The Top 10 Books That Have Influenced Me

I read this, and got thinking about the books that have influenced me in my life. 

So, I decided to make a list.  I cut it from 20 to 10; as a writer, it’s always good to try stripping down your message to deliver it clearly.

Here’s my top 10:

A Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi

-          Miyamoto Musashi was a samurai in 17^th Century Japan.  Because of an interest in his life developed through reading Sword of the Samurai, I picked this up way back in elementary school.  Every time I read it – frequently a couple times a year – I pick up something new.  His philosophy of fighting and planning has informed governments and businesses around the world.  This remains my favourite book on strategy.

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

-          Reading this book is like boiling a frog in water.  You don’t realize it while it’s happening, but Conrad’s carefully woven narrative takes us all down river, sheathing us in the darkness of the jungle.  It’s an unsettling journey – and a concept I have since realized is repeated throughout literature and film, across cultures.   Think Alice in Wonderland, or The Matrix’s journey down the rabbit hole.  Looking out from the Heart of Darkness, I began to see a much broader pattern emerging.

My Traitor’s Heart, Rian Malan

-          A review on the back of my edition says Malan will forever change the way you look at the world.  He certainly did for me.  A raw, visceral look at Apartheid South Africa, My Traitor’s Heart made me revisit every assumption about human nature I had come to rely on.  It added a layer to my experience of books like Tao te Ching and really forced me to look deeper into what, exactly, makes the human animal tick.

On The Road, Jack Kerouac

-          Still my favourite book.  It’s a rambling tale, brilliantly told.  I relate very much to the mindset of Sal Paradise; driven, head spilling over with thoughts, he's a tumbleweed rolling around America in search of meaning.  I have travelled all over the world looking for meaning myself.  This journey has cut deep facets into my perception, bringing me closer to a point of understanding.  On The Road has been my constant travelling companion.

Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

-      I am a creative person and a story teller. I’ve been making up characters and crafting my own tales since I first picked up a pen (which was a while before I could actually write). The Lord of the Rings is just such a great, imaginative yet rooted tale, I found myself completely transported to Middle Earth. LOTR actually inspired me to develop my own mythological world and characters, steeped in its own lore. I’ll write it down – one of these days.

The Worthing Saga, Orson Scott Card

-        I was somewhere deep in Ecuador when I first read this.  When people think Orson Scott Card, they generally think Ender’s Game, a book used to develop strategy by militaries all over the world.  I’ve never read Ender’s Game (being made into a movie now) but The Worthing Saga really left an impression.  It (combined with Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy) instilled in me the idea of planting seeds in the present that will bear fruit in the future and of being able to prognosticate based on current and historical realities.  Of course, there’s a deeper allegory in the idea of sleep, too (read this, then go watch Inception).  I have come to realize that the real-world equivalent of Somec isn’t religion – that’s just a red herring.  The real false god we all cling to is a silo-based vision of individuality.

Tao te Ching (translated), Lao-tzu

-          For my major OAC (yes, I’m old enough to have had grade 13) English project, I did a compare/contrast between Western thought and Eastern thought, using Taoist and Confucius philosophy as my entry point to the East.  Reading the Tao te Ching was like defogging glasses; the philosophies therein just made sense to me, though I couldn’t have told you why at the time.  Now that I’ve begun to wrap my head around cognitive function, I can tell you exactly why this little book is as relevant today as it was when it was written.

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

-          From my travels, I have collected a series of pictures of myself sitting in exotic locales, pen to page of a journal.  In most of these images, I’m writing notes for the book I have written three times, but never finished; my generation's equivalent to The Sun Also Rises.  Hemingway's finished story defined a generation, as On The Road would also do.  Both books were hugely influential in shaping my writing style and way of interpreting the world.  Plus, I discovered this book very shortly after I discovered bull fighting; something else Hemingway and I have in common.

Time Machine: Sword of the Samurai, Michael Reaves + Steve Perry

-        This was a choose-your-own-adventure book I read somewhere in the Spring of my youth.  The protagonist in the story (the reader) travels back in time to feudal Japan to retrieve a sword from samurai Miyamoto Musashi.  The way Musashi and the whole culture of the sword was presented in this book really struck a cord with me, launching my continuing interest in both fencing and the Eastern Approach to looking at life.

Travels, Michael Crichton

-          Michael Crichton is the guy who wrote Jurassic Park and created ER; he was also a trained doctor, a travel-addict and a man who sat uncomfortably on the edge between science and mysticism.  I picked this book up for the travelogue and because I enjoyed his other books, but what I really took away from Travels was Crichton’s methodology of applying scientific reasoning to that which seems to defy explanation.  It was from this book I developed the idea that there is no such thing as the “super” natural; what we see as supernatural is really just the dark corners of understanding that we have yet to fill in.

and

The Red Queen, Matt Ridley

-         I know, I’m cheating; this is number 11.  If I have learned anything in my life, it’s that social rules are prescribed.  You need structure to function, but rules are meant to be a foundation, not a prison.  The Red Queen brought structure to a lot of concepts that had been floating in my head, nebulously.  It’s a book about biology, evolution and behaviour; understanding these things is really the root to anthropology, the understanding of mankind. 

        This level of understanding is Kurtz’s voice; our preconceived notions are Somnec, keeping us from consciousness; the discipline of a samurai allows us to journey through the mythology of history to The Centre, where all things begin and ultimately, end.

This, then, is my list.

What's yours?