Books.. and their influence and inpact..

I was recently asked on Facebook, which top 10 books where most memorable or influential on your life. This is mine:

The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
Rats – Stephen King
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (I’m counting this trilogy as one!)
Bad Ideas? By Robert Winston
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Luck Factor by Dr Richard Wiseman
The Return by Victoria Hislop
A thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Robin S. Sharma

What are yours?

 

Lord of the Rings
Georgette Heyer's Regency novels
Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Game of Thrones series
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

Maybe I'll think of more later.

 

Wasn't that James Herbert?

As much as I love Scandanavian drama I struggle with the books.Maybe it's down to the translation?

1] The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
2] Espedair Street - Iain Banks
3] Stark - Ben Elton
4] The Portable Door/In Your Dream/Earth, Air, Fire and Custard - trilogy by Tom Holt
(if 3 and 4 don't get you laughing your ass off then your dead from the neck up!!!!)
5] A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly
6] Snow Falling On Cedars - David Gutterson
7] Hide and Seek - Ian Rankin
8] If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
9] The Prince - Machievelli
10] Ancestral Vices - Tom Sharpe

 

I read every Enid Blyton book, I can truly attribute my introduction to the love of reading at a very early age to this author.

 

You are quite right, it was James Herbert! I LOVED Steig Lasson's books, the most graphic, dark but totally gripping books I've ever read.

 

Have you not read the Wasp Factory??!!
I'll give them another go, but I'm sure that it's a translation issue that gets in my way. Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell write what I call good pick me up put me down novels, but nothing more than that.

 

I'm just about to go on holiday so I will see if I can get hold of a copy

 

You can usually find The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road or Dead Air in the charity shops around here. I like all his books, but I wouldn't recommend Whit, A Song of Stone or The Bridge to the Iain Banks virgin.

 

My mums old gardening book with a green cover. Cannot remember the author or title.
Each chapter covered the tasks and tips for the month. Aside from the love of gardening.
What I really liked, at age 6, was that each chapter started with a verse of the Sara Coleridge poem "The garden Year". Twee poem but it started the love of poetry
Enid Blyton read almost everything Secret seven, Famous five, Malory towers, Twins of St Clair's, the Adventure books then all the short stories I could get my hands on ....... I agree with Yvonne that Enid Blyton left a legacy of happy readers!
The lion the witch and the wardrobe read to us by my favourite teacher.
Heidi because I loved the toasted cheese her grandfather made her .... Blame Heidi for my weight problems!
All the classic childrens books, as they helped me with my shyness, helped me escape.
Current novels would be;
Goodnight Mr Tom which I read to my children over a bleak October half term! It affected and stays with us all and I am glad we shared it together!
A Thousand splendid suns
Captain Corellis mandolin and Birds without wings.
The wedding officer.
Random acts of heroic love.
The book thief
Birdsong
The island
The millennium trilogy, in fact any crime, forensic or history I can get my hands on!
Most poetry.
Most biographies, read over the last year, Vera Atkins, biographies of the SOE's, The small woman ( filmed as the inn of sixth a happiness).
Love any old country books, folklore or historical use of nature and the countryside. So much is useful still. Except dipping your kids heads in sheep dip if they get headlice!
.....Sorry got carried away!
Great idea for a thread Yvonne!

 

My list was more about my favourite books.
Because of what I do for a living my life is about black and white. Mending cars is fact based so I watch movies and read books for escape. That is probably why I struggle with autobiographies and biographies. The Long Walk To Freedom is a great story but it is so poorly written (IMO). That said, it should be a part of the school syllabus.
As far as books that have changed my life goes the two standouts are To Kill A Mockingbird and Stark;
I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was eleven. Growing up and living in a rural Tory heartland racism is rife here but that one book changed my life. It was the only book that Grampy (who was a pukka country bumpkin) ever discussed with me. His outlook had been changed forever when he was posted to India during the war. From that time on I've never had any truck with racism.
Stark was a masterpiece. Ben Elton took the basic ideas of the environmental movement and exaggerated it all the way to Total Toxic Overload. By making it laugh out loud funny and chucking in a fair bit of Thatcher Bashing he grabbed my attention and got the message across.

 

Her books were far too nice for my tastes. For me it was W.E.Johns (Biggles author) and the Just William books.

 

EVERYTHING that Enid Blyton wrote!!! I loved her books, the" famous five" were particular favourites of mine, also Malory Towers.

Val

 

I read them all as well. Armada paperbacks at 2\6, I used to get at least one every Saturday morning with my pocket money. They were what really turned me into a reader.
I can never work out EB's appeal, they are not very well written and are rubbish for reading aloud to kids. But I still loved them.

 

Any of the Terry Pratchett books.
Portent by James Herbert, read many, many years ago and made me really think about how we treat our planet.
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield was another one that changed the way I thought.
I love Stephen King's books and cackle madly over Robert Rankin.
I couldn't possibly pin down just ten books. So many have either changed how I think about things or cheered me up/ made me laugh like a drain.

 

I've really enjoyed all the Ben Elton books I've read. They don't seem like great literature but he is a brilliant entertainer and frankly, his books kept me awake at night because it was impossible to stop reading. I really like his ability to combine a ripping plot with a massive political and social agenda.