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wneleh:
15 Books Meme
You're not supposed to think too long or too hard on this one. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it. Then tag 15 friends and see if they write their own lists (part of the challenge is to think about which 15 friends would have the weirdest or most interesting book list).
Well, clearly I'm not tagging. But here are the first 15 that came to me -- doing this meme was basically a matter of my mind going absolutely blank for a minute and then being inundated by a blizzard of books. Don't judge me? *g* (Well, you might.)
1. The Valley of Horses, Jean Auel
2. Fire Sea, Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman
3. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
4. Roots, Alex Haley
5. The Firelings, Carol Kendall
6. The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King
7. Fair Peril, Nancy Springer
8. Alien Earth, Megan Lindholm
9. Drop City, TC Boyle
10. Devil to the Belt, CJ Cherryh
11. Amber series, Roger Zelazny
12. The Time Machine, HG Wells
13. Elfquest, Wendy & Richard Pini
14. Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
15. Watership Down, Richard Adams
Hmmm! *looks at list*
Some interesting stats:
- 2 are co-written by a female and male author, 8 are written by male authors, 5 by female authors
- All but 4 are sci-fi or fantasy (or 3, depending on whether you consider Jean Auel's books fantasy *g*)
- All but one of the authors are, to the best of my knowledge, white
- One is a series of graphic novels (that counts, right? It was too hugely influential on me; I couldn't leave it out!)
- One is nonfiction(ish), the rest are definitely fiction
- I started trying to figure out how many of them have non-human protagonists, but gave up, because it's just impossible to figure out (would you call Good Omens a book about humans? what about the Amberites in Zelazny's books?) - however, that made me aware of something a lot of these books have in common -- they're genre books, but kind of unusual for their genre; they combine multiple genres or push across traditional genre boundaries.
- most are books that I read when I was young or at some turning point in my life, and for almost all of them I have distinct recollections of the first time I read them, and how and why I found that particular book, at that moment in time.
And now I've thought of a dozen more that should have been on the list! OH WELL. That's why you're supposed to do it fast...!
wneleh:15 Books Meme
You're not supposed to think too long or too hard on this one. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it. Then tag 15 friends and see if they write their own lists (part of the challenge is to think about which 15 friends would have the weirdest or most interesting book list).
Well, clearly I'm not tagging. But here are the first 15 that came to me -- doing this meme was basically a matter of my mind going absolutely blank for a minute and then being inundated by a blizzard of books. Don't judge me? *g* (Well, you might.)
1. The Valley of Horses, Jean Auel
2. Fire Sea, Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman
3. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
4. Roots, Alex Haley
5. The Firelings, Carol Kendall
6. The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King
7. Fair Peril, Nancy Springer
8. Alien Earth, Megan Lindholm
9. Drop City, TC Boyle
10. Devil to the Belt, CJ Cherryh
11. Amber series, Roger Zelazny
12. The Time Machine, HG Wells
13. Elfquest, Wendy & Richard Pini
14. Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
15. Watership Down, Richard Adams
Hmmm! *looks at list*
Some interesting stats:
- 2 are co-written by a female and male author, 8 are written by male authors, 5 by female authors
- All but 4 are sci-fi or fantasy (or 3, depending on whether you consider Jean Auel's books fantasy *g*)
- All but one of the authors are, to the best of my knowledge, white
- One is a series of graphic novels (that counts, right? It was too hugely influential on me; I couldn't leave it out!)
- One is nonfiction(ish), the rest are definitely fiction
- I started trying to figure out how many of them have non-human protagonists, but gave up, because it's just impossible to figure out (would you call Good Omens a book about humans? what about the Amberites in Zelazny's books?) - however, that made me aware of something a lot of these books have in common -- they're genre books, but kind of unusual for their genre; they combine multiple genres or push across traditional genre boundaries.
- most are books that I read when I was young or at some turning point in my life, and for almost all of them I have distinct recollections of the first time I read them, and how and why I found that particular book, at that moment in time.
And now I've thought of a dozen more that should have been on the list! OH WELL. That's why you're supposed to do it fast...!
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Dragonflight wasn't especially influential on me, but Dragonsinger -- that was the one with Menolly and the fire lizards, right? Oh, I loved that book to pieces! Quite possibly literally, as I tended to read my favorite books 'til they fell apart!
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Great list. Haven't read Drop City. Gonna check it out.
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Drop City is ... a book that really, really nails the darker and less photogenic side of Alaska and the '60s hippie movement in a way that made me go "Oh my god, YES" on practically every other page (when I wasn't cringing because it struck too close to home). It's not a happy book, but it's a book that absolutely captures rural Alaska in the early 1970s. Rather than lovable rural eccentrics, you have a small town full of dangerous alcoholic rednecks. And yet, you can't help liking the characters even though they're all so deeply messed up. It's a bit sensationalized in some ways (I mean, it's fiction, after all) but I am really boggled by how accurately the author caught the gestalt of the Alaska I grew up in, despite not being from here at all. If you want to know what living in Alaska is really like, forget all the romantic stories of wilderness survival and sweeping vistas of mountains -- Drop City is THE book for that, even though it's dark and unhappy and a little bit racist in places.
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I just got "The drawing of the three" as well as the second and forth book of 'The Dark Tower' series by Stephen King! (Alas, they did not have the first book. :()
I also got a Margeret Weis and Tracy Hickman novel-Dragon of the Fallen Sun, Volumne One. It's been a while since I was involved in their series, but I thought I'd give it a try.
And I also got the third book of Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (Blood of the Fold). I've read it once before, but I've decided to read it once again.
Good Omens is a particular favorite of mine, but they don't have it here. :( I also really enjoyed Time Machine by H.G. Wells. The others I have yet to try, and I seriously don't think that this library has them (it's kind of small, compared to the bigger cities).
But other than that, no books comes to mind. (Of course, they probably WILL come to mind once I finish posting this!)
It's nice to see that other people read the same things that I do-if to a point-and we all seem to be a fan of science fiction and fantasy, horror, and adventure. Books seem to be a universal language, just like music! :D
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Catch-22 pops into my head, mostly because I wonder if Major Major would really be made a Major. Such is the depth of my internal monologue.
I read a lot of Cherryh in my early-mid 20's (before Patrick O'Brian ate my brain), but I couldn't think of a particular title. Bits and pieces from many of them pop through my head, and I'm not even sure of the precise origin of most of them.
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