Books..

I've been reading the "books that have influenced me" memes on others livejournals. Interesting meme. But difficult. So I started thinking about books and what they mean to me and all sorts of other things that I seem to be struggling with finding the right words to convey.

Speaking of books, I've stumbled upon a lovely one, called The Three Junes by Julia Glass. Falling a little bit in love with this book, which is a story about a young man and his family. How they relate to each other, the misdirections, desires and longings. Also with the idea of mortality and passages through life.

Here's a sample:

"Satisfying, he thinks, the way the sea is stirred up, churned so briskly, then returns to its original calm - though not quite: for a moment, if you look hard, the water sparkles there with a little more brillance. Ahead and behind, always islands, more islands; one fades away, another draws near. Turning full circle to take them all in, Paul sees each one as a welcome mystery, a choice to be weighed without prophecy or speculation."

This book speaks to me - something inside me is responding to it. As I read, and it took a while for me to get into it, memories, thoughts bubble up from within me in response.

In reading this book, I've realized something - which may have a lot to do with being raised by bibliophiles (one of which considers Television to be a primitive art form), is that of all the entertainment and art forms out there - I prefer books. They are the things I treasure and cannot easily part with. Between their covers is passage to worlds I cannot imagine, thoughts I've never known. Books haunt me in a way that no movie or tv show ever can. It's hard to put into words this life-long love, but it's there. Books have always made me feel less alone. I honestly don't think I could live without them. Also, I think the books that haunt me the most, the ones I love the most are the ones that pull at some memory, idea, feeling, emotion inside me. The ones that don't do that seem to be forgotten quickly. Floatsam on the waves of my brain.

At any rate, this got me to thinking - what books in my 37 years of life would I distinguish as most influential? Impossible to limit to ten. And the lists changes constantly. I've read more books than I can count, and remember about 65% of them. How do we define "influence"? Is it - influence as in politics and beliefs? Influence - as in love of reading? Influence as in career choices or paths? As much as I'd love to be able to blame a book with the current path I am on - I doubt it's that simple.
Like it or not we live in a cause and effect universe with so many other variables, random and not so random, playing a hand in what happens that it is literally impossible to determine how we got to where we are today, much as we'd like to.

So back to the meme: how do I define influence? And which books should I include? The ones in the last ten years, the complete 37, or only the ones in the very beginning -the first 20 years? I think the first 20, since those years are, in some respects, the point of our lives where we are just forming our imaginations, our beliefs, our desires. And I'm picking those books that continue to haunt me, the ones that in some way, shape or form motivated me in a certain direction - whether it was merely to learn to read, to dream, or to tell my own stories. Who I am today may or may not have something to do with these books that haunt me still.

The ten books that influenced me in the first 20 years or my formative years:

1. Stuart Little by EB White
2. Lisa Bright and Dark by John Neufeld
3. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
4. My Side of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George
5. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
6. The Bible
7. The Veldt by Ray Bradbury (a short story)
8. Farwell to Manzanar by Jeanne Houston
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
10. The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson

( Why and How These 10 influenced me )