite authors have been sci-fi people, I think, and the occasional Patrick Suskind.

I remember reading an article by an author (I think it might have been Jonathan Frantzen) suggesting his passion for fiction began with being read Moby Dick by his father. Not sure if it was an annual tradition but I think it might have been. It struck me as a great way to both introduce and nourish a literary passion and also to make classic and weightier fiction accessible at a younger age. I feel irreconcilably behind when it comes to reading (the list of what I want to read or feel I should have already read gets ever longer) and I wish I'd started sooner on more ambitious works.

While your experience may not be the norm I think it's an enviable one.

i feel that way with directors. all the movies i liked as a kid directly link to what i like now.

also when i found out Christopher McCulloch and Jackson Publick where the same person i nearly had a heart attack.

he wrote my favorite ticks growing up.