The Book That Changed My Life: 'Streams of Silver'

 Wayne Doidge

Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore

The book that changed my life was Streams of Silver, Book 2 of the  Icewind Dale Trilogy. During primary school, I loved mathematics and hated English or reading unless I was forced to. At 11 years old I went on holiday with my family to Florida and, while there, we visited a new bookshop that was opening at a Mall in Orlando. The store was fantastic, with so many books, and I found Streams of Silver in the fantasy section of the store.  It sounded interesting and I bought it to read at our hotel.  

I never expected to enjoy it as much as I did. I couldn’t stop reading it and had to go back for the first book in the trilogy the next day.  It developed a deep love of fantasy literature and I now read at every opportunity I get. The Icewind Dale Trilogy was set in the Forgotten Realms, part of the Dungeons & dragons world of role play and I went on to collect over a hundred of their books during my teenage years.  

This love of fantasy continued during Sixth Form, where I found Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, which has brilliant humour and new ways of viewing the world around us.  At University I began to read The Eye of the World, part the The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, an epic fantasy series that eventually ran through fourteen amazing volumes that I have reread many times and was eventually completed by Brandon Sanderson.

More recently this has included reading the Harry Potter series and developing a love of the wizarding world created by J.K. Rowling.  This has become a love for my whole family and we have many themed items around our home.

All of these fabulous memories, however, stem from that moment at eleven years old when I decided to buy a book in a bookstore thousands of miles from home that I could read by the pool in our hotel.  It certainly changed the way I viewed English as a subject and developed the love of reading I now have.

 I would recommend finding a genre that inspires you and allows you to imagine and dream of new worlds and new possibilities.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Icewind_Dale_Trilogy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time#Books_in_the_series