Five Important Books I’ve Read

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Written by: on Monday, July 25th, 2011

The Daily Post asks:
List the 5 most important books you’ve ever read. Don’t think too much, just get a pen, or open a new post, and start listing books. When you’re done, go book and write a sentence or two about why each book ended up on your list. Do you think those books would have been more or less important had you read them at a different time in your life? Or would each one have effected you just as much regardless of when you read them?

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling – I can’t pick which book so I might as well go with the whole line-up. This has been the only series where I just couldn’t put them down. I couldn’t get enough and actually finished each book within a day or two because I just had to know what happened. I’ve never been able to do that with any other book before and after.

The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams – I have learned from this book that it is a very bad idea for the first 100+ pages to have no action. No action at all whatsoever. It’s a very bad idea. I made it through the first 100 pages and had to call it quits. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – I own these two volumes that are supposed to be the complete collection about Sherlock Holmes. While I devoured the first volume and part of the second (I died out during The Baskerville Hounds), it was a real lesson that it is very difficult to write a character that’s supposed to be much smarter than you. The fact that the author was able to pull out tons of little details and deduce major plots based on them and move things along… I loved it.

A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony – This was my first leap into a fantasy world where things really pushed the envelope and still managed to work. This taught me that not everything has to have a scientific reason or has to be explained. Fantasy is truly where anything goes.

Desert Eden by J.M. Morgan – I’m not sure why this comes to mind. I just know that this was pretty much the first book that I willingly read outside of school. I remember liking it a lot and always wanting to get the other two books. I tried but libraries in the area never had the other two books or even heard of it. It wouldn’t be until years later when the internet came around and eBay was at its peak when I tracked down the other two books and finished the trilogy.

 

As for whether it makes a difference on when the books were read, I don’t think so. Harry Potter was consumed upon sight. I think the only thing that really would be affected is Desert Eden as I pretty much mark this as my first book despite my having read a number of books from the Great Illustrated Classics line-up. I figure the GIC books were often required to read in school so it wasn’t my true step outside to other books.

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