The #Icanreadchallenge meme
The Black_Sluggard tagged me for this, so here's my response:
The challenge: ** List 10 books that had an impact on you, at the top of your head, and tag 10 people to do it as well. **
This is a quick list without much in the way of introspection, because that's what the challenge called for. Catch me on a different day and I'd probably have a different list. Note these are books that had an impact on me, not necessarily ones I think are good.
1. The Bible - I sat down to read it at some tender, yet barely double-digit age, thinking that if my immortal soul depending on my following God's commands, then I'd better damn well get familiar with them. That was how I discovered it was a nonsensical mound of gobbledegook. I came to understand why there were preachers - because any random person given this source material wouldn't be able to make sense of it. If this was the best God could do in informing people of His creed and commands, then He wasn't much of a God.
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Awesome book. Hilarious. Loved it. I adored this book and quoted it enthusiasticly with my high school friend. It introduced me to a whole new brand of humor and a more 'intelligent' sort of reading experience. It was so nerdy I could just bask in it!
3. Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs - This totally tapped into and fed my inner savage, that feeling that I was just a monkey dressed up in human skin. Oh yes, this was an incredible high, a sort of mindspace that I could slip into for hours. It was trippy. My first exposure to how I could warp my own mind and become someone else through reading a book. At one point, I had 20 or so Tarzan books.
4. Nor Crystal Tears by Piers Anthony - What I loved about this book was the totally different intelligent insect society (even as I was irritated to find that even bugs on other planets had painted whores and female prostitutes). But - it was different and intriguing. Eventually some humans showed up and the story because immensely less interesting at the end.
5. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel - My first exposure to light erotica that I actually liked (actually, I wasn't very fond of the erotica parts, but the story was fine when I skipped them and some of them were simply funny rather than sexy).
6. Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews - My first exposure to whatever fucked up genre that stuff is part of. I read through this one to the end, mortified the whole way. It wasn't morbid fascination, but more a long-term delusion that a book couldn't possibly be this horrid. Something awesome was going to happen to balance out all of this suck, right? I mean, it was a bestseller. My mom loved it. A bunch of people had read it. But no. It had an even worse ending than I thought possible.
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville - This was another book I plowed through out of stubbornness. It wasn't as bad as Flowers in the Attic, but it proved to me that some 'classic' books were lousy reads. This is the book that made me lose the automatic respect for bestsellers and classics and start judging each book on its merits (as well as understanding that some of them, like Flowers in the Attic, might be crap to me and awesome to others).
8. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien - A rousing, fascinating tale that opened my eyes to fantasy world-building.
9. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice - My first exposure to erotica that actually turned me on. Oh yes, this very much tripped my trigger.
10. Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman - I have a review of this on my LJ. I read it early on after my separation, during the divorce. It helped me understand the panic attacks and freezing up responses I was having, the procrastination, and some of the emotional struggles I was going through. It didn't really tell me how to recover from them, but it told me this was normal and to be expected, and with that, I could stop blaming myself (and stop wondering if perhaps my ex was right, and I really was insane, weak, and selfish).
I'm not going to tag anyone else, but if anyone else on my flist wishes to respond, please tag me so I can read it!
The challenge: ** List 10 books that had an impact on you, at the top of your head, and tag 10 people to do it as well. **
This is a quick list without much in the way of introspection, because that's what the challenge called for. Catch me on a different day and I'd probably have a different list. Note these are books that had an impact on me, not necessarily ones I think are good.
1. The Bible - I sat down to read it at some tender, yet barely double-digit age, thinking that if my immortal soul depending on my following God's commands, then I'd better damn well get familiar with them. That was how I discovered it was a nonsensical mound of gobbledegook. I came to understand why there were preachers - because any random person given this source material wouldn't be able to make sense of it. If this was the best God could do in informing people of His creed and commands, then He wasn't much of a God.
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Awesome book. Hilarious. Loved it. I adored this book and quoted it enthusiasticly with my high school friend. It introduced me to a whole new brand of humor and a more 'intelligent' sort of reading experience. It was so nerdy I could just bask in it!
3. Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs - This totally tapped into and fed my inner savage, that feeling that I was just a monkey dressed up in human skin. Oh yes, this was an incredible high, a sort of mindspace that I could slip into for hours. It was trippy. My first exposure to how I could warp my own mind and become someone else through reading a book. At one point, I had 20 or so Tarzan books.
4. Nor Crystal Tears by Piers Anthony - What I loved about this book was the totally different intelligent insect society (even as I was irritated to find that even bugs on other planets had painted whores and female prostitutes). But - it was different and intriguing. Eventually some humans showed up and the story because immensely less interesting at the end.
5. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel - My first exposure to light erotica that I actually liked (actually, I wasn't very fond of the erotica parts, but the story was fine when I skipped them and some of them were simply funny rather than sexy).
6. Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews - My first exposure to whatever fucked up genre that stuff is part of. I read through this one to the end, mortified the whole way. It wasn't morbid fascination, but more a long-term delusion that a book couldn't possibly be this horrid. Something awesome was going to happen to balance out all of this suck, right? I mean, it was a bestseller. My mom loved it. A bunch of people had read it. But no. It had an even worse ending than I thought possible.
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville - This was another book I plowed through out of stubbornness. It wasn't as bad as Flowers in the Attic, but it proved to me that some 'classic' books were lousy reads. This is the book that made me lose the automatic respect for bestsellers and classics and start judging each book on its merits (as well as understanding that some of them, like Flowers in the Attic, might be crap to me and awesome to others).
8. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien - A rousing, fascinating tale that opened my eyes to fantasy world-building.
9. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice - My first exposure to erotica that actually turned me on. Oh yes, this very much tripped my trigger.
10. Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman - I have a review of this on my LJ. I read it early on after my separation, during the divorce. It helped me understand the panic attacks and freezing up responses I was having, the procrastination, and some of the emotional struggles I was going through. It didn't really tell me how to recover from them, but it told me this was normal and to be expected, and with that, I could stop blaming myself (and stop wondering if perhaps my ex was right, and I really was insane, weak, and selfish).
I'm not going to tag anyone else, but if anyone else on my flist wishes to respond, please tag me so I can read it!