Meme: Ten Books That Stayed With You

Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag ten friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them.

I was tagged by @archaeo-geek! Oh, boy, talking about books: this is my kind of thing.

1) Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. The man’s conversational writing style is marvellously addictive and taught me that this was a thing one could do, that one could invite readers into one’s world this way and make them feel happy to be there. Delightful.

2) Dorothy Sayers’s Strong Poison. The language! The characters! (Lord Peter, Harriet Vane, Bunter!) The setting! (Genteel interbellum at its finest!) I read everything else by her that I could find, and I still feel vaguely that it isn’t enough.

3) Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love. Lazarus Long is a dickhead, but he’s an entertaining dickhead, and the stories he tells pull you in. People swap genders and bodies with remarkable frequency (Minerva, I’m looking at you!), and the depiction of the Long family home, where AIs are just as much family members as anyone else, has stayed with me.

4) Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. Ever have your view of mythology turned on its head? It’s a remarkably disorienting experience. More so when the book in question advertises itself as a comedic romp. I re-read it every few years to screw myself back together. (which leads me, strangely, into the next one!)

5) C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. I don’t know if I believe in devils on one’s shoulder, but I do believe in the baser impulses in all of us, and this book does a fine job of catching them all out, one by one, in a fantastically entertaining way. Readable as pure fiction, but theologically enjoyable too.

6) Stephen Manes’s The Obnoxious Jerks. Okay, this seems out of place, but I first read it when I was about ten, and it was the first book I could remember reading where the main characters were a) geeks like me, and b) fine with it. I still own this book. I still pull it out when the world seems alien. It reminds me that there’s nothing wrong with being who you are.

7) John Varley’s The Golden Globe. God damn. Shakespearian actor/genderswapper/former child star/fugitive from law/part-time hallucinator leads law enforcement a merry chase across the solar system? Sign me up. Another thing I like: he’s written a bunch of stories in the same ‘verse, and characters wander in and out of each other’s stories. Another writer with a distinctive first-person style, too. Good stuff.

8) Lois McMaster Bujold’s Mirror Dance. Oh, wow. Hugely unsympathetic protagonist becomes my favourite character with ease. I won’t go into it any further to avoid spoiling friends, but I re-read this one too, and every time I flinch.

9) Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Lady. Okay, I’m a sucker for a good chunk of the Callahan’s books (although the later ones smack of contract fulfillment), but I have a special love for Lady Sally and the artists of her House, who taught me that sex could be a joyful thing, a pleasure shared between consenting adults purely for its own sake. Pretty goddamned revolutionary stuff when you’re twelve. Still pretty revolutionary now that I’m thirty-four. And the puns.

10) J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. For Bilbo, with whom I fell in love at an early age. His way of speaking and thinking have stayed with me. His pocket handkerchief, his brass buttons, “struck by lightning!”, his kettle on the fireplace, “Attercop! Attercop! Down you drop!”, “I am Barrel-Rider,” “Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo, you fool!”, his fat little tummy that shrinks away, his pride in Sting, and his quietly growing confidence… God, losing myself in Bilbo and his world is an endless delight, and if I can ever write something half that captivating, I’ll count myself proud.

(and there are like ten more, but this is a place to start!)

Now it’s your turn: bmouse ladyyatexel lemonsweetie teroknortailor feltelures and anyone else who damned well feels like it!