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After doing a post about the 10 most influential books to literature, I wanted to create a post about the 10 books I consider the most influential books to me. I am open to all suggestions.
Hamlet. William Shakespeare.
The Iliad. Homer.
Le Morte d’ Arthur. Sir Thomas Malory.
The Lord Of The Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien.
Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury.
The Stand. Stephen King.
The Shadow of the Wind. Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Don Quixote. Miguel de Cervantes.
Frankenstein. Mary Shelley.
Dracula. Bram Stoker.
What are some of the most influential books for you?
charles french words reading and writing 
Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory. I am having some of my students read some of the King Arthur stories. I modify them a bit. They love the stories.
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Yes, they are wonderful.
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Sooo many. Thomas Mann books. The Stranger. Sister Carrie.
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Yes!
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1. Gandhi, Autobiography
2. Plato, The Republic
3. Shakespeare, King Lear
4. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
5. Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar
6. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
7. D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
8. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads,
9. Baba Ram Dass, Be Here Now
10. Pablo Neruda, 20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Thanks, Charles. Great topic! Gary
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Wonderful choices!
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You too 🙂 (I’ve read and enjoyed 8 or your 10 too 🙂 )
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thank you!
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Would you believe I had started are-reading The Stand a couple of weeks before all this hit?
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That is an interesting bit of serendipity.
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“Le Morte d’ Arthur. Sir Thomas Malory.”
I never read this one, will do so, post haste.
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It is the first English collection and assembly of the Arthurian myths.
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Good morning Charles…thank you and take care
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Good morning Charles thank you for your post take care
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You are very welcome.
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Great choices! Two I’d add – Master and Margarita by Bulgakov I thought was just wonderful and The Collector by John Fowles. OK, I know the premise behind the latter has now been done to death in TV movies but its still a strong book.
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Yes, it is, and thank you!
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Your list is outstanding, Charles. For me: Charlotte’s Web, The Story of Little Babaji, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone With the Wind, Jumanji, Green Eggs and Ham.
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Jennie, thank you! Your list is wonderful.
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You are welcome, Charles!
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My ten:
1. The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. 1984. George Orwell
3. Macbeth. William Shakespeare
4. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
5. The Odyssey. Homer
6. Lavondyss. Robert Holdstock
7. Gormenghast. Mervyn Peake
8. Collected Poems. T.S. Eliot
9. The Dispossessed. Ursula K. Le Guin
10. The Lurking Fear and Other Stories. H.P. Lovecraft
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Thank you! Wonderful choices!
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One year in my mid-20s I decided to challenge myself and read Solzhenitsyn’s “In the First Circle”. I wanted to 1) Read a banned book that was a fictional/semi-autobiographical account of life in the USSR and 2) Actually finish a Russian novel.
This profoundly enhanced and influenced my understanding of communism and elitism & how it functioned in the lives of everyday people – artists, peasants, educated, uneducated, etc etc.
I offer this up as one of many literary influences.
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Thank you!
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frankenstein,
my reading life and the water is wide (both by pat conroy),
sophie’s choice,
the giving tree,
the mists of avalon,
my grandmother told you to say she’s sorry,
my sister’s keeper
the roald dahl treasury
poetry by pablo neruda
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Wonderful choices!
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Thanks !
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You are welcome!
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Again, a great post that is going to make me really think and evaluate. For starters, To Kill a Mockingbird is definitely on my list. And believe it or not, A Time to Kill by John Grisham.
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Thank you, and I would like to see the list.
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Okay, I’ve come up with my list. There are fewer “classics” on my list than many of the others listed above and below, but this is a very personal list of books that changed me either as a person or as a writer.
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Time to Kill
A Tale of Two Cities
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Wuthering Heights
Macbeth
Rebecca
Molokai
No Friend But the Mountains
The Count of Monte Cristo
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Thank you so much!
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I see a lot of these titles in your writing. How do you feel Hamlet influenced your stories?
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The themes in Hamlet definitely run through much of my writing, although I am not sure it is always intentional.
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A very good selection. Mine would include stories by MR James, George Borrow, John Buchan, Geoffrey Household – and most of your list.
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Thank you!
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Great post here, and I’m having a very hard time with this. I think The Bible most of all, but then just to keep the thread going.
St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word
JRRT Lord of the Rings
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Camus, The Plague
R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages
Romily Jenkins, Byzantium the Imperial Centuries
Ronald Knox, Spiritual Aeneid
Boccaccio, The Decameron
Shakespeare (where to begin and there is no end)
Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers
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Thank you! Excellent list!
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For greatest influence, I’d have to go with the collected works of three authors: Raymond Carver, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor.
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Liz, thank you for these wonderful choices!
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Two stand out for me: Dune, for a mind-blowing introduction to SF, and A Wizard of Earthsea, ditto for fantasy.
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Excellent choices!
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Thank you!
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Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Stoner by John Edward Williams
The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
and many many more.
Thanks for your inspirational posts.
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You are very welcome, and thank you!
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