Today’s prompt is Books that shaped my life.
This isn’t a meme prompt, but Denise Drespling
posted a blog post in early December that made me start thinking.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – the whole series, really. I can’t pinpoint an exact change-in-thought from these books, but I can still remember the plots of all the stories, and reading them over and over again.
Ogre, Ogre, by Piers Anthony – okay, Piers Anthony and the whole Xanth series have flaws, nice big gaping holes, but this is the first “grown up” book I can remember reading – Mom left it sitting on the couch – and it got me started on a lifetime of reading genre fiction.
What’s more, that was the first time I started writing stories-in-my-head about another author’s worlds – fanfic!
To Sail Beyond the Sunset and Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein – parents, don’t let your tweens read these books.
I spent a lot of time with a ridiculously screwed up view of what women should be (hypercompetent beautiful 6′ tall geniuses who are dynamite in the sack and never screw up socially), and I went into high school with a mentality on sexuality and sex that was atypical and problematic for socialization. That being said, there’s a lot of really interesting stuff in these books (colonization, history, parenting, relationships).
The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach – a book that changed my mindset on love and relationships for a while, among other things. Also, taught me that you have to pay attention to paying taxes.
The Oversoul Seven Trilogy: The Education of Oversoul Seven, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time by Jane Roberts. *cough* Well, in addition to really shaping a lot of my thought on reincarnation in my teens, this book set started me thinking about aging and childhood.
Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear – I want to be her when I grow up. I want to write as awesomely as she when I get there, and I want to make writing a cast that is diverse in all ways look as effortless as she does.
There are more, I know there are. But this is a tidy short list.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/877758.html. You can comment here or there.
