10 Books That Changed My Life
How do you like that heading? Isn't it portentous? Doesn't it ring of smugness? This is why I love blogging: because it's my blog and I can do whatever I want. The idea for this entry came to me a few nights ago when I woke up around 4:00 AM after a particularly weird dream scenario which I won't bore you with here (hey, maybe we can pick that up in a future entry!) and couldn't get back to sleep.
These are not necessarily the best books I've ever read, although I'm very fond of many of the books on this list, but the books that, upon reflection, seem to have had the greatest influence on me. I list them in roughly the order I first read and/or became aware of them.
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
I've never actually managed to read this thing all the way through. But when I was very young, I remember seeing it on the bookshelf in our family's living room and feeling strangely drawn toward it. I think this was less because of my fascist leanings than it was the thickness of the book itself. "Who could ever read a book that big?" I remember thinking. There was also something about the spine of the book jacket itself, depicting, as you might guess, a large, stark, black & white swastika, that I found compelling. I had no idea what the symbol was or even what it was used for, but it carried (and still does, I suppose) an inherent totemic power. Note to marketers: swastikas sell books!
Anyway, I think the start of my life as a reader relates in no small way to the challenge of reading a book that large. I guess I'm still working up to it.
2. Frank L. Baum's Oz series
I don't remember when I first started reading these, or even if I saw the movie or read the book first (more likely, The Wizard of Oz was first read to me by my mother), but I do remember that, by the age of 9 or 10, I was familiar enough with the characters and scenarios of this series that I carried them around in my head and was able to draw them out frequently for imaginary playtime. I would walk around talking to the characters as if they were standing next to me and we were engaged on some grand adventure. (Tik-Tok, the mechanical man, was probably my best friend for quite a while. Yes, I was a lonely child.) It's probably a good thing that RPGs weren't around back then. There would have been no further need for me to interact with humans.
3. Peanuts Classics by Charles M. Schulz
I still have the copy of this book that I grew up with, which is pretty amazing, since I took it with me everywhere for a number of years. On one occasion, in the back of my dad's pick-up, I smashed a mosquito with it and the remains of the insect are still preserved on the pages. I don't know when I got this--I'm guessing it was a gift from my parents--but it has a 1970 copyright (when I was 3 years old). Like the Oz books, I remember this book being an important interactive tool. I would read the comic strips aloud, creating different voices for each of the characters. Lucy was one of my favorites because she was always shouting. I remember sitting in a neighborhood playground once and getting yelled at from someone in a neighboring apartment because I was shouting "Real estate!" at a high volume. (I pronounced "estate" with an accent on the first syllable. What the fuck did I know about real estate?)
Probably the best thing about this book, aside from its sheer sentimental value, is that I can pick it up anytime and get practically the same amount of enjoyment from it as I did when I first read it. It's become a sort of scrapbook and now holds Schulz' obituary and the last Peanuts strip as it appeared in the newspaper.
4. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This was part of a stack of books given to me by my Aunt Shirley, probably the single most important influence on my literary life. One day, while expressing my boredom with the world and all it offered, Shirley took me to a closet in her house. The closet was stacked high with books and magazines of all varieties. She pulled out a stack of four similarly designed volumes, along with a few copies of some SF magazines. This was my introduction to science fiction. The four books (which I still have) included Bradbury's, Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, and A.E. Van Vogt's Slan. Of these four, most of which I had a hard time understanding, Bradbury's was easily my favorite for its simplicity, its imaginary depth, and its moralistic tone. After reading this, I started to seek out every book I could find with either Mars or a green alien on the cover (I soon came across the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series), and then anything with a spaceship on the cover, and then I was hooked for life.
5. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I first read this as an assigned text in a junior high English class. I seem to remember most of the students in class remarking that it was "too weird" or "hard to understand," but most of these people wouldn't think of hanging out with me anyway. With a background in Oz and Mars, it didn't take long for me to realize that The Hobbit was set in a world as fully-realized as those of Burroughs and Baum. I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever read, and I spent the following summer reading The Lord of the Rings on family camping trips. And this signified the Point of No Return in terms of my development--I was, and would forever remain, a Geek.
More later.
These are not necessarily the best books I've ever read, although I'm very fond of many of the books on this list, but the books that, upon reflection, seem to have had the greatest influence on me. I list them in roughly the order I first read and/or became aware of them.
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
I've never actually managed to read this thing all the way through. But when I was very young, I remember seeing it on the bookshelf in our family's living room and feeling strangely drawn toward it. I think this was less because of my fascist leanings than it was the thickness of the book itself. "Who could ever read a book that big?" I remember thinking. There was also something about the spine of the book jacket itself, depicting, as you might guess, a large, stark, black & white swastika, that I found compelling. I had no idea what the symbol was or even what it was used for, but it carried (and still does, I suppose) an inherent totemic power. Note to marketers: swastikas sell books!
Anyway, I think the start of my life as a reader relates in no small way to the challenge of reading a book that large. I guess I'm still working up to it.
2. Frank L. Baum's Oz series
I don't remember when I first started reading these, or even if I saw the movie or read the book first (more likely, The Wizard of Oz was first read to me by my mother), but I do remember that, by the age of 9 or 10, I was familiar enough with the characters and scenarios of this series that I carried them around in my head and was able to draw them out frequently for imaginary playtime. I would walk around talking to the characters as if they were standing next to me and we were engaged on some grand adventure. (Tik-Tok, the mechanical man, was probably my best friend for quite a while. Yes, I was a lonely child.) It's probably a good thing that RPGs weren't around back then. There would have been no further need for me to interact with humans.
3. Peanuts Classics by Charles M. Schulz
I still have the copy of this book that I grew up with, which is pretty amazing, since I took it with me everywhere for a number of years. On one occasion, in the back of my dad's pick-up, I smashed a mosquito with it and the remains of the insect are still preserved on the pages. I don't know when I got this--I'm guessing it was a gift from my parents--but it has a 1970 copyright (when I was 3 years old). Like the Oz books, I remember this book being an important interactive tool. I would read the comic strips aloud, creating different voices for each of the characters. Lucy was one of my favorites because she was always shouting. I remember sitting in a neighborhood playground once and getting yelled at from someone in a neighboring apartment because I was shouting "Real estate!" at a high volume. (I pronounced "estate" with an accent on the first syllable. What the fuck did I know about real estate?)
Probably the best thing about this book, aside from its sheer sentimental value, is that I can pick it up anytime and get practically the same amount of enjoyment from it as I did when I first read it. It's become a sort of scrapbook and now holds Schulz' obituary and the last Peanuts strip as it appeared in the newspaper.
4. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This was part of a stack of books given to me by my Aunt Shirley, probably the single most important influence on my literary life. One day, while expressing my boredom with the world and all it offered, Shirley took me to a closet in her house. The closet was stacked high with books and magazines of all varieties. She pulled out a stack of four similarly designed volumes, along with a few copies of some SF magazines. This was my introduction to science fiction. The four books (which I still have) included Bradbury's, Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, and A.E. Van Vogt's Slan. Of these four, most of which I had a hard time understanding, Bradbury's was easily my favorite for its simplicity, its imaginary depth, and its moralistic tone. After reading this, I started to seek out every book I could find with either Mars or a green alien on the cover (I soon came across the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series), and then anything with a spaceship on the cover, and then I was hooked for life.
5. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I first read this as an assigned text in a junior high English class. I seem to remember most of the students in class remarking that it was "too weird" or "hard to understand," but most of these people wouldn't think of hanging out with me anyway. With a background in Oz and Mars, it didn't take long for me to realize that The Hobbit was set in a world as fully-realized as those of Burroughs and Baum. I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever read, and I spent the following summer reading The Lord of the Rings on family camping trips. And this signified the Point of No Return in terms of my development--I was, and would forever remain, a Geek.
More later.
posted by Chazzbot at 1:09 PM
2 Comments:
Crazy. You posted this, like, two minutes ago. Or an hour and two minutes ago, depending on whether your posting time is displayed to me according to my time zone or yours.
Anyway, finish the list! And speaking of books, do you ever think about how Penny's "computer book" (from Inspector Gadget) was basically a laptop computer with wireless internet, before those things ever existed? I was thinking about that today. I wonder what else that show predicted?
And tell us your dream. Your dreams are always interesting.
Surprisingly you are the only real person I could find in the blogosphere that has made a review of the book "The Hobbit". Thus you have gotten a link to my blog which you can find here: http://mansguidebook.com/blog/archives/44
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