My father would buy a book, read it and then give it to whoever he thought would like it. Many times I was that person.
This was pretty much it for me as well, with a minor exception.
I’d figured out how to read by 2-3 years old, and my parents, being tired of being asked “why?” or “How does X work?”, started getting me encyclopedias and various reference books, both child-friendly and more academic, so I could look stuff up and not pester them incessantly with questions about how rocket engines worked, or where did Columbus go from Spain or whatever.
So in a sense, they encouraged me to read a few of my favorite childhood books, but not in the sense that I suspected the OP really meant.
I didn’t need encouragement. I loved books from the time I was taught to read.
My mother read to me constantly before I could read. Comic books, mostly, Archie, Little Lulu, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse. And sometimes Classics Illustrated. I was a fiend for reading from the get-go, I remember as if it was yesterday, the first time words clicked into place and made sense. My aunt was a librarian and took me with her to work once a week in the afternoon, set me loose to look at whatever I wanted. The first book I took out of the library on my own was ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’. My aunt recommended many many books over the years, the Poldark series by Winston Graham, ‘Gone With The Wind’, and many many mysteries. My uncle sent me a classic book every year on my birthday, lovely hardcovers of fairy tales, collections of short stories for young readers, and things like ‘Little Women’ and ‘National Velvet’. (these were a bit hard to understand pre-internet for a young teen, but I persevered!) A cousin and I were into fantasy, sci-fi, and mythology long before those were ‘things’ and haunted a second hand bookstore downtown - again, when we were 12 or so
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There weren’t ever any particular books you needed encouragement to read?
My parents bought me the Narnia books. Oh, and my mom encouraged me to read The Scarlet Pimpernel, which became one of my very favorite novels ever.
My mother wanted me to read fairy tales and Rutabaga Stories and I hated both. But she encouraged me to read whatever I wanted. My sister got me the Little House books from the library. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Riordan, didn’t care if you didn’t do your schoolwork, as long as you were reading. Any surprise that I became a librarian?
This thread reminds me: I was in the grocery store yesterday and overheard the lady behind me in line reprimanding her kid for reading the fronts of the tabloids in the magazine rack. “I’ve told you before not to look at that junk! If I see you do that again I won’t bring you next time!” Jeez, lady. How do you expect a kid to not read what’s right in front of him? I hope that kid grows up and reads EVERY DAMN THING.
I became a big reader when my grandmother’s sister died and left my grandmother all her stuff. I never met the woman, but she had a couple hundred books, which were stuffed in the basement and forgotten by everyone else. The ones that haven’t been water damaged or eaten by rodents are still there, unread by anyone but me.
Lots didn’t interest me- many were about gardening, cooking, and religion - but Gone With The Wind was in there, and Moby Dick, and other cheap prints of classics someone might get just to appear literate. Reading those kicked off my love of reading.
My parents encouraged me to read anything and everything. Books, comics, magazines, the back of baseball cards. As kid my favorites were Highlights Magazine and Dr. Suess. In elementary school I had a subscription to Highlights and was a member of a Dr. Suess book of the month club.
Not that I can recall. My family were not readers, except me. I don’t read as much as I used to, but i have many books standing in line.
I don’t remember my dad reading anything but the newspaper (they still had them when I was a child. I miss them now) and my mother took up romance novels (even subscribed to a book club or two) when she got into her late 50s and 60s.
I don’t think my brother reads much more than a newspaper or something with sports scores even though he is the only one who went to college.
I can’t imagine being without reading material around me. I have not gotten into e-books or mags at all; I prefer paper and just handling the books/magazines.
Bob
I was 13 and already a voracious reader, but of stuff like Agatha Christie and PG Wodehouse like all my friends. This was back around 1980 in Pakistan. I was sent away for the summer to stay with my uncle-by-marriage and cousins in another city. He had a collection of books that changed my reading life. W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Conrad. My cousins still remember the summer I never left that easy chair. “Uncle” would suggest each book to me with an introduction, and sometimes a warning (I had no idea what homosexuality was!). He also taught me to play bridge and play better chess.
It’s the time I went from being a bright kid with a future in medicine or engineering to being a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual wastrel.
Thanks, Uncle, for the priceless gift. Took me 20 years to realize what a difference that summer made.
I’ll go with my mother and father. They read for pleasure, and I saw that, and grew up thinking that was normal. My mother was also a teacher, but my father also always had a fat stack of paperbooks he was reading.
It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.
…but men seldom realised it when as charmed… something… as the Tarleton twins were?
And the thing is–every time you re-read it, it’s a different book, because you’re a different person. For me, there are three very distinct readings of GWTW, at three different ages. All matter.
Hmm…no, my family has never been very big on books. At least not the classics that carry across generations.
They introduced me to a lot of music, tv and movies though. And mom drove me to the library a lot - not like anyone was ever against me reading.
“Caught by her charm”, yes! I would like to hear more about the three readings…
Abuelita organized her library by age and height, so the books that were appropriate for younger kids were further down. Other than that, most of my relatives just made sure there were books around. “Just” - I had classmates whose homes’ only books were those the children had for class and the phone book.
One day I went to return a neighboring child who’d been playing at my house and came back with Alice through the Looking Glass. Later the kid’s father, now my science teacher, brought I, Robot to class to lend it to me and another classmate who used to trade books: Michel and I would bring to school books the other one didn’t have and read them in class, keeping them under the classbook/notes. One time the Lit teacher came over, checked what was it we were hiding and after exclaiming “ok, I teach Lit, how am I supposed to tell them not to read good books in my class?” told us to just put them atop the rest, our bad postures were giving him a stiff neck in sympathy.
Same here…pretty sure one of my parents bought me Chronicles of Narnia, which is probably the juvenile series I think influenced me the most. But I was horse crazy and books were primarily a vehicle to get my horse fix so I needed no encouragement (there’s even a Chronicles book about a horse and his boy 
).
I do credit my sense of humor development to my dad reading a lot of Mark Twain. I don’t think he encouraged me necessarily but it was there and I read it when I ran out of horse books.
My mother was not as much of a reader as my father but she did haul us to the library every week during the summer until we could ride our bikes there.
My grandfather bought me a subscription to Reader’s Digest in 4th grade or so and I gobbled that up too. I’d read anything I could get my hands on. I read constantly during class, more than one teacher tried to catch me at it by calling me out on a question but since I read the textbooks by the first month of the year, I usually knew the answer.
My mother also always had stacks of books everywhere. After she died my sisters and I had a good (and sad) laugh when we were cleaning her bedroom and found a bunch of bodice rippers hidden. 
She had never before shown in book snobbery.
I’ve just re-read them so they’re fresh in my mind but my mom was the one who started me on the Little House books by Laura Ingalls. She’s a voracious reader, always has been, and encouraged me to be when I was a kid (and still am!). Did anyone else have those Scholastic book fairs at their schools? I ended up with more books than anyone else. She volunteered in my elementary school’s library and encouraged other kids, too. Even now she still goes to the library at least once a week and has TWO Kindles. I got her a new one last Christmas but she still likes the old one, too.