[Books] Books that have inexplicably influenced me.
I've been thinking about this, for some reason, so I decided to make an LJ post about it. Let's see how long I can go before I have to give in to sleep.
So, okay, I admit that as a young adult, I was completely obsessed with Christopher Pike's books.
Some of them were better than others, some of them seemed great at the time but are admittedly not-so-much in retrospect, and some of them were godawful. And there were those rare few that I still think of today, and have influenced my thought processes and beliefs in some way (as much as part of me is loathe to admit it).
The first Pike book I ever read was Bury Me Deep, which, HOLY FUCK some of the imagery is genuinely fucking scary. ... oh hello, ROTTING CORPSE THAT COMES OUT OF A GRAVE I think I'll sit around and HAVE A NICE CONVERSATION WITH YOU. Not to mention, WOW DEAD BODY FLOATING IN AN UNDERWATER CAVE WTF HOW DID I NOT HAVE NIGHTMARES OF THIS SHIT?? I honestly don't remember what it was that made me love this book so much, other than the unrelenting creepiness, and possibly the fact that this was, as far as I can remember, the first time I'd come across the juxtaposition of a very realistic plot (young women on vacation, murder for the sake of greed) with supernatural elements (ghosts, clairvoyant-like dreams). Which, as we all know, I love my weird shit.
Some of the titles that stay with me now as being my favorites are The Immortal (mostly because it had a lot to do with Greek mythology), The Midnight Club (teenagers in hospice WOW DEPRESSING), and my all time absolute favorite: Remember Me. If I had to choose a Pike book that I still love, to this day, it's Remember Me. The sequels are okay, but the first one still makes me happy in the way only a book that touches me can.
There are other books I appreciate for the concepts they introduced to me. The Starlight Crystal is a really terrible book, in all honesty, but it was the first to introduce to me the concept of a cyclical universe, something that still fascinates me to this day. Whisper of Death is just really fucking confusing, but hey, it tried, and it did some really interesting things with time, death, and perception of reality. As did Road to Nowhere. The Last Vampire books started out good, but three was really too many, and apparently there are eight now? But they expanded more on the basic introduction of Krshna that we got in Remember Me, and remember, at the time, I was a middle school girl brought up as Baptist. My mother is the woman who, many years later, asked me why I couldn't just believe in God "like everyone else." (NO I AM NOT JOKING OR EXAGGERATING.) So just reading about a figure of another religion as a character, even a badly researched or written one, stuck with me.
All of this comes from the one book I've really been thinking about. If there is one concept from a Pike book that I can say remains part of my central belief system, it's from See You Later:
Vincent's computer game. The one simulating World War III, and the one that can only be won if you choose not to play.
And that's about as much deep thinky as I can get right now. ::yawns:: Night, LJ.
So, okay, I admit that as a young adult, I was completely obsessed with Christopher Pike's books.
Some of them were better than others, some of them seemed great at the time but are admittedly not-so-much in retrospect, and some of them were godawful. And there were those rare few that I still think of today, and have influenced my thought processes and beliefs in some way (as much as part of me is loathe to admit it).
The first Pike book I ever read was Bury Me Deep, which, HOLY FUCK some of the imagery is genuinely fucking scary. ... oh hello, ROTTING CORPSE THAT COMES OUT OF A GRAVE I think I'll sit around and HAVE A NICE CONVERSATION WITH YOU. Not to mention, WOW DEAD BODY FLOATING IN AN UNDERWATER CAVE WTF HOW DID I NOT HAVE NIGHTMARES OF THIS SHIT?? I honestly don't remember what it was that made me love this book so much, other than the unrelenting creepiness, and possibly the fact that this was, as far as I can remember, the first time I'd come across the juxtaposition of a very realistic plot (young women on vacation, murder for the sake of greed) with supernatural elements (ghosts, clairvoyant-like dreams). Which, as we all know, I love my weird shit.
Some of the titles that stay with me now as being my favorites are The Immortal (mostly because it had a lot to do with Greek mythology), The Midnight Club (teenagers in hospice WOW DEPRESSING), and my all time absolute favorite: Remember Me. If I had to choose a Pike book that I still love, to this day, it's Remember Me. The sequels are okay, but the first one still makes me happy in the way only a book that touches me can.
There are other books I appreciate for the concepts they introduced to me. The Starlight Crystal is a really terrible book, in all honesty, but it was the first to introduce to me the concept of a cyclical universe, something that still fascinates me to this day. Whisper of Death is just really fucking confusing, but hey, it tried, and it did some really interesting things with time, death, and perception of reality. As did Road to Nowhere. The Last Vampire books started out good, but three was really too many, and apparently there are eight now? But they expanded more on the basic introduction of Krshna that we got in Remember Me, and remember, at the time, I was a middle school girl brought up as Baptist. My mother is the woman who, many years later, asked me why I couldn't just believe in God "like everyone else." (NO I AM NOT JOKING OR EXAGGERATING.) So just reading about a figure of another religion as a character, even a badly researched or written one, stuck with me.
All of this comes from the one book I've really been thinking about. If there is one concept from a Pike book that I can say remains part of my central belief system, it's from See You Later:
Vincent's computer game. The one simulating World War III, and the one that can only be won if you choose not to play.
And that's about as much deep thinky as I can get right now. ::yawns:: Night, LJ.