Gabriele

Tolkien. Though I read stuff like Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann before that and still enjoy 'literature', too. Since I came to Tolkien in the early 80ies, many of the books out then were sorta generic, sometimes fun like Edding's Elenium or the first Riftwar novels, but I really got into Fantasy with Tad William's Dragonbone Chair which started a new sort of Fantasy - or made me aware of its existence. It was not so easy to get English books in Germany prior to Amazon, and I don't like to read translations. The coming of the Internet (and I got mine as early as 1993) made it easier to learn about new books. I still fondly remember some Geocities websites. Nowadays my shelves are an unholy mix of 19th century novels, Fantasy, historical fiction, Icelandic sagas and such, and non fiction books about Roman and Mediaeval history, sorted by whereever I can fit another book in. And I swear they procreate when I'm not looking.

I joined another forum to discuss Fantasy. I'm also on Westeros and Malazan, which may tell you about some of my favourite book series (they also include Tolkien, lots of historical fiction, more Fantasy and 19th century novels). German by location, German/Russian/Scottish mutt by ancestry, with a liking for tea and traveling, history, archaeology and opera; aspiring writer and a pretty decent photographer, preferably of old castles and such.