I Have To Pick Just One? #MFRWAuthor 2018 Week 5

This week’s writing prompt is, “A book that has influenced my life.” I have always been a voracious reader. I remember my dad reading me The Hobbit before bed, along with the staples of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. When I started picking up books, I had the complete Litte House books, dozens of Baby-Sitters Club books, and Chronicles of Narnia boxed setActually, the more I think about it, the more books I owned or rented from the library on the regular. The library was a weekly adventure during the school year, and a daily trip in summers.  In junior high, I was a library assistant. And while I was supposed to be shelving books, I usually found my way to a secluded corner with a copy of a Shakespeare play.

When I went to college, I first majored in English, and then went for my master’s in English as well. I’ve read hundreds if not thousands of books. I could never say that one book influenced my life more than another, because they have all left their mark in some way. That is easy to say of books that I love, such as The Lord of the Rings, The Monk, or The Joy Luck Club, but could also be true of books I have hated such as Wuthering Heights (#thereIsaidit).

 

Of course, there are books I love, and some I have read more than once. I’ve written before about books I have read more than three times, but there are very few books I would ever read more than once. There are just too many wonderful books in the world to read. I’m currently trying to work my way through the works of Amy Tan, Pearl S. Buck, and Tolkien. I haven’t read the recently released finished version of Beren and Lúthien and I haven’t finished all of the Histories of Middle-Earth, so I have plenty to keep me busy and keep me from re-reading old favorites. 

What do you think? What book(s) influenced your life? Let me know in the comments.

This post is part of the 2018 MFRW Weekly Blog Post Challenge. You can read all my posts in the challenge for 2018 here.