Which books define you

Jo Zebedee

Jo Zebedee

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This came from a discussion about films tonight (Withnail and I of all things) but, to ask the book question - which book could you imagine not having read and your life would be poorer for it. Not reccommendations, not favourites, but some that have become part of you, that you carry with you in some way?

For me it's often ones I've read only once and never returned to, which is unusual for me, as I'm an inveterate re-reader.

For me:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I don't, especially, like it, but some of its feel soaked into me, particularly the being and not the doing of life.

The Deptford Trilogy - a sense of mystery, of the hidden veils bacame part of me.

The Snow Goose, just I could never, not have read it, or Gallico

Yeats, in my Irish little soul

Long Day's Journey Into Night, in my soul, as is Playboy of the Western world and Waiting for Godot.

Sff: Dune, Starbeast, Rama. Very little fantasy had made it to the centre that defines me I'm afraid.

I hope the thread makes sense.
 
Don't know if this is what you mean and it sounds horribly cliche but for me its Harry Potter. I didn't have the best of childhoods, not outright horrible like the stuff you see on the news but there was definite room for improvement, and it was the Harry Potter books that got me through. Whenever things got tough I would pick one up, curl up and read and for a while I wasn't the weird kid with her mum passed out drunk in the next room but instead at Hogwarts with Harry and co flying over the great lake and moaning about Snape. Even nowadays when I'm stressed or upset its Harry Potter that helps me back to a state of normality :)
 
The Narnia series was a huge part of my childhood, I got the complete series when we moved to Brazil from England (I was 8) and they were my friends, helping me make sense of a very strange new world.

Others that for some reason have marked me: Lord of the Rings, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and (blush) Anaïs Nin's Erotica, then later her diary (went through a long and embarassing phase of diary writing, thanks to her!). Kipling's Jungle Book and Just So Stories. Oh, and The Princess Bride for making me realize that fantasy could be funny. :)
 
The Fox and the Hound. I remember it from childhood and it was one of the books that first got me into reading. (I could've picked Richard Scary's[sp] Picture Dictionary or a collection of short stories the name of which I forgot, but the best story was the Hollybush Knights).
 
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Lord of the Rings, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

All rather predictable, I'm afraid, but there you are...:)
 
As a child, Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree books. I didn't realise how 'moral' they were, I was just totally captivated by the idea of it all, couldn't wait to read each one. Pinocchio was read to us at school, and I still hear the teacher's voice and the pictures she conjured up.

Richard Bach's The Bridge Across Forever - there hasn't been a better love story written IMHO, and its intensity is all the more rich for being a true story, and I got to that from Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, which I read once only, but it stayed with me.

A Cold Wind in August by Burton Wohl. (I just googled it to find out how to spell his surname and found they made a film of it!!)

A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow. (and the two sequels, but this one was THE one)

Dune. The Lord of the Rings.The Name of The Wind. Shogun.

Hah! Now I see why the fantasy I write always has love stories in them...
 
For me Moby Dick. I never tire of it and I love the way it's written (particularly Ahab's final ravings at the whale).

Marcel Pagnol's Jean de Florette for teaching me simplicity is often the best route to take.

A couple of poems ( I know - not exactly on topic) - Yeats Second Coming and Owens Anthem For Doomed Youth. These simply because they move me in very different ways.
 
Interesting question... mine would all be books I read in my teens or early twenties, which I suppose says a lot about how we read and what moves us...

The Weathermonger, Peter Dickinson - just has a permanent hold on my imagination, probably because it evokes a Britain with no cars...

Lord Of The Rings (of course!)

Some SF: The Book Of The New Sun, Dune, Helliconia.

Also the first Erich Fromm book I read, I can't remember which one it was but I think it was To Have Or To Be?

Finally, the Nicholas Humphrey classic The Inner Eye.
 
The Faraway Tree again for me. Along with anything else Enid Blyton ever wrote. The very first book I ever read to myself was called Bimbo and Topsy about a cat and a dog.

Agatha Christie has to be high on the list. She still draws me and I love her voice and style. My love of murder mystery came from her.

Jane Eyre - the first grown up book I ever read. I have never been able to put my kids in time out because of it. (Instead when I am really angry I shut myself up in the little room at the top of the stairs)

Most recently I think One Door Closes Peter Sissons' autobiography. It changed my views on a lot of political events in a way that was unexpected. It also gave me an insight into the childhood of people I knew growing up.

But also books I disliked like Catcher in the Rye, Perfume, Mayor of Casterbridge, Lord of the Rings etc
 
At a younger age it was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Not the first sf&f I read, but one of the first and the first to really open my mind to all the possibilities of sf&f literature.

During my teenage years it was Dangerous Visions, the ground breaking anthology edited by Harlan Ellison. It was like a mind-expanding drug of sf&f!
 
Doesn't this thread already exist somewhere? I think my answers were Redwall by Brian Jacques and the Duncton books by William Horwood. Redwall, because I started writing novel length stuff after reading it, and Duncton because it made me realise religion's really not for me.
 
The Castings trilogy--Pamela Freeman (introduction to the idea of "there's no set good/bad in the world" in fantasy)

Dragon Rider--Cornelia Funke (like Boneman, this was because my favorite teacher read it to me. It was also one of my first fantasy books read, followed by the Spiderwick Chronicles)

ASOIAF--GRRM (I deeply connected with a few of the characters, and I just fell completely in love with the series. It expanded on the "no set good/bad" ideal)

1984--Orwell (hated the book with a great, great passion, but the ideas kind of just soaked in)

Perks of Being a Wallflower--Stephen Chbosky (probably the most influential book in my life, ever)

As long as there's poetry on the list, "A Person, A Paper, A Promise" by Earl Reum.
 
Hmmm...

I'd say the Horatio Hornblower stories by Forester. Such great stories, especially if you love the sea.

The Tarzan books by Burroughs, and Kim and The Jungle Book by Kipling. I swept through these in a few months as a child.

Dune, of course, but also The White Plague by Herbert. That book started me down the path in biochemistry.

Neuromancer by Gibson. I still love cyberpunk and related stories.

Other sf would be Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers by Niven, and a lot of Heinlein and almost all of Asimov.

The only fantasy I'd say were the Conan stories by R. E. Howard.

There's probably more, but I'd have to think about it for a while.
 
The first Adult Sci-fi book I read was I robot by asimov, I loved it, and it kindled an interest that has lasted my whole life.

The book that has affected me the most is DUNE. Not sure what part of the story resonates with me but I think its a masterpiece of story telling. The way languge is used is fantastic.
 
The earliest that sticks in my mind is The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron.
The Tarzan books of course.
Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier
The Harrad Experiment by Robert Rimmer (hey I was 16)
Have Spacesuit-Will Travel by Heinlein
Foundation Trilogy by Asimov
 
Without a doubt, The Lord of the Rings, specifically The Fellowship. Aragorn, not the heir of kings, nor even as king, and not the bold leader/decision-maker/field general, either. Rather, the image of the exhausted, careworn ranger in a dark corner of a pub, pulling his travel-stained cloak closer around him and trying for a few moments of rest speaks to me about unassuming comportment, humility and service to others.
 
The first set of bound pages I remember reading was Conrads Castle. Its a picture book where this little boy finds that he can build a castle in the sky, all the while he works on it people walk past to gawk or deride him for it. When he finishes he stands there proudly, next page someone points something out and he looks dismayed, next page the castle falls. It takes about three or four pages to fall, but once the stones settle. He starts right back up again.

I dont call it a "book" because the story was never exactly the same. (I was maybe 3-5 years old and had not yet realized that when adults were reading to me they were looking at the monochrome squiggles in the margins of the photos to do so.) I would read it to my Grandma or siblings and each reading was different.

The thing that stuck with me from it was how changeable life can be. Not just that one miniut your castle is standing there in the sky beautiful and strong, and the next it's falling on your head. But that a perspective shift can change how we see anything and everything. How the story isn't the same before and after lunch, and how important memory is because it's very hard to "read" the same story twice.

The other book I'll mention is the first one I remember cognitively deciding to take the pages into my life. The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstien. Again I was pretty young, but I remember thinking how fun it would be to be the tree; to give and give of myself till I had a good friend who would just sit and rest with me till the end of time. (Totally got the moral wrong on that one, but hey, who hasn't got the moral of a story wrong a time or two?)
 
Hmmm, an interesting topic.

I would instantly say pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. It was the first real fantasy novel I read, and just reading the prologue with all the history of Belgarath and Co and their trials and tribulations with Torak and the Orb, was enough for me to fall in with with not only them but fantasy in general. Here finally was the type of books I wanted read.

But I would have to also state a book I read in my childhood, called Hills End by Ivan Southall. He was an Australian writer who wrote from the 60's until the 90's. I don't know what it is about the book, but I love it still. It took me forever to find a copy, which happened to be the same as the ones we read in school. The tale is sort of a coming of age story for children/ young adults. I think perhaps it suggested to me that just because you're young doesn't mean you can't do things that are grown up and mature.
 
Darren Shan's vampire YA stuff! I started reading when I was about 10 and it is endlessly quotable and with characters that will stay with me

Also Joseph Delaney's books - these books have engaging characters and it has loads of messages that taught me a lot.

Interestingly just writing this it occurred to me that both series have the same central messages. That life isn't predetermined and you make your own destiny!

Even though I no longer read YA fiction I will always treasure these books as I bought them as they were coming out and they got me interested in reading in a way I never had been before.

P.s lovely thread
 
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