After reading about the attempts to ban books in school libraries I started thinking of the books that influenced my life. In some ways this is an ego trip, but on the other hand, I am inviting you, the reader, to share the books that shaped your lives.
Most of my books were very nerdy and sometimes very technical, but I did occasionally read more literary fare. For a while my one teenage male friend was on a Russian literature kick and as my father had, in one of his more generous moments, bought a set of classic literature, I read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina without it being assigned as class work! One book I was assigned in community college was Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. That book gave me an appreciation of the start of the Russian Revolution! For a while I got interested in John Steinbeck’s novels and read The Pearl. I thought it a masterpiece! One reason I liked Steinbeck was his connection to biological sciences, especially log from The Sea of Cortez, a non-fiction book, which I also read. Also, I did delve into a short story by Hemingway, but never looked at his works in detail. The homeschool material also got me in to The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rolvaag. Much of my ideas about race were honed in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (which was obviously an attack on the racial discrimination of the day) and later The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, both assigned reading.
My interest in Science Fiction was initiated by one of my correspondents from 1961, who is still alive and occasionally emails me even now, after 60 years! He sent me his finished copies of SF magazines and I discovered that I liked the genre very much, which caused me to explore more in the local library. I read Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and works by various other giants in the field. Like Larry Niven and his Ringworld series, Jules Verne and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, H. G. Wells and the War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, Ray Bradbury and The Martian Chronicles, and several others. In recent times I found several female authors whose works I like, including Julie E. Czerneda and Margaret Atwood. At one time I found two SIFI authors of initial interest, but became somewhat disenchanted after the first book I read of their works. I never considered L. Ron Hubbard’s work to be worth reading.
Most other books I have read have been in natural history and science. For example I read avidly Ditmars Reptiles of the World and Snakes of the World. Anything by William Beebe, including Galapagos: World’s End, Edge of the Jungle and High Jungle (despite the author’s tendencies to write some things that were questionable), and later anything written by Gerald Durrell, especially My Family and other Animals. Lady with a Spear by Eugenie Clark almost turned me toward ichthyology but Zim’s the Golden Guide to Insects had already started up my interest in insects, and this was intensified by Lutz’s Fieldbook of Insects. Then I discovered Edwin Way Teale’s Near Horizons and after that The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre. These set me off on a career I would follow the rest of my life. J. H. Emerton’s Spiders of the United States, started me thinking about arthropods other than insects, which changed my trajectory slightly. Then a correspondent suggested George and Elizabeth Peckham’s The Attidae of the United States, and I was hooked on spiders, especially the family Salticidae (called Attidae back in 1909, when the Peckhams’ book was published.) I also read books on birds, sealife, geology, paleontology, astronomy and physics, especially on relativity. George Gamow’s Thirty Years that Shook Physics was a special favorite of mine. The history of astronomy interested me a lot as well and I read several books on the subject.
I also read other history books, especially, but not limited to science (I already mentioned Gamow.) These included several lives of both Darwin and Einstein. I especially liked Browne’s two volume biography of Darwin. Among the non-science historical works were those on ancient history and archeology. Ann Axtell Morris’ Digging in Yucatan was another favorite when I was young.
At the the University of Arizona I took a course in philosophy that was so well presented that in later life I read several books on Stoic philosophy, including Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. When I was fairly young I read the Bible and much later an English translation of the Qur'an I read the Tao te Ching and several Buddhist texts. My wife said that the Qur'an should be read in Arabic and I countered that the Bible should then be read in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.
Over time I have found several excellent works on the history and natural history of regional areas to be of major interest. These included Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ Everglades: River of Grass, Alan Boye’s Tales from the Journey of the Dead and Craig Childs The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert. I also found William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth to be an surprisingly fascinating look at one county in Kansas. Works by W. H. Hudson, especially Far Away and Long Ago and his novel Green Mansions were of interest as well, as they took me into worlds that I never visited. Any of Carl Safina’s books are good reads and I read several.
We read to our daughter’s a lot, including the delightful Moomin series by Tove Jansson, anything by Dr. Seuss, and many books that explored other cultures and peoples. The list was very long and we tried to expose our kids to healthy fantasy as well as how things are in the real world. The result was that we have daughters who are very observant and critical in their thought processes.
This has been a cursory, but still lengthy list, but it may explain a few things about me. My wife reads (or at least read) much more than I ever did and her yearly reading probably was more than my reading in my entire life. She especially likes murder mysteries, a genre I seldom delved in unless there was a biological hook.
Reading the written word is one of the great inventions and it was so important that white slave owners in the South forbade slaves from being taught how to read. Non-readers are at a real disadvantage in the world, so of course authoritarians are prone to book burning and/or banning. If a person is also taught about propaganda and how to critically evaluate writings, they are truly educated. It says something about TFG that he hates to read.
What is in your reading list? What books influenced you?