Top eleven novels

[blacbird]

I was sitting reading an old mystery tonight, about to go to sleep, when a thought hit me (once in a great while, that happens). What novels are the ones that have influenced me most, in terms of interest in writing? Not necessarily the greatest novels, but just the ones that stick in my brain, and have done so for a long time, that mean something, however profound or weird or sordid or just plain odd, that I can't discharge from my mind, and have shaped my thoughts and interests.

So I sat down here at the computer to make a list, without a lot of contemplation and filtering, of those that come to mind most quickly. I'm picking twelve because everybody else picks ten, and because twelve is a dozen, and is sandwiched between two prime numbers. So the gauntlet thrown down to everybody else is to pick their twelve, under similar conditions. Mine, not necessarily in any order:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Inheritors, William Golding
The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
To Kill a Mockingburd, Harper Lee
The Ox-Bow Incident, William Van Tilburg Clark
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo
The Snopes Trilogy, William Faulkner (kind of a cheat, I know, three individual novels, but it is really one big single story, and it's my list, dammit)
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

A lot of novels I dearly love didn't make this cut. But there it is. Yours?

(Crap. I titled this eleven, intending to make it eleven, and then as I rambled, made it twelve, because it's late and the rain is horizontal and the wind is shaking the house and the power probably will go off any moment now and my cat is trying to eat my mouse cord and I'm incompetent. Oh well. Make it eleven or twelve, your choice. But not ten or thirteen. Or anything on either side of those, arithmetically. I'll be watching.)

caw.

[Southern_girl29]

The first chapter book I ever read was Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read it in the second grade. I fell in love with reading with that book, and I decided then and there that I wanted to write, to make people feel the way I felt with that book. I've been writing ever since. So, here's my list of 12, not 10 or 13, lol.

1. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
2. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (one of my all time favorites)
5. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
8. Any of the Harry Potter Books
9. Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
10. The Stand by Stephen King
11. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
12. The Betsy, Tacy and Tib books by Maud Hart Lovelace (I re-read these books every summer during elementary school after reading the first one the summer before my third grade year. I loved them, and I'm planning to buy a set for my daughter.)

All of these have taken me away from my day-to-day life, and I could read them over and over again. And, each time I finish one of them, I always wish I could write as well as the person who wrote them.

[gromhard]

1. Catcher in the Rye - Jd Salinger
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Ask the Dust - John Fante
4. Martin Eden - Jack London
5. Johnny Got His Gun - Dalston Trumbo
6. Dear Mr. Henshaw - Beverly Cleary(hey I was a kid once)
7. Post Office - Charles Bukowski
8. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
9. Journey to the End of the Night - Louis Ferdinand Celine
10. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein

Just writing the list made me recall so many great books I hadn't thought of for years. Good query.

-g

[triceretops]

The Island Peter Benchley
Jaws " "
Black Marble Joseph Wambaugh
The Onion Field Joseph Wambaugh
Ice Rigger Alan Dean Foster
Jurassic Park Michael Crighton (sp)
Journey to the Center of the Earth Verne
The Time Machine Wells
Farenheit 451 Bradbury
The Forever War
Lucifer's Hammer
Virgin Planet Poul Anderson

Tri

[MacAllister]

1. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
2. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
3. Slan, AE Van Vogt
4. Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank
5. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
6. Scottish Chiefs, Jane Porter
7. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
8. The Stand, Stephen King
9. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
10. Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
11. The Doomsday Book, Connie Willis

Wow. I decided arbitrarily to go with the eleven that first occurred to me--which leaves out about a zillion I would have liked to list. What's odd is that I found myself listing books I hadn't read or thought about in years.

[MacAllister]

Oh! Tri! How could I forget Lucifer's Hammer! And the Legacy of Heorot! And...

[persiphone_hellecat]

Don Quixote
Les Miserables
Catcher in the Rye
Slaughterhouse Five
Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Beloved
The Fountainhead
Billy Budd
Neuromancer
Clockwork Orange
Catch 22
Things Fall Apart
Heart of Darkness
East of Eden

It's more than 11 - but that's the most I can whittle the list down. My reading tastes are to say the least - eclectic.

[Begbie]

Women, Charles Bukowski
Imajica, Clive Barker
Porno, Irvine Welsh
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
Personal Injuries, Scott Turow
A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
Ask the Dust, John Fante
The Assault on Tony's, John O'Brien
The Select, F. Paul Wilson

[kilamangiro]

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban, by JK Rowling
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman
The Lord of The Rings, by JRR Tolkien
The Catcher In The Rye, by JD Salinger
How Many Miles To Babylon?, by Jennifer Johnson
The Curious Incident Of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon
The Twits, by Roald Dahl
About A Boy, by Nick Hornby
The Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding

[Linda Adams]

Most of my are either authors or series, rather than an individual book. Most of these are from childhood.

Little House series - Children's. This is the first book I remember reading. I even remember where it was in the library.
Nancy Drew series - Mystery. This and the next four were the closest I was to get to thriller and exciting stories with girls in them. The boy characters always got the action in the rest of the books I remember, and the girls didn't have much to do.
Trixie Beldon series - Mystery
Kim Aldrich series - Mystery
Phyllis A. Whitney, author - Gothic mysteries
Star Trek Log series - Sci-Fi/TV Tie in. He took the half hour animated series and turned them into well-written, lengthy stories, not just rehashes of the scripts.
Star Trek novelizations - Sci-Fi/TV Tie in. These books make the list because they were a bad influence. At a formative time in my writing development, I was reading these. It was very common to see an A story and a B story, and the B story was usually page filler. But it frustrated me as a reader having meaningless subplots that distracted me from the story, so I tried to do novels without them.
Kinsey Milhone series (first seven books) - Mystery (a good influence and a bad). The emergence of women character's in traditionally male books. But she also had stories with subplots that were rather meaningless, so it contributed to my subplot problems.
Dirk Pitt series - Thriller (a good influence and a bad influence). He was writing in my genre. But they were located in the General Fiction section of the bookstore, so I had no idea what exactly they were. Thriller was just starting as a recognized genre at this point when I was reading. One of the Pitt books also did the meaningless subplot that went on and on, which contributed to my subplot problems
Sword and Sorceress Anthologies - Fantasy. Women! Doing action stuff. After seeing so few books with girls/women as the main characters and my only choices being romances, this was a wonderful series of books that I eagerly hunted for.
Anita Blake series (first seven books) - Horror. Women! Doing action stuff and being competent throughout the story. The author was also very good at plotting, and I studied how she did it when I was trying to overcome my subplot problems. The rest of the series past seven books we won't discuss.

[rwam]

Interesting...you can tell a lot about people with these lists. Here's some that come to mind for me...I believe in the order I read them, too!

April Morning
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Shadowland
The Talisman
The Green Mile
The Lovely Bones
Peace Like a River
The Secret Life of Bees
Life of Pi

[glutton]

Mine are so predictable, they're more than predictable:

11. Sparhawk series, Terry Brooks- same deal as Iron Tower, for me. One of my early experiences with fantasy, though I don't even remember much of it, I remember it had a good sense of humor.

10. Iron Tower series, Dennis L. McKiernan- epic fantasy, perhaps not the most original thing ever but it was my introduction to grand fantasy with huge battles, armies of giants monsters etc. I still vividly remember how I first imagined the ogres and trolls, towering over the desperate human defenders of the besieged city...

9. Conan stories and Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard- the original Conan by the original Conan writer. Still holds up well today- Conan is a badass matched by few, especially among the girlie men of much high fantasy.

8. Khavren series, Steven Brust- I like this better than his Vlad Taltos series, for some reason. Great sense of humor, which isn't overdone. Also, in one of the books a female guard manages to knock the hero unconscious after she's been run through...

7. Band of Four series, Ed Greenwood- great high fantasy in which the heroes fight constant threats coming from all angles and take tons of punishment. Nonstop battles and action.

6. Chicks in Chainmail series- lots of great, humorous stories about girls who can fight.

5. The Last of the Amazons, Steven Pressfield- the title says it all, and Pressfield is great at writing brutal battles. Antiope's death scene was one of the best I've ever read, and damn, Theseus is tough. He fought with a broken arm, broken foot, half his jaw sheared away, and two ruptured "groins"!!!

4. The Hero and The Crown, Robin McKinley- this one is about a princess who kills dragons. With only her horse for help, Aerin slays the last of the great wyrms, so big she has to run up his head to stab him in the eye. Note that she is burned to the point of being blackened on the face and arm, has severe lung damage (which later slows kills her until she is magically healed), and a broken ankle, while running up the dragon's head. With these injuries, she is still able to get home with only her horse. Love her.

3. Comryr series, Troy Denning- yes, it's DnD. So? Alusair, the promiscous, tough as nails princess of Comryr will always be one of my favorite female characters in any book (besides my own). Who could forget the time when, covered in wounds, she took off her armor and beat her chest during a speech to her troops to inspire them?!

2. Drenai series by David Gemmell- ah, yes. The quintessential modern "legendary warriors" series. Great plot, great characterization, great battle scenes, great everything. It was tough to choose between this and number 1, but Gemmell didn't feature female warriors all that prominently, especially in terms of front-line combat, so...

1. Paksennarion series by Elizabeth Moon- a trilogy about a farmgirl who becomes a great warrior. Paksennarion (or Paks to her friends) fights like a man and kicks serious ***. The author is a former officer in the military, and her expertise shows. What more do I need to say?

[UrsusMinor]

Oh, I hate questions like this. I always feel like I'll miss one really important and then someone will come take it away from me.

In no particular order, and for very different reasons:

1. The Magus, John Fowles. (Or maybe French Lieutenent's Woman).
2. The Lord of the Rings. JRR Tolkein.
3. The Aubrey-Maturin series, Patrick O'Brian (really one long book).
4. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
5. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny.
6. The Cornish Trilogy, Robertson Davies.
7. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett.
8. The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham.
9. The Way I Found Her, Rose Tremain.
10. Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth.
11. Horn of Africa, Philip Caputo.
12. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke.

[Ardellis]

So hard to limit this list!
In no particular order...

JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Mists of Avalon
Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Bram Stoker: Dracula
George Orwell: Animal Farm
Greg Bear: Blood Music
S.M. Stirling: Island in the Sea of Time
Homer: The Odyssey
Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

[emeraldcite]

1. Dark Tower Series, Particularly The Wastelands, Stephen King.
2. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
3. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
4. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
5. Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon
6. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
7. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
8. Engines of God, Jack McDevitt
9. I, Robot, Isacc Asimov
10. King of Infinite Space, Allen Steele
11. The Gammage Cup, Carol Kendall
12. Hatchet, Gary Paulson

[Lyra Jean]

Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder- I knew these books so well that I could bring it into any conversation and it would make sense. I can't do that anymore. The television series makes me sick to my stomach.

Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery- She made me want to become Canadian. Canada treated fictional Anne better then we treated our real Laura.

Wolf by the Ears and other books by Ann Rinaldi- She puts so much research into all her historical fiction. I love her work. She has strong female characters that are still fit in with their time period. No women libbers here.

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury- My first Bradbury novel. I love dystopian novels. I'd like to think I would do the same thing if I was in their place.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury- My first book about life on Mars. I especially like the story about the man who lived on Mars built the House of Usher and then invited all the censors from Earth and killed each one in the same manner as one of Poe's characters died.

Moving Mars by Greg Bear- I just love novels about Mars. This is one of the political stories I can actually read and not go to sleep.

The Giver by Lois Lowry- My first dystopian novel. This book made me want to become a writer.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman- I never thought of it as fantasy and after finding a book about the science behind this series how can I. It's a good story and if it's still fantasy well then he was able to make me read a genre I usually avoid. Plus the main character has the same name as I do. How cool is that?

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank- She was the same age as me when I read her diary. It got me reading all the stories out there about Jewish survival during WWII. I read a lot of good stuff but I think I got burnt out on it. They started to all sound the same. But I could never get rid of Anne.

The Mars Trilogy: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson- I first started reading it because I thought it was written by a woman. Well it's not surprise to me. It took me months to find all three books at the flea market. I had no job I couldn't afford new at the bookstore. These books made me wonder what exactly would we look for in people in order to colonize other planets. I would go to another planet in a heartbeat. I then realized I have no special skills. I'm a female of childbearing age so if we have a program to colonize another planet in the near future I'm signing up. Keep the colony going yo.

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by The Brothers Grimm- How can you not love the undisneyfied version of Cinderella. Not only does Cinderella get the man but her step-sisters eyes get eaten out by birds at the wedding. Plus other tales that are just as awesome.

The Otherland Series by Tad Williams- Each book is around 800 pages each but it's really one huge story not four seperate books. Makes me wish wetwire was invented already....sort of.

[Jamesaritchie]

I couldn't begin to make such a list, but I can remember the first novel that had a huge impact on me. It was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I was in the fourth grade, reading the book during lunch hour, and there's a scene with blood on the deck, and I swear I actually smelled blood. It jerked me right out of the book for a minute.

I knew what blood smelled like, and I smelled it. It took a minute to realize it was my imagination.

[ChaosTitan]

In no particular order:

Watership Down, by Richard Adams

The Little House series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Outsiders, by SE Hinton

Band of Brothers, by Stephen Ambrose (an amazing nonfiction book that reads like fiction, and I can't recommend it enough)

Pet Semetary, by Stephen King

Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson

The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

The Story Girl/Golden Road, LM Montgomery

The Night World Series, by LJ Smith (published before sf/fantasy became big in the young adult world)

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

The North and South trilogy, by John Jakes


And since I like having a baker's dozen, I will admit that an ongoing DC comic book line has also influenced me, both as a reader and a writer. Comics and graphic novels may be the black sheep of the literary world, but their influence cannot be dismissed.

[Thomma Lyn]

Novels

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Contact by Carl Sagan

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Not novels, but definitely influential:

Dubliners by James Joyce

The Art of Fiction by John Gardner

[Lolly]

I'm not sure if I can keep it down to eleven, just because I've read and enjoyed so many books. However, here are some that have had an impact on me.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird I grew up in the South, so that book really made me appreciate what the people who struggled for civil rights had to go through.

2. Little Women Made me realize it's ok to be a tomboy.

3. The Little House series. Same reason as above, and I loved learning about a girl my age who lived long ago.

4. D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. An illustrated YA book my grandmother gave me. I loved all the colorful stories, and in fact I still have that book.

5. Star Trek, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine Ok, they were TV shows, but I loved how the writers dealt with serious issues but still made it entertaining. That was one of the things that inspired me to become a writer.

6. Lord of the Rings

7. The Shannara series

8. Dr. Who Again, another TV series. However, the writers have done an excellent job at developing the characters. I cried at this season's finale. :cry:

9. The Scarlet Pimpernel I stayed up late at night to finish this, then turned right around and read it again. It taught me that you don't have to write "the great American novel." It's enough to write a great story and entertain people.

10. The Bible. There are some beautiful passages in there.

11. There are so many other books, I can't narrow it down to a final choice.

[Aesposito]

Not in any particular order:

1. Lord of the Rings (I re-read every year)
2. Watership Down
3. Little House on the Prairie series (I'm reading this with my daughters now and they love it as much as I did)
4. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - a Harlen Ellison collection from the 70's that turned me on to Ellison in general
5. Pride and Prejudice
6. Sherlock Holmes (all 60-something stories and 4 novellas)
7. The Foundation Trilogy - Asimov
8. The Bible
9. Anne of Avonlea series
10. Anything by Ed McBain
11. Hitchhiker's Gude to the Galaxy series

Audrey

[nicegrrl]

In no paticular order:

1) Bible
2) House of Spirits
3) Tale of Two Cities
4) Homo Zapiens
5) Hero of our Time
6) The Vampire Lestat (lol, how out of place does that look?)
7) Wrinkle in Time
8) Wuthering Heights
9) Fathers and sons
10) Scarlet Letter
11) Lolita

[nevada]

1. A Home At the End Of the World, Michael Cunningham. THis book made me write again.

2. Over the Edge, Suzanne Brockmann. I realized there was nothing wrong with my style.

3. Anything by Lee Child. Incredible characterization of Jack Reacher, perfect voice, great stories.

4. Anything by Andy McNabb. Again, great characterizations. Not a great writer, but his character is so involving, such a mess, that you immediately fall in love with him. A continuing series of Nick Stone novels.

5. The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas. I recently read this book and the beginning was wrong. I could remember the beginning almost word for word and this was not it. It took me days to realize that I had never read this book in English, only in Dutch and that is why the words were wrong. I still vividly remember whole passages from this book.

6. Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maughan. After I read this book, I couldnt read for weeks, it struck me as so profound, so exactly how I felt. I tried to read it a few months ago and couldnt make it past the first chapter. Funny how things change.

7. Neuromancer, William Gibson.

8. Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies, Richard Morgan. Showed me that I do like science fiction and that good science fiction doesnt need massive amounts of information dumps. I dont care how things work, just that they do.

9. Maurice, EM Forster. Made me cry.

I could list all those "classics" I read in University, but while I really liked them, none of them made an impact on me as a writer.

[Shadow_Ferret]

Eleven novels? I can probably name 11 series, but I don't think there is any ONE novel that got me interested.

1) Conan the Adventurer, by Robert E. Howard, Edited by L. Sprague de Campe and Lin Carter

1) Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tie because to be honest, after all these years I can't remember which I read first, but these were the first two books I read that were not The Bobsey Twins or The Hardy Boys or even children novelized versions of Jack London or what have you. These were adventures of the first order, blood and guts, death and dying, beautiful, scantily clad women and savage, primordial men, and they opened my eyes and made me shout, "THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO!" But seeing I can't be a sword weilding, loinclothe wearing barbarian, I decided on trying my hand at writing, instead.

3) Everything else in the Conan series by Robert E. Howard, Edited by L. Sprague de Campe and Lin Carter

4) Every other series by Edgar Rice Burroughs

5) The Shadow series of pulp adventures

6) Doc Savage series of pulp adventures

7) Elric of Melnibone series by Michael Moorcock

8) Fafrd and the Grey Mouser series by Fritz Leiber

9) Beyond the Green Star, Lemuria, and other series by Lin Carter

10) Any of the books I read by Alan Dean Foster.

11) Any of the books I read by Robert Silverberg.

Basically, these were the stories that interested me enough to emulate them and start writing my own. There are some novels I've read later in life that have had an impact upon me as a person, but they didn't have an affect upon my writing. These adventures did. These and the comic books I read formed the writer that you see here before you today.

[earthshoes]

I was (am) a voracious reader from childhood forward--reading some books aimed at adults well before adulthood. It's hard to narrow it down. Not all of my influences were novels. Easily a 1/3 were poets. With the exception of number one the list is no particular order.

1. anything by Ray Bradbury--I finished the Martian Chronicles and thought "I want to do that with words."

2. The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

3. The Stand by Stephen King

4. Strangers to the Dust by William Faulkner

5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (read it three times)

7. Jane Eyre

8. Watership Down by Richard Adams (Plague Dogs was pretty good too)

9. The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London

10. In the Shadow of a Rainbow by Robert Frank Leslie

11. The Hitchhiker's Guide series

12. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

13. Rose's Garden by Carrie Brown

14. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

[Summonere]

1. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Neuromancer - William Gibson
3. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
4. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
5. Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
6. Galactic Pot Healer - Philip K. Dick (any of his work, really)
7. The Books of Blood - Clive Barker
8. Deathbird Stories - Harlan Ellison
9. Watership down - Richard Adams
10. The Inferno - Dante Alighieri
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

[KTC]

My list would be completely different on any given day. Having said that, today's list is as follows:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Franny & Zooey by JD Salinger
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
5. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
6. Wonder Boys by Stephen Chabon
7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
8. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
9. Too Loud A Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
10. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
11. A Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice
12. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
13. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

[Mayor of Moronia]

1. WAR & PEACE, Leo Tolstoy
2.ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN Mark Twain
3.ATLAS SHRUGGED Ayn Rand
4.EAST OF EDEN John Steinbeck
5.THE YEARLING Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
6.LES MISERABLES Victor Hugo
7.HUNCHBACK OF NOTREDAME Victor Hugo
8.KIDNAPPEDRobert Louis Stevenson
9.OLIVER WISWELL Kenneth Roberts
10PATHFINDER, DEERSLAYER, and LAST OF THE MOHICANSJames Fenimore Cooper
11.anything by Jack London

[smiley10000]

Nancy Drew got me hooked on reading. Just as Long as were Together and Charlotte Sometimes were my security blankets. If I was afraid to go to sleep I would pick one of them up and the world always seemed a little safer. (still works too!)
I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte in highschool. I picked it up for some light summer reading... I still remember the first time I read it sitting in my room with the tears running from my eyes on the fourth page. The book enchanted me.


Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Just as Long as were Together by Judy Blume
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Twelfth Knight by William Shakespeare (not a book, but...)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Secret of the Old Clock: A Nancy Drew Mystery by Carolyn Keene
Anthem by Ayn Rand
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher


Thanks for this thread. It was interesting to explore.
:) 10000

Edited to add: I knew I would forget some: The Outsiders and Anne of Green Gables would have to be on my list.

[Novelhistorian]

For what it's worth, in no particular order:

1) War and Peace
2) Tender Is the Night
3) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4) Morality Play (Barry Unsworth)
5) Madame Bovary
6) Pere Goriot
7) Pride and Prejudice
8) Arrowsmith
9) Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
10) The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Brian Moore)
11) Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

[Jamesaritchie]

For me, the thing is this. I could list a dozen classics, and be dead on about how much they influenced me. But I could also list ten of Louis L'Amour's Sackett novels and be just as dead on. Or novels by Mark Twain, Jack London, or one of fifty current writers, and still be just as dead on.

[Novelist in Paradise]

Too many. Growing up on a small tropical island without any TV (in the 60s) I read whatever I could get my hands on. Fox's Book of Martyrs (my parents were missionaries) was pretty cool. I also loved Saki's short stories. O Shredni Vashtar!

[Bleak House Books]

Like everybody else, this list is flexible after the top four on a daily basis.

(1) Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger)--I wasn't a huge fan of Catcher in the Rye and wasn't excited to read another Salinger book. Gestalt Switch. Totally changed my view on Salinger and reinforced my love of words.

(2) Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction (J.D. Salinger)--Continuing the Salinger rediscovery. Genius use of words and storytelling. No need for kidnapping plots. Alien invasion. Car chase. None of it. No gimmicks. Just words.

(3) A Prayer for Dawn (Nathan Singer)--Ugly and beautiful at the same time. An over the top satire of post 9/11 America written in real time while the world watched to see what happened next. Button pushing.

(4) To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)--Powerful. Great use of character. Taps into some of the same things that make me love the Andy Griffith Show. The kind of book that sticks with you.

(5) Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)--Don't remember much about it now, just remember that it shook my cages when I read it. I'm cursed with a poor memory with most books/movies. Sometimes I only remember feelings. This is one of those cases.

(6) Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)--It was between Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. Cat's Cradle won because I remember how blown away I was by the concept of Ice-9.

(7) The Hardy Boys (the team of writers writing as F.W. Dixon)--The first real novels I read. Inspired a love of reading and storytelling. When I read through them now I can forgive their shortcomings because of what they did for me way back then.

[Mom'sWrite]

In no particular order--

Great Expectations--Dickens
Pride and Prejudice--Austen
The Scarlet Letter--Hawthorne
The Thorn Birds--McCullough
Edith Hamilton's Mythology (Although technically this is not a novel. I'll just have to make this a baker's dozen)
A Suitable Boy--Seth
Black Beauty--Sewell
Joseph Andrews-Fielding
Candide--Voltaire
War and Peace--Tolstoy
The World According to Garp--Irving
Carrie--King
I, Claudius--Graves

I should be flogged without mercy for failing to include:
The Great Gatsby--Fitzgerald
Sons and Lovers--Lawrence
A Handmaid's Tale--Atwood
A Clockwork Orange--Burgess
Through the Looking Glass--Carroll
Grapes of Wrath--Steinbeck

Hey, I know this is over the stated limit, but I'm a natural-born iconoclast. Sue me.

[beezle]

Hrmm, I don't even know where to begin... so I'll just cherrypick from you lot.

From childhood and later,

Animal Farm, 1984 - George Orwell
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (First real novel I read)
The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven
Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury

I could also add...

The Dragonbone Chair, and the rest of Memory, Sorrow and Thorne - Tad Williams. Otherland is a favorite too.
All Quite on the Western Font
War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

I seem to be falling short. I'm sure more will come to me.

[Bayou Bill]

These aren’t necessarily my all-time favorite novels, although many are. However, they are the ones I recall making me want to write. By definition, that leaves out novels published over the, well, let’s just say, last few decades.

My first seven have appeared on other lists. The last four may be making their first appearances.

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald.
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
William Faulkner – everything

Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
Candy – Terry Southern
The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
Shogun - James Clavell

Bayou Bill :cool:

[NightWynde]

In no particular order and with quite a few "ties".

1) Stuart Little-- EB White. My grandmother started reading this book to me when I was four. One chapter a night until I could finish it by myself.

2)Amityville Horror-- Ric Osuna. My great-grandmother handed this to me when I was eight years old and said, "Here, read this, you'll like it." Yeah, I didn't sleep for a week after that and it was a long time before I was able to turn off the lights, but I've been addicted to horror ever since.

3)Fox in Socks--Dr. Seuss. If there's a lesson to be learned about conciseness and rhythm, Dr. Seuss has done it, hands down. Besides, my kids still love the fact that I'm the only person who can read this book without tripping over it (one of those bizarre skills I mastered when I was a kid. LOL).

4)Carrie--Stephen King. Simple and straightforward plot, but the reason this one stands out is because it taught me how to turn on my "writer" mind when I was reading. Sometimes this isn't such a good thing, but in this case it taught me how to express thoughts in writing.

5)Rose Madder--Stephen King. Even I find it strange that there are two SK books here, but this one was more a matter of timing as my reading it may have saved my life, literally.

6)Catcher in the Rye--JD Salinger. I was assigned this during my junior year in high school. We had two months to finish reading it. I polished it off in the first day and ended up having to pay for my copy because I had read it so much it fell apart. What the heck was so intriguing about Holden Caulfield, I still haven't figured out to this day.

7)Beggars in Spain-- Nancy Kress. I only read this book because the author, at the time, was the fiction columnist for Writer's Digest. After reading this, I understood why. I was floored.

8)Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy(series)--Douglas Adams. I haven't laughed so hard before or since reading this series.

9)Stranger in a Strange Land--Robert Heinlein. Darned good writing, darned good story. I was sad to see it end.

10)The Werewolf in Me (working title)--author unknown. I had a neighbor of mine who heard that I was a writer and that I liked horror so he asked me to take a look at his very rough draft. I sure as heck hope he polished it off and submitted it. I also really wish I could remember his name so I could find out.

11)A Prayer for Owen Meany-- John Irving. I also liked his Cider House Rules, but this one took my breath away.

12)Fanny--Erica Jong. It just reads like the author had fun writing it. It's also distinctive in that it's the only book I've read more than once (besides my own and some folks I beta read for) since I've become an adult.

13)Anything by Clive Barker. Holy schlamoley, he still scares the crap outta me and his writing style is just well, beautiful.

Notable runner-ups:

Anything by Ray Bradbury
Animal Farm--George Orwell
Brave New World--Aldous Huxley
Elements of Style--Strunk and White
Charlotte's Web--EB White
Black Beauty--Anna Sewell

And so many others that I can't even begin to list them.

[gromhard]

My reading list is growing by lengths and bounds with each post. Keep'em coming.

[KatRiley]

I couldn't even begin to rank the books that have had some impact on me as either a reader or a writer. There are two books, however, that stand out:

Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz - It was the first "adult" book I read and started my life-long additiction to reading.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind - I had to read this for a college lit course and is the first book I ever wanted to read over and over again.

[Anonymisty]

What novels are the ones that have influenced me most, in terms of interest in writing?

Let's see...in no particular order:

1. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein was the first adult science fiction I read. I was 13. I was terrified my mother might object to what I was reading, so I read at night when I'd gone to bed, and felt terribly subversive. ;)

2. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien was the first fantasy I ever read. I was 11. It was the book that made me think there might actually be more to my mundane world than what I could see around me.

3. Flight to the Lonesome Place by Alexander Key featured a character named Marlowe who was a disembodied voice. I wrote to the author after I finished reading, to ask what Marlowe really was. I was 9. When Mr Key wrote back, he kindly told me I'd have to use my imagination and make that decision for myself, because it wouldn't be fair of him to just tell me. It was the first time I realised that not everyone reads the same story when they read the same book.

4. Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp remains the scariest book I ever read. No blood, no cursing, and yet to this day I can't bear the sight of a garden reflecting ball. I admire her subtlety.

5. On Writing by Stephen King was such a casual and easy guide to writing. It was the first time I ever knew that famous authors sometimes faced the same creative dilemmas as I.

6. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis opened my eyes to what became my adult spirituality. He was gentle and entertaining, and all the time he was teaching me.

And since seven rhymes with eleven, I'll finish with the book that made me want to write:

7. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers was the first time travel novel I read in which all the loops closed. I was stunned by how I felt when I finished it, and determined to someday write in a way that would make other people feel the way Powers' book had made me feel.

[Albedo of Zero]

1. Green Eggs and Ham
2. The Call of the Wild
3. Great Expectations
4. 1984
5. Animal Farm
6. The Other Side of Midnight
7. The Stand
8. Magician
9. Atlas Shrugged
10. The Green Mile
11. Wizard's First Rule
12. Battlefield Earth

[aric77]

1) Master of the Five Magics
2) Priest-Kings of GOR
3) The Two Towers
4) Neuromancer
5) Starless Night
6) The Black Gryphon
7) Her-Bak-Egyptian Intiate
8) Robin Hood
9) Call of the Wild
10) The Old Man and The Sea
11) Catcher in the Rye

[OverTheHills&FarAway]

War of the Worlds was the first "old" book I read--gave me the shivers.
Hitchhiker's Guide--gave me humor
Return of the King--gave me lyricism
1984--gave me ideas
Connecticuit Yankee in Kig Arthur's Court--gave me perspective
Contact, Carl Sagan--gave me a headache
About a Boy--gave me a voice
The Princess Bride--ruined my voice
My Side of the Mountain, Jean Creighead George--the library should have given it to me out of pity I checked it out so much
Wuthering Heights--made me cry
Call of the Wild--gave me visions

and any book Avi wrote before I left middle school--plus a few after. That guy can tell a story.

[IrishScribbler]

In no particular order:

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Finding Alice by Melody Carlson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

[jules]

Eleven influential novels. This is going to be a tough list. But, there are some obvious ones to start with:

Stephen King, It. This is the novel that first persuaded me that writing was something I wanted to do.
Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead. I took a long break after I'd finished the first draft of my first novel, because I felt it wasn't good enough. This novel, or at least Card's introduction to it where he described the revisions it went through, persuaded me to pick it up again and see what I could do with it.
Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal. I like to try to capture the "race against time" feeling this book has.
David Weber, Honor Harrington series. Taught me how to write a tactical battle scene.
Jack London, To Build a Fire. Yes, it's a short story. So what? It shows how to bring something the reader has never experienced completely & totally to life.
Niven & Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye. Made me want to write in a sub-genre of SF that so far I've been unable to write anything convincing in. But I'll keep trying.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon. I picked up a theme of "cultural clash between two completely different world views" from this book. I like that theme.OK, so I've got four more to think of. Might post more later.

[ggglimpopo]

Am I the only person on the planet who didn't enjoy "Animal Farm". Loved some of his others.

[Inkdaub]

These are books read when I was younger that made me want to be a writer.

Kavik the Wolf Dog - Morey
The Last Unicorn - Beagle
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh - OBrien and Bernstein
Dracula - Stoker
Marvel Comics special issue Spiderman Vs Wolverine, the one in Berlin -Owsley (my first short story was a hack of this comic)
Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls
Dracula - Stoker
To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
Chronicles of Narnia - Lewis
The Outsiders - Hinton

[expatbrat]

As a kid I was right into:

The three gollywogs (now banned!)
The naughtiest girl in school.
Secret seven
Famous Five But that was a very long time ago.

As I don’t differentiate between me as a person, and me as a writer, these are the books which have most influence, or remained mentally with me for a long time:


The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
The way of the peaceful warrior – Dan Millman
Veronica Decides to die – Paulo Coelho
Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
Forest Gump – Winston Groom
Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
Feel the fear and do it anyway – Susan Jeffers
River God - Wilber Smith’s Egypt based novels.
Warlock - Wilber Smith’s Egypt based novels
7th Scroll – Wilber Smith’s Egypt based novels
My Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
If Wilber Smith, Jennifer Weiner, Paulo Coelho, Emily Barr, Kathy Lette, or Tony Parsons (and probably others who are not jumping in my head right now) put out a new book, I buy and read it immediately.

My list never anything like everyone else who hangs around on this site…

And seriously - I can not understand how Wilber Smith never makes these lists. I love pretty much all of his work.

[triceretops]

A slight departure:

The Teons
Sisters of Santora
Journey to Serpents Rest
Tommy John
Cave Island
The Manphibians
Dinothon
Word Wars
Planet Janitor
Felicity Fortune
The Mantid Wars

And...of course, they're all by me, unpublished, but very dear to my heart. I owe them all to my previous list, for without those fantastic authors, I wouldn't even have tried my hand at it.

Tri

[smiley10000]

:hooray: Great list Tri! I was reading them and thinking...hmmm I don't know any of these until I got to The Mantid Wars and that one sounded really familiar...

A slight departure:

The Teons
Sisters of Santora
Journey to Serpents Rest
Tommy John
Cave Island
The Manphibians
Dinothon
Word Wars
Planet Janitor
Felicity Fortune
The Mantid Wars

Tri

[ibid.]

Eleven books that have made a great impact on me, or that I thought were very, very well done, or that I wish came to mind when people asked me what're my favorites (in no singular order):

Janine, 1982 Alasdair Gray (hated the fact that it was over and didn't go on for another thousand pages — Gray is totally someone that needs to be read more)
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami (this century's Catcher in the Rye)
Pieces of Payne Albert Goldbarth (a must for anyone interested in meta-fiction)
The Death of Virgil Herman Broch (my Ulysses--and just as readable! if not moreso!)
A Trail of Heart's Blood Wherever We Go Robert Olmstead (the greatest unknown fictionist that America's produced in the last few decades)
Cages by Dave McKean (Director of last year's MirrorMask. This is a graphic novel, and will leave you feeling like a tornado just rammed though your imagination)
Beyond Good and Evil Frederich Nietzsche (one of these things is doing its own thing, sure. but its glorious. albeit offensive even to me, in places)
Valis Philip K. Dick (his most mature work, I think)
Diamond Age Neal Stephenson (put it here because 1) he's brilliant and 2) I have to mention someone that's popular)
I, Claudius & Claudius the God Robert Graves (they're halves of one book, he admits, in one of the fwd's of I,)
and...
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

if I must have influences, I will point to these

[beezle]

Heh, expat, your banned gollywogs reminded me that as a child I had an old copy of Little Black Sambo, and I loved it.

[nancy02664]

1. The Shipping News, Proulx
2. The Razor’s Edge, Maugham
3. Love in a Time of Cholera, Marquez
4. Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
5. Candide, Voltaire
6. Les Miserables, Hugo
7. Of Human Bondage, Maugham
8. War and Peace, Tolstoy
9. Growth of the Soil, Hamsun
10. Ragtime, EL Doctorow
11. Arrowsmith, Lewis

[Cath]

Since reading is as natural to me as breathing, it's impossible to pick out 11 "top" novels, but I can list 11 that have had a huge impact on me.

1. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino. Not a story as much as a book about perception and perspective. I read this when I was 16 and the passage on "the inferno of living" was a moment of revelation for me.

2. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami. I've been a fan of Murakami since I stumbled across The Wind up Bird Chronicle, but, for me, Kafka takes his work to another level. He is an exceptional writer, one that always leaves me feeling inadequate and unqualified to pick up a pen.

3. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley. Less well written, I think, than 1984, but in my opinion, Huxley's message is as pertinent today as it was when it was written.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird - I'm not the only one to have this on my list :) An exceptional book that gave me an insight into something I could not experience any other way.

5. The Story of San Michele - Axel Munthe. One of the first books I fell in love with, I know I read it over and over again.

6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. The opening line is a classic (actually the opening two lines), and the combination of silliness and satire had me hooked.

7. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. One of the most perfect war novels I've read. Not hindered by the fact that I grew up near the "real" Brideshead.

8. Maurice - EM Forster. Another insight into a world I could never know, a powerful story by a wonderful writer.

9. Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake. How could I leave out my favorite author/poet/painter? Gormenghast is often (wrongly) compared to Lord of the Rings, but the style and story is much more personal. Peake's characters are almost caricatures, twisted and much darker than I'd encountered before. He writes like a painter.

10. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper. This is my annual Christmas read. I love it for the story and the characters and the magic that surrounds me every time I read it.

11. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. More of a cerebral choice than an emotional one. This is a story that works on many levels and appeals to a huge audience, but it's his challenging concepts about religion and belief that get me so excited about this one.

[Summonere]

Cath:

Great work, that Calvino one. Liked it a lot. It’s the very first of his books I ever read, and it’s both responsible for prompting me to read the rest of his work and for showing me new ways to tell stories. Kind of reminded me of one long prose poem.

[laurel29]

In no particular order-

Notes From Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky and I’m tagging on a short story by him as well - Bobok
Childhoods End – Arthur C. Clark
Lucifer’s Hammer- Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Star Man’s Son or Daybreak 2250 AD – Andre Norton – As a child I read everything I could by her.
Hawkmistress- Marion Zimmer Bradley- This was the first book I ever read by her.
Dragon Song- Anne MCaffery- Again the very first book I read by this Author.
This Perfect Day – Ira Levin
Watership Down-Richard Adams
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – (Series) Too funny to list just one :).
The Dragon Bone Chair – and the rest of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy – These books helped me through a really difficult time- I was completely drawn into them. I hope one day I can submerge someone in something I write like these books did for me.
This Fine and Private place & The Last Unicorn – Peter S. Beagle I can put them as one right? They came together :)



I’m leaving these out but I should pay homage to: the Witch World Series, The Foundation series, Conan, The Time Machine and so many more that I read as a kid.