An old bloggy game: list 15 books (in no more than 15 minutes of thought) that have most influenced your thinking, writing, or speaking.
This is, of course, an impossible project, and probably a silly one, to boot, but I’ve always liked these kind of games; in addition to giving you, the reader, more insight into my character and tastes (surely the most important thing you could be looking for in your doomscrolling) it allows for interesting self-reflection; the absurd, artificial constraints can, like the rules of a sonnet, create fascinating results.
Like Joel, I tried not to consult lists of what I’ve read, though I did allow myself to go stare wistfully at my bookshelf. This inevitably means I will have forgotten something Far More Important; such is the nature of the game. Also, no more than one book per author. (I compiled the list in 15 minutes. I took longer to write a little bit about each of the books. That’s not cheating, right?)
Thus, in alphabetical order by author’s last name:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I read it (and its sequels) at about 10 years old and it has forever been written on my soul in letters of fire. I frequently catch myself trying to imitate the rhythms of Adams’s writing to no avail, and hardly a week goes by that I don’t think about some joke or idea from the Guide.
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
It came out in 2021 and I’ve already read it four times, which is not how I usually read books. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to write in a novel, so I’ll never forgive Susanna Clarke for getting there first. It’s the one book I wanted to listen to when I was in the hospital awaiting the results of my MS tests.
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
It’s almost certainly not Gaiman’s best book, but it’s the first one I encountered, back in high school, and it hasn’t been dislodged since, however much I might like American Gods and Sandman and all the rest. Neverwhere is what first instilled in me my love of strange, magical, lawless cities, despite my ambivalence about real cities in the real world. I would not have come to love Sigil or Lankhmar or, more recently, Luriat, without it.
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
It all comes down to one paragraph, which I wrote about a few years ago, and I won’t repeat myself here.
Mossflower, Brian Jacques
This is partly a stand-in for the entire Redwall series, which was my childhood book obsession, but it’s also important in its own right because it introduced the world to Gonff the Mousethief, the most important character in English-language literature. Redwall as a whole taught me many important lessons: the joy of good food, yes, but also that people get old; and that sometimes good people die for bad reasons.
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, H.P. Lovecraft
This is technically a cheat, since this is a Penguin Classics collection of stories and not a book Lovecraft himself ever put together, but whatever, it’s my list. There was a time in my life when I considered going to grad school for English to study Lovecraft and his pals; although I think my actual life choices probably turned out better than that would have, there is no escaping Lovecraft’s influence on my interests; my dogs are named Azathoth and Nyarlathotep.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.
Three novellas set at different periods in the rebuilding of society (and, specifically, the Catholic Church) after the bombs fall. I didn’t know you were allowed to write books like this; the last portion of the first novella may be the most tragically beautiful thing anyone has ever written.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty
I haven’t read it since college, but it blew my mind up back then. I’ve been meaning to get back to it at some point, since I strongly suspect I wouldn’t like it very much if I read it now, but it was an important stepping stone on my way to whatever my personal ethics or philosophies are now. 19-year-old Bill still needed some shaking out of his dogmatic slumber, and Rorty was essential to that project.
Unapologetic, Francis Spufford
When Julia and I started dating she wanted to know a bit about my religious beliefs. I started trying to explain myself, and realized I was basically just parroting Spufford, so I stopped and just handed her a copy of the book. It is, as its name suggests, not apologetics, nor is it theology, exactly; it’s a picture of what it’s like to be a Christian, and it helped remind me why I am one, as well. I’ve read other books in the same vein (that is, snarky, sweary, aligned with the political Left) yet none of them work nearly as well.
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
I haven’t read this since high school so I don’t actually have an opinion today on its quality, but in high school I thought it was one of the greatest books ever written. Joel talks, in our podcast, about how certain books give you “permission” to do the weird writerly things you want to do. East of Eden was one of those books for me. You can talk directly to the reader! You can intersperse your own family history into the fiction you’re writing!
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
What can be said here that hasn’t already been said?
Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 3.5 Edition, Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, & Skip Williams
Also partly a stand in for RPG books as a whole, but 3.5 was when I first really fell in love with D&D, so it gets to be here. In addition to the million or so hours I’ve spent playing D&D and other RPGs over the course of my life, there’s the infinite well of possibilities that seems to be contained in every Player’s Handbook. The finite amount of options (classes, races, feats, etc.) in each PHB can be combined into a functionally infinite number of potential characters, each of which one could potentially play for months or years at a time. Every grouchy cleric, every self-destructive swashbuckler, and every robot wizard I have ever played was built from pieces of this book or one like it.
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West
It’s a travelogue; it’s a history textbook; it’s about the entirety of the human condition. Every writer of serious English-language nonfiction is living in Rebecca West’s shadow, whether they know it or not.
Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
I’m not sure I’ve ever finished the whole book, but I think about it constantly, so this counts. I’m certain I do not understand most of it. But what I do understand is consistently useful: I probably refer to the “family resemblance” theory every other week. In addition to its own ideas, I admire Wittgenstein’s obsessive willingness to discard or at least heavily modify everything he wrote in his first book.
The Wizard Knight, Gene Wolfe
The last and possibly most important of my personal permission-giving books; if I ever write any fiction that’s worth reading, it will be due to The Wizard Knight. Beautiful, relentless, strange, and sorrowful. I was in love within the first five pages.
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So there: I have played the bloggy game, and I hope you enjoyed it. I am already regretting not including Kipling’s Just So Stories, which first taught me to love language, and many others, but I’ve written enough as it is. I encourage you to play the game and leave your answers in the comments, if you’d like!