Twenty to ahem Forty Books That Stayed With Me or Influenced Me..

[shadowkat]

Choose books that have stayed with you or influenced you. (It was 20, but I couldn't choose just 20...sigh. Just put the covers, no explanation. It's probably a good idea to remember I was an English Lit Major, and studied Drama in college.)

It's supposed to be thumbnail pictures, but I can't figure out how to do that.


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Comments

[dirtygreatknife]

Ahh! There's a few here that I also love! (And forgot about as I have a memory like a sieve.) "The Dragonriders of Pern," "Watership Down," "Interview With the Vampire" (love the show too) and "The Crystal Cave" (love the whole series of those books.)

[shadowkat]

I've admittedly not gotten into the series (Interview with a Vampire) but that's more of a mood thing, also it's a series filmed at night (dark in that - filmed in poorly lit rooms - because hello vampires, and in the 1800s, so of course), and on AMC (which I no longer have access too). I wish the whole thing would be available for streaming somewhere like Hulu or Netflix. But so far, just 8 episodes on Netflix.

I also have a memory like a sieve - I can't remember a lot of books that I've read, recently. But apparently can remember books I read over twenty years ago?

[dirtygreatknife]

Ah yes, that's understandable. Luckily for us here in AU, it's been on SBS On Demand, which is a free streaming service, so we watch it on that.

[shadowkat]

I'm thinking that it's become more affordable in international markets (or where it was exported) than national markets. Which is interesting.

I have to admit that I'm burned out on the genre - and when I did have AMC and was taping it - I was having troubles getting into it - mainly because I'm kind of burned out on it. Also I devoured at one time anything related to the Interview of a Vampire Series - including graphic novel adaptations. (That was in the 1990s).

[dirtygreatknife]

S1 was on AMC which is hosted by Binge here, and you could buy it for a week, which was all I could afford, so I did that and watched it that way. Then R told me that S2 was on SBS On Demand for free, so no expenditure there!

Another friend was/is really into Anne Rice's books but she got a bit tired of the vampire Lestat series when he was hanging out with Jesus. I confess I never did get that far.

[shadowkat]

Another friend was/is really into Anne Rice's books but she got a bit tired of the vampire Lestat series when he was hanging out with Jesus. I confess I never did get that far.

I didn't either. I stopped with The Body Thief, that was my last Anne Rice. She kind of went off the rails after a certain point - and decided she didn't require an editor. I avoided her religious stage, thank god.

[dirtygreatknife]

My last one was Queen of the Damned. Her decisions about not needing an editor annoyed me, too.

[shadowkat]

I made it a little further - with the Tale of the Body Thief (which was tighter than expected, but also kind of boring?), I did not make it to Menmoch, You Devil - I gave up there. The last book I tried to read of hers was something called "the Violin" for a book club, and it was awful. That book had no editor.

I never read the Mayfair Witches - tried, but didn't get very far.

I did like Queen of the Damned, but that's just because - I'm into mythology and folklore, and was a cultural anthropology major - so I was intrigued by what she was doing with it. (I also read it in early 1990s, I think 1991? So, I have no idea what I'd think about it now. The movie was not that memorable.)

[dirtygreatknife]

I didn't mind QOTD, though it's the last of her books I read. I didn't mind the film either, purely bc I was playing spot the goth I know as the gigs were shot in Melbourne, and many of the crowd were people that I knew!

[shadowkat]

I didn't mind the film either - it had an attractive lead. ;-). But I didn't know it was shot in Melbourne.

[dirtygreatknife]

It did! He kind of disappeared after that film, though. Yeah, I think Fox Studios had a place there and it's kind of cheap to film here as our dollar is worth next to nothing. I mean, it's worth 60c US atm, so not doing so great!

[shadowkat]

Damn, 60 cents on the dollar? If it weren't so far away - I'd go to Australia again. (I visited once in December 1990 - was mainly in Sydney (visiting my parents who were living there at the time, then at Xmas we drove through Victoria to Melbourne, and took a ferry to Tasmania). Never saw any of the crazy spiders or snakes, Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabees, etc - yes. But none of the reptiles or arachnids.)

[dirtygreatknife]

Out of curiousity I went and had a look at what it is now, and it's 62 whole cents on the dollar. Woo! Our money is worth so much! The bugs were probably around, you just don't tend to see them during the day or when it's not hot. I've been outside in the evenings and had the hell scared out of me by turning around and seeing some creature from the dawn of time I have no desire to see. I also have several cans of bug spray. I can't stand them--they get sprayed when I see them.

[shadowkat]

I'm an arachnaphobe. Absolutely terrified of spiders. But when I visited Australia, the most I saw was an ordinary small house spider. My parents lived there for 18 months and saw nothing. My brother visited them twice - nothing.

I think you are right - they are there - but usually not in populated areas and around humans. But, the wildfires back around 2020 probably brought them out in droves. I remember reading something about spiders - large spiders being seen around Sydney and Melbourn and residential areas that had not previously been seen - due to all the fires.

[dirtygreatknife]

You were very, very lucky. Bc they absolutely are in populated areas and around humans. I've lost count of how many I've seen over the years, either in my home or garden, no matter where I've lived. I had a small huntsman in the kitchen sink the other day, that got flushed down the drain bc NO. Last year, there was a HUGE huntsman right by the front door, and yes, I screamed, made my way inside and got the bug spray then nuked it. They are everywhere. They tend to hibernate in winter but as our summers are so HOT, that's when they come out and freak everyone out. Like the snakes do. In the place where mum lived before we moved here, there was an Eastern Brown in the communal garden, and they're one of the most poisonous.

[shadowkat]

It was admittedly in 1990-1991, before the wildfires, and the increased temperatures and ahem climate change. In 1990 - the summer was about 80 degrees in Sydney, and cooler in Melbourn and Tansmania, and we were mainly in city areas, although did visit the wildlife sanctuary outside Sydney. My parents were all over Australia, and my brother visited Great Barrier Reef and islands around that area, no spiders or snakes seen. But again? 1990-1991, about thirty years ago?

Although, note to self? Do not visit Australia again, go someplace else. Maybe New Zealand? LOL! (I can't handle a tarantula, and certainly can't look at pictures of huntsman. The largest spider I've seen in person (not a picture) was a tarantula as big as my foot - it was huge. A sociopathic boy that I was traveling with at the time (it was a college camping trip) decided to pick it up in his hat and chase me with it. He got off on how terrified I was - he'd never seen anyone that terrified in his life - and at the age of 18, it turned him on. (Needless to say - I gave him a wide berth and never came near him again.) I've seen brown recluse (small spider - deadly bite - it eats away the skin around it - I've seen what it does to folks who got bitten - horrid), and a black widow - also deadly little spider. Tarantulas are actually harmless - just big and scary. People have them as pets. (Not me.) The big spiders in the US aren't that dangerous. It's the tiny ones you have to worry over, such as brown recluse, black widow, and the wolf spider - which has a tendency to grip and not let go.

In the 1990s? The only spider I knew about that was dangerous in Australia was the funnel web. We didn't know about any others. This was before the internet, or smart phones. We didn't have any of that.

[dirtygreatknife]

Happy Valentines Day! I'm afraid this comment is going to be an essay, so apologies in advance LOL.

Okay. I need to put to rest that you wouldn't see spiders pre-1990, bc you would. They've been here since probably the dawn of time, and I'm not kidding with that. At least pre human times, anyway. And when humans arrived and began to encroach on their habitat, spiders (and other insects and a lot of native marsupials) were very adept at adapting to that. Now it's true you won't see kangaroos bouncing down the streets of our major cities at night, but I can absolutely guarantee you that there were spiders living in your parents home--you just didn't see them. They would've been in the walls and ceiling, where their prey is, and as most of their prey is other insects, that's where they'd go. Plus, most of them operate at night, usually when we're asleep.

Yes, it's true that when there are bushfires (happens every year in every state and territory), spiders and all other forms of life who can run will do exactly that, to get away from death bc that's their need to survive kicking in. Sometimes, you'll see them like a moving carpet trying to outrun the fire and sometimes they manage, most of the time they don't. Fire is faster and more deadly. Australia has dealt with fire forever, as this country is the driest and hottest country in the world. The indigenous people know how to prepare for it far better than we white fellas, and it's only been in recent years that indigenous fire shamen/women have been brought in to help prepare prior to bushfire season. (We even call it a season. Five seasons in Australia and one of them is flaming heat and destruction.)

So I say this, but if you were to visit Australia again, say this year or the next, you wouldn't see one unless there was a bushfire in the vicinity or unless it was a 43+ degree day like it was here the other day. I've had friends visit me from all over the US, and they never saw a spider (or a cockroach--and ours are big and they sometimes fly zomg) while they were here. They never saw a fire ant, a blowfly, a European wasp (nasty fuckers, deadly stings), or any other nasty bug like that--most they saw were reguar ants doing the regular ant thing.

That kid with his tarantula sounds like a total dick. I'm glad it turned on him, he must have give it some reason to do so, too. Dickhead. (Him, not you). A huntsman or daddy long legs are big but they're not poisonous, and the ones that are poisonous are usually small--off the top of my head, some of these are the red back (black with a red back--we are very inventive with names for things here), trapdoor (has a back that looks like a trapdoor), whitetail (black with a white tail), funnel web, and imported, usually via cargo ships and some came with the First Fleet too, we have the black widow and the wolf spider. Not sure if we have the brown recluse, it wouldn't surprise me, but again, I'm not going to google it. I already feel like I have a phantom spider in my hair as I write this. I know I don't, I checked, but it's not a nice feeling LOL!

A lot of our native species adapted pretty well to humans and invasive species (camels, the common mouse and rat, dogs, horses, cats, rabbits) but many have not and are on the verge of extinction. A lot of the camels are now wild, descended from the original Afghan cameleers who came out here not long after the First Fleet and helped get this country going. The horses first came with the First Fleet and came to be named Brumbies by indigenous people which at least has stuck, bc for things like what we call our spiders and snakes and a particular octopus (blue ringed octopus--very small, super poisonous), we don't tend to ever use the indigenous or scientific name for them. Just descriptive ones. Like the red bellied black snake or the eastern brown snake. We're not very inventive when it comes to naming things. At least creatures like the kangaroo, wallabies, bird life, fish/sharks (mostly) and other marsupials kept their indigenous or scientific names. Google Quokka to see the most adorable marsupial in this country.

NZ has it's own share of nasties--a dear friend of mine went there to work for several years and she told me horror stories about flying roaches, and I was like, thank god we don't have them here. More fool me, we do--we just don't see them very often. I've only seen one and that's plenty. She told me she'd seen so many, she carried around a small container of bug spray with her. There's also the Weta--don't google it, you'll have nightmares, I did. Nature does not mess around with its nasties. (Also, most of us Aussies have several cans of bug spray in our homes, usually one in each room, just in case.)

But look at pictures of Quokkas. They will not give you nightmares and they will bring you joy. :)

[shadowkat]

Where are you in Australia? Melbourne? Perth? Sydney? Or the suburbs?

[dirtygreatknife]

Yet another essay of a comment!

Heh. There's more to Australia than Melbourne or Sydney. The rest of the country gets annoyed when people forget that, and it's often people in Melb or Syd who push that narrative. (Sometimes Brisbane too. The Eastern states like to think they're the be all but they're not.)

So I am in Adelaide, capital city of South Australia, which is the bottom middle chunk of the country and is the driest state in the driest country in the world. Drought is our middle name; for example while the weather is quite nice right now, having had a cool change, far north Queensland has been dealing with tropical cyclones for the last 4 months and most of it is under water. I have a friend up there and she had to evacuate a few weeks ago, only able to go back a few days ago. Everything is soaked, and there's no food in the supermarkets and she and others are despairing. And it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon. Are we due any rain in my state? Not in the foreseeable future.

I was born and raised here, I've lived all around the suburbs and in the city center itself. My brother used to live in Sydney; I still have a lot of good friends there. I also have family in Queenland, in Ipswitch and in Western Australia, in Perth. I have friends in Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, I used to have some in Alice Springs and Darwin (Nothern Territory), but one of them moved to Toowoomba in QLD and the other moved to the US (Kansas), and I have friends in Perth. I've travelled all over this great country of mine except for Tasmania, I love Sydney and Perth, I enjoyed Brisbane and parts of the Sunshine Coast in QLD, I did not enjoy Darwin bc omg so HUMID and HOT, but Alice, despite it's problems (crime, alcohol abuse, drug abuse) was amazing. Canberra bored me, probably bc it's the capital of the country and where all the politicians are and it is also title holder for the greatest number of porn shops per capita in Australia, which amuses me greatly. My friend C, who I write about in my DW was working there for a few years and I think she was very glad to get back here. I'm not really a fan of Melb, even though I have a lot of friends there, I think Sydney for all its huge sprawling size is more welcoming and relaxed. And I love Perth, it's beautiful, when it's hot it's a dry heat which is far easier to deal with than all that humidity in Syd, Bris and Darwin.

Adelaide also is the only city in Australia that was planned. When it was designed by Col. William Light, he designed it in a grid formation, with the center being bordered by roads named for each point of the compass and accurate to those compass points, ie, West Terrace faces the west and so on. I'm in the north eastern inner 'burbs. Then he had the whole CBD surrounded with parklands, so we're also ranked in the top 5 green cities in the world bc of that. Adelaide is known as the Festival City and SA as the Festival State bc we have so many festivals in our city (and neither of those links are a complete list of what we have here). Plus we have a river that runs through the center, on the edge of North Terrace, called the Torrens River. Wouldn't go swimming in it, but you can rent paddle boats or go on a slow boat tour on a boat called the Popeye, which is fun.

However, while life here is good, as with anywhere, there's a darker side. Adelaide also has the monicker of "City of Churches," bc there seems to be one on just about every city block (I remember in the later 80s there was a pub that was a church on Sundays, so you could get a pint and a sermon before it went back to regular trading), "and bizarre murders." Bc, well, yeah. We've had/have a lot of those. I have a penchant for true crime and there's a YouTuber named Bailey Sarian who covered one of our more unpleasant murders, and she went so deep into research that there were things in her two vid coverage that I hadn't known about and was floored by--and I live here and knew about the case and had been following it at the time!

But as with all major cities and locations, be sensible and you won't have any trouble. Like, don't accept a ride from a stranger or anything like that, that sort of thing. So I say this, but I do enjoy living here and while I live in public housing (thank god, again, I am very lucky to have it), I wouldn't choose to live in any other city/town in this country. They all have their own problems and they all have people who aren't good--just like anywhere in the world--and on the flip side of the coin, they and we all have people who are very good, kind and thoughtful.

[dirtygreatknife]

(Had to go for two parts for this one!)

So how about you? What city/state are you in?

[shadowkat]

Wow. Thank you for that. Being an arachnophobe - I'm glad I didn't see them. Mother wisely only told me about the one I knew about when I was there - and made it clear it was nowhere near me. LOL!

The difference between US and Australia - is the US media is ridiculously virulent around the world? So you may know a lot more about the US than I know about Australia?

I live in Brooklyn, New York - which is a borough of New York City - in a rent stabilized apartment.
New York City has five boroughs - Manhattan (which most people visit and tend to think about when they think of New York City, and often forget there's anything else), Brooklyn (which due to all the writers who live in the Borough and film makers and the ridiculous tax breaks filmmakers/television makers get for filming here - is also what most folks think about when they think of NYC - it's kind of a blend of residential/city and it's not until you get to the more Southern/Eastern regions of the borough that you need a car), Queens (tends to be more residential in character, and you need a car for the most part), Staten Island (also heavily residential in character), while the Bronx is highly residential in character, but also very much a city - similar to Brooklyn. I've lived in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. Worked in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

The area I live in is south of and between Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park - it's mainly residential but within walking distance of pharmacy, five or six grocery stores, two book stores, two libraries, numerous eateries, and four subway lines and several bus lines, also Greenwood Cemetery (a big beautiful park with tombs, mausoleums, graves and lakes and ponds), and Prospect Park (another huge park - but without graves, it has a waterfall in it and a lake and you can get lost in that park and it will take a few hours to find your way out).

I'd say it is for the most part safe? Depends on where you are in the city, there are areas you probably want to avoid at night. NYC gets a bad rap - but like anywhere else? It depends on what you are doing and where you are? Outside of being robbed once - they stole my laptop out of my apartment while I was sleeping - but this was 20 years ago, and in a brownstone under construction - I've not really experienced anything? Kansas was just as dangerous - there was a serial rapist in the 1980s preying off of shopping malls, and a lot of weird murders. Johnson County, Kansas and Kansas City were kind of like how you describe crime in Adelaide. It's a small sprawling city,

I've lived in other states as well. My childhood was spent in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I actually saw more potentially dangerous situations there - than I have in NYC. Although we lived in a more rural suburban area. This is a state just South and to the West of New York and about a two hour train ride or you can take ferry and car or just drive or bus. West Chester is about two hours outside of Philadelphia, PA. It's suburbs but also fairly rural - and horse country. Many of my friends growing up owned horses. We had lots of trees, forest in the backyard, and trees across the street, and creeks. And about an hour drive or so to the north - lots of of horses. I desperately wanted one at that time. (We never got one and I'm fine with that. LOL!) We also lived near Amish and Mennonite country. It's a very hilly state, with Mountains, although not high Mountains. The Poconos are in PA. When I was about 12, we moved to Kansas, or the suburbs of Kansas City Missouri, but on the Kansas side - in the Eastern Area of the State. Kansas is about a two-three day drive from Pennsylvania or thereabouts, and there's several states between. I went to College in Colorado - a mountainous State, about 13 hours from Kansas City, in Colorado Springs, which is at the foot of Pikes Peak. It's a smaller city. Not that big. Then for Law School - I went back to Kansas, and lived in Lawrence, Kansas, which was a small college town, not city about two hours from Kansas City.

I've been to most of the States, including Puerto Rico. I've been California - which is very different from the East Coast cities, it's more sprawling in its cities, and drier in the South, the North is very wooded. But the south is part desert. Also we've driven from Arizona to California which is about a two day drive? Arizona is mainly desert. Cactus. Scorpions. Tarantulas. Various types of birds, and rodents that live in the desert, along with coyotes, rattle snakes, spiders, insects, etc. There's areas here that are just sand dunes. New Mexico - I hiked in Bandalier National Monument - which is a terrain of buttes, cliffs, mountains, desert and evergreen forests with streams. Animals range from bears, raccoons, bobcats, cougars, coyotes, hares, and various types of birds. We didn't see anything but huge raccoons. Also saw spiders - lots of spiders - that's where I saw my first black widow - climbing on someone's pack. And several tarantulas. I also have hiked up Pike's Peak. Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah make up a portion of the West or the American West, which is in a lot of American Westerns. Although a high percentage of American Westerns were filmed in New Mexico, and California.

I've been to all the states on the East Coast - and my mother currently lives in South Carolina - about one-two hours away by plane, thirteen to fourteen hours by car. My family lives across the US.
As do my friends. I've lived in NYC for about twenty-eight years now, so by far the longest. My brother lives in upstate New York. NY is an interesting state in that it has just about everything: a huge city, small towns, various islands, mountains, beaches, lakes, on the edge of one of the Great Lakes, Niagra Falls, rural farmland, major city, suburbs, etc. Climate? Temperate in NYC and rather mild, with it getting colder upstate. NY gets snow in the winter, and isn't that hot in the summer. (We consider anything in the 90s (30s celisus) hot. Animals: coyotes, bobcats, bears (black bears), wolves, deer, raccoons, rabbits, groundhogs,gophers. Brown recluse spiders (although they are in Kansas too and a lot in PA - saw one on a camping trip in PA when I was a kid), daddy long legs, etc. My niece is going to school in Montana, which is a state that is beautiful - it has rugged mountains, forests, rivers, bison (Buffalo), cattle, bears, mountain lions, etc. If you've ever seen the television series Yellowstone? My niece is going to school where that series is filmed.
It's cold in the winter and receives a lot of snow.

We do have monstrous cock roaches in the US, we just call the big ones "water bugs or water beetles" and they fly. But the big ones tend to be in the Southern US. In NYC - the city of roaches, they are everywhere. Although (knock on wood) - I've not seen any in a while - but my apartment complex has an exterminator that comes through monthly and exterminates regularly the apartments requesting it. Spiders I see less - but I also live in a six floor apartment complex - and on the third floor. I do see them, just small ones. If I was in a house - I'd see them more.

My brother sees bears, deer, coyotes, raccoons, gophers, ground hogs, and rabbits. He has 11 acres and lives near a forest with a large meadow of wildflowers and greens that the deer love to frolick in.

Our biggest insect issue is ticks - my brother has contracted lyme disease three times from ticks.
Also wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, flies, horse flies, actually I think we may have the same insects you do? We also have the snakes. But I don't need bug spray that much and rarely use it. But I also live in a big city or urban environment, bordering on residential (lots of trees and flowers, not much grass) - in the country we do need it. So it depends on where you are. I think this is true everywhere though?

[shadowkat]

And happy Galentine's Day (per New York Magazine - Galentine Day is non-romantic love day). Hee hee.

[dirtygreatknife]

[ I will come back and answer this properly--just been running around like a one leg chook without a head atm (one legged bc my bad knee is very, very bad right now), so when this current period of everything is over, I'll have more time. ]

[shadowkat]

Eh, take your time. I admittedly didn't put a lot of effort into it. Oh, by the way, they have the Australian version of Alone on Netflix now - with people surviving in Tasmania, which I find amusing, considering I traveled around Tasmania in the 1980s with my family. It does have undeveloped wilderness - mainly rain forests though.

[mtbc]

Nice selection, and always interesting to see different book covers - some familiar, some not the one I knew - not only different editions, I guess, but sometimes US/UK market difference.