How does your reading history influence your writing?

There’s lots to worry about right now including that the Trumpeter Swans have not come back to the Comox Valley in their usual numbers yet this year. I have only seen one pair of birds in contrast to the hundreds that overwinter in the local farm fields. I hope this is a transient phenomenon.

But it is also the year-end and time for BEST OF lists.

As part of a recent writing exercise, I was asked to think of my life in five-year blocks and to recall (misremember) what fiction I was reading that most affected me at the time.

It would be great to say I was reading ancient Greek philosophers, or any of Quixote, Shakespeare, Milton and so on but I wasn’t. Do Classic Comics count?

I’ve made a list to see out old 2021.

And to make it harder, I couldn’t refer to my bookshelves or any other sources to twig my memory or correct dates, spellings, titles, and authors. And I wanted to do it over a short period as one memory seems to release others and I wanted the list to reflect what comes up first and was possibly the most formative. I have no evidence for this thought. So, for your enjoyment and editing pleasure my list from less than 24 hours.

Age Under Five

I was lucky to have had parents that read and sang to me. And I do remember the first time I realized I could read. I was on the upper level of a double-decker bus in Edinburgh and saw the blue and white (or was it green and gold) sign for Greyfriars Bobby’s Bar. I saw the letters BAR and said to whoever was with me, “Bar, just like Barbara,” which is my sister’s name. I digress.

All sorts of anthropomorphic adventures of bunnies, foxes, hedgehogs, badgers and the like dressed in waistcoats and aprons and other Victorian costumes.

The Tales of Beatrix Potter with their soft and detailed illustrations

When We Were Very Young and The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

Nursery Rhymes I can still recite wholly.

Presbyterian Prayers

Age Five to Ten

(This age category was the most fun thinking about)

Now We Are Six

The Wind in the Willows

A Child’s Garden of Verse – “I should like to rise and go Where the golden apples grow.” And later as a teenager, Treasure Island.

Grimm’s Fairy Tales with grim woodcut drawings of children in peril

Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, less grim

(and both books were crumbling antique editions that seemed to add to the seriousness of the situations that the children contending with)

Enid Blyton’s Noddy and Big Ears series and many others

Tintin series

Children’s Annuals–Rupert Bear, The Bunty Book

Heidi, Black Beauty, Little Women (tears after each)

Swallows and Amazons

Age Ten to Twenty

(Here the age categories are challenging, the journey from children’s literature to more adult interests)

Tales from Narnia, CS Lewis (but never The Last Battle)

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

And this may be cheating but some movies that affected me profoundly:

            Easy Rider and A Clockwork Orange and later Trainspotting and although I tried I was never able to read Anthony Burgess or Irving Welsh.

Mary Renault books

The Once and Future King, TH White

And believe it or not, as I took Greek and Latin in high school, I read the Penguin Editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But have yet to read the Aeneid or the modern derivative novels.

The dystopias.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm,

Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids. (I’m not allowed to look up the author)

All Quiet on the Western Front

DH Lawrence Sons and Lovers and others

Catch 22

And in my 20’s to 30’s.

Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and others

Mavis Gallant short stories (I want to look up the name of the collection)

Early Alice Munro (same, Lives of Girls and Women?)

The Deptford Trilogy and others, Roberson Davies

Stephen Finlay, The Wars, Famous Last Words, the one about the bird plague?

I won’t get the dates right but Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, The Cat’s Eye, Surfacing and later The Handmaid’s Tale.

Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon.

Conrad, Heart of Darkness after having seen the movie, Apocalypse Now

30’s to 40’s and probably mixed up with my 50’s

Lots of children’s books for small children. Peepo, Goodnight Moon and so on

Carol Shields, Larry’s Party and others, which reminded me of

Mordecai Richler, Barney’s Version and others

More Atwood, the futuristic dystopias, Oryx and Crake and others

More Lessing, the futuristic dystopias

Drabble and Byatt, Possession (I’d have to look the others up)

More Munro

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children which brought me to

Anita Rau Badami, Tamarind Mem

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Vikram Seth, A Fine Balance and A Suitable Boy

The English Patient and others, Michael Ondaatje

Ann Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees

Tim O’Brien, The Things We Carried

Annie Proulx, The Shipping News and her short stories including Brokeback Mountain

Michael Crummy, The Wreckage

Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus

Grahame Green, The Quiet American, The Heart of the Matter

Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

John Vaillant, The Tiger and The Golden Spruce

Half a Yellow Sun and I need to look up the author’s spelling Adiche?

And now in my 60’s, I finally got to

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Melville, Moby Dick

And I am otherwise busy reading short story collections by many of these authors and others.

So, a fun exercise to see what you one does recall and why. And it was most helpful that the word-processing program spell checked many authors names.

I think if I looked at this list again tomorrow, I would remember even more but it’s more interesting to see what comes up without much thought.

And even if I had looked at my bookshelf, since I usually foist whatever I have loved reading on someone else so I wouldn’t even have kept a copy of a favourite book.

What do we remember and why? What was your most formative fiction?

I wish you all a safe and joyful holiday as we navigate this next episode of uncertainty.

Post Script

Since I wrote this a few hours ago, I realize I forgot On the Beach, Nevil Shute and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road but even better, when I drove by the field where the Trumpeter Swans feed, there are now at least a dozen of them.