Gene Wolfe coined the term ‘golden book’ to refer to a book that utterly opens up your head, stirs around your brain, and changes how you look at the world — I think it was singular in his coining, the one book that changes you, but I think many of us have several over the course of their lives. For me, these are the books I read over and over and keep extra copies around so I can force them on new friends or lovers.
Here are a few of mine:
R is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury. My mother made me read this at a young age; it was my first SF. Have never looked back.
Little, Big by John Crowley. I absolutely adore this book. Thoughts of it haunt me sometimes. Every time I read it I find something new or gain a deeper appreciation of its themes.
The Years of Rice and Salt and the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The Mars trilogy provides such wonderful thoughts about other ways to do this human society thing that I always end my readings yearning to go live on his Mars. And Rice & Salt is stirring in so many ways, among them Robinson’s gifted ability to write in so many styles, and some powerful explorations of human relations.
Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint. I’m not much of a de Lint fan these days — too many of his themes started to wear on me after a while, and I started to see some holes in how he sees the world. But I remember how differently I looked at the world around me for days after finishing this book, and others by him.
What are some of yours?
Correction: Andrew Wheeler informs us that Gene Wolfe’s term is actually The Book of Gold. Thanks!
97 responses so far ↓
1 skzb // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Well, of course, Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT is at the top of the list, along with Dumas’ THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Hmmm. Have to think more, see what comes bubbling up.
2 kit // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Some more:
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. Sad and thought provoking, the kind of book that makes me engage in days worth of inner debate.
The Ethical Slut by Easton and Liszt — I was already poly when I read this book, but its been a great guide throughout my explorations of non-monogamy and has great advice for all sorts of relationships, so I loan it out all the time.
3 Lenny Bailes // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:29 pm
My favorite de Lint book is either “Mulengro” (powerful, no punches pulled), or “Memory and Dream” (brilliant pacing, reads kind of like a secret alternate world sequel to Robertson Davies’ “What’s Bred in the Bone.”
Have you read Grania Davis’ “The Rainbow Annals?” I’m happy to see this back in print and think you might like it:
http://www.wildsidebooks.com/The-Rainbow-Annals_p_47-326.html
4 thisdaydreamer // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:29 pm
I’ll echo Dreams Underfoot.
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley — this was the book that taught me the importance of point of view, not only in fiction, but also in real life. I was astounded by how much the story could change by seeing it through the eyes of Morgaine.
5 Terry Mancour // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:32 pm
JRR Tolkien, LOTR
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Heinlein
Stranger In A Strange Land, Heinlein
Zelazny’s Lord of Light (It don’t get much better than that)
Handbook For Spaceship Earth, R. Buckminster Fuller
That’s enough to give any therapist nightmares.
6 kit // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Lenny@3: I enjoyed Mulengro a lot. At some point maybe I’ll go back and reread some of his non-Newford works, like that or Svaha. But there’s a lot of books to get to before then, I think.
That book looks interesting, maybe I’ll see if I can get a copy to review. :)
thisdaydreamer@4: Mists of Avalon was probably one of my first exposures to ’same story, different perspective’ as well. Good call.
I love Lord of Light, but I think I would have had to read it earlier in life for it to end up a Golden Book. Or I need to reread it a few more times for it to fully sink in — this is possible too. I’m greatful to Steve for introducing me to it.
7 chaos // Aug 18, 2008 at 11:55 pm
The book that happens to have affected me the most, or at least the most suddenly and dramatically, is Phil Dick’s Ubik, which disassembled my mind and put it back together in escheresque arrangements when I was 17. Before I read it, my worldview was the usual reductionist materialism that thinks that’s the same thing as “science”. After I read it… well, the world was much larger.
I’m sure I love Lord of Light as much as anyone commenting, but it wasn’t really formative. Amber was.
And of course I read enough of Bob Heinlein at an impressionable age to make me poly for life, as far as anyone can tell.
8 josh // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:03 am
John Varley’s short story “The Persistence of Vision” is profoundly moving and truly changed my perspective on a number of things, and is part of the reason I learned ASL. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” also affected my outlook in a significant way, though everything by Le Guin does that more or less. Crowley’s “Little, Big” was deep and memorable (the things that make us happy make us wise), but “Engine Summer” had a larger effect on me.
These days my brain gets its biggest perspective-shifting workouts from Greg Egan, Vernor Vinge and Steven Brust. Egan and Vinge make me expand my vision of what the world might be, while Brust ambushes me with challenges to my innate human moral complacency.
9 Miramon // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:10 am
I only seem to have had such experiences with books in childhood. I read all these before age 13. I suspect that this is because the ideas are all fresh and new for a young reader.
Here’s the ones I can come up with, quite possibly missing one or two:
Galactic Patrol by Doc Smith. The first SF novel I read. I think I was 8.
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. It’s just that good.
LOTR by JRRT. Well, yah.
Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser the series by Leiber. Wonderful characters, with just the right amount of titillation for a 12 year old.
The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin. Well, it was a trilogy at the time. In a sense, her writing is more grown-up than any of the other authors mentioned above. The combination of the awesome “sense of wonder” of the overall series with the bittersweet elements of the second and third books in the trilogy (especially the third) were very affecting for a young reader, or at least for me.
I also started reading large quantities of other SF standards as soon as I got through Galactic Patrol, but though I may have liked Heinlein or Asimov or Dickson or Norton (my library had lots of Andre Norton books for some reason) among others, no one of their books had any really amazing significance for me.
In retrospect, the Lensman series is still fun, and has that magic space opera “scope” quality, but of course it’s very dated, and the writing is not that good.
Lord of Light is just as awesome as ever. There’s something about Zelazny’s style that just works for me, regardless, but when he is firing on all cylinders, his stuff is just top-notch.
I still like LOTR and Tolkien in general, but the impact of the work has been weakened for me as an adult. This has nothing to do with having worked on LOTR Online, it’s just not as powerful for me as a mature reader.
I still like pretty much everything Leiber has ever written, but I don’t think if I were to selectively lose my memory of the F+GM series that I would esteem it quite so highly today.
I continue to have profound respect for LeGuin (loved her recent collection Changing Planes, by the way), but I doubt, again, that if I lost my memory of her books and reread them today, they would have quite the impact.
In terms of books I read as an adult, the most significant for me, I think, were probably Gibson’s Neuromancer and Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun tetralogy, and a little later Iain Banks’ Player of Games, the first of his Culture books that I read. However, none of those really qualifies as “golden” for me.
Most recently, I’ve read some Murakami that I really liked, and perhaps if I had read him as a child, books like Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-up Bird Chronicle would have qualified as golden too, but they don’t make it at my current age.
10 Miramon // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:15 am
Oh, wait, there was one “golden” adult reading experience after all. Just not SF, so it didn’t occur to me in the last note.
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin series. The whole thing, taken together, yes, even including the odd Jane-Austen-esque second book.
It’s not an original sentiment, but these have to be the best historical novels ever written.
11 joxn // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:15 am
sf/fantasy: Delany’s Neveryon series; Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers.
Fiction: Georges Perec’s Life: a User’s Manual
Non-fiction: Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas and GEB; Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract
If I had to pick two of these as “more golden”, Delany and Pateman would be my choices. If I had to pick one, it would be the Pateman. She completely changed the way I think about everything in our political discourse.
12 Julian // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:21 am
Stranger In A Strange Land, Heinlein
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Someplace To Be Flying, De Lint
Portrait of An Artist As An Old Man, J. Heller
Dark Tower, S. King
Short Stories, Charles Bukowski
13 idiomagic // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:27 am
Dune would have to be at the top of my list, along with Mark Helprin’s brilliant Winter’s Tale.
Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg was a real eye-opener for me.
Judith Tarr’s Alamut changed my whole view of history, and started my love/obsession with Outremer.
Sometimes I wonder who I would be without books…surely, a much poorer person…
14 skzb // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:30 am
Miramon @10: I absolutely love and adore everything Patrick O’Brian wrote, and I reread the entire series about every other year. But I came to them too late, alas, for them to form me in the a “Golden Book” does.
15 idiomagic // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:39 am
Good gods, how did I forget to include Robert Anton Wilson?
And Silverlock by John Myers Myers?
And Anne Sexton’s Transformations…
Each of them etched a small part of my mind and heart.
16 jamoche // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:08 am
Heinlein’s “The Menace from Earth”.
It was 1977. I was 12, female, loved math. Every story I’d ever read that started out like MfE - smart, tomboyish teenage girl’s boyfriend leaves her for a sophisticated and more “feminine” woman - ended with the girl’s mother telling her “well, dear, it’s time for you to start acting like a young lady” or “boys don’t like it when you’re smarter than them”; cue makeover. Much to my surprise, Holly gets her boy back by not changing at all; she’s still an aspiring spaceship designer. Three years later, I was a computer whiz kid. Still am, actually, and I never once played dumb around boys.
(I should note that the other stories were, for the most part, written in 1977. Yeah, the 20-year old story was more enlightened than the new stuff.)
17 Billy Meyers // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:25 am
I’m mid-twenties and I’ve been an avid reader all along but I’ve been blindsided with a few as I’ve forced myself to explore (at least somewhat) some of the modern greats.
Ubik. This one blew my f’ing mind. Pow, atomic blast, amazing.
Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five. These two gave me the same thing. The absurdity, the hilarity, mixed in with all sorts of terrible.
Lord of Light. The first part seemed a little drab, but each section got better and better. Zelazny laid it out perfectly. Oh, and thanks to Steve for mentioning how great Zelazny’s stuff is over and over.
18 Sander // Aug 19, 2008 at 4:58 am
David Zindell’s The Broken God remains forever as the book which changed my outlook on life. It connected dots in ways I’d never imagined, and made my mind soar.
I know exactly what you’re saying about de Lint. For me it were several of the short stories in Moonlight & Vines that made me look at the world in just a completely different way. One of his stories had one of his characters undergo something very similar…
====
After that, I never looked at anything the same again. I watched light, saw everything through an imaginary frame. Clouds didn’t just mean a storm was coming; they were an ever-changing picture of the sky, a panorama of movement and light that affected everything around them - the landscape, the people in it. I learned to pay attention and realized that once you do anything you look at is interesting. Everything has its own glow, its own place in the world that’s related to everything else around it. I looked into the connectedness of it all and nothing was the same for me again.
====
And Kim Stanley Robinson as well - he can make you look at a place in a way that you want to be there, to experience it for yourself. Escape From Kathmandu was the one where I realized this most strongly. I’d never had any desire to visit the Himalayas, but have been yearning to go there ever since.
19 SteveH // Aug 19, 2008 at 5:57 am
Lord of Light
The Hobbit
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
20 brownkitty // Aug 19, 2008 at 6:05 am
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card stirred my brain like that. So did Dune. So did several of the Elric books by Michael Moorcock, though for some reason any other incarnations of his Eternal Champion haven’t gained my affection.
The one that stirred it the most was Stardance by Spider Robinson, which may have had something to do with me being fourteen at the time.
21 Charlene Teglia // Aug 19, 2008 at 6:33 am
Oh, the Mars trilogy. “Because of the big bang!” Love that.
Some of my golden books: Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. Robert Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo and Red Planet. Isaac Asimov’s I Robot. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Ursula LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven. Charles Sheffield’s Godspeed. And everything by Lois McMaster Bujold.
22 Ken // Aug 19, 2008 at 7:07 am
I don’t know if this quite fits with the spirit of the term Golden Book, but Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged messed with my head for several years. The first time I read it I was thrilled and appalled by it. Its message was so seductive, but seemed so wrong at the same time. I could almost hear Ayn Rand in a raspy voice saying, “Ken, I am your mother.”
The problem was that I couldn’t come up with the precise reasons why I thought it was wrong. It was just a feeling that there was something fundamentally incorrect in its premises. It took a couple years and a couple more readings before I was comfortable with my reasons for rejecting Rand’s Objectivism.
I still credit it, along with Army basic training, for converting me from a Republican to a Liberal.
23 Adam // Aug 19, 2008 at 7:18 am
My Golden Book:
To Reign in Hell
It’s all about perception.
24 Andrea Smith // Aug 19, 2008 at 7:47 am
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead! by James Kirkwood.
It’s just a great, funny, light read that makes you feel better about your life no matter how bad things may seem before you pick up the book. The original cover reads:
It’s New Years Eve. Your best friend died in September. You’ve just lost your job, your girlfriend is leaving you and the only one left to talk to is the gay burglar you’ve got tied up in the kitchen… PS Your Cat Is Dead!
Before Steve Guttenburg made his god-awful movie based on the book, finding copies was difficult. I once bought Amazon out of their last four or five copies so I’d have plenty to give away to friends. They were gone within three months.
25 Jim // Aug 19, 2008 at 8:08 am
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (golden might not be the best adjective as I’m not sure how much I *liked* it, but I’ll almost certainly read it again.)
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
and one that I read recently that probably will qualify (I’m still sorting out all my reactions to it) - The Fisher King by Paule Marshall.
26 Pace // Aug 19, 2008 at 8:23 am
Ishmael and The Story of B by Daniel Quinn.
Those two books irrevocably changed my view of humanity and culture.
27 Miramon // Aug 19, 2008 at 8:56 am
Charlene@21:
Oh, yeah, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time is a great example of something that must have been a golden book for a great many other people as well. I’m not sure why that would be, analytically, but when I think about it holistically, it certainly has a brilliant auric sheen to it… I read it when I was a bit too old for it to have that kind of impact, though.
28 Star Straf // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:01 am
I’m another one for Mists of Avalon but I had already read half a dozen retellings of that legend by then.
Nancy Springer The White Hart was the first time I went looking for another book by the same author.
Richard Bach Illusions was that way for both my mom and myself, we put quotes from the book all over the house - I have the cover feather inked on me in memory of mom.
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury was another early influence about reality for me.
29 rone // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:14 am
Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth because of its treatment of language, and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun for its treatment of war. It probably saved me from joining the Air Force.
30 Rio // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:24 am
The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller
The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri Tepper
KiNdred by Octavia Butler
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptee Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
31 Eeyore // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:52 am
“Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars” by Daniel Pinkwater
32 Dennis // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:56 am
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the first book where I remember delighting in the way the author used language.
“They hung in the sky in exactly the way that bricks don’t.”
And Bridge of Birds, just because it’s Bridge of Birds.
33 Durin // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:12 am
This is always a hard list to compile.
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien- He got the whole ball rolling.
Dragonsinger- by Anne McCaffrey , Finding your place in the world despite many obsticals setbacks and losses.
Callahan’s Secret-by Spider Robinson - Where everybody knows your name and will empathize with your problems.
Magic’s Promise-by Mercedes Lackey -
I guess most of the books that are “Golden Books” for me are about finding places to belong.
And
Jhereg- because we all want to be a badass like Vlad Taltos
34 skzb // Aug 19, 2008 at 11:26 am
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead–thanks for reminding me of that one. Loved it!
35 Lewis Himelhoch // Aug 19, 2008 at 11:27 am
All of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Underneath the humor are always important ideas.
Spider Robinson’s Callahan stories - Who wouldn’t want to hang out there even if it was only one night?
War and Peace. I read it when I was about 13. It wasn’t the contents of the book or the ideas but
just the fact that I could read such a long novel
that made me realize I could do anything I set my mind to. (As far as the book itself, it’s an interesting historical romance but it’s hardly my favorite book.)
As far as a book that shaped my personal philosophy, Spiderman issue #33
36 Gailmom // Aug 19, 2008 at 11:59 am
wow….course there are a lot of books i LOVE, but we can narrow that a lot by looking for the ones i always want folks to read that made me rethink something in my life….lessee
not to be a kiss-up, but The Sun The Moon and The Stars, by Brust….this one totally messed with me, only a couple of years ago now actually, 1/3 of the way through i was calling the friend who loaned me the book going “Brust paints? ….whaddyamean no, he doesn’t????”, 2/3 through i was going “i must buy canvas, brushes, paint!”, when i finished, i put it down and went “i’m not a painter, i’m ok with that. but i must create something or wither” and several times along the way i had to put it down for a moment just to digest some beautiful combination of words that had just picked my brain up and sloshed it back down into it’s own liquid.
The Romance of Atlantis, by Taylor Caldwell. i have two copies of this cuz i won’t let one of them out of my house but i want everyone i come across to read it….i still re-read it a time or two a year…
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. picked it up by accident, and i will never be the same. her other stuff didn’t do this for me, but Handmaid’s Tale i read 3 times in a row with no other books between b/c i was Fascinated by the ideas and the implications.
Rainbow Man by M.J.Engh…this one gave me so very much to think about i am always shocked if i loan it to someone and it doesn’t blow their head off like it did mine.
Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen. not fiction. this one was incredibly enlightening for me. i was one of those students taught history the public education way….he opened my eyes so much to the propaganda and downright falsehoods that education had included in a way only the DC Holocaust Museum had ever hinted at. it is changing the way i homeschool my kids, that is certain.
Ishmeal by Daniel Quinn has been mentioned, Mutant Message Down Under and Message From Forever by Marlo Morgan did similiar things to me, but on a more visceral level.
There are others, Small Gods by Pratchett…almost all the Callahan books… and some whose authors i don’t know and can’t look up cuz they are currently loaned out, Omnivore’s Dilema was a recent impactual one.
By far the biggest Golden Book of my childhood, however, was Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I read it so often that i had two copies literally fall apart, and I am NOT hard on books. :)
37 Andrew Wheeler // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I think you mean “The Book of Gold;” Golden Books is an American publisher of books for small children.
For myself, the most memorable Book of Gold was Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness, where he did at least a dozen things I was sure couldn’t be done in a book, and did them all superbly.
38 Mia // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Anything by Robert A. Heinlein - esp The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
The Callahan Books - Spider Robinson
The Amber Books - Roger Zelazny
Short Stories by Charles deLint
Douglas Adams
Ilium & Olympos - Dan Simmons (and the Hyperion stuff isn’t too bad either)
The Chronicles of Narnia - the reason I like Fantasy
The Harry Potter books - just because they’re so much fun to read and re-read
The Pern books - Anne McCaffrey
…and of course Brust :-)
39 Baba // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Ah, that magic age between 9 and 15. The books that had the greatest impact on me in that early reading phase when everything was new and shiny and wonderful were “Krabat” by Otfried Preussler (called “The Satanic Mill” in English) which among others taught me to appreciate style, “The Jubilee Trail” by Gwen Bristow (at barely 10 I didn’t get everything, but I still knew that it was one hell of a story) and “Kon Tiki” by Thor Heyerdahl - even if that hadn’t been a real life story, it still would have bowled me over. “Midway” by Anne Barrett was a dream come true I never knew I had. And then there was Guareschi’s Don Camillo and Peppone and the Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. And “Watership Down” by Richard Adams and “San Michele” by Axel Munthe. “Mio, my Mio” by Astrid Lindgren. Lord, I could go on for ages …
40 Chris B. // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:05 pm
The fact that I really had to think about this means I probably got the answer wrong. I can’t claim “Tolkien” or “Lewis” because I was raised on family readings of Middle Earth and Narnia, from before I could read them myself.
I’m going to go with “The Jewel In the Skull,” by Moorcock. It’s the first book I remember choosing by myself, as a youngster tagging along on a visit to the used book store. And without diminishing M.E. or Narnia in the least, it showed me just how much more there was to go explore.
Maybe that’s not quite the same as a “golden book,” though. I’ll keep pondering.
41 Jason s.b.f. // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:13 pm
My first “golden” book was Startide Rising as it was the first book I read for pleasure and not for school and started me down the path of reading.
Lord of Light was amazing.
To Reign in Hell absolutely affected my point of view.
Catch-22 was another.
Jim @ 25; Dennis @32
I loved the chronicles of Li Kao and Number Ten Ox. In fact, I have been looking for spare copies for when my current set falls apart. They were not a “golden” books for me but amazing and vivid.
I also agree that when books are read matter as to whether it is “golden” or not. Several of the books listed by others were great but not life changing to me, though I could see how they would be so for others.
42 Anke // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:13 pm
If I believe my mother, I have to list Hook - she says her buying the novelisation after I liked the movie a lot is what got me reading.
Mort by Terry Pratchett was my introduction to comic fantasy, and to unusual perspectives/reinvented myth. ( I did read Mists of Avalon beforehand, but since that was the first version of the Artus myth beyond osmosis of “there were a king, some knights, and a round table” through pop culture, that wasn’t particularly special in that regard.)
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett makes me feel great every time I read it, because of the sense of wonder about plain old life.
Not sure if you want to hear about graphic novels, but, hey, I think Elfquest did more than any prose novel I can think of. It got me into reading comics, and, more importantly, it made me take up drawing. It shaped a lot of my tastes when it comes to comics, fantasy or science fiction worldbuilding, or storytelling in general.
43 Terry Mancour // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Addendum:
Illuminatus! How the hell could I forget thfnordat?
Mists of Avalon — required Pagan reading.
And — at the risk of being accused of brownnosing — Yendi, by SKZ Brust, PJF. Not Jhereg (which rocked for other reasons) but Yendi, because of the way in which the plot and the character arc unfolded. It was the first time since Zelazny that I had that warm, loved feeling you get when you know the author has put some serious effort into the work. (confidential to Steve: don’t screw it up for me by telling me how you wrote it in a drunken stupor — leave me my illusions)
Speaking of illusions — Illusions, by Richard Bach. Yes, I know it’s all new-agey and stuff, but it contains some important passages that can be mistaken for profound if used as directed.
Again, at the risk of obsequiousness, The Phoenix Guards, because it proved that you can get paid by the pound, tell a great story in a compelling and amusing fashion, pay homage to a favorite author without looking hackneyed, and, by Gods, you can use all of that indirect vocabulary that has since fallen out of favor. I re-read it about twice a year, now.
Confederacy of Dunces. I mean, anyone who has lived in the South needs to read this before High School.
Honorable Mentions:
TAZ, by Hakim Bey
Godel, Escher, Bach
44 Jon // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Only two books has ever really made a change in the way I think.
“The Devil’s Day” by James Blish and “les Fluers du Mas” by Baudelaire. I have gotten much enjoyment from many authors, but those put a serious dent in my psyche. I read “The Devil’s Day” decades ago in high school, discussed it with friends in the library, was overheard by the librarian, and BAM, it was banned from the school library. My first introduction to censorship for the good of the innocent masses.. It took many years to find a copy for myself.
I encountered Baudelaire because a character in a Zelazny book had a copy, and thus piqued my interest. The idea of finding beauty in the horrific stayed with me, and probably accounts for a fair part of how I cope with the world to this date.
45 JP // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Great question. (By the way, anyone remember the little hardcover Golden Books from the late sixties, juvenile readers?)
As far as totally gestalt-shifting, mind-rearranging books…
Voltaire’s Bastards, by John Ralston Saul
The Modern Prince, Antonio Gramsci
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
What I got from them was a (new) understanding of how we got the society we have, how to go about changing a society, and an alternative principle around which to organize the world. Of particular note, the deeper into Carey’s world one gets through the D’Angeline novels, the more Blessed Elua’s foremost precept becomes an intriguing possibility.
Or so I find.
Honorable mention to The True and Only Heaven by Christopher Lasch. It didn’t change my gestalt, but the tradition of thought he introduced in that book did, collectively. The value of wonder, the difference between optimism and hope, nostalgia and memory.
46 Kleio // Aug 19, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Ohhh…
There was one incredible summer in which I read both Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man and Steven Brust’s To Reign in Hell for the first time. I’ve really never been the same since, though it was only a few years ago. If nothing else, The Demolished Man made me forget that I get carsick when I try to read in a moving vehicle.
Earlier than that, I credit Patricia A. McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Elde with sparking my love of both fantasy novels and strong, flawed female protagonists - it was the first book with actual depth of character that I really remember reading… I think that was also the book where I realized that people have sex in novels!
47 UntamedPlayer // Aug 19, 2008 at 2:18 pm
A few of the many:
The Last Deathship Off Antares - William Jon Watkins
Legend - David Gemmell
The Warriors Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Deepest Sea - Charles Barnitz
48 skzb // Aug 19, 2008 at 2:26 pm
“The Book of Gold.” Right. I told him wrong. My bad.
49 UntamedPlayer // Aug 19, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I read Heinlein’s Red Planet at the age of 8. It was the first time I encountered big ideas and strong characterization in the same book. Corrupted me for life.
50 Miramon // Aug 19, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Andrew@37:
Yes, good call. Creatures of Light and Darkness is my other Zelazny favorite. It would have been “golden” for me if I had read it before Lord of Light, but at the point I read it I was expecting it to be great, so despite its innovative avant-garde style, I wasn’t amazed by its brilliance.
But I still like Typhon, Madrak, and Vramin an awful lot, not to mention the 3 norns….
51 Jeanette Healy // Aug 19, 2008 at 3:57 pm
For me it’s not completely golden books…there are golden authors too.
I love an author that makes you think while you are reading the book, but that you can go back to time and time again because the reading is always different.
Golden Authors and books: Steven with the Vlad Books. I loved trying to figure out how everything tangles and untangles as Vlad thinks things through. Dorothy Dunnett with her Lymond Chronicles. The best cure for Depression because by the time you are done, with them the only direction is up. Of course i also think they should be required reading to show why you don’t do drugs or alcohol. Katherine Kurtz with her Deryni series. If you want a true look at what persecution can do to a society. Mercedes Lackey with the Valdemar books. A good exposure to equality between sexual preferences. EE Doc Smith and the Lensmen Books. Lessons in science that stick with a person. Christopher Stasheff with both series His Majesty’s Wizard and the Warlock books. One makes you re-examine religion and metaphysics, the other makes you realize Shakespear wrote fantasy and gives you a good break down of how government and society really works.
Heinlen’s Stranger in a Strange Land, which to this day I still can’t touch or say without shivering, because i read it at the wrong time.
Tad Williams Dragonbone Chair books. A long winded series that is beautifully written and makes you think with out the need for the 17 words to describe the color green.
Lawrence Watt Evans with Misenchanted sword, because it was the most wonderful example of irony ever!
Ian Toll with Six Frigates. A truly fascinating telling of the founding of the US Navy and what shapes our politices to this day in the Mediteranian Middle Eastern area.
Oh and the Hobbit, it makes a great bedtime story for a 5 year old.
There are lots more out there, but these are the ones that come to mind as standing out for me. And explains alot about just how i think.
52 Christopher Turkel // Aug 19, 2008 at 4:26 pm
For me:
“The Horse and His Boy” by C.S. Lewis. My first fantasy novel and got me hooked into the whole genre.
“Slaughter House Five” by…oh you know, the man himself. I was assigned this in college and as an English Major I knew I’d be reading a lot of books so I took this one at face value and read it as sci-fi. I loved it. I’d love to write a book like this.
53 Miramon // Aug 19, 2008 at 4:58 pm
This is a good thread for recalling good books.
Christopher@52:
I think reading Vonnegut is always a kick to the mental behind, enlightening and mind-changing in some ways, but, somehow, for me at least, the “kick” is never strong enough to last. In other words, for me his writing is not “golden” because his writing doesn’t really stay present in my mind long after I read it, fine as it may be while I am reading it.
Digressing somewhat randomly, the same thing applies for me to Mark Twain, who I think was Vonnegut’s spiritual predecessor in many ways. I don’t know if there are any extant recordings of Clemens doing a reading or anything like that, but I imagine that they had similar speaking voices, for some reason. If anything I enjoy reading Twain more than Vonnegut, by the way, because I appreciate Twain’s delicate and precise use of language regardless of what he is writing about, even when his subject is broadly humorous.
54 Liza // Aug 19, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Kit, the only one you listed that I’ve read is the de Lint. I take it you recommend the others? :-)
Some of mine:
Lewis Carroll, in particular Sylvie and Bruno (but also pretty much everything else in the volume of his Collected Illustrated Works that I grew up with)
Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren (not one I re-read regularly, but still an important one in some ways)
T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (which I’m re-reading right now, in fact)
Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin
I think Jo Walton’s Farthing might end up on that list too. I haven’t digested it enough yet. And come to think of it, also Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.
Heinlein has also had a big impact on me, but not always in a good way.
Gailmom @ 36: Neat to see that someone else has read Mutant Message/Down Under!
55 Jacob // Aug 19, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Phillip K Dick - Valis. I dont know how it changed me, I dont really know what it was all about as a I refuse to reread it becuase it scares the shit out of me, but I definatley felt significally different for about a year after having read it.
Hienlien - Assignments in Eternity
theres many more, but theyve all been listed here already.
56 Devinoch // Aug 19, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Many of the books mentioned here (Amber, Good Omens, HHGTTG) but here’s a handful of others…
Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams - I loved Neuromancer, but Hardwired, to me, has always been the superior book, a sleek juggernaut of a thing that has fumes and engine grease splattered all over it. I try and read this once every few years or so.
1984 by George Orwell - Still one of the most moving pieces of fiction.
Jhereg by some-or-other-guy - I love all the Vlad books, but I think Jhereg, Orca and Issola are my favorites of the bunch.
The Crown Jewels Cycle by Walter Jon Williams - I’ve never understood why these absolutely hysterical gems of sci-fi comedy never got more widely accepted. Just the notion of a bunch of royals attending “an Elvis recitation” should be enough to have you snickering. Track them down. The compendium of all three was called “Ten Points For Style” and should be the last thing you need to know. It’s about a man who’s aristocracy (sort of) and allowed to steal (as long as it’s fashionable and vaguely performance-esque).
Cyber-Way by Alan Dean Foster - I like a lot of ADF’s books, but this was one in particular that’s hung with me particularly well. Sci-fi mixed with Native American mythology. Track it down and thank me later.
57 Christopher Turkel // Aug 19, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I think what I liked about Slaughter House Five was the fact someone could write a book like that and get it published. The craft of it was astounding.
Oh ya, some guy named Brust wrote a few books I liked. Whatever happened to him?
58 Mplsfish // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I commented in LJ.
59 Jennifer of Montreal // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Theodore Sturgeon -without whose work any other book I have ever read and enjoyed would not have existed- wrote the perfect book - More Than Human. Doorways in the Sand/Lord of Light are in a tie. Mistress Marsham’s Repose by T.H. White - a true pioneer - is something I have read more than a dozen times since I was 12 and have gotten something different every time. The War Hound and the World’s Pain also falls into this category of multiple readings and meanings. Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean is the only book I have ever read that made me question existence, weep and rejoice all at once.
60 Mia // Aug 19, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I forgot a few…more authors than titles per se…
Reading Stephen Baxter right now (Manifold Time)…great for anyone who likes “hard” sci-fi.
Neil Gaiman
David Wingrove - Chung Kuo series
R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt books
Christopher Moore
61 Dan Abraham // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Again, not to be the screaming fanboy, but The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars is the book I always go back to when I need inspiration.
I’ve changed the way we play storytelling games by skipping over the “once upon a time” in favor of “Maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t…”
When my son is old enough to sit through a bedtime story, I’ll be asking him “bones?”
And, perhaps, the pain of the breakup of my group of college friends was eased a little by knowing that we shared stories in the same way.
==========
Oddly enough, the Shun Lee cookbook. I’d tried everything but sneaking into the kitchen at a Chinese restaurant to learn how to cook Chinese food properly. This book flipped the switch between “eh” and “ideal” for me. Now I can cook the food I dreamed of.
==========
Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstader. Handed to me in Junior High by a friend who called it the Weird Man’s Bible, GEB shaped my geekdom from haphazard oddity to the quest to assemble a toolbox of thought-toys I could carry anywhere. This paragraph doesn’t make much sense, but I was 11, ok?
==========
For The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, I want a concordance for the paintings, dammit.
62 Jeff Davis // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:34 pm
The relevant passage from early on in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun:
And the other relevant passage, this time from near the end of The Book of New Sun, when the narrator is reflecting on the memoir he has almost finished writing:
(Can you tell that The Book of the New Sun is my Book of Gold?)
63 B. Durbin // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Off the top of my head, I’ll say The Cure of Chalion, because it took my thinking in a new direction regarding religion— specifically, the means of being a saint. It’s a sort of twist on “doing God’s will”; just because you’re doing it doesn’t mean you know what’s going on.
It feels very real to me, that living saints would be very confused about the business. (Paladin of Souls added the idea that many are set on the path, and they may all turn away. The fact that this is used to guilt someone into a saint’s duties is pretty hilarious.)
64 Miramon // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Jacob@55:
Yep, I have to agree, Valis messes with your head. I wouldn’t call it “golden” so much as maybe “cesium” or “polonium”, or possibly antimatter-gold, though. I hate to think that Dick was living in that world 24/7, but all indications are that in fact he was, at least toward the end of his life. For some interesting info (read, nasty gossip) about Dick from someone who didn’t like him at all, see Thomas Disch’s (RIP) last book, The Word of God.
Devinoch@56:
Yeah, I’ve always liked WJW. I think those comedies you mention are riffs on Alexei Panshin’s superb Villiers books, but that doesn’t diminish WJW’s wit or humor. I just wish Panshin would have written more about Villiers….
Jennifer@59:
I wish I appreciated Sturgeon more. He’s often cited as the best of the best in the genre, but, while I enjoy his fiction, it just doesn’t quite come together for me as it apparently does for many other readers. I like that Nifft the Lean citation. The book didn’t have that effect on me, but I think it was a generally overlooked book of high quality.
65 Evil // Aug 19, 2008 at 11:00 pm
T.H. White’s The Once and Future King
There’s something about the sadness and inevitability of it all, as Wart becomes Arthur and tries - and fails - to figure out some way to make a world where people are more decent to one another that always makes neurons fire in a wonderful melancholy.
66 cesura // Aug 20, 2008 at 8:18 am
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Beatiful book about finding your way in life, and how it’s not always what you first thought it would be.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. This book, just as its prologue claims, will make you believe in God, or at least make you believe in the people who do. It’s about faith in hard times, and about how faith is private and not to be restricted by any one religion.
To Reign in Hell by that one guy. I’ve always had an interest in the subject of the war in heaven and the Devil (whatever he may actually be like), and To Reign in Hell is a new and completely different take on it. This book had a number of effects on me. It was the first book I ever read by my now favorite author. It showed me what can really be done with narrative, and even more so with dialogue, impacting me as a writer hugely. It frustrated me more than almost any other book I’ve read with its sense of crushing inevitability and that stupid Abdiel. If I hadn’t been loathe to put in down, I’d have thrown it across the room. I may have at one point.
Phantom by Susan Kay. I don’t read fanfiction, but I made an exception for two things: Steven’s Firefly novel, and this. A stunning look at the life of the Phantom of the Opera that makes him incredibly human and easy to reach. Beautiful book.
Honorable mention to Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle for making HUGE science explanations easy to follow and fun, getting me interested in a period of history, and being a fantastic enough writer for me to pound down 900 page books in 3 days. I, as a writer, would love to be able to describe things like he does.
67 Miramon // Aug 20, 2008 at 9:09 am
cesura@66:
>It frustrated me more than almost any other
>book I’ve read with its sense of crushing
>inevitability and that stupid Abdiel.
I must say as an aside, that I think that’s TRIH’s worst flaw, the seeming inevitability of the plot. I found it hard to take the characters as seriously as they deserve when it appears they are all chained to various predestined roles and outcomes. There may be some point about free will there, but I found it more frustrating than tragic that everything just seemed to “play out”. While the book has many other virtues, this one feature really made it impossible for me to enjoy it properly.
68 beer_crafter // Aug 20, 2008 at 9:51 am
The Hobbit was a great introduction to fantasy, and I’ll add a few more here that I didn’t see elsewhere.
Changeling - the first Roger Zelazny novel that I read.
The Conan series - Great pulp fiction for a preteen. I haven’t gone back to them in a long time, but they still reside in an honored place on my bookshelf.
Dream Park - Larry Niven read the minds of D&D players everywhere with this live-action roleplaying tale.
69 bakunin // Aug 20, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Got to agree with Eeyore at 31, “Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars” by Daniel M. Pinkwater.
Actually, everything Pinkwater wrote in the mid-70s to early 80s had a profound effect on how I turned out, but that one really was the most influential on me.
70 Ethan // Aug 20, 2008 at 8:25 pm
LOTR
Ender’s Game by Orson Card
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Jhereg and Teckla by Brust
500 Years After by Brust
Wild Cards II: Aces High
71 kit // Aug 20, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Dennis@32: Yes, I read and reread Hitchhiker’s Guide and all the rest, up through So Long, all through my childhood. I think it definitely influenced my sense of humor.
Lewis@35: I often wish I had encountered Callahan’s in my youth. I have only come to be a fan as of a few years ago.
Gail@36: I’m afraid I’m one of those people who enjoyed but wasn’t blown away by Rainbow Man, but I am glad you loaned it.
And I’m very grateful to you for loaning us Lies… as it really opened my eyes to the potential joys of history.
Andrew@37: Thanks for the correction.
Christopher Turkey@52: Its funny how many people cite this book when it is the one Narnia book I’ve never been able to make it through. But I loved the series, otherwise, as a kid. I wish they still published it ‘out of order’ instead of in its chronological order, as Narnia was the first place I encountered non-linear storytelling.
72 kit // Aug 20, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Liza@54: Recommended? Yes!! :)
Devinoch@56: I enjoyed some of WJW work more (like Hardwired), but I thought the Crown Jewels was a lot of fun. Thanks for reminding me of it. Same with Cyber-Way, easily ADF’s best book, which I haven’t thought of in years.
73 attjen // Aug 21, 2008 at 7:56 am
Haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but:
Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
was pretty important in my formative years.
74 Ethan // Aug 21, 2008 at 9:35 am
Taran Wanderer was great! I also really really liked Alexander’s First Two Lives of Lukas Kasha
75 Lewis Himelhoch // Aug 21, 2008 at 12:20 pm
The one book that is obvious by it’s omission from everyone’s response,including my own, is the Bible. Whether you have made it a part of your ethos or rejected it as entirely false, each of us has almost certainly at some point read parts or all of it and been influenced in some way by it.
Certainly Steven had to have examined it and the Apocrypha pretty thoroughly to write To Reign in Hell. In fact, I doubt there is a well known fiction writer that hasn’t at least made some kind of direct or indirect biblical reference
in their work.
76 cesura // Aug 21, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Miramon@67
That’s a good point, and I can see why you say that. I guess I found it really powerful because even though you like Satan and crew and want things to turn out, and hold out some silly childish hope that they will, you know they won’t, so I was stuck reading with kind of a morbid fascination to see when and how everything would go wrong. It was definitely a book that stayed with me long after reading, and one that I have reread and will read again.
77 Ethan // Aug 21, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Jhereg was on my list as it’s just an amazing story that is still readable years later. I recommend it to everyone . A friend kept getting me to try it, and I didn’t for a long time, then WHAM. I still remember reading the first 4 and thinking that was all there was, then discovering by accident Phoenix in a store far away from home. I still have that copy! Now with the internet we always know when a book is coming.
Teckla is there becasue it still gets me with the relationship parts. I relate to this book in many ways. It still makes me think and hits me in places. This book brings tears to my eyes every time.
Ender’s Game is like Jhereg for me. I keep reading it, always amazed by the thought behind it.
LOTR just sucked me in, though I still find it hard to read at times. I still remeber reading it for the first time and how the details of the ring getting heavier almost made me ill. That’s powerful!
I should add Atlas Shrugged. Obvious since I consider myself an Objectivist, but unlike many Oists I don’t love this book like I do those above. I don’t re-read it constantly. I read it once and then listened to most of it on audio. It took me years to digest what I read and certain scenes burned right into me.
500 Years After is both fun and also full of all those things that make a great epic. It was so much fun to read the Dumas style.
78 Gailmom // Aug 21, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Ethan @ 77 and others:
Jhereg got me instantly hooked on Vlad, and made me love and hate Steve before I ever met him (ha, my “inner groupie” just giggled cuz I can say i’ve met him). I remember reading it, then turning to Reesa and saying…”did I miss something, i think I started in the middle.” No, she snickered, that’s the first one. “Shit, i think i’m gonna hate Steve for this assume i know stuff style.”
Teckla, if it’s the one I’m thinking of, hurt to read. I felt like I was eavesdropping where I absolutely had no right to be. It was so uncomfortable because I HAD to keep reading, but I kept feeling like I should apologize to Vlad, or Steve, or someone. Which is wierd, cuz I still hadn’t met Steve when I read it, so why I felt I should apologize to him for reading a published book I don’t know…
hee hee, there goes the inner groupie giggling again…”before” i met him…hee hee hee
So many of these are bringing back great memories. And I now have a much longer list of books to look for and/or borrow! Any excuse to maybe get my brain stirred. :)
79 Ed Lee // Aug 22, 2008 at 2:01 am
This is a predictable book to choose in the circles I run (ok, walk) in, but The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Reading about someone else’s paradigm-shifts; their ability to transcend not only their circumstances but re-evaluate and constantly challenge their own views and values over and over again requires a thoughtfulness, energy, rigor, and guts that is impressive when you consider how many paradigms he had to attain, then shed and transcend. And I thought what he learned was quite valuable in helping me organize my thoughts around race, class and society.
And since this is Mr. Brust’s thread, it’s worth complimenting him on his ability to portray race and racial experiences in a genuine and smartly accessible way by writing about “humans” and “dragaerans” instead. If you’re at all curious about what it’s like to grow up a racial minority, just think Vlad, and that’ll give you some idea.
(how intentional was this, Steve? Where did you draw from to write about these kinds of minority experiences? Was it primarily class-based, or…? I’ve always been curious…and pardon if this has come up before or is an inappropriate place to post)
80 Nezahualcoyotl // Aug 22, 2008 at 3:03 am
Many of my “golden books” were mentioned already (especially Godel, Escher, Bach), but here are some directions which I have not seen.
1. Michener’s Centennial (along with several other of his novels) which made characters out of (long periods of) time and location.
2. Clavell’s Noble House presented a main character caught in a web of heavy responsibilities and the conflicting demands of different cultures. The problems he encounters and somehow overcomes are the most complex and convoluted but believable ones I can remember.
3. Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox. This is not fiction, of course, but another kind of storytelling with a haunting gravity. The opening chapter highlights the humanity of the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. This both underscores the horror these survivors had endured already and foreshadows the terrible sacrifices these men still would make to end the war.
81 skzb // Aug 22, 2008 at 3:47 am
Ed Lee @ 79: Thanks. Glad to hear I got it right. It’s mostly class based, except that one can’t be involved in proletarian organizations without a whole lot of interactions with minorities–in Minnesota mostly black or Indian. I was never trying to make any points about it; I don’t think I have anything to add to that. For me it was the background against which to paint the picture, you know?
82 Ethan // Aug 22, 2008 at 10:49 am
My brain is clearer now so I’ll add
Edges of the Earth by Richard Leo. Non-fiction. Incredible story.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805015752/ref=cm_rdp_product
83 Jeff Lowrey // Aug 22, 2008 at 4:48 pm
If you want to really unclasp wide the tables of your thoughts, try to read Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 immediately before reading Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller
Tim Powers usually manages to knock me for a loop or two, in that good way.
It wasn’t until my second reading of Agyar that I really understood it… and I keep coming back to it mostly just to revel in the understatement and the mood.
84 Siun // Aug 23, 2008 at 1:42 am
Interesting to think about books of gold being related to the age at which you read them … not sure that’s true for me overall but the early books that changed my life/worldview were R is for Rocket and Wrinkle in Time.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy is perhaps my most essential reading along with Pacific Edge - these shape my politics or reflect them and give me hope at each rereading (which is at least once a year).
For a while DeLint though no longer with the same pull except I still greet crows and spot odd happenings out of the corner of my eye.
Hardwired, Metropolitan and City of Fire are favorites but perhaps not gold.
Will Shetterly’s Dogland has a very special place in my heart.
Recently the wonderful Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine comes surprisingly close to gold and entranced me.
And for both the knowledge shared and the power of journalism that always remembers the human, Fisk’s Great War For Civilization shapes all my recent writing and much of my worldview and focus.
A familial comment - it is a joy to learn that my insistence on R is for Rocket had such an impact - which was returned when years later Kit insisted I try SF again leading to discoveries of the authors who now shape my dreams.
85 skzb // Aug 23, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Which reminds me of one of my other Books of Gold: Eleanor Cameron’s _The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet_. Still my favorite hard SF.
86 k // Aug 23, 2008 at 6:00 pm
skzb@85: And of course we’re agreed on this one. This book influenced me by suggesting possibilities about storytelling I hadn’t considered before.
Specifically, the protagonists find a mysterious classified advertisement in the paper looking for children’s help to build a rocket ship. The book states that the ad catches the kids’ attention because it is printed in green ink, and I remember being blown away that (at least in the edition I read) the text of the ad was actually in green ink in the book too. It was a small thing, but it opened up all kinds of windows in my head.
87 Miramon // Aug 23, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Mushroom planet! Oh yeah, I remember those books. No gold for me, but I read them when very young indeed.
Now that recalls some other childrens’ book, title and author forgotten, but on the same shelf at the library, I think. Aliens come by spaceship from the Moon. They live under very dry conditions there, and water is a terribly powerful solvent for them. For some reason don’t understand that the Earth is very wet. So they get out of their spaceship, and it starts to rain.
“Oh no! They’re shooting water bullets at us!”
88 Bill Reich // Aug 25, 2008 at 11:11 am
Between Planets by Heinlein: Not because of its intrinsic merit but because it turnmed me from an eighth grader who didn’t read and didn’t think novels were a good thing to a constant reader. Several of his juveniles and adult books were better but this one turned the switch.
Animal Happiness by Vicki Hearne Ideas I had never entertained before that have never left me.
Pheonix Guard by whatsisname: Without this book I would never have gotten around to reading Vlad, having bounced off the first book I picked up. So it unlocked the door to two great authors, whatsisname and Paarfi.
American Fried by Calvin Trilllin It’s too bad he never got to write about Valabar’s
Shut Up and Deal by Jesse May you had to be there. I guess Steve has
The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson
The Dark Border by Paul Edwin Zimmer
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson. If one of my favorite SF authors had never written fantasy I might never have read tLoTR or many others I have enjoyed.
89 Dru // Aug 25, 2008 at 6:30 pm
The Book of Gold in the Urth novels was, according to Wolfe himself, actually a copy of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance. For myself, it would have been the Eyes of The Overworld.
The other ones that really made a difference in my head were Not To Mention Camels by Lafferty, Doorways in the Sand (of all things) by Zelazny, the Urth books themselves by Wolfe, Earthsea, and Doris Piserchia’s Doomtime.
90 Ethan // Aug 25, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I want to add that the meal descriptions in Dzur are some of the best writing I have ever had the pleasure to read. It never fails to make me hungry. Was Valabar’s inspired by a real restaurant??????
91 Miramon // Aug 26, 2008 at 9:08 am
Dru@89:
Really? That’s hilarious. I love Vance’s work, but even so it’s hugely funny to think about all these serious little characters from Urth, most of whom spend all their time worrying about various weighty, tragic, and transcendent matters, being inspired by Vance’s wry humor to become librarians.
Doorways in the Sand was definitely a great book. I can see how Lafferty could well be golden for many people, but much as I liked his work, he never quite did it for me, just a little too far out in style, I guess.
92 Duffy Pratt // Aug 26, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Limiting myself to books that I’ve read over and over:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I read continuously for a couple of years when I was about 8.
Lord of the Rings — I still reread this.
Moby Dick — especially the chapters about whales in scrimshaw, and such…
Ulysses — I think I may be the only person alive who reads this book for fun, and did not read it in any college course.
End Zone, by Don DeLillo — a football novel about what it means to be a saint in America. It totally bowls me over every time.
All of Jane Austin — I think I might feel about her writing, small as it is, the way skzb feels about Dumas.
and, Philosophical Investigations, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which probably changed my mind about more things, and more times, than all of the others combined.
93 Gailmom // Aug 27, 2008 at 9:39 am
Duffy @ 92
I wonder, a bit, whether the fact you did not read Ulysses in any college course has had an impact on your ability to read that book for fun. :)
Miramon @87
ooh, now i really have to find those books, I bet my kiddos would love them. My 5 yr old is particularly into anything that isn’t “what it should be” right now, so water bullets would probably send her into hysterics! …wonder if they have them at our library……
94 Dru // Aug 27, 2008 at 11:55 am
I forgot to mention Tove Jansson’s Moomin books. Those books are still rockin’ today.
95 Jor // Aug 31, 2008 at 8:59 pm
The Dosadi Experiment
Frank Herbert
-When I learned that attention to nuance might be better than telepathy
The Stars my Destination
Alfred Bester
-What makes a man?
The moon is a harsh mistress
Robert Heinlin
-Like a warm bubble-bath full of loyalty, friendship, love and revolution.
The curse of chalion
Lois McMaster Bujold
-I’ve always suspected, but here I began to really understand what it means to be a good man.
The man who never missed
Steve Perry
-Everyone in this crew should probably read it
Dragon
-Which should be on this list because it changed the shape of my mind.
There’s one line in Sterling’s Schismatrix plus that blows the top of my head off, it’s a short bit about the protagonist interviewing a group of genetically engineered super-bright scientists who are seeking asylum. The conversation is totally normal and rational up to the point where the protagonist asks, “And how long do you plan to stay?”
To which his guest replies “Not long, just long enough for God to finish eating our brains”
Thank you all for your suggestions, I’m off to Green Apple Books to meet some new authors ;- )
96 Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Golden Books 1: The Sun, The Moon, And The Stars // Sep 4, 2008 at 11:41 pm
[...] at the blog Steven Brust shares with his roommates, the question was posed about the “golden books“–those ones that because you hit them at just the right time, and they were just the [...]
97 Amanda // Sep 11, 2008 at 6:57 pm
books that changed my life…books are my life, or lives, as it may be. but the best of them, from when i was a child? the hobbit (NOT lotr, which i didn’t read until a couple of years ago), and Zelazny’s Amber series…Corwin’s half, since Merlin wasn’t actually written by Zelazny, and it sucks. Corwin was my first anti-hero, not terrifically noble, high-minded or dashing. Just a man deciding on and then going for what he wants, and taking his breaks and saving the world when he doesn’t get it. Or trying to. But time/space travel, superhuman abilities…these are things that never left me.
What else? The Jaguar Princess, and The Darkling Hills (which, if you haven’t read it, you should!). The Secret Garden is one I’ll never get rid of, be I 25 (like now) or 90.
But the discussion can continue from there…books that changed my world more recently? Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series, along with George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire have shown me how complicated and utterly differing fantasy can be. Jordan wrote with such amazing subtlety, foresight and intricacy that he made everyone’s hero (Tolkien) look like a child with a crayon (no nasty comments about that one unless you’ve read the series…). Of course, now he’s dead, so we’ll never know that ending. And that’s a life lesson too. As for Martin, he is a man who is not afraid to kill his MAIN characters at whim, and has none of that “multi-racial group of heroes who go on a quest and save the world” crap. While it can be well done, it is also OVERDONE!!! Martin has all of Jordan’s complexity, and much less of his long-windedness. And he’s not dead. That’s a plus.
Also, Jacqueline Carey, whose Kushiel series shows us new meanings of love with every chapter, with a scope and beauty of writing that stun the mind. Not to mention the Sundering Duology (same author). Was Satan really the bad guy? A must read for anyone who thinks they’re Christian. And anyone who doesn’t.
And of course, Brust, who uses sarcasm to such stunning effect, and writes stories that are not only exciting, epic (in total, while being short enough to enjoy without having to be slogged through, taken one at a time), but just plain fun. Besides, who else makes blatant Monty Python references so casually? “I got better!” *giggles* We love you, Steve!
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