Anne of Green Gables: In my inaugural post for the LoveCats DownUnder I spoke about how Anne Shirley made me a writer. Not LM Montgomery who wrote the Anne books, but the character she created. I loved Anne’s imagination and her way of looking at the world. And so, without knowing it, she encouraged me to create my own flights of fancy and to see beauty in unlikely places. She encouraged me to write my own stories. I will be forever grateful. Love you Anne-with-an-E (and LM Montgomery too, of course). :-)
I believe that childhood is a place where our reading can shape us. Enid Blyton gave me an enduring love of fantasy and happy endings with her Magic Faraway Tree, The Wishing Chair, Hurrah For the Circus and The Children of Willow Tree Farm. I am also firmly of the opinion that Jo from Little Women and I are BFFs in a parallel universe somewhere.
Romeo and Juliet: this isn’t my favourite Shakespearean play (that honour would go to Hamlet), but this was the very first work of Shakespeare's that I was introduced to—in Year 10 English. The language was difficult and I found so much of it puzzling…but when I finally got the hang of it, I was lost. Shakespeare is a master of emotion and character. This love of Shakespeare led me to taking more Renaissance English classes at university than you could poke a stick at. :-)
Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen is a genius, and each of her six novels is worthy of a place here, but this is the one that really makes my soul sing. Plus, Mr Darcy! Need I say more? :-) Jane Austen elevated romance to classic status—she showed how seductive, gripping and important romance was and is. Also, a heroine who turns down a marriage proposal from the richest man in Derbyshire…I mean, how can you resist that? ;-)
The Lord of the Rings: I was late coming to this story. I was seventeen the first time I read it, because I found reading Bilbo’s birthday-party preparations in the first chapter a real slog (because, frankly, it is a slog). But when I finally got past that first chapter, the epic nature of this work beguiled me. For a start there are all of those characters to love and root for (Aragorn is my favourite hero ever). Then there’s the message that a single person can change the course of the world. I read this every Christmas for at least five consecutive years. Whenever my confidence and self-esteem were wobbly, a hit of The Lord of the Rings could give me a real boost.
Eloping With Emmy: This is the book that had me not just wanting to write for the Mills & Boon Sweet line, but aching to write for it…determined to write for it. Liz Fielding created a feisty heroine and a sexy hero who liked each other despite being at odds with one another. This book wasn’t predictable, it took twists and turns that had me laughing out loud one minute and had my heart in my throat the next. Eloping With Emmy made me fall in love with all the possibilities inherent in category fiction.
There have been many other books I’ve loved. After all, I did an English Literature degree at university. I’ve read the classics…and many of them I’ve adored. I’ve read romance novels that have pride of place on my keeper shelves, but this post isn’t about my all-time favourite books, it’s about books that I feel have shaped my life in significant ways.
What about you? Is there a book or two (or ten!) that have shaped the person you are today?
Michelle, how interesting to read your list of books that shaped you as a writer - because they would all be on such a list for me, too! I would add the novels of Georgette Heyer to mine - I loved them. Also some of the "racier" stories I found in my mother and grandmother's bookshelves such as Forever Amber and Peyton Place. I also loved the books set in the deep south by Frances Parkinson Keyes. I was really young when I read some of these books and probably didn't understand half of what was in them! I loved category romance too but can't really single out a specific title as I devoured so many of them - and knew I wanted to write one myself one day.
ReplyDeleteGreat minds, Kandy! :-) Heyer's Faro's Daughter nearly made my list. I found that heroine so surprising and refreshing (but the post was already long enough...and I figured 5 books was enough to be going on with).
DeleteOh, yes, when I discovered racier stories it seemed that whole worlds opened up to me too. Like you, I didn't always understand everything that was in them...but that mystery just made them all the better! :-)
Hi Michelle
ReplyDeleteGreat list I am going to have a hard time deciding LOL I started reading young and loved all of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Famous Five I did love a bit of mystery in High School the first book in 1st form for English was The Secret Garden loved it and over the years we read Pastures of The Blue Crane Daddy Long Legs The Red Pony The Searchers and I Can Jump Puddles and I remember them all never liked Shakespear sorry then I moved onto Agatha Christie Mum and I read a lot of the stories set in the South about the slaves gruesome some of them were Jackie Collins Harold Robbins and then I discovered romance and was lost :)
Have Fun
Helen
Helen, I found Enid Blyton utterly addictive. I read and reread her books endlessly. Love your high school reading list. Do you know, Daddy Long Legs is a novel I've always meant to read...and and I just went and grabbed it and the sequel (Dear Enemy) for free for my Kindle (yay!) -- so huge thanks for the reminder!
DeleteAh, yes, romance. Once we become fans, it seems we're fans for life. :-) Thanks for sharing your significant books!
The theme tune from I Can Jump Puddles used to one of my favourite things to play on the piano, Helen.
DeleteGreat list, Michelle.
ReplyDeleteI loved, loved, loved the Malory Towers by Enid Blyton and desperately wanted to have midnight feasts (as one of my friend had been sent to an English boarding school - we lived in South America at the time).
I so loved Cheaper by the Dozen, a biographical novel written by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, published in 1948. My Dad gave it to me (still have that old copy of that book). He was must known, even when I was a little girl, how much I love efficiency. The book tells the story of time and motion study and efficiency experts Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth.
I book that really sticks in my mind is John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. Wow, that book just blew me away.
And Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance.
Jen, I borrowed the Malory Towers series so often from the school library that the librarian made a deal with me -- that every time I borrowed them, I would also sample something new. I begged my parents to send me to boarding school, LOL.
DeleteWow, I've never heard of Cheaper by the Dozen...but am nodding and chuckling as it does sound right up your alley.
Have always meant to read your other picks too. Might go check them out on Amazon now. ;-)
Hi Michelle - yes, my list echoes yours. Anne Shirley, Jo March and Laura Ingalls were like soul sisters to me when I was young. I read Gone With The Wind when I was ten and loved every page (and then there was the Harold Robbins years between the ages of 13-15) Black Beauty, The Silver Brumby, Call Of The Wild....the list goes on. So many books, I must revisit some of them. Great post :)
ReplyDeleteHelen, I have a vision of us all -- you, me, Anne, Jo and Laura -- forming our own childhood gang. How much fun would that have been?
DeleteOh, and the books with animals, particularly horses, featured large in my childhood too. Snap. ;-)
Michelle, I enjoyed your list of books! I used to be completely horse mad so horses featured big in my reading for a long loooong time. And as I was writing this, I had a vivid memory about a series of books I read when I was 11 or 12 from my dad's book collection of Westerns about a gunfighter called Sudden. I adored those books (there were horses in them too! LOL) and I remember wanting to be a gunfighter - the good guy naturally! Mmm, I haven't thought about those in years... the author was Oliver Strange... I might go and have a Google...
ReplyDeleteOh, those horse books, Sharon! How I loved them. There's a part of me that's never grown up and still wants a horse. ;-)
DeleteOh, yes, my dad read those Westerns too and I remember sneaking one, but it was seriously racy (who knew you could do THAT on horseback) and poor dad nearly had a heart attack when he realised what I was reading. It was promptly taken off me. Made them seem all the more exotic, LOL.
Loved your list of books, Michelle! I think one of the biggest books that shaped me was Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile - it was the book that took me from kis books to adult books and my love for every AG book I've ever read is possibly why now some of my books have a mystery element to them.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of books from my childhood that made my love of reading grow stronger: Tomorrow When the War Began (John Marsden was pretty much my literary hero as a high school student), Looking for Alibrandi, and of course my collection of Sweet Valley High books.
I went through a major Agatha Christie phase when I was a teenager, Stefanie. You've made me want to reread her.
DeleteI love the Tomorrow series -- brilliant writing and brilliant characters. I attended a talk Marsden gave a few years ago at the townhall -- which proved to be an auditorium full of school groups and me, LOL. But he was great.
Oh, and I still remember the twins of Sweet Valley High -- Liz and Jessica -- with real fondness. Wonder if those books would stand up to rereading now. Hmmm... ;-)
Michelle, what a great post. I will have to think hard to see what books shaped me as a person and a reader. It goes as far back as Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses which my mother bought for me as a youngun. I think I took my pleasure in tearing that up and coloring the pictures in the book than reading it but that's my oldest memory of a book. After that came Enid Blyton who introduced me to a world of fantasy and make believe. I particularly loves the Faraway Tree, the chair that could fly which the name escapes me now, the Naughtiest Girl and Mr Pink Whistle. Mr Pink Whistle had a particular impact on me since he was about doing good deed and righting wrongs. After that came Anne McCaffrey and other fantasy greats like David Eddings and Terry Brooks who introduced me to dragons, wizards and magic. I still have an eternal love for them. I moved into comic books as a teen too and collected and read everything I could afford from Marvel and DC. Those were my prized possessions until I outgrew them. And let's not forget the Archie comics for fun and laughs. After that came the Mills and Boon historicals and Johanna Lindsay, Barbara Cartland and a few others which I talked about in Bron's post earlier. I also remember as a teen reading Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer. They were books my parents were reading (very adult) and for some reason they allowed me to read them too. I have fond memories of discussing books with my parents from all that reading material. To this day, my parents and I share some similar reading tastes in thrillers and mysteries. Of course, romance is my first love for reading now but because of the influences from my younger days, I pretty much read almost all of the romance sub-genres. Horror would probably be the only thing I stay away from intentionally. I don't have the constitution for scary stories.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful that you remember your first book, Deanna! And it seems that a few of us here grew up on Enid Blyton too -- the name Mr Pink Whistle made me smile. I so wanted him as an uncle. :-)
DeleteYou've quite a diversity of tastes there, which I think leads to such a rich reading life -- how wonderful. And what a gift that your parents let you read such adult book and would then discuss them with you. So lovely that you've continued those discussion to this day. :-)
Definitely Anne of Green Gables and Romeo and Juliet. Animal Farm was another. And when I was a wee person - The Famous Five and Secret Seven. They got my imagination going.
ReplyDeleteGlad we share Anne and Romeo and Juliet, Sue. :-) Ooh, Animal Farm blew me away when I read it--such a clever, intelligent, heartbreaking book.
DeleteOh, and long live The Secret Seven and The Famous Five!