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My gateway book into fantasy was Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone.  I was 10 years old and at Boy Scout summer camp of all places.  One of the older buys in our troop, Mike O'Brien, had brought the whole Elric saga with him which I thought was excedingly strange.  Who wants to read when there's hiking and swimming and sailing to do?  Anyway, it went something like this:

"Dude, books?  Are you crazy?  Why are you wasting your time reading?"
"Dude!  These books are awesome!  Take a look."
"Well, they do look pretty cool.  This guy looks really pissed about something and I like the sword.  That dragon helmet is cool too."
"Yeah, that's Elric, he's the main character.  He's a total bad ass."
"So what's it about?"
"OK, Elric is this prince, the last king of an ancient dying race of near immortals.  His kingdom is crumbling and he leaves to go on adventures in the Young Kingdoms among the lesser race of men."
"Why's he so white?"
"This is the cool part!  He's an albino and he's really weak.  He has to use drugs and sorcery just to stay alive but he runs out of drugs so he makes a deal with his god, Arioch, who gives him a black sword called Stormbringer."
"The sword has a name?"
"Yeah, but it's no ordinary sword.  Stormbringer sucks the souls out of its victims and feeds their strength into him!  He has to keep killing people if he wants to live and of course Arioch demands more souls from him.  But the sword is cursed!  Its kinda alive and has a will of it's own and sometimes controls Elric.  When he's too tired to fight and the bodies are piling up around him Stormbringer takes over and continues to fight for him."
"Dude, that sounds really cool!"
"Oh yeah dude, but it gets better.  Stormbringer doesn't care who it kills.  A soul is a soul so it makes Elric kill his friends sometimes which really sucks but he does warn them to stay away from him."
"It's a wonder he has any friends at all."
"Well, he doesn't kill them all.  That would be kinda boring.  The ones he has are all really cool too like Moonglum, he's my favorite.  And he's also a part of the Eternal Champion.  They're a bunch of other bad asses from other times and worlds who sometimes come together to fight.  Some of them have their own series too which I'm going to read next."
"OK, which one is the first in the series?  I'm gonna give it a try."
"That one in your hands is the first.  I'm on the second but I've already read them once.  You're gonna love these books, I promise!"

And love them I did!  In fact, after I read the first one I convinced another guy to read it and went on to volume 2.  He passed it on to another scout and so on until we had a summber camp book club with everyone nagging everyone ahead of them to hurry up and finish.  The scout master thought it was strange before we tried to explain the plot.  Afterwards he just shook his head and walked away.

It was an amazing experience that really opened my eyes to whole new worlds of imagination and started me off on a life-long love of reading.  I mean up until that point books were something my teachers and parents made me read.  I had no idea that books like that existed and that people actually chose to read when they didn't have to.  I think it's wonderful and forturnate that another kid got me hooked.  I'm not sure I would have believed an adult wasn't just trying to trick me into something.

Thanks for that trip down memory lane, Badseedgirl!