Christopher Paolini

It's like dragons were just the slightly cooler version of dinosaurs, but there wasn't that big of a difference.

My mother introduced me to reading.

She actually taught me how to read.

She is a trained Montessori teacher.

So when I think of books that have influenced me, I think of the children's books that I was introduced to back in the day.

Dr. Seuss, Harriet the Spy, Beverly Cleary's works, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift.

A lot of the books that many of us read growing up.

And then later on, I read lots and lots of science fiction and fantasy.

These days, the books that I turn to are some of the ones I read as a young person, but also ones I found as an adult.

I would think of the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I would think of Anna Karenina.

I would think of Beowulf with the Seamus Heaney translation.

I would think of Dune by Frank Herbert and Ian Banks' science fiction work.

I would also think of Smilla's Sense of Snow, which I'm an enormous fan of, and the number one lady's detective agency.

It's hard for me to point to just one book or one work and say that was the book, that was the piece of fiction that made me fall in love with writing and reading.

It was a cumulative effect, and all of these works have had a wonderful, wonderful influence on me.

For speculative fiction, this is a very personal list.

Everyone is going to have different answers to this, but for me personally,

My sort of tops that I always gravitate toward would be – on the science fiction side of things would be Dune by Frank Herbert, would be the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons, would be Wild Seed by Octavia Butler, which might be the closest thing to a perfect book I've read.

It just never gives you a reason to not turn the page.