When I was growing up, my parents would read to my brother and me before we went to bed. My mother would read a chapter of one book to me in my room, while my father read a chapter of another book to my brother in his, and then they’d swap.

My mother’s taste ran to Dickens and Bronte, while my father’s fell closer to Herbert and Tolkien. Between the two, I had listened my way through an exceedingly wide array of novels before my tenth birthday.

I think it was that nighttime reading, more than anything else, that instilled in me a love of fiction, kept me tearing my way through books in all the years since. But though I’ve dug deep through literary fiction, I must admit I’ve mostly strayed from fantasy and sci-fi.

A few years ago, on the strong recommendation of the inimitable Sarah Brown, I picked up and quickly devoured the His Dark Materials trilogy. Those books reminded me that there’s very little as deeply engrossing as an entire parallel world, carefully detailed and full of intrigue.

Even so, I still don’t think of fantasy as a genre I really read. Which is why, perhaps, I’m so late to the game in discovering both the Hunger Games series (thanks to Jess) and the A Song of Fire and Ice series (thanks to HBO’s Game of Thrones).

If you, too, haven’t read either or both (or the aforementioned His Dark Materials, for that matter), pick them up, and clear out some time in your schedule. Once you start, you won’t put them down.