Kevin's Watch

We don't always know how books are affecting us, or which ones are making the greatest changes.. but I'm gonna pick a few of the ones that first come to mind, in no particular order...

1. "Till We Have Faces" (C.S. Lewis)
2. The Recluse Saga (L.E. Modesitt)
3. "The Time Traveler's Wife" (Audrey Niffenenger)
4. "Child from the Sea" (Elizabeth Goudge)
5. "To Kill A Mockingbird" (Harper Lee)

I'm gonna list some of the things I've been given / things I've taken away.

1. Exposed my self-pity and some of what it was
2. Hurt my head by making me think about costs and unintended consequences (also made me care about those things more)
3. Was a potent reminder of how fleeting life is
4. An especially vivid vision of joy and beauty amid a broken world
5. Provided a picture of humility in the main character

1. The Tale-Tell Heart (edgar allen poe)
2. The Haunting of Hill House (shirley jackson)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (harper lee)
4. Alas, Babylon (pat frank)
5. The Wounded Land (stephen r donaldson)


1. scared the bejebus outa me and gave me a life-long love of the macabre (my dad read it to me when i was 8 yrs old)

2. also scared the bejebus outa me but was immediately the most engaging and thought-provoking book i'd ever read, gave me an understanding of the "layers" of stories, and was probably the first book i ever read which gave me an understanding of what self-destruction looks like, made me understand metaphor, and was also the most brilliant and poetic prose i had ever read (and still is, for that matter) and remains the book that i've most often given away to friends to read, dozens of copies. (read this for the first time when i was 14)

3. this book may be on everyone's list, i asked my roommate this question just to see what popped into his head. this was the first thing that came out of his mouth. for me, atticus finch showed me what a good father is supposed to be, what a good man is supposed to be. i am sure that he is an idealized version of a father but for me, having the father i had (who i loved, don't get me wrong) i needed to know what a good father looked like. beyond atticus, there was many more lessons in this book for me, trust, loyalty, generosity, humility, kindness, ethics, morality. i could go on and on.
not to mention the fact that it was extremely inspirational to me as a writer of the southern persuasion. it also remains, with the haunting of hill house, at the top of my list for brilliantly poetic prose.

4. also scared the bejebus outa me for entirely different reasons than the first two! lol!! this book, more than almost any other book, set up the proverbial "what if" in me. what if the world as we know it ended. what if you were left alive. what if society could start over, what would we keep, what would we throw away as useless. there are other more science fiction books that continued that life long curiosity in me (what if there are other worlds than these) but this book, read when i was 16, really cemented the question into my conciousness.

5. i know donaldson would probably be aghast to know this, and i'm pretty sure i've posted this before elsewhere in other threads, but...this book firmly ingrained into my awareness the kinds of clothing and shoe choices i would make for the rest of my life. not kidding. it also has to do with the big "what if".
what if you were suddenly snatched away or transported to some other...LAND , especially one where you were on an extremely long quest covering hundreds of miles on foot and what IF there was like...a sunbane. you'd want comfortable clothing and good shoes (shoes that would BLOCK the sunbane, right?) wouldn't you?
not kidding.
i'm just that neurotic and just that imaginative to choose my shoes and clothing with this thought in my head.

Wow, I dunno.

All of it I guess.

--A

exposed me the idea that this life could contain secrets...

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. 'nuff said.

1. Lord Foul's Bane, SRD
2. Illusions, Richard Bach.
3. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
4. Moby Dick, Melville
5. The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald

1. Fantasy stopped being just fun and started being important.
2. Bach is often so New Age it hurts, but Illusions really is a short little masterpiece. Well, the prose is so-so, but the ideas... I would love to rewrite this some day, but I'd probably make it more depressing and not a whit more "true." After a friend gave me this book, I realized my ideas might not be that strange after all.
3. Hard to imagine any contemporary fiction being more moving to a father. Never having a father myself, this book made me realize how important it is to be one.
4. What can I say? A lot of people will hate this book without ever reading it, and many will hate it because they had to read it. That's a shame. There is genius on every page. Finishing this novel, while appreciating every facet of chapters like "The Whiteness of the Whale," is the literary equivalent of successfully running a marathon... or surviving Vogon poetry. Your pick.
5. This was a tough one. I chose Gatsby because it was basically this book that introduced me to critical theory. I never realized how many different ways there are to look at a novel, and I never realized a lot of things that were going on in this book.

this book informs much of my art. if you haven't read it, i won't spoil it. but the fable touches upon this, my poetry touches upon the ideas lightman brings forth.

I read that book back in high school ('92 to '95). I don't remember there being a plot so much, rather a collection of 'thought experiments' in which the laws of the universe were different. I'll have to look for it again.

I just finished a book that has changed my perspective on the Vietnam War and the soldiers that fought in it. As someone that was always on the fringes of the internal conflict, it gave me a whole new understanding and compassion for those soldiers. It also left me with a sense of sadness I just cannot shake. Maybe that is a good thing. So please, read it. (took me FOREVER to finish it.)

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

it's about bunnies.

i have read the book every couple of years since hs. i have always identified with Blackberry (the clever one) and Blackavar (the one who never gives up)

i even saved a seagull years ago , naming him Keehar until I could set him free.

i love the sweep of the novel, i love the characters. how well it works.

In response to Lorin and Null:



All Quiet on the Western Front would be my introduction to the horror, futility, and destructiveness of war. It also really led to my disillusionment of politics. Giving power hungry bastards the power do something tragically pointless like this is the greatest evil of civilization. I also can no longer look at war without reference to WWI anymore, which I think is as close to a true look at war without the trappings of 'necessity', 'us & them', etc. And damn the education system for relegating it to a footnote of history.


The Wind in the Willows was the first chapter book I had ever read and is still one of the best. It ages really well.

Av- yeah, that's the truth, isn't it?

lucimay wrote:i know donaldson would probably be aghast to know this, and i'm pretty sure i've posted this before elsewhere in other threads, but...
...
i'm just that neurotic and just that imaginative to choose my shoes and clothing with this thought in my head.

Whoa, I would never thought of that. I could totally see somebody doing that, though. That's definitely ONE way of knowing that something has left a lasting impression on you, at least!

But pfft, I bet SRD would know that wasn't his fault and not worry about it excessively...

and null... hmm, "Harold and the Purple Crayon" ...haven't gotten around to reading that one yet!

there are so many that made changes, led to things [at least thought about things even if I eventually rejected them] that my list would be huge. But I can also do an extremely short version:
The short story "The Lottery," just slapped my head off. Drama, tension, other things...and yet real connection to the world through an impossible world.
The "Dune" books [especially the first...but unlike many I don't think any are bad [of the Frank ones] they vary only between "really f-ing good", and "f-ing unbelievable."]
Because it did what "The Lottery" did...but showed you can go deep and long with the real connection/fake world and still tell a story.

Kafka - the Trial

read this around age 19 or so. the struggle against faceless authority. the helplessness of the protaganist. the miserable ending... you guys have met me right. lol. it is the sort of stuff i write.

i incorporated kafka himself into my writing (he is a zenman after all)

and if i ever get to do movies, this is one of them (maybe zom...)

lorin wrote:I just finished a book that has changed my perspective on the Vietnam War and the soldiers that fought in it. As someone that was always on the fringes of the internal conflict, it gave me a whole new understanding and compassion for those soldiers. It also left me with a sense of sadness I just cannot shake. Maybe that is a good thing. So please, read it. (took me FOREVER to finish it.)

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

Sounds Good Lorin. I think I'll pick this up.

I started a post this afternoon, and bailed. Let's see if I can finish it now...

In roughly chronological order, based on when I read 'em:

1. Poe's short fiction
2. In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
3. The Chrons
4. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
5. The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

And why:
1. I read "The Tell-Tale Heart" first, but it was "The Masque of the Red Death" that *really* scared the pants off me. Plus it's got magic (there's nobody in the costume!) *and* the Universe's revenge on the powerful -- two of my favorite themes. What a great story.
2. Quirky in the extreme, but I love the descriptions of the "house" with the trees and the creek running through it. Plus I love the concept of a commune called iDEATH. And the chapter titles always crack me up ("Margaret again, again, again" ).
3. If for no other reason than that the Chrons eventually brought me to the Watch. But of course, there are all the usual reasons, too: The anti-hero as protagonist, the emotions Covenant goes through as he's rejected by one culture only to have his new reality threatened by hero worship in a different culture, the vocabulary building, etc.
4. I just love this book. It's set in Colorado; the characters cope with life as best they can, which is all any of us can hope to do; and the language is spare and plain and, for all of that, very moving.
5. This one scared the pants off me, too, and reminded me how much I enjoy psychological horror (see Poe, above). I like the way the story doesn't settle on whether the main character is crazy or is experiencing real visits from a supernatural creature.

Hunh. These exercises always end up with me talking about what various books have meant to my writing....