My reading habits and opportunties

I love books and I love to reading books. But... But I also love many other things to do. So this is just one of the cause why I read less than 15 years ago.

It's started when I was 5 years old. I read the tales from the books to the other children at the kindergarten. I was very proud I can read before my primary school years. I have many story-book with numerous tales from Hungarian and foreign authors (Andersen, Grimm, La Fontaine, etc.)

In my primary years time I read many books and cartoons. The books from my parents collection, mostly are historycal fictions and non-fictions, books from Karl May, Jules Verne and what could I find the selves. But I never weary of tales...

I was nine when I read one of the most famoust Hungarian historical book of the brave deffenders of Castle of Eger. The Hungarian title of it 'Egri csillagok", but it get German (Sterne von Eger) and English (Eclipse of the Crescent Moon) traslation also. I found an English wikipedia link about this book. I loved it!

I spend the summers with reading my childhood. I couldn't do too much things at my village, and it was the main reason of I read 15-20 books every summer. But I played football with my friends when we have oportunity under the blue sky.

As I remember I got my first fantasy book at age 14. It was the Dragonlance trilogy by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman. These 3 books were amazing to me! I couldn't put them down, because of the strange races, mystical magic, sorcery, the fights and the great adventure.

And maybe that time discovered the "fighting-fantasy" books also. I was the hero of the story in dangerouos dungeons, fight against orks, goblins and other mosters rolling the dice. Many of my friends draw maps to these dungeons, because some of them are so hard to easy to lost the right way. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone made really great job this interactive stories. I have to admit sometimes I cheat a little bit...

After this golden era the computers spoiled my reading life, and stole many of my precious time from the books. But I was happy because I find many great computer games, like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, X-wing series and car racings. These games helped a lot to learn English (which is far from the perfect due to my laziness), and know better the beauty of fantasy worlds.

I read less, but due to my friends I found the books of John Caldwell (István Nemes) about the half-ork priest-warrior, Skandar Graun. These stories were quity funny and easy to read category.

I met the books of foreign authors too. R. A. Salvatore pulpfictions, the books about world of Forgotten Realms, and after I met the works the real, hi-fantasy authors...

George R. R. Martin opened a whole new chapter in my life with the A Song of Ice and Fire series at the beginning of 2001. I couldn't imagine before the real meaning of fantasy books. His thick tome of The game of thrones was a very big suprise to me. As I read GRRM's books I wanted read more from him, and this leads to read my first book in English. It was the A Feast for Crows, which wasn't as easy reading as I had expected.

It was the time when I widening my interest towards other great authors, like Steven Erikson, Robin Hobb, Stephen King and others.

Unfortunatelly my freetime drastically reduced. The work, the family (with two children), my translation activition, playing boardgames, watching movies and series... So, not easy to organize my life, but - I hope - with the growing up the young ones my sparetime will increase.

Intro

I had been thinking a while, when I finally decide to start a new blog, but in English.

It'll be a hard task, because my native language is Hungarian, and I have been to lazy to learn the proper basic of English language. I think I have great enough of passive vocabulary, but is not active. When I want to express my thoughs I allways forget the proper words and use the wrong English grammar elements. So, I'd like to apologize to my followers about my English.

I think it will be a great experiment to test and improve my skills. Because reading in English is not a hard thing. Sometimes I have to use dictionary, but usally I can understand the meaning of the new words without it, from the context. In additional I translated many computer games from English to Hungarian. As I know the sum of my typed and translated characters is over the 10.000.000.

For example I take part of the translation of the Icewind dale 1 and 2 (included add-ons), the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and many small titles.

What?

I don't decided yet about the content of this blog. Maybe it will be same, or the English mirror of my primary, Hungarian blog. I don't know yet, but I'm still on fire to start and run a blog in English. Reviewing books, boardgames and other thing won't be easy, but - I think - I worth a try.

A short explanation about the title of my new blog. I choose myself this stupic nickname (RaveAir) during my high school years. I love the rave music and I was a real raver that time. The "Air" part of my nick came from the basketball. I don't have to say who was the original "Air" in the NBA. I allways wanted to fly under and over the basket...

I decided to split my nickname, because some of my friends call me a shorter nick to "Rave". As I know the meaning of "On the Air" is the following: currently transmitting; live; - used of radio and television broadcasts, to indicate that the images and sounds being picked up by cameras and microphones are being broadcast at the present moment." So I'd like to broadcast my thoughs, my opinions to you... and I'm currently working the business of terrastial broadcasting of TV and Radio channels.

Why?

I started this blog to reach much more people over the world. My primary blog will remain in Hungarian. (I think it's a good idea to share my opinion about books written in English on Hungarian language, and introducing new, mostly unknown authors, books, boardgames to my readers on that blog.) This blog will be a little bit different, it will be English. So stay tuned...