Here’s a quick Sunday morning diversion.
I was just visiting around some of my favourite blogs last night, and on one of them (was it Moira’s?) I read a fascinating list of books which influenced the reader in some way, and which were instantly memorable without trying too hard. I found her list intriguing, and it got me to wondering about my own “Aha!” book moments.
So rattling off the ones which instantly spring to mind, and without any sort of attempt at deep analysis, here’s my version of an absolutely snap Top Ten of personally imagination-influencing books, from my pre-teen years to now. Vaguely chronological. Coming back to add that as I can’t narrow it down to just ten, I’ve made up two lists, one of adolescent/teen memorable books, and one for the adult years.
Schoolgirl Choices:
- The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
- Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard
- The Borrowers by Mary Norton
- Jade by Sally Watson
- The Ark by Margot Benary-Isbert
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- Claudine at School by Colette
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (okay, this one makes 11. But how could I not include it? I read it over and over and over.)
Adult Choices:
- The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein
- The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
- Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
- Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge
- One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens
- Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley
- The Lens of the World by R.A. MacAvoy
- China Court by Rumer Godden
I’m not quite sure what this says about me. Maybe that I’m irretrievably middlebrow in my default reading tastes? With a dash of fondness for fantasy/sci-fi? Not a Russian or a Big Important Book in the lot…
Isn’t it revealing what floats at the top of our consciousness? This feels…dare I say it… rather humbling…none of these are particularly deep or intellectual; most are pop culture standards of their eras. Could it mean that I’m merely….well…average?! In a stuck-in-the-past sort of way – none of the ones on the adult list are particularly current, either. 😉
What about your list? Anyone else want to share?
Write ’em down quick; don’t think about it too hard. Even if you don’t feel inclined to share (I almost didn’t post this) the exercise is revelatory.
Leaves & Pages 
Most influential in my younger years:
People of the Deer by Farley Mowat
The Desperate People by Farley Mowat
House of Earth – Pearl Buck
Wolf Willow – Wallace Stegner
Redburn – Herman Melville
Where The Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Wilderness – Rockwell Kent
Of Time And The River – Thomas Wolfe
The Long Valley – John Steinbeck
The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
What an intriguing list. Farley Mowat – I read him a fair bit in my teen years – Never Cry Wolf and A Whale for the Killing were de rigueur, of course – and I have some others here (Sibir, People of the Deer) which I mean to read in the future. Pearl S. Buck – read her a lot but overdid it – she’s either very, very good or the opposite, isn’t she – Stegner is a recent “discovery” and Wolf Willow is here on my “read soon” shelf so was pleased to see it mentioned – Where the Red Fern Grows – read that one as a newspaper serial – some farm paper my dad received when I was young – my gosh – tearjerker!!! Rockwell Kent – haven’t read Wildernss but I do have a copy of This Is My Own and am finding it hard going – very scattered and incohesive – very (vehemently) patriotic as was published in 1940 – the illustrations however are AMAZING – Thomas Wolfe is on the radar but can’t say I’m that familiar with him – Steinbeck – yes – he almost made my list – read and was deeply influenced by East of Eden at a probably-too-young age – I think I was 12 or so – a lot went right over my head but I thought it was GREAT 😉 – and I’m reading Fitzgerald right now – just finished This Side of Paradise and am working through The Basil and Josephine stories – quite fascinating. Love the memories and connections to my own reading your list has sparked – thank you!
Thanks for the nice comments! If you want to part with This Is My Own by Rockwell Kent, I would love to have it in my collection. If you have not read Wolf Willow by Stegner, then surely you have not read his earlier, coming of age book set in Utah called Big Rock Candy Mountain. It is autobiographical fiction and one of my top ten favorites (different list) ~ Steven
I’ll probably hang on to the Rockwell Kent book, if only for those beautiful illustrations, but I will definitely keep you in mind if I do decide to part with it. I will eventually finish reading it, I’m sure, though it’s desperately hard going. Very stream-of-consciousness, and the reader really needs to focus. He (Kent) also comes across as being a bit of a jerk, to be quite honest – always having neighbour issues and tangling with the local bureaucracy – he’s *always* in the right, and so much smarter than everyone he comes across. This is very much Autobiography. 🙂 Re: Stegner – Haven’t yet read Big Rock Candy Mountain – but I shall, as soon as I get my hands on it. Bumping it up to the top of the go-out-and-get list right now. Rather surprised that I haven’t yet come across a copy in my book store prowls, and Stegner is definitely one of my look-for authors. May need to sit down and order it. What a great writer…
I picked out books that jumped out at me from the bookshelves next to my desk…perhaps that was cheating. But these all did truly influence me. I ended up including more non-fiction than fiction, which doesn’t perhaps represent my reading habits, but I was trying not to think too hard.
D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths
Knitting from the Top by Barbara G. Walker
A Mixture of Frailties by Robertson Davies
The Feminine in Fairy Tales by Marie Louise von Franz
Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones
The Education of the Child by Rudolf Steiner
The Three Years by Emil Bock
Art and Human Consciousness by Gottfried Richter
The Golden Key by George MacDonald
The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book
What a marvellously eclectic list – and I can definitely see where you’re coming from. Do you homeschool, by any chance? 🙂 The D’Aulaires and Rudolf Steiner lead me to speculate that you just might…
No, but I did teach briefly in a Waldorf school, and my son attends one. : ) My Greek Myths book definitely predates that interest; it’s my oldest book on this list by a good margin. I must have had it since about third grade.
Aha! That explains so much. 🙂 My only personal experience with Waldorf (sort of) was several years using Oak Meadow curriculum (in our own unschooly sort of way – we weren’t very regimented), which is described by its creators as “Waldorf-inspired”, and we *loved* it. My now-grown kids still talk about some of their projects with immense fondness. Love that Greek Myths book. Also the Norse Gods and Heroes one. Good stuff.
Oh, we have some overlap – Claudine! And Alcott, Heinlein, Sayers. Here’s my list, I did it on Facebook as ten (well, more) authors, rather than books:
Jane Austen
Louisa May Alcott
Colette
Brontes (plural but mostly Charlotte)
Nancy Mitford (plural but mostly Nancy)
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Charlotte M. Yonge
Dorothy L. Sayers
Noel Streatfeild and Virginia Woolf because the pairing delights me.
No men? Oh, well, I’ll make an exception for Byron’s letters. (Could throw in C.S. Lewis and Sinclair Lewis for symmetry. Want more men? L.Frank Baum, Robert Heinlein, that Trollope fella, Thackeray, Henry James, Herman Wouk, Coleridge, Shelley…and last but not least, Shakespeare!)
Claudine at School was a random find – a tattered paperback (which I still cherish) on the discard table outside my high school library. Read it and went “Wow! Why have I never heard of this writer before!?” Opened so many literary doors. As did so many of those other “first acquaintance” books – many of the writers on my list are still being actively read though a few of the juveniles (Walter Farley, Jim Kjelgaard) I definitely outgrew. But they were incredibly important at the time to the furthering of my rich grade-school fantasy life, which involved a lot of riding around on amazing horses, accompanied by a super-faithful dog. 😉
My favourites (not sure they were so much influential as just reread multiple times) when young in no particular order:
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
All of a Kind of Family by Sydney Taylor
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (the whole series actually)
Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace
When the Dikes Broke by Alta Halverson Seymour
Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery
Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery
The Adventures of Sammy Jay by Thornton W. Burgess (again the entire series of these wonderful, in my memory, animal stores)
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Not sure if it was cheating to put in 3 by Montgomery but I reread them so often when young that it was hard to leave any out. The one by Alversin Seymour, which I’m sure almost no-one will have heard of, was perhaps the most influential because it was the first time I had read a book about the Netherlands where I was born and had the experience of reading a book In which all the cultural references were my cultural references.
Oh, gosh! The Thornton W. Burgess books! Loved those. And Laura Ingalls Wilder – read those over and over. Of LM Montgomery, I only read Anne of Green Gables in my school years, but my mother ended up collecting most of the other Anne books plus many of the short story collections/Emily/Pat etc. and I read them (and am still reading them) as an adult. Interesting your comment on the Netherlands book – I was drawn to Margot Benary-Isbert’s books for much the same reason – my heritage is German and my father came to Canada after serving as a soldier on the “wrong side” in WW II and I always felt a bit lost that there were no cultural references to “normal” German life in our school library – the only Germans represented were evil Nazis and such. The Ark and the other books by Benary-Isbert I then discovered (Rowan Farm, Castle on the Border, The Long Way Home, Dangerous Spring) were so refreshingly *normal*. They referenced the war and what had happened but they were also very much about everyday life and the characters were very realistic and relatable. And I recognized all of the cultural references which we also shared – Christmas Eve celebrations, Advent candles, the smell of beeswax candles and fir branches… very evocative and made me feel closer to my father because this fictional representation proved that his past was shared by other basically “good” people.
I think it says you’ve always been interesting and eclectic in your choices. I’m tempted to try this but am dithering so nothing to put on here. Maybe a blog entry….?
It doesn’t do to think too deeply, because it becomes overwhelming immediately. I mean, where does one stop?! Would be a great blog entry – shall be watching for it. 🙂
Fascinating! I thought it was a strangely interesting meme, and just creating my own list got me thinking about all kinds of things. A friend has done a list of books *consulted* which would be intriguing too – reference and practical books. I enjoyed your list, and your readers’ ones, and now am off to look up some of those….
Love the other people’s lists – and that was your list that I originally read, wasn’t it? We share ICTC, I am pleased to see. 🙂 I was lying in bed Sunday morning, mulling over the whole concept, and those books just stood up all on their own and demanded to be mentioned. Though of course once I’d set down the first ten many more started clamoring for attention! Quite a few are representative, because I read (and still read) many by certain authors (Alcott, Heinlein, Colette, Sayers…so many of them, really!) but the ones I listed are either the first ones I read by those writers or staunch favourites. A few intriguing titles show up on these “other people’s” lists – must look into those…
Interesting lists! I like how you made separate lists adult and children’s books. I’m not familiar with some of the books you’ve listed, and others, such as Little Women, The Secret Garden, and LOTR would appear on my own list. Just to rattle off ten very quickly:
Little House on the Prairie (the series, not just that one volume)
Anne of Green Gables (series)
LOTR
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
Mansfield Park
Wizard of Oz (series)
Towers of Trebizond by Rose McCauley
Mary Poppins (series)
Nancy Drew (series)
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Oh, wow! Another fascinating list. I share your delight in all of these, with the possible exception of Nancy Drew. I could never really get into her – she was my sister’s “thing”, while I leaned more to the Hardy Boys. (Was something of a tomboy growing up – actively rejected “too-girly” things for a few years there.) Though of course I read Nancy whenever she showed up in my space – I read *everything*! Also read as many of the Oz books as I could find – my grade school library was very well supplied – only now am I realizing what a rich collection our librarians had assembled – sad to see so many school libraries being dispersed, and access being cut to students except for only short periods every week when there is a transient librarian available. I was one of those kids who *lived* in the library – before school, at lunch, and after school – I was in there so often, and I remember walking out with piles of books continually. I wish I still had access to some of those stellar collections…but they are not really there anymore, with all of the old stuff culled to make way for the vampire books et al and rows of computer monitors. Even our public library has decimated its youth/young adult section in the years during which my children were growing up – old favourites would vanish, sometimes to be found in the frequent book sales, but often gone without a trace and erased from the catalogue. (Oh, dear – off topic somewhat. Sorry about the moan!)