My 10 Most Influential Books
The "Ten Books that Have Been Most Influential for You" meme is going around Facebook, so I decided I'd port it here to LJ, so that I can talk about them a little bit more.
This is a hard list to compile, and there must, by necessity, be many runners-up. I've based it not necessarily on "books I like the best," but rather books of which I retain particularly vivid memories, or books that have affected my writing in some way.
1. Collected Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I received the volume itself when I was in high school, but I was already a Millay fangirl at that point, and had memorized several poems. I have dog-eared this copy and written my own little paean to Millay in the front. She would approve, I think--as "The Poet and His Book" says, "Read me, margin me with scrawling/Do not let me die."
2. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, Tad Williams. One of the first adult fantasy series I remember reading, although not my first Tad Williams (that would be Tailchaser's Song, which has to be a runner up, alas). I had... a bit of a worship of this series going on, as I wrote about here, second item. It had that beautiful but oh-so-90s cover art by Michael Whelan, and I remember, even before I reached the last volume, To Green Angel Tower, I would take it down from my shelf, admire the cover art, smell the pages, read through the detailed glossaries, etc. Really, this series formed the platonic ideal of a fantasy series for me--which is to say, it should have complex world-building that you need a glossary to get through.
3. Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King. I'm not sure if I would classify this as adult fantasy or not? I seem to recall King wrote it for his daughter, but it's also pretty adult in tone. I remember my mother reading it, and telling my dad and I about the fantastic plot involving napkins and a dollhouse, and then going on to read it myself. I remember being convinced I had an imaginary disease mentioned in the book.
4. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. I first read this soon after graduating, in 2003 or 2004. I have a vivid memory of sitting in North Station, coming back from a job interview, reading this book. I think this is most influential in terms of Gods & Fathers, which I began writing not long after. As such, I went back and re-read it this past year, and found that experience rewarding, too.
5. Go Dog Go, P.D. Eastman. I'm not kidding. I don't think this is my first "first reader" book, and I may have gotten it when I was older than the intended age. I think my copy was secondhand, too. What I found influential about it was the pictures that rewarded close examination, which told a deeper story than the (very basic) text itself. I know it influenced my "thinking around," the stories I told myself as I walked around in circles, which eventually turned into my writing.
I was sad to learn that the edition you can find reprinted these days excludes both the "do you like my hat?" exchange as well as one of my favorite pictures from the book--the one with all the dogs in, under, and around the bed at night. That I remember this, years after this book vanished from my life, is telling.
6. More Adventures of Samurai Cat, Mark E. Rogers. I've talked before about how influential I found this book; how it affected me at a time of life that was already liminal. It's not great prose and the art is ultra-violent, but it was humorous and appealing to my ghoulish pre-teen self, and the characters lived a second life in my imagination.
7. Five Hundred Years After, Steven Brust. I was hard pressed to choose between this and The Phoenix Guards, but FHYA ultimately has more e'Kierons being e'Kierons in delightful ways. This is influential in that every time I re-read it, I discover something new; also, obviously, it inspired me to write my Dragaera larp.
Ironically, I encountered this book years before I ever read it--I remember seeing it on the bookmobile when I was around thirteen, which would have been right when it came out. I borrowed it and tried to read it, because at the time fantasy was thin on the ground on the bookmobile. Understandably, that was just about impossible for a fidgety teen that hadn't read the previous book nor any of the Vlad novels. (I wouldn't read The Book of Jhereg, the omnibus of the first three novels, until my senior year of college).
8. Hellsing (manga), by Kouta Hirano. It's not genius, but it's a vampire tale with an interesting spin which became something magical through the power of fandom. (True geekomancy, that). It inspired me to write the first fanfic I ever finished, and from there, it encouraged me back to original writing, after the hiatus of college, and inarguably had an influence on that first project, Mode of Employ.
9. I suppose, as I'm a writer of fantasy, I have to mention The Lord of the Rings, even though I didn't read it until after college. (I read The Hobbit as a kid, but could never get into the trilogy itself). Due to reading it so late in life, I realized how much EVERY fantasy trope depends on this--hell, even the notion of a fantasy trilogy. Also, many things in Nethack made a lot more sense after reading it.
10. The Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft. I was almost done my HPL read-through when I acquired this volume, but it's the best representative I have of his works as a whole. Lovecraft is a study in "liking problematic things," but his Dream Cycle is particularly affecting, with its lush imagery and its poignant truths.
Honorable mentions go to Kage Baker's The Anvil of the World (and related books in the same world), the Harry Potter series (it did influence me to write a larp!), The Three Musketeers (perhaps this should have gone higher on the list, given Reasons), and maaaaany more.
This is a hard list to compile, and there must, by necessity, be many runners-up. I've based it not necessarily on "books I like the best," but rather books of which I retain particularly vivid memories, or books that have affected my writing in some way.
1. Collected Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I received the volume itself when I was in high school, but I was already a Millay fangirl at that point, and had memorized several poems. I have dog-eared this copy and written my own little paean to Millay in the front. She would approve, I think--as "The Poet and His Book" says, "Read me, margin me with scrawling/Do not let me die."
2. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, Tad Williams. One of the first adult fantasy series I remember reading, although not my first Tad Williams (that would be Tailchaser's Song, which has to be a runner up, alas). I had... a bit of a worship of this series going on, as I wrote about here, second item. It had that beautiful but oh-so-90s cover art by Michael Whelan, and I remember, even before I reached the last volume, To Green Angel Tower, I would take it down from my shelf, admire the cover art, smell the pages, read through the detailed glossaries, etc. Really, this series formed the platonic ideal of a fantasy series for me--which is to say, it should have complex world-building that you need a glossary to get through.
3. Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King. I'm not sure if I would classify this as adult fantasy or not? I seem to recall King wrote it for his daughter, but it's also pretty adult in tone. I remember my mother reading it, and telling my dad and I about the fantastic plot involving napkins and a dollhouse, and then going on to read it myself. I remember being convinced I had an imaginary disease mentioned in the book.
4. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. I first read this soon after graduating, in 2003 or 2004. I have a vivid memory of sitting in North Station, coming back from a job interview, reading this book. I think this is most influential in terms of Gods & Fathers, which I began writing not long after. As such, I went back and re-read it this past year, and found that experience rewarding, too.
5. Go Dog Go, P.D. Eastman. I'm not kidding. I don't think this is my first "first reader" book, and I may have gotten it when I was older than the intended age. I think my copy was secondhand, too. What I found influential about it was the pictures that rewarded close examination, which told a deeper story than the (very basic) text itself. I know it influenced my "thinking around," the stories I told myself as I walked around in circles, which eventually turned into my writing.
I was sad to learn that the edition you can find reprinted these days excludes both the "do you like my hat?" exchange as well as one of my favorite pictures from the book--the one with all the dogs in, under, and around the bed at night. That I remember this, years after this book vanished from my life, is telling.
6. More Adventures of Samurai Cat, Mark E. Rogers. I've talked before about how influential I found this book; how it affected me at a time of life that was already liminal. It's not great prose and the art is ultra-violent, but it was humorous and appealing to my ghoulish pre-teen self, and the characters lived a second life in my imagination.
7. Five Hundred Years After, Steven Brust. I was hard pressed to choose between this and The Phoenix Guards, but FHYA ultimately has more e'Kierons being e'Kierons in delightful ways. This is influential in that every time I re-read it, I discover something new; also, obviously, it inspired me to write my Dragaera larp.
Ironically, I encountered this book years before I ever read it--I remember seeing it on the bookmobile when I was around thirteen, which would have been right when it came out. I borrowed it and tried to read it, because at the time fantasy was thin on the ground on the bookmobile. Understandably, that was just about impossible for a fidgety teen that hadn't read the previous book nor any of the Vlad novels. (I wouldn't read The Book of Jhereg, the omnibus of the first three novels, until my senior year of college).
8. Hellsing (manga), by Kouta Hirano. It's not genius, but it's a vampire tale with an interesting spin which became something magical through the power of fandom. (True geekomancy, that). It inspired me to write the first fanfic I ever finished, and from there, it encouraged me back to original writing, after the hiatus of college, and inarguably had an influence on that first project, Mode of Employ.
9. I suppose, as I'm a writer of fantasy, I have to mention The Lord of the Rings, even though I didn't read it until after college. (I read The Hobbit as a kid, but could never get into the trilogy itself). Due to reading it so late in life, I realized how much EVERY fantasy trope depends on this--hell, even the notion of a fantasy trilogy. Also, many things in Nethack made a lot more sense after reading it.
10. The Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft. I was almost done my HPL read-through when I acquired this volume, but it's the best representative I have of his works as a whole. Lovecraft is a study in "liking problematic things," but his Dream Cycle is particularly affecting, with its lush imagery and its poignant truths.
Honorable mentions go to Kage Baker's The Anvil of the World (and related books in the same world), the Harry Potter series (it did influence me to write a larp!), The Three Musketeers (perhaps this should have gone higher on the list, given Reasons), and maaaaany more.