What’s old is new again… the 10 books meme struck me on Facebook. I thought I’d toss the answers here, so I can be amused at how much they change next time it rolls around.
10 Books that changed my life upon first reading them and have stayed with me: (via Will Johnson and Tony Ridgway)
10. Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion
9. Several Piers Anthony series: Xanth, Bio of a Space Tyrant, and Incarnations of Immortality
8. Ender’s Game
7. The Time of the Dark
6. The Chronicles of Amber
5. The Eye of the Heron. A great prompt to examine pacifism, the difficulty in adhering to it… and to think about success and failure of non-violence as a movement. All of her Hainish/Ekumen novels prompt thought about cultural influences and nature/nurture in worlds with very different nurture.
4. The Chronicles of Narnia. I read the covers off of them. Then I heard how it had all been a trick to proselytize, which led me to carefully reread and notice the parallels. Soon I appreciated how well drawn they were and how appealing Narnia’s story is. Streamlined for kids; rough in important ways. The stone table scene delivers what feels overwrought or like torture porn in telling Jesus’ life.
3. Red Box D&D/AD&D: I read, and mused, and studied, and researched—and built worlds for myself and my friends to inhabit. In many ways THE most influential book in terms of guiding how I spend my days and what I think about.
2. The Last Herald Mage: Magic’s Pawn. Lackey’s hurting, misunderstood young hero made homosexuality painfully normal, by experiencing the confusion and longing for myself.
1. A Wizard of Earthsea. Precise, beautiful writing, a story with a moral; difficult relationships, and acceptance that we all die. The third book, The Furthest Shore, was similarly powerful–though it taught a sense of balance, restraint, and provided a vision of life as an old person that seemed pretty cool all the same.
