Week 5’s prompt is to name a book that influenced my life
First, a little background. I was literally that kid whose parents had to take my books away at night so I would sleep. In one house we lived in, the flood light on the side of the house shined into my window and I would sit in bed with my book propped on the sill and read until I feel asleep like that.
But for all the books I’ve read, I can’t point to one single one and claim that it altered my perception of reality or my outlook on life. Maybe I’m not reading the right books…not that I think there are wrong books.
What I can do, is point to the books that inflamed my passion for reading. The books I disappeared into while the world around me vanished. The worlds I escaped to when my parents were fighting or we had just moved to a new place and I had no one to hang out with except my annoying little brother.
I rode dragons in the world of Pern thanks to Anne McCaffrey and I journeyed through magical lands with Garion thanks to David Eddings. These epic fantasy novels encouraged my imagination and taught me that happy endings didn’t come easy – a lot of times you had to fight for them.
The first romance I remember reading was My Enemy the Queen by Victoria Holt. I’m sure I was way too young to be reading it (12 or 13), but ever since I’ve been fascinated by the Tudors. Not that I claim to be an expert on Tudor history – I just find them fascinating. Probably in the same way people today find the Kardashians fascinating.
Every book I read imprints itself on my mind. Whether I like, love, or could leave it. It makes me believe in the unbelievable and allows me to hope for impossible. The truth is it’s not a book that influenced my life – it’s all books.
Anne McCaffrey wrote the Dragonriders of Pern series and David Eddings wrote the Belgariad and the Mallorean series.