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My first reading memory would be in first grade where I was first introduced to chapter books. I remember liking Magic Tree House and feeling powerful as I crunched through those books like the nerd I was. I blitzed through books with a nigh blood-thirsty fever that would signal a reoccurring trend. It was here that I began to really fall in love with reading and the journey that it would bring me on.

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The Harry Potter series is perhaps the most influential series that I’ve read primarily because my parents hated it. (I realized I need to explain this). Prior to this, my parents were pretty neutral about my reading craze. Despite them telling me to read some nonfiction and to stop reading in class, they didn’t really mind me reading. That is until I brought home a book of Harry Potter. My dad had apparently watched the first movie and promptly declared it nonsensical and brain-rot inducing. Child-me took this as a challenge and then proceeded to draft extremely elaborate plans to be able to read Harry Potter around the clock. I would wake up at 5 in the morning just to be able to cram in 2 hours of Harry Potter before and try to sneak my copy of
"The Order of the Phoenix" out of the house so I could read on the bus. While this story may sound a tad concerning, I assure you that this experience greatly strengthened my love for reading as my devotion was tested against the views of my father. This also sparked the sense of independence that would later contribute to my fanfiction arc.

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There’s this one reading moment that doesn’t really fit in here but I feel like this wouldn’t be a reader autobiography without it. For context, I used to have a lamp on my bedside that I would turn on whenever I would read. One day, I was reading in my bed as usual. At some point, I looked over at my reading lamp to see that the lamp had been on for so long that the lightbulb had melted through the plastic of the lamp cover. For the next several years I wondered just how long I had sat there reading in order for the lightbulb to get hot enough to melt plastic. I still don't know the answer. The best I've come up with is at least 5 hours during one of the times I tried to replicate the situation.

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I remember randomly grabbing the book "Martin the Warrior" off of the shelves of a library in Dover. Little did I know, that book was part of a series called Redwall that would soon become one of my favorite series at the time despite not really understanding what the book was saying. All I knew was that it was cool and pretty dope.

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Reading for me had already gotten stale at this point. It seemed to me that every book out there was a Hunger Games clone with little to no variation. On top of that, it was getting increasingly difficult to find good books. Cover summaries were useless and the Goodreads ratings didn’t work for me. Any good books I did find were finished in a day, which slowly caused me to fall away from reading. At some point though, I discovered that fanfiction was a thing and I quickly fell in love with it.

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I know what you’re thinking. “Oh no, crappy romances written by teens would’ve never been in a relationship” and you’d be right for the most part. However, there’s a side of fanfiction that few people see and I discovered it. Fanfiction was an experimental playground and I absolutely loved it. Machiavellian protagonists? Time travel with a concerning amount of angst? Intelligence 9000 protags logic-ing their way through the plot? You name it, a decent writer has probably written it.

(Also the rating and filtering systems are really good. The summaries are nice as well.)

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“There’s a silver lining to every case where Sturgeon’s law applies, and that prospect of gold is plenty of motivation to dig through manure”.

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This is the site that I start out on.

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From this point onwards (8th grade), I can count the number of professionally published books I've finished on my hands.

On the other hand, I estimate the amount of fanfiction I've read to be at least 25 million words. For context, the entire Harry Potter series is about a million words.

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Fun facts: My method of finding fics at this time

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Fun facts: My method of finding fics at this time

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This covers 8th grade to 9th grade

Go on fanfiction.net
Sort by the amount of followers
Skip everything that wasn't an OC-insert

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I don't particularly have a reading mentor as I generally don't like participating in communities. However, I could say that Reddit was a pretty influential when deciding the next fanfiction I would read. The long-form nature and culture of the site allowed me to see in-depth reviews of any fics before I committed to reading.

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Yes I am a Reddit dweller.

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Up until this point in time, there hadn't really been any fics that I truly and whole hardily loved. Walk on the Moon would be the fic that would remain my number one for a very long time. What really stood out to me about this fic was the uniqueness of a villain MC (main character) that was well-written and not overly edgy. The MC's motivations are clear and make plenty of sense, which leads to some of the best character writing that I have ever seen.

There really isn't any fanart for this fic that I could use as 'cover art', so no art for Walk on the Moon.

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Shift: I begin to read actually decent stuff

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Shift: I begin to read actually decent stuff

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It was around the end of 9th grade that I began to browse Reddit more often and diversify into other genres. It's here that I read a few Harry Potter fics despite never really liking the fandom, as there are far too many romances for my liking.

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All-time favorite comedy fic: Seventh Horcrux

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All-time favorite comedy fic: Seventh Horcrux

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It's just really funny.

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"Hem, hem," Umbridge hem-hemmed.

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Much Important Book: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

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Much Important Book: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

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This fanfic is on something else.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, also known as HPMOR, is perhaps the largest fanfiction known for its good writing. There is a Wikipedia article for this fanfic. That's how big it is. HPMOR is also one of the first fics where I really felt a sense of community present in the work.

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The ending of the fic has the main character in a dire situation with all of the cards stacked against him. The author then calls upon the readers of the fic to 'pass the final exam' and create a way for the protagonist to survive and escape. If the readers do not manage to offer a feasible solution within the given timeframe, the protagonist will die.

The final solution involves creating anti-matter and quantum physics.

There were official parties held around the US to celebrate the ending of HPMOR. This fic is bonkers.

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This is your final exam.

You have 60 hours.

Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death, despite being naked, holding only his wand, and facing 36 Death Eaters plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort.

If a viable solution is posted before *12:01AM Pacific Time* (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015, the story will continue to Ch. 121.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.

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https://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/a-harry-potter-story-you-haven-t-read/story-z1hRf8Lej9V3uf30Pu4R3N.html

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Have you ever, while reading a book, wished that you were the author because it's so clear that the characters are being stupid and there's a simple course of action that could make everything okay?

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality ( HPMOR), is what happens when someone who co-founded a "community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality" read Harry Potter and felt that way. The result is Eliezer Yudkowsky's 1983-page, 122-chapter-long tour de force that:

a) Reduces the gargantuan number of significant plot holes in the Potter saga to - in my opinion - just one.

b) Adds internal consistency to a story that, to paraphrase JK Rowling herself, wouldn't recognise internal consistency if it danced naked in front of it wearing Dobby's tea cosy.

c) Prevents the villain from turning into a pathetic cartoon that even Tobey Maguire's Spiderman would have been able to beat.

d) Asks some questions that the characters in the series really should have been asking. Like why Slytherin House is officially allowed by the school to be a breeding ground for bigoted schmucks. Or why Lily Potter's sacrifice for her son was the only such sacrifice to end up saving anyone from the Killing Curse even though there must have been people throughout history who had made similar sacrifices. Or how, in fact, the magic in the series works because it's a tad ridiculous that ' Wingardium Leviosa ' is all it takes to defy that great universal constant: gravity.
What's the story?
HPMOR is a work of fan fiction, but the good kind, in which the author invests time and effort to pay tribute to the original and yet gives us a brand new story that stands on its own.

It was started more than five years ago and finished this March. Per Rowling's policy on fan fiction, she will not bring any legal action against the author as long as the book is not commercially distributed. You can access the book for free at Hpmor.com.

HPMOR is a thinking person's story about magic and heroism. Harry isn't fostered by idiots who shut him up in a cupboard. Instead, his aunt Petunia marries a biochemist, and they inculcate a love of science and books in Harry, which serves him well in the story.

Dumbledore isn't just a mysterious old 'good' wizard who mentors the hero, but a complex man whose motives are actually unclear for large parts of the narrative and questioned by Harry. Harry attempts to learn how to defeat Voldemort, rather than leaving it to luck and bravery. Hermione is finally the character she deserves to be, with an identity separate from Harry.

Most interestingly, the conflict between good and evil is represented as a battle between knowledge and ignorance, and this gets fascinating characters out of Draco Malfoy, Professor McGonagall and, to some extent, Snape (the character Yudkowsky changes the least, because Snape was, after all, Rowling's best creation).

This is perhaps best reflected in the fact that the book spans a single year (Harry's first year at Hogwarts), with characters actually thinking about their future courses of action, instead of blithely letting years go by without freaking out over the fact that the allegedly greatest dark wizard is clearly attempting to come back to power. (I'm looking at you, Prisoner of Azkaban, even though you were perhaps the best of the bunch.)
What makes it work?
Is it perfect? Of course not. Harry can be insufferably arrogant. The writing isn't going to win any prizes. And there is the one plot hole that I mentioned.

Nevertheless, it's gripping, thought-provoking and witty (with some brilliant cultural references, such as Dumbledore quoting The Lord of the Rings and the Weasley twins making up a song about Harry to the tune of Ghostbusters).

HPMOR benefits from Yudkowsky's expertise in rationality and cognitive science - he is one of the principal contributors to a blog sponsored by Oxford University, his LessWrong blog has been referenced by the Guardian, his articles have been published in books on philosophy. But the reason I enjoyed this book so much is different.

When I read the first four Harry Potter books as a 10-year-old, I loved them - it was a time of discovery and wonder that I'll always be indebted to Rowling for.

But within a year, I'd read Tolkien and started to think more critically about what I was reading, so I became disillusioned with Rowling's story. But Yudkowsky has managed to write a version that can reconcile these two different iterations of myself, and let me appreciate the Potterverse once again. Now, if he could just rewrite the Star Wars prequels...
Follow @HTBrunch on Twitter From HT Brunch, October 11 Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunch

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harry potter and the methods of rationality

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Have you ever, while reading a book, wished that you were the author because it's so clear that the characters are being stupid and there's a simple course of action that could make everything okay?

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Previously, I had been using a site called fanfiction.net that only displays story summaries and titles. This new site has a story tag feature that allows people to tag their stories according to what's in them.

It is here that I pick up reading again. Do you know that 25 mil number that I threw around earlier? At least 15 mil is from the past year alone. AO3 has very different writing culture compared to fanfic.net and I loved it.

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Haha I can filter out everything that isn't angst now.

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I would like to step out of my comfort zone more often and try more 'casual' stories. Right now, I exclusively read angst and heavy action but I would like to start reading more lighthearted stories because I'm beginning to run out of good angst fics.

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There are two things that I struggle with the most.

1 - Finding good stories to read. I read 40-60k words a day casually and up to 150-200k when binging. Given the fact that the average novel is 90k words and many around 100-300k, I run out of stories very, very quickly.

2 - Actually remembering to have a life whenever I find a good fic. Last week I found a fantastic 600k that is probably my all-time favorite. I didn't do anything other than read for 4 days, which is a problem.

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They're too short.
They're too censored.
I can't sort through them.
Too few risks are taken.
I don't like romance
but I like drama
and prefer YA style stuff
while hating the traditional 'slightly sassy independent' protag\

It's a very hard combo to find in a post-Hunger Games world.

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There are actually some novels that I like though. Some of the classics such as The Handmaid's Tale and 1984 are really cool.

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...is something that I probably don't want to name here because it's pretty dark. Very dark. And very, very graphic.  The MC gets an ability that lets him go back in time a little every time he dies. This ability gets used a lot.

I really like this fic because of the character interactions and relationships that he builds with other people as he slowly opens up about this ability. Other characters slowly realize the truth about his 'premonition' and help him with the traumatizing effects of his ability. The fic is currently reaching it's final chapters, where it seems as though the MC is heading towards a happy and peaceful ending. yay.

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I just love this author their work so much. They've written several different stories under the series name "For the Want of a Nail". All 5 of their stories have been so good and evoked the 'AHHHHHH' emotion in me that I hadn't felt for a very long time. This series is what also made me try participating in fanfiction communities for the first time, which is something considering my hermit-ish nature.

By the way, the Want of a Nail series currently occupies 4 of the top 7 most liked stories on AO3, just saying.

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That feeling of ohmygodsogood whenever I find something new and binge-worthy is perhaps my favorite feeling in the world. This usually results in me taking a several-day break from the world as I dive into the world of reading. Something else I absolutely love is when an author I really like has written some other amazing works. The resulting binge usually becomes the highlight of the month.

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Pied Piper, while being a well-written series, wasn't anything special to me until the author decided to sucker punch me in the gut repeatedly before taking my heart out and shattering it into a million different sad pieces. The MC becomes a well-known and beloved vigilante and then fakes his death to the entire world because of reasons. What happens afterward is the entire world and several characters grieving over his death in a manner that just breaks my heart.

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This fic is only on here because of this fanart. Don't get me wrong, the fic is really good and is on my top ten, but the fanart is really good.

Plz don't deduct points for this. Look at the fanart.

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Please feel free to comment on my Padlet!