The Books That Stayed With Me

Reading is my biggest love, it brings me the best dreams, inspires my creativity and escapes me from the world after days full of chaos and stress.

For this Book Week Scotland we challenged ourselves to list the five books which had the biggest impact on our lives, the reads that stayed with us and helped to shape us as readers, writers and people. Of course, as with all passions, meeting the limitations proved impossible, so I present to you the six books which made a lasting impression on my life.

1. The Moomins, by Tove Jansson; these children’s books are hands down where my passion for stories began. I can remember hundreds of hot days, lying out on Welsh beaches, wrapped up in a towel and tired from swimming, when my mother beside me would read aloud the adventures of Moomin Troll. Her masterful telling of each beloved story never grew old, and brought to life this far off magical world. I would be rocked asleep by the tales and would spend my afternoons and nights dreaming of Moomin Valley and all who lived there.

2. Howls Moving Castel, by Diana Wynne Jones; this is my favourite book of all time. A beautiful story, wound into complex mystery, that truly takes two reads to fully grasp. Diana Wynne Jones is a true artist with words, painting out a world which is shocking in size and complexity. This is the only novel I have read more than five times, and will likely read again. Howls Moving Castel taught me that a story does not have to be straight forward to completely grasp the reader, and certainly does not have to be full of plot twists to succeed in creating surprise.

3. Stravaganza: City Of Masks, by Marry Hoffman; the first full length novel I ever read on my own. This book holds a special place in my heart not only because it is the first I managed to read, but because it was my first taste of young adult fiction, and what a taste it was. This incredibly heartfelt book explores the life of a young man suffering with cancer, and creates for him an adventure into which he finds a new life. Kicking off what proved to be a highly popular series, Marry Hoffman started my obsession with YA, which I have carried with me to today.

4. The Wee Free Men, by Terry Prachett; of course I could not fail to mention the art that is Terry Prachett. The Wee Free Men stood as my first taste of Diskworld, a taste which swiftly turned into an appetite. Terry Prachett was the first author I came across who wound hilarious humour with action and serious moments, all tightly bound into a science fiction package. One of my father’s favourite authors, Prachett, and my dad, bought me a love of science fiction, which shaped my first attempts at writing and almost all of my short stories.

5. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte; on every good readers top five list there should be at least one obvious classic. For me this is, without a doubt, Jane Eyre. Though I love Shakespears ‘Love, Labours, Lost’, and enjoy every rendering of Austin’s many works, it is Jane Eyre that I enthuse over. Before reading the novel I fell in love with this classic through the many movies and TV series it has wrought. Some of my favourite childhood programmes being Jane Eyre. Then, when I was capable, I delved into the pages of the book itself. Charlotte Bronte taught me that you could rewrite your life, to tell the story you wished it did. She taught me about the art of writing the thrill of the unknown, the fear that other people could impose. Jane Eyre consumed my mind, and to this day still holds onto me.

Of course I couldn’t quiet bare to leave with just five, so grant me this sixth; The Ghost stories of M.R.James; for all of my life my mother’s best party trick was her ability to tell from memory the ghostly tales of writer M.R.James. These tales ignited in me my fear of grown people crawling, and my love of ghost stories, so much so that this is now a party trick I too have strived to perfect.

Although not the grown up list of books you were likely expecting, these are the stories that truly shaped my life. From the important worlds we are gifted as children, to the novels we obsess over in adulthood, every book we read, and read to others, has an impact, big and small, on who we are, and where our minds wonder.