Books that Shaped Your Life

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Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Aeladrine »

I saw a meme I liked, where you talk about the five books that have influenced you the most/speak the most to your character. These are in the order in which I read them.

"Aela," I'm sure you're wondering, "Most of these are YA books!"

Damn right they are. I could tell you about Shakespeare, how Othello made me realize you could have a likeable villain who's not just a big, misunderstood baby. I could talk to you about all the books I read on my King Arthur class, and how they changed me as a person.

But I'm going to talk to you about YA books, and you're going to fucking like it. The obvious exception is the Wheel of Time series. But we'll get there.

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1. The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce

Honestly, I could've put The Song of the Lioness Quartet in here just as easily, but I think I always identified with Daine a bit more than with Alanna. Regardless, these books shaped my childhood in a way no others did. I got my first one in, what, third grade? I was reading way better than I ought to have been at my age, and my mother got frustrated. So she picked these up, thinking they'd be too hard and I'd give up easily.

I didn't. I devoured these books.

They shaped me as a person, honestly. I can look back on these books and see a lot that I didn't see when I was younger; how these were some of my only female role models, how they never stopped to think that they couldn't do something because they were women, how each and every one of them changed the world but were really everyday people. Each girl had her faults, but they worked through them.

I owe a lot to Tamora Pierce's writing, and I'm sad that the Circle of Magic books never managed to do for me what the books of Tortall did. I never read Keladry's books, because my mom said I was too old for them and wouldn't let me get them. I haven't read the Beka Cooper stuff yet because I just keep forgetting.

But as I'm sitting here in my bed, I've got Lioness Rampant sitting right next to me. In two months I'll be 21, yet Tamora Pierce is still one of those authors I pick right back up to reread.

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2. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

I know, I put The Subtle Knife as my picture, not The Golden Compass. But there's a reason for that, actually.

This series did a lot for me. It showed me that adults can be just as wrong and awful and cruel as kids, that they're people as much as children are. It showed me that just because a lot of people believe something that doesn't mean it's true. It showed me you'll make friends in the most unlikely of places, and that's okay.

But The Subtle Knife spoke to me in a way the first book just didn't. I loved The Golden Compass, don't get me wrong. But Lyra didn't really click with me, and Will did. I understood Will, when I just didn't understand Lyra. I didn't understand her until The Amber Spyglass, which I was unable to read until high school, as my mom and I couldn't find it anywhere.

For years, I wanted my own dæmon. I was upset I didn't have one, even when reading about how it could be cut away and you'd become empty.

The problem was I wanted a companion, and I didn't have one.

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3. The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

Holy hell, this series is a monster. I read it for the first time in Germany, during my freshman year of high school. I managed roughly a book a day, but I had to spend all day reading it.

When I came across this series, I was a mess. I'm still a mess; this series didn't turn my life around. But I was being home schooled because my mother didn't think the teachers at the DOD high school in Germany would actually teach me anything. She's right, they wouldn'tve. Most of them took vacations during the school year, and our classes were often filled with substitutes. But she didn't do any better.

Every day, my mother would leave me alone in the house with a list of work to accomplish. Some of it was schoolwork, some of it was chores. Then she'd go out with her friends, leaving me at home alone.

I would do the chores first, then grab a chair to take the grading book mother had and copy all the answers down onto my own paper. There, schoolwork done.

Books came next. It was hard to buy new books in Germany; only a few made it in to the shopette, and ordering them online meant they'd take forever to come in. Local books weren't in English, obviously, and I didn't know any German.

I burned through all my books, my sisters books, then eyed my parents' collection. I knew the romance novels were out of bounds, and I didn't want to touch them, anyway. But there were huge fantasy books, larger than anything I'd read previously, stacked together.

Dad's went quickly. Though they were larger than my own books, the writing was simple and easy to get through. Before long, I had a good footing in adult fantasy.

Then there was this series. I'd tried it first, but gotten bored quickly and put them back.

Now I can't imagine my life without them. I still haven't finished the last book, because I don't want to let it end.

I can't really describe how they changed me, or why they're important to me, but you can bet they are.

After all, the name I go by online is Faile.

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4. Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce

I know. Tamora Pierce, again? I read these two books at a very different time of my life, though. I was sixteen, same as Aly, and going through a lot of her same problems. I didn't know who I was, who I would be, anything. All I knew is everyone was asking what I wanted to do with my life, but kept telling me writing books wasn't an option.

Aly proved to be just the heroine I needed at that time. She was strong, resilient, obstinate, and clever. I connected with her in ways I couldn't with her mother, and she won out even over Daine.

I dyed my hair blue, to my mother's dismay, and wrote in secret. I wrote in made-up alphabets I've now forgotten, so no one else could read it. I wrote on the backs of tests that I still had to turn in, in the bathroom, on the bus. I wrote anywhere and everywhere, because if Aly could be a spy, I could be an author.

I can't see myself in Aly as much anymore. I don't have her courage, her ability to overcome anything.

But Aly was there during the deepest parts of my depression, and I will always be grateful.

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5. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

I didn't actually read this book until after I'd seen the movie enough times to have it memorized. I didn't know there was a book, and once I found out I grabbed it right away. The two after it took a while, but they weren't as important to me.

How could a story about a girl bound by life to be the least successful sister not call to me? My sister was already planning to be a doctor, already had perfect grades, already did everything right. And I, the oldest, was always the disappointment.

But Howl's Moving Castle showed me that, even though it seems like things are going to go a certain way, nothing is ever set in stone. The world changes, people change, and you yourself will always change. You'll find great things inside yourself that you had no idea were there. Even the oldest sister can do great things. You don't have to be confined to a hat shop. As long as you can believe in yourself, you can be amazing.

Sometimes it takes a witch with a curse. Sometimes it takes depression so deep your blood mixes with the mud keeping your boots stuck in the ground.

But there is always a castle.

And what about everyone else? What five books do you think represent you?
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Samskeyti »

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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Agravaine »

The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn, illustrated by Harold Minton.
Image This one taught me not to be afraid to take risks or suffer for what you know is right. That's not much of a cover for such a great story, but the illustrations often showed people in dramatic poses, or if not in motion, showing a wonderful range of expressions on their faces.
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Apparently Minton did a lot of illustration fof children's books -- this one was from one of the Bible books he illustrated. I'll edit again if I can find any of his illustrations for Huck.

The Chronicles of Narnia. The illustrator, Pauline Baynes was such a treasure. I adapted, er, "covered" some of her art to illustrate an epic poem for a high school project.
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The Crystal cave, exploding the old stereotypes of merlin and "wizards"...
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Wise Child, exploding the old stereotypes of "witches"...
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I do love many of the other things people have mentioned so far, but unfortunately I didn't have them so young, growing up in the 70s and 80s. :geek:
Last edited by Agravaine on Thu May 30, 2013 3:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Vephriel »

Ooh, fun topic. Really hard to choose only 5 though. These aren't in too much of a particular order, perhaps vaguely in order of reading, but I can't remember for a few which came first. I tried to find images of the covers that they had when I first read them.

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The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien's mainly responsible for my love of fantasy. I read The Hobbit over and over again when I was a child, and I even tried getting through LOTR before I was 10 but they proved to be a bit advanced for me at that age. I jumped in again when I was a few years older and have since reread the trilogy almost once a year.


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Harry Potter - And of course I have to put Harry Potter. My friend Shauna got the first book from her friend that lived in the UK, not long after it was first published. No one had really known about it back then since it was new, especially not in North America. I was 10, about to turn 11, when I read it, so I stayed the same age as Harry as the books progressed. It really made the connection so much deeper. I never could have guessed back then that the series would become so huge, but it played a very big role in my life.


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The Sword of Truth - This was such a pivotal series for me, they've been among my favourite books since I was teenager. I've reread them countless times and I just can't gush enough over the characters and themes.


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A Song of Ice and Fire - Hands down my favourite books of all time. That's a hard choice to make, but I can safely say that these are the pinnacle. I will forever be in debt to Ryan's friend for lending me the first book all those years ago when I was looking for something new to read. They changed my life, and they were the first novels to overtake Tolkien as my favourite fantasy series. I've reread them so many times, my first copies actually fell apart and I had to buy new ones.


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The Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice was a huge inspiration of mine and the Vampire Chronicles have admittedly been some of my favourite books for a long time. I've always been immensely fond of her portrayal of vampires, no one can ever top that for me.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Falcon »

Great topic!

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1. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

I'd seen the movie many, many times (my parents got sick of me constantly renting it from the local video store) before I finally found a copy of the book in the High School library during my 8th grade year. I cherished the movie, and had always wanted to read the book, so I checked it out. Like the very first time I saw the movie, I was blown away by the book, and I was shocked to discover that Bastian was overweight in the book, which helped me to identify with him even more than I already did. I was the 'weird overweight kid who read a lot' and was a constant target for bullying, which led me to constantly wishing that I could escape to my own world. This book, and the movie adaptation, helped me to do just that.

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2. The Pit Dragon Chronicles by Jane Yolen

I was introduced to this book series through CBS Storybreak, which was a children's series that aired animated adaptations of books to introduce them to children. My favorite episode by a mile was the Dragon's Blood episode, and that led me to wanting the book. My parents are religious fanatics, though, and anything that dealt with dragons, monsters, and other things were strictly forbidden. I'd run across the second book of the series, Heart's Blood, in the High School library around the same time I found The Neverending Story, but when I tried to read Heart's Blood, I found myself completely confused and had to put it back. Unfortunately, the library didn't carry Dragon's Blood, so it wasn't until my mid-twenties that I finally got to read these books, when my boyfriend got them for me for Christmas.

I was shocked to learn that in actuality, the books are way more adult than the CBS Storybreak animated adaptation. Rather than an alien civilization, Jakkin and the others were actually the descendants of a penal colony, dragons inflicted claw wounds upon the neck of the opponent rather than breaking an opponent's horn, and the green dragon Shining Jade was actually a brown dragon named Bottle o' Rum. Despite these revelations, I devoured the first three books, and the third in the series, A Sending of Dragons, is the only book I've read that's traumatized me by how intense some of the events were. Even though I own the fourth book, Dragon's Heart, I've yet to read it, because a part of me just doesn't want it to end.

I know this is cheating, but number three is a tie, I just could not pick between these two!

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3. Ratha's Creature: First Book of The Named by Clare Bell and Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China retold by Ai-Ling Louie

As with Dragon's Blood, I learned of Ratha's Creature and Yeh-Shen through CBS Storybreak, and my mother even taped the Yeh-Shen episode for me. It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that I finally got a hold of Ratha's Creature and the other books in The Named series, and it wasn't till last year that I finally got a copy of Yeh-Shen, both given to me by my best friend.

Though I've never identified with Ratha, I was pulled in to her world, and I suffered through all her hardships. Again, I was shocked to learn that again, the actual book was more adult and far different than the animated adaptation, but I didn't let it put me off. I've always enjoyed books where animals were given speech and human emotions, but Clare Bell's writing kept them very feline in habit at the same time, which I admire.

I've always been intrigued by the story of Cinderella, and though I was first introduced to the tale through the Disney adaptation of the European variation, Yeh-Shen has been and always will be my absolute favorite. The book and the animated adaptation have differences, but they aren't as vast and jarring as with Dragon's Blood and Ratha's Creature. I identify with Yeh-Shen, not in how beautiful she is, but in how she was treated by her family. While I wasn't forced to do all the chores, I was still made fun of and used as a scapegoat, and I still resent my family for such treatment even now.

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4. Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker

During my childhood, I came across Raptor Red in a bookstore I always went to, and while it would call to me, I always ended up finding something else that called louder, so I wasn't able to read this book till my mid-twenties, and I was captivated.

Where Clare Bell's writing gave her Clan cats speech and human emotion while still keeping them very feline in behavior, Robert T. Bakker's writing brought Raptor Red and everyone else to life in his book in a way I've yet to encounter again in any other work. Raptor Red and the other characters do not speak, nor do they convey human emotions through conventional means. Instead, they convey emotions through their actions, interactions, and through the way they see their ancient world. These are sometimes written like thoughts in italics, but they don't seem like actual thoughts, they're more like translations, for a lack of a better word. I can't really explain it, so I recommend picking this title up to see for yourself. This is one of my absolute favorite books, and, as I've already said, I've yet to find anything else even remotely like it in style.

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The Animorphs Series by K. A. Applegate

I know I have The Visitor as my picture instead of The Invasion, but I have a reason for this choice.

The Visitor was the very first book in the series that I picked up, and at the time, I had no clue that it was a series. Since the covers had different people, I thought they were a collection of separate stories, and the cover with a girl changing into a cat was more appealing to me than the cover with a boy changing into a lizard. Though starting with what turned out to be the second book in the series rather than its own story confused me at first, the exposition at the beginning was well done, so I wasn't confused for very long. I was mesmerized by the book, and as soon as I could, I picked up the Invasion and devoured it just as quickly.

In the mid 1990s, Animorphs and Goosebumps were the books to read and collect by children my age and while I read and collected both, I was always eagerly awaiting the next book in the Animorphs series to be released each month, and I would hurry and buy them as soon as I had enough money. I stopped collecting these books when they were numbering in the early thirties, and I don't really know why, and it's a choice I'll always regret. I also regret not bringing what I owned of the series with me wen I moved out, because they were lost in the fire that destroyed the house I grew up in back in 2008. I've been slowly working on getting these books again, though, because even now, I still enjoy them.

I was in Junior High when Animorphs first came out, and it was around the time I'd first contracted arthritis, which left me even more miserable than I already was. I constantly wished for the power to morph into my favorite animals and to leave my constantly aching body... to change into a tiger or to fly like a bat. Out of all the characters who made up the Animorphs, I identified with Tobias the most. He was the quiet kid who was constantly picked on, and cursed with family members who didn't want him because his parents were nowhere to be found.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Lupis »

Ooooh, books! No order here, either. Just the ones I can remember.
Oh, and Falconcrest, I *adored* the Dragon's Blood series, though I don't think I ever read the last book either. The third one killed my heart to such an extent (heck, the second one destroyed me) that I was terrified of what might happen. I also really loved Raptor Red, the way that the author added life to the raptors without making them obviously just humans in raptor skins was amazing!

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Larklight, by Phillip Reeve

This was one of those books that I didn't learn to appreciate until about halfway in. At first it just weirded me out; why would the author so blatantly ignore science? All the things I'd learned in school, in my feverish studies of space, were thrown out the window in this book. At first, I hated it. Then I kind of liked it. Then I loved it. It went far, far beyond the idea of fantasy being the addition of a few dragons and spells to a normal world; Larklight changed everything, and made the world completely new. I still try to remind myself of Larklight when I'm thinking about fantasy, because I never want to limit myself.

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The Tiffany Aching series, by Terry Pratchett

Where some people grey up on Harry Potter, I grew up on Tiffany Aching. Tiffany was my role model. This series taught me a lot about what was really strong and necessary. Witches in this series weren't all about flashy lights and powerful spells, they were about helping the people that really needed help. It brought to the spotlight the people that spend their lives doing the little things that make the world spin, and gave them a special sort of power and dignity that no other book had given them. I can honestly say that these books changed how I saw the world and changed who I wanted to be, and few books since have done anything like that.

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The Time Quintet, by Madeleine L'Engle

More specifically, A Wrinkle In Time, A Swiftly Turning Planet and A Wind in the Door. Those books enchanted me. Another series where fiction was taken farther than I'd ever seen it taken before, the characters in these books were my favorites as soon as I met them. I know A Wind in the Door had me sobbing uncontrollably for quite a while. I read these at the perfect time in my life; in middle school, when I really wasn't sure who I was, but I knew I wasn't happy with it. Reading about the main character in these books gave me something to think about, a character that isn't always strong, that needs help sometimes, but can still do amazing things.

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The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

This book taught me to love literature. Before reading this book, books were just stories to me, rarely with real meaning beyond the plot. At first, Lord of the Flies was the same. I hated it. I thought it was preachy and terrible, a horrible story with an unsatisfactory ending. Then I read it again in class, and I started to see. It was the first time I'd ever really encountered symbols that meant anything to me, and I read the book twice over again just to follow them and to see how each sentence added to the story. I went from thinking it was a trash book to thinking that it was a masterpiece. If it wasn't for this book, I don't think I ever would have loved literature like I do now. I just thought it was an easy class; now I think it's fascinating.

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Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko

I read this in AP english and expected to hate it. I could not be more wrong. I read a lot of eye-opening things in that class, but Ceremony absolutely stole the show. Everything was a theme, everything a symbol, and everything struck me to the core. The messages were far different than what I expected, all about accepting and adapting instead of hating to war against hate. The way it was written was new and different, full of details that I would usually skip over but somehow became important and calming. No other book has made me love a scene that's just the description of a spring, love it so much that I write all over my book about what I think it means. I packed that book from cover to cover with annotations. By the time I finished reading it, I had to just stare at a wall for a while, not sure if I wanted to cry or just read it all over again. It wasn't sad, either, but I really wanted to cry.

I can't really put into words how powerful that book was to me. Every time I discussed it, instead of lazily going through the pages, I was excitedly racing through to try and re-evaluate each passage, seeing whole new layers each time. I swear I'll never be done reading it.

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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by SpiritBinder »

1st of all, SUCH A GREAT TOPIC!!!! <3 it!

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The 1st book that I remember, although not much to read in it, but the most splendid popup book you will ever come across. It may have been the very early 80's but it made me fall in love with all that go bump in the night and all magic that goes with it. I'll have to give a little nod to "Dinner Time" which I love nearly as much.

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Randomly I did not have much of a passion for reading as a child, though I did get through these, and namely The Magician's Nephew. Fantasy books were just not the sort of this my parents encouraged much reading of and other books just did not interest me. These ones however managed to get the ok.

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That said as I did not really read that much when I was younger it took me quite some time to find the love for it. But around the age of 18 I was working for a vidoe game shop where the owner read nearly a book a day when it was quiet. I remember scoffing at her one time when I saw her reading "Harry Potter" telling her it was for kids. That year for Christmas she brought me the Prisoner of Azkaban (as the 1st movie was already out) She said when it was quiet in the shop, if I did not feel like dusting/cleaning/stocktaking etc. I was allowed to read this book. One very quiet day I begrudgingly picked it up... and I was hooked, I was obsessed, I was in love, never again to look at a book the same way.

It was also the 1st movie that I read the book for 1st. It broke my heart to remember so much that was missing, but warmed it to the core knowing all the little bits that were missing and all the little "Easter eggs" they put in as a "nod" to those whom did.

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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Wain »

Aeladrine, not only is this a great topic, you write really well. It was enjoyable just reading your post :)

I've always been a mad keen reader, ever since I was little. I've had a lot of favourite books over the years, but this topic is about the ones that had great influence, so I'll stick to just a few. :)

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1. H.G. Wells. The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
I can't really separate his works, as I read all these books around the same time, when I was about six or seven years old. I had seen old movie versions of the first two on tv (I remember dad letting me stay up late just to see the endings) and then devoured the books. Publishing in the late 1800s, Wells is one of the fathers of science fiction and he started my love of the genre. He didn't write about space battles and lasers and intergalactic cruisers (those concepts didn't even exist!), he wrote about humanity, society, and where we're going. And many of his insights have proven eerily accurate. While I love a good space western as much as the next person, science fiction was created to hold up a mirror to society, and I believe is still what it does best.


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2. The Hobbit.
By the time I was introduced to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (at the age of 12) I'd already developed a love of mythology and read a number of kids' fantasy books. But this is the work that kicked my passion into overdrive. Nothing since has ever compared to the feeling I got while reading these books for the first time. It made me realize that anyone can step out their down and "go on an adventure", even if there are no orcs and elves and dragons involved ;)


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3. Holding the Man. Tim Conigrave.
This book was published soon after I came out, in my early-mid 20s. It's a true story, a love story between two guys who grew up in my city, about a decade before me. And no book before or since has ever made me cry so hard. It's a very honestly written book, and the familiar locations made it feel all the more real and personal. It certainly influenced my process of coming out, and made me feel far less alone at a time when I didn't know that many gay people at all.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Hatari »

Yes, great topic!

I think I will only list one book, though. There have been many novels that have affected my life, as well as uncounted other forms of literature.
Yet, without a doubt only this one has informed almost every aspect of who I am.

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Watership Down by Richard Adams


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He remains one of my real heroes.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Serendipity82 »

OH good Topic.


I'm not posting book covers, but I will have to say

1. The Last Unicorn by Peter. S. Beagle
2. The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce (such a great author!)
3. The Giver by Lois Lowry
4. Winds of Fate trilogy by Mercedes Lackey
5. Redwall (the entire series) by Brian Jacques

Oh man...there are so many others, but I can't think of all of them right now.

Aeladrine, you HAVE to read the Beka Cooper and Keladry series. Both of them are fabulous.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Aeladrine »

Aaaah, I love that other people love Tamora Pierce. ;a;

And yes, I keep meaning to! I just don't have the time or money, haha.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Castile »

Wow what an awesome topic! As a librarian I give this my stamp of awesomeness!! Now onto my books...

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1. The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann
One of my all time favourite books. I still have my dog eared copy that I read over and over again. I was also a massive fan of the BBC series and am really sad it hasn't been released onto dvd yet.

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2. Watership Down (and its sequal "Tales from Watership Down") by Richard Adams
Are you seeing a theme lol? Another one of my all time favourites. The plight of these rabbits touched me and the all female warren in the second intrigued me even more.

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3. The Tripods by John Christopher
We were instructed to read the first book of the trilogy for english in yr 10....I promptly read the entire trilogy before the class finished the first! It was the birth of my love for sci fic....

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4. Gold Unicorn by Tanith Lee
The start of my fantasy love came from a book i found on the $2 table outside a dymocks :) I loved the story of the fix it girl and had to read the other two in the series. Truely a remarkable writer Tanith Lee.

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5. Tomorrow, when the war began by John Marsden
This series was just one of the best in terms of australian YA fiction imo. So many issues it dealt with besides the war itself...I've yet to read the Elle Chronicles though :) The movie was very well done as well and I hope they make the rest of the series at some point.

I could of listed about 20 but i'll stick with these 5 for now ;)

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Serendipity82
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Serendipity82 »

Oh man..Tanith Lee. I have red both the Gold Unicorn..and I think she also wrote the Black Unicorn. Great books.


Speaking of unicorns:

Into the Land of Unicorn by Bruce Coville


And also the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley.


I think I'm done now.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

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Last edited by Nahale on Fri Mar 27, 2015 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mozag
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Mozag »

What an interesting topic, and it's a pleasure reading everyone's responses.

I have always been a voracious reader, ever since I learned to at the age of 4. I have read everything and anything I can get my hands on. I read while walking, I read while playing, I read while watching films sometimes, I read while in the sauna (back when I lived in Finland and had one!), in the bath and I still wish I could devise a method to read while in the shower. I have read a lot of trash and a lot of amazing literature, it's hard to pick the books that have had the most impact because most thing I've read have resonated in some way or another. But let us try, onward with the adventure!

1.
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Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

If there is one book I can thank for my love of literature, I guess it could be this one. I am lucky in that I have a brother eight years older (also passionate about literature), so I was always able to rummage through his library when I ran out of stuff to read in my own. And so it was that a nine year old girl, bored, stumbled upon his collection of Shakespeare and found herself fascinated by the skull on the cover of this particular book. I opened it, and...had no idea what I was looking at. I didn't understand anything. Words I recognised jumped out at me, and I fought to comprehend what the story was about. I didn't, and I loved it. All I knew was that here was a treasure trove I wanted to unlock, I wanted to understand what was written, how it was written and why. I didn't so much care about the story as I did about that rich language it was written in. Years on, I still love Shakespeare, all the more for the depth and humour, the tragedy and the history that breathe at me from every page.

2.
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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

We read this book at school when I was a child, and I didn't even know at the time that it was a series. I don't remember much else except that the book shivered and glistened within me like a lake of ice. I felt scared and elated and fascinated. I admired the White Witch, I wanted to be just like her, and like everyone I loved Aslan. Years later I read the book again, and I can't say it impressed me. But I still felt the power of the Witch, and the warm comfort of Aslan as I remembered and imagined him. Perhaps this was the first book in which I ever saw a role model for myself, because I wanted to BE that witch. Powerful and beautiful and feared and admired. I never really enjoyed the rest of the series much.

3.
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The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

It may be cheating to include both here, but they cannot be separated. The cover of The Lord of the Rings depicted is the one I own now, I could not find the original cover as that one fell apart after years of reading and re-reading. I have never been a fan of the fantasy genre, despite enjoying fantasy games, so it may come as a surprise that the two most profoundly moving books I have ever read are fantasy. But I do not love Tolkien's works for the fantasy theme, I am usually left rather cold by dragons and wizards and fair ladies in towers, it is, once again, the language, that rich, evocative, fascinating language that only a linguist could have built his world with. It awoke the same feelings of awe in me as Hamlet had, except that this time I understood it all. It was like a portal that made me believe I could speak, write, think like this. I cried when the Lord of the Rings ended; I can still feel the hollow in my chest when I realised that no matter how often I read it again, it would never be like the first time. I was right, but I also found plenty to admire and study as I, like Veph, began reading the book once or twice a year. A routine I have kept up for all these years.

So of course I thought no book could ever top the sensations LotR had given me. I was wrong. I borrowed The Silmarillion from one of my best friends at the time, a fellow Tolkien enthusiast, and was thrown into a world which resonated with me even more. Gone were the sharp black and white angles provided by The Lord of the Rings. The scenes were larger and more epic, the English more profound and deep and beautiful, the characters more powerful than we could even dream, but not everyone was either good or bad. There were shades of grey everywhere. Death and destruction, sorrow and glory and joy such as I had never known in any work before. I struggle to explain or do justice to the impact that this work, in particular, has had on me. When I quote lines from it, I am touching the immortal.

4.
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Theon matka (original Le Voyage de Théo by Catherine Clément

My mother bought this book for me because it was a lauded bestseller, and she wanted me to read it in Finnish, because my skills in Finnish have always been poorer due to a childhood lived abroad. I don't always enjoy reading things in Finnish because it's slower and harder for me, and because I find that usually translations sound silly and contrived. Even many originally Finnish books have me giving up in disgust because I think everything sounds so...stiff. It's hard to explain. So I began reading this rather reluctantly, a thick book in Finnish about who knew what topic. But read I did, and as it unfolded, I knew even then that it would be THE book to remember from my teens. It opened up the world of religion for me. I had attended International Schools most of my life, and thus was never taught anything about the religions of the world. I hardly knew anything about the faith to which I had been Christened, except that there was a guy called Jesus in it, and you prayed to a God when stuff didn't go as you wanted it to. But here was a work that opened my eyes to it all, it showed me different religions, different philosophies and thoughts, it gave me glimpses of countries I had never been to and of people I badly wanted to meet. I wanted to BE Theo, I wanted an experience like his. I wanted to travel the world and learn about people and religions and customs. It shaped my life enough to make me zoom to be one of the best in my religion classes in my new school, I longed to study religions at university and it shaped a dream of becoming a cultural anthropologist. I never did do any of those things, but the dreams remain, and this book shaped me in very tangible ways. Perhaps most of all I realised that I don't believe, although I wish I did, and the week I turned 18 I formally signed myself out of the Lutheran Church in Finland.

5.
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Täällä Pohjantähden alla by Väinö Linna

Again, I cannot separate these two. They happened at around the same time, the awakening of my love for Russian literature and my awakening to the history of my own nation. Of course, like most Finns, I have had our history stabbed into me again and again and again since childhood, but I never much cared for it. I've not been one for modern history in any case, preferring to cast my mind back to a time that is easier to relate to because it's less real. I have felt a call for Russia, Russian language and Russian history since I've been quite young. My mother says it's because I'm part Karelian, and so my "soul" still yearns for the East and the solace of Orthodoxy. Be that as it may, I am also a proud Finn and we have a convoluted history with the Russians. Anna Karenina awoke in the me the desire to learn Russian so that one day I could read it in its native tongue. I went into a frenzy, a Russia obsession for a while, I wanted to marry a Russian, live in Russia, speak Russian, support their hockey team. I decided that Slavic men are the most handsome, that I find their languages the sexiest, etc. etc. etc. While these were naturally the mad ramblings of an obsessive teen, some of this has rubbed off after all these years. It is perhaps no surprise that I married a Croatian, that I have two children who speak a Slavic language fluently. It is definitely not a surprise that I fell in love with a Russian and share my life with him now, and hope some day to learn the language. I think perhaps it is that Russian literature speaks to me in ways that a lot of literature from other nations can't. It is dramatic and sad and terrible, it is realistic and beautiful. It is a nightmare within a dream. I think we melancholy Finns understand the equally melancholy Russians far better than many of us would like to admit.

A little bit later though, interspersed with this Slav frenzy, which may after all have been nothing more than the titillation of a forbidden fruit, I came across Väinö Linna's trilogy. Now, his Tuntematon Sotilas is standard fare in Finnish schools. It's something probably every Finn has read and should read, but I never found it particularly interesting. I don't think I've still managed to read it, and the bits I did tend to make me yawn. But this...THIS. This was something else. I struggled my way slowly over the long, winding paths of the story of the Koskela family. I cried and laughed and raged. The history of my small, unimportant nation unfolded itself in painful detail before me. My own preconceptions of my own family's history within the greater story of Finland's rise as an independent nation were put sharply into focus. It shook me as a person, it shook everything I knew or thought I knew about my country and my family. And what's more, it was a love story, a tragedy, a sprawling roller coaster of death and birth and politics and war. And it is, above everything, very, very Finnish. Wholly, completely Finnish. No other country could have produced this work.
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Re: Books that Shaped Your Life

Unread post by Samskeyti »

This is fantastic! I shall read some of the books you have featured here. I love reading too.
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