(This is a meme from Facebook. I figured I’d cross-post it.)
Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
1. The Bible. Obvious, but also true.
2. The Screwtape Letters. The first book that told me that reason was of God, and that God approves of pleasure. Seemed too good to be true at the time.
3. That Hideous Strength. A difficult book that’s worth wrestling with. The inspiration for Wolf Time.
4. The Lord of the Rings. I’ll never forget my first reading of the Mines of Moria scenes, and the charge of the Riders of Rohan.
5. Heimskringla. The essential text for all my novels.
6. Mere Christianity. It all seems so elementary today, but on my first reading I struggled with every page.
7. Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. Almost a perfect book.
8. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. A friend mentioned my name to him personally, recently! I made squealing noises like a teenage girl.
9. Prince Ombra, by Roderick MacLeish. An obscure, but extremely fine, adult fantasy that was very inspirational to me before I got published.
10. The God Who is There, by Francis Schaeffer. Actually, any number of his early works could be mentioned here.
11. Moby Dick. I waited until I was an adult to read it, and so had the privilege of actually enjoying it.
12. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. The first Shakespeare play I read.
13. Conan the Adventurer, by Robert E. Howard. First gave me the idea that I could write heroic fantasy myself.
14. The Bishop/Weiss trilogy by Andrew Klavan. A hard-boiled detective story on an entirely higher plane.
15. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Who can forget his first Sherlock Holmes?
Might as well plug The Middle Shelf a little …
1) Neuromancer by William Gibson. His style of stripping almost all exposition from far-flung SF stuck with me.
2) Watership Down by Richard Adams. It’s like The Lord of the Rings with rabbits, only the bunnies have their own culture, language and religion. Magical and wonderful.
3) The October Country by Ray Bradbury. The short-story collection that made me love horror. It’s alternately frightening, touching, terrifying and beautiful.
4) Burning Chrome by William Gibson. Another volume of shorts, and here Gibson moves his SF into noir and encouters with aliens territory. The stories are almost jewel-like in their construction.
5) Lord of the Flies by William Golding. A literary novel with genre sensibilities that is completely wasted on disinterested schoolchildren.
Also, numbers one, four and eight on your list. YotW is in the running, too. My mind keeps going back to it.
That’s most flattering. Thank you.
I thought about Loren’s middle shelf when I read your list, Lars. In no particular order:
Little Women—Louisa May Alcott (sacrificial love)
The Shepherd—Frederick Forsyth (honor and sacrifice)
The Snow Goose—Paul Gallico (sacrificial love, honor. Reading anything about the Battle of Dunkirk reduces me to a sobbing wreck, but this is my favorite bit of fiction)
Exodus—Leon Uris (this book broke my heart and I will never read it again, but I’ll never forget it either)
The Thorn Birds—Colleen McCullough (see Exodus)
Captains Courageous—Rudyard Kipling (honor, integrity, devotion, sacrifice)
A Town Like Alice—Neville Shute Norway (sacrificial love)
Kristin Lavransdatter—Sigrid Undset (broke my heart)
Ivanhoe—Sir Walter Scott (sacrificial love—they all want what they can’t have)
Those Who Love—Irving Wallace (love, devotion, sacrifice, courage, honor. I was fourteen when I read this, and profoundly moved.)
To Kill a Mockingbird—Harper Lee (courage, honor, integrity, sacrifice. I read this when I was nine so you can imagine the impact it had on me)
The Journals of Lewis and Clark—Lewis and Clark (courage, honor, sacrifice)
A Message to Garcia—Elbert Hubbard (honor, integrity, sacrifice)
All of Jane Austen—should be obvious by now
Deborah, you would probably enjoy Elizabeth Gaskell’s books as well, if you have not already read them.
Thank you, Sarah. I just did some internet research on Gaskell and I will look for her. I am ashamed that I didn’t know about her before now.
I’m impressed you liked Moby Dick. I genuinely didn’t know of anyone who did, and therefore had no intention of reading it. It’s worth it, you say?
I guess my answer is contingent on another question. Do you like Shakespeare? If so, then (I think) there’s a good chance you’ll like Moby Dick.
Speaking of CS Lewis; there are a couple lectures online that Ralph Woods did in 2008 on the Screwtape Letters. I found them (for the most part) interesting and helpful.
– Humanitas Project
– http://humanitas.org/forum/archive/2008_wood/2008_wood.shtml