Books That Touch My Life

I should write more. I know I should, I just need to conquer the laziness which lays in wait for me in every couch, bed, and computer screen. Anyhow, as most of you know, there is a thing going round about on the book of Faces which asks one to list ten books that have touched you - no matter how insignificant they are as works of fiction. Upon scribbling down ten and posting them, I realized I had miss four of the most influential works on my life and upon pondering the new list of fourteen, I realized the list was far from complete. I figure a blog is a place for something and so there is a more complete list. I say "more" for who knows what books I am temporarily forgetting or what books I will read in the coming years. I'm limiting myself to the ones which have left an imprint of themselves in my life, mind, and soul that remains in some form or another to this very day; the ones that left their mark on my mind and for some reason, I cannot shake off.




List of books/poems that have touched my life:
(in a somewhat chronological order of influence)
(with random piece of thoughts beneath each)


The Complete Works of Beatrix Potter - Beatrix Potter (written and illustrated)
(Instilled in me the love of illustrations and the joy and simplicity of a good story)

"Princess Amanda and the Dragon" from Tales of The Kingdom - David and Karen Mains, illu. by Jack Stockman
(This is a story I don't know WHY it hasn't left my mind, but it never has since I first heard the story as a very young girl.)

King of The Wind - Marguerite Henry
(Aaaaaahhh...the nights with a mute boy and an Arabian horse. An amazing work of literature without any dialog between the main characters and others due to the fact that one is mute and the other is a horse. Follows the journey of a boy to manhood through the life of a horse.)

Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
(If there was ever a time when I fell in love with a spider and a pig, it was when I read this book. I sobbed when Charlotte died, and Wilbur was the most adorable and stupid pig I have ever known.)

Highs Feet In High Places - Hannah Hurnard
(Even I, the wounded soul and clumsy of foot, can receive the feet of a hind. In a nutshell, it is a story of the lover and his beloved, ie the Song of Solomon, and is based off the nineteenth verse of Habakkuk Chapter Three)

The book of Habakkuk
(Taught me through suffering, the Lord is to be praised. Though the Lord strike us dead, still we shall glorify His name.)

A Wrinkle In Time - Madeline L'Engle
(Created my love of science fiction and my fascination with time and space)

The Song of Solomon
(The best of all love stories)

The Wind In The Willows - Kenneth Grahame
(Perhaps the work of literature that I have read the most. I own three copies of it, if that tells you anything. It pulls together the beauty and simplicity of a child's story with the wonder and depth of an adult mind. Somehow, it has never left me and is a story I shall treasure always.)

The Trumpet of the Swan - E.B. White
(Pure genius. It gives sage advice, wonderful humor, and a delightful story. Very similar, but of a lesser degree, to The Wind In The Willows as far as the influence it has had on my life.)

Shadow of His Hand - Wendy Lawton
(Based on the life of Anita Dittman, a young half Aryan, half Jewish girl whose mother was a Jew and father was an Aryan in the Nazi political party. Follows her life through WWII and the Holocaust.)

Black Beauty - Anne Sewell
(While most of you know this to be a story of a horse, I think it offers a keen insight onto the ways of human behavior and begs the philosophical question "Does the soul effect the works of man? And what is the essence of a creature?". Or at least it did when I last read it. It has been a while.)

The Garden Wall - Jennie Bishop Allen
(Picture book. An analogy for love.)

Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
(Oh Anne... cannot decide whether or not I would actually get along with her in real life. She taught me to laugh at myself and that sometimes the person you can hate the most is turns out to be the best of the bunch *coughchokescough*...)

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baronness Oczy
(Ah, perhaps the most well laid romance between a man and his wife within a wonderful drama of the French Revolution.)

A Bear Called Paddington - Michael Bond
(While some people read this book as a young child, I did not pick up the book until three years ago and thus fell in love with a little bear who loves marmalade and gets into all kinds of scrapes. It is pure simple delightful fun.)

The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton
(Brilliance. That's all I can say. Pure brilliance.)

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
(This is more than a love story. In fact, I don't even really think of it as a romance story. It is a story of suffering and the overcoming of such suffering. It is a story of the abuse and misuse of human beings, especially by those who think they love them and rather only have a burning passion for desiring them instead of willing to give up their own selfishness for the other. There in lies the love story. It is also a story of self-respect and what it means to have self-respect.)

Sherlock Holmes (numerous works) - Arthur Conan Doyle
(I have always loved detective stories in some form or another. As a young girl, detective books. But Doyle does more than capture a story. He captures the heart and soul of human in all of its twistedness and its seeking of good in either right or wrong ways.)

Father Brown (numerous works) - G.K. Chesterton
(Just think philosophical and theological detective stories. Yes, they are awesome.)

Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
(A masterpiece. What isn't in there?)

Phaedrus - Plato
(The concept of the soul in relation to essences and forms)

Nichomachean Ethics, books 2 & 4 - Aristotle
(What does excellence mean? Unintentional pun there, but you'd only get it if you'd read Aristotle...)

I and Thou - Martin Buber
(Exploring the relationship between two...essences)

Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning
(People read this poem and ask me why it has affected me so greatly. I really should just write a longer blog post about it, but in a nutshell, it deals with a desire for something which twists itself into ultimately destroying what the desired.)

Bellwether - Connie Willis
(Basically, it combines everything I love in one: people, science, philosophy, time, and bunches of other awesome stuff.)