[mreid]

I also had to convince my parents to buy me books about fractals. My prized possession as a 15 year old was a copy of Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature". A lot of it went over my head but it had some gorgeous colour plates and interesting sections. I still have it at home some 35 years later.

That also inspired me to write IFS code for ferns, Sierpinski gaskets, and Menger sponges in 68k assembler (after realizing AmigaBASIC was too slow).