I have been doing a lot of thinking these past few years, now that I am not constantly bombarded with the deafening noise of the world (read: commuting and the office environment). It's not necessarily anything profound or meaningful, just the usual introspective bullshit. A lot of it is mulling over things I want to write about: vignettes from my past, stories from my parents' pasts, multiethnicity, being indigenous on stolen land, cultural touchstones that make me feel alone, cultural touchstones that make me feel not alone, those ideas that might become a novel if I spent more than 5% of my energy on it, and other random drivel.
But all this thinking makes me feel like I'm mentally preparing for the next act, standing right on the precipice of something. So to try to flesh out more ideas that have been rolling around in my head, I thought I'd take stock of what books I still think of as extremely influential. These books are not necessarily great works but they introduced me to new concepts, new viewpoints, new worlds. They gave me vocabularies for new feelings, ethical deliberations, eternal questions. They made me happy, angry, angsty, wistful, terrified, laugh, and cry. They are what I consider foundational, ones that made me integrate ideas into who I am.
I notice that as I have gotten older, the number of books I find influential drops dramatically. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’ve stagnated. Instead, I will assume that with five decades behind me, there aren’t as many new concepts to incorporate into my world view.
Note: some of these do not age well but I am wholly sentimental about most of them. In some cases, I have listed a single book from a series, but that’s only because the one book in the series stood out so much above the others. I also consider this an unfinished list, as trying to remember everything I've read isn't realistic. There are also very, very few classics in this list.
FROM MY CHILDHOOD
Urashima Tarō - traditional fairy tale
The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams
Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tales, Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colours and a massive slew of folklore books and tales from around the world
The Witches of Worm - Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones
The Witch Family - Eleanor Estes
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
The Chronicles of Prydain series - Lloyd Alexander
The Dark Is Rising sequence - Susan Cooper
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
FROM MY TEENS/TWENTIES
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
Don't Bite the Sun/Drinking Sapphire Wine - Tanith Lee
Night Shift - Stephen King
A Coney Island of the Mind & Pictures of the Gone World - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
V for Vendetta and The Watchmen - Alan Moore
Moonshadow - J.M. DeMatteis
Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson
The Gate to Women's Country - Sherri S. Tepper
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Deathbird Stories - Harlan Ellison
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice (specifically the version with this cover)
FROM THE LAST DECADE OR TWO
Imperial Radch trilogy - Ann Leckie
Dreamblood Duology - NK Jemisin
Yeah, I’m sure I will be adding to this as I remember others.
Foundational Books: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Foundational Books: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
So, if you remember, oh, last summer, I went through some of the books that have made me who I am today as a writer, but mostly just in general.
(Apologies for being late AGAIN, I can’t even blame the quarantine this time. I did a push to finally get my new SkillShare class live–I always forget how long it takes to edit the videos, and my new microphone is so sensitive I had to get up at 5 am…
Foundational Books: Everything by Bruce Coville #reading #books
I initially got into Bruce Coville’s books the way a lot of my generation did–through the My Teacher is an Alien series. I think they may have been the first books I read that took real life and combined it with fantastic or supernatural elements. Before this, science fiction was something that took place far in the future with spaceships and whatnot.
Foundational Books: The Ancient One by T.A. Barron
Foundational Books: The Ancient One by T.A. Barron #books #reading
Good afternoon, squiders! Today we’ll discuss The Ancient One by T.A. Barron.
(To be fair, we’ve discussed before. It was part of our Adventures of Kate readalong in 2016.)
My middle school had a program where they’d pick a local children’s author, and we’d all have to read a book by said author, and then said author would come to our school and talk about the book/writing/whatever else…
Foundational Books: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
Foundational Books: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn #books #reading
(What, they made a movie of this too? I missed that completely. Wonder if it was any good.)
You know I love ghost stories, squiders. And Mary Downing Hahn is perhaps the best children’s ghost story/horror author out there. (She was, at least, when I was a kid. I mean, I read the Goosebumps books, but they always felt a little silly, unless I was reading them in the dark, and then maybe it was…
Foundational Books: Two-Minute Mysteries (and The Society of Misfit Stories)
Foundational Books: Two-Minute Mysteries (and The Society of Misfit Stories) #books #reading
(As an aside, does anyone have ideas for testing out the temporary tattoo pen I bought? My stupid brain is stuck on the dark mark from Harry Potter, and since it is hot and I am around other parents a lot, it’s not necessarily a good idea, especially if it doesn’t wash off in a reasonable amount of time.)
Today we’re going to talk about another foundational book series from my childhood, the…
Foundational Books: Harry Potter Series #reading #books
Happy Friday, squiders! This week we’re going to talk about the Harry Potter series. Like LOTR, this is perhaps a bit obvious, but hey, it’s still true.
(We’ve discussed Harry Potter here before–I think the first readalong we ever did was HP. Waaaaaay back in 2011. First post for that is here. We had discussion questions back then.)
I am not one of those people who grew up with Harry. I…
Foundational Books: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Foundational Books: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark #books #reading
I am a secret horror lover, squiders. But only a very particular type of horror. You won’t catch me watching horror movies (I had to sleep with my TV on for three nights after seeing The Ring–because if the TV was already on it conceivably couldn’t turn itself on) and I don’t like a gore, but I love horror with a tinge of the supernatural–ghost stories, or tales of ancient, forgotten evil,…
