10 Books That Have Influenced My Life

When I saw that I had been tagged in some sort of Facebook challenge, at first I assumed that a bucket of ice water would be required. Then I was relieved to see that the challenge involved books, and not dumping them on my head. The challenge was to list ten books that have influenced my life. I knew that there was no way I could make such a list without explaining how they influenced me. So without further ado…

1. Shane by Jack Schaefer

This classic western about a boy’s hero worship of the gunfighter who saves his farming community from the local cattle baron has been adapted to film several times (including a sci-fi version starring Patrick Swayze!). But even the most straightforward interpretation (1953’s “Shane”) hasn't resonated with me like the novel. Shane is the archetypical western loner with no backstory, who rides in out of nowhere and goes back to wherever he came from a changed man. Yet it is his relationships with each of the three main characters that make up the heart of the novel. Reading this on the verge of adolescence, I learned about life, storytelling, and fistfights. To this day I sit with my back to the wall, facing the door, because that’s what Shane did.

The Wizards Harry

With Potter-mania still a force to be reckoned with and my own literary obsessions flitting around as they will, I’ve been thinking about fantasy stories and why I like some and just can’t lose myself in others.  For most of 2010 I read hardly anything that didn’t center around the adventures of a wizard named Harry… Dresden.  Yet whenever I’ve tried to go to Hogworts, whether in book or movie form, to visit with that other wizard named Harry, it’s felt like a chore.

Reading Addictions

My sister, the classical musician, once asked me why I don’t write more frequently. She observed that she plays music all the time—not just for practice, but because she loves it. If I think I’m a writer, shouldn’t I be writing with the same frequency and passion? Well, yes. However, the comparison doesn’t quite hold up. She plays, but she doesn’t compose. Writing is composing. Reading, however, is more like practicing.

Stephen King says that if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write. I think he advocates reading for three or four hours a day, on top of writing 500 to 1,000 words every day. Then again, he’s filthy rich and has a mental twitch that compels him to write in the same way alcoholics are compelled to drink. I’m not the former, and lack the latter.

But I do read. Blissfully free of internet access in my apartment, with a broken DVD player and lots of time on my hands, oh how I read. And while I don’t have a writing addiction, I do tend to get hooked on certain authors or series. Here’s a snapshot of what I’m presently hooked on, after the jump.