influences

At the moment everyone on facebook is making up lists of their 5 top books etc. for different categories, in a manner reminiscent of High Fidelity, but I really feel that a top five deserves a blog post to be dealt with fully. So here are some top 5 lists of mine:

Top 5 most influential books, in chronological order:

-Fairytales
I don't remember which book. All I know is that for the first half of kindergarten I couldn't read at all, but then somehow I started, and the first word I remember reading is "grandmother", I'm assuming this was 'Little Red Riding Hood'. That was such an exciting moment, and the start of a lifelong love of words.

- The Treasures of the Snow, Patricia St. John
Reading this book is the first time that I remember really thinking about what I believe and making a conscious decision that yes, I would like to count myself a follower of Jesus. So pretty important for me...

-The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
This book pretty much sealed my fate as a bookish fantasy nerd, I loved it so much. I read it again every year for years.

- Possession, A.S. Byatt
I read this while taking trains around England after finishing my HSC, it was the perfect combination of book and place, and made me decide that studying English would be a fun and glamorous activity (which may well surprise those who've read it).

- Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation
I read this just before starting uni, decided that Old English was amazing, also influenced by Possession, switched a course from Archaeology to English so I could do ASNAC in second year, and ended up doing honours in Old English.

Comments

  1. Unknown25/3/09 14:54

    thanks for sharing ... will have to go blog my own now ... :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous25/3/09 22:14

    so if favourite books become memes, then passing around the idea of making up a list of favourite books is a metameme?
    D.

    ReplyDelete

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