Oct 22 2008
favourite books
In a recent comment, Libby asked, “Just curious, what are some of your favorite books? What books have influenced your writing? I’d love to read some of them!
That is such a great question, and I’m never sure how to answer it. I love books! I love discovering new ones, perusing old ones, rereading passages … I practically sleep with books under my pillow. But for some reason it’s very difficult to pick favourites.
When it comes to fantasy stories, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles gave me the fantasy bug. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is unmatched, of course, but I’m not sure I’d really say they’re an influence on my own work. (Terry Brooks’s Shannara books, which I read years before LOTR, are definitely an influence. The Sword of Shannara practically is Lord of the Rings without the genius, but I didn’t know it at the time; and after that, his work gets a lot more creative.) I also like Robin McKinley’s fairy tales (Beauty , Rose Daughter , and especially Spindle’s End ), Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising Sequence, and Stephen R. Lawhead’s Song of Albion and Pendragon Cycle. And George MacDonald’s Lilith is amazing.
For bringing God into fiction, no one equals George MacDonald. I also love Amy Carmichael’s writings. In general fiction, I’m a big fan of pretty much everything by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Charlotte Bronte, and P.G. Wodehouse. I love Hard Times by Charles Dickens, The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling, Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne, and various children’s books by Madeleine L’Engle.
Since my latest trip to the used bookstore, I’ve been riveted to Essays and Essayists, edited by somebody named Newbolt, and I had great fun the other night skimming an introduction to Robert Browning’s poetry. Which just goes to illustrate my firmly held belief that writers should read widely, in all sorts of veins.
(A disclaimer: families and individuals will have their own standards for what is acceptable and what is not; if you are interested in checking out some of MY favourites, do be aware that not everything will necessarily suit you.)
