Books that changed my life

Was it a childhood favourite that helped you discover the full power of your imagination? Was it an inspirational true story that taught you not to take life for granted? Was it a self help book that made you realise you were not living your life to the full? Or was it a novel in your adult years that taught you about love?

For me, two books have changed my life - one in my childhood, and one on the cusp of adulthood.

In the newspaper on the weekend, I read a great feature where eight well-known Wellingtonians - writers, politicians, a broadcaster, a sportsman and a comedian were asked what book changed their life, so I thought I would share mine with you.
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

I was delighted to discover that Bill Manhire - writer and the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University - and I share a life-changing book: The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.

Being a shy, quiet child who preferred reading to sport, I read a lot of books in my childhood and Enid Blyton was there through it all. I read as many of the Famous Five books as  could get my hands on, and then discovered her foray into fantasy which I struggled to put down and read over and over again.

I will admit that I don't remember much of the story, but I do remember how it opened up my imagination and made me believe in another world, another reality that is closer than you think. It sticks with me today, and I even think it influences how I write - not shying away from magic, other worlds, and the possibility of a force, a sort of electricity around us that we can neither see, nor touch, nor understand, that would explain things like spirits and demons and people that don't quite make sense in this world.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

At the tender age of fourteen, I went to my local library after getting frustrated with the lack of mature fiction in my school library. I was bored with every book I read, so I asked the librarian if she would point me towards something a little different, something exciting. And that's when my obsession with Jamie and Claire Fraser began.

You've all heard me talk about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series - I seem to find a way to slip it into every post I write about books - but it's just so GOOD!

Looking back now, I do wonder if it was appropriate for a fourteen year old girl to be reading a book so full of very, very detailed sex scenes. But in a way, I'm grateful because it taught me that sex is not just physical - it's the most intimate thing you can do with another person and when you love them more than life itself, you bear your soul to that person. And Diana Gabaldon herself taught me that the intense, all-consuming, impassioned love that exists between Jamie and Claire is possible in the real world - because she experiences it herself.

And then there's the time travel. I LOVE time travel stories, and this book started me on the road to writing my own novel - which I've dreamed about doing all my life - which also has a time travel element to it.

Again, it was not just the book, but the author who influenced me here. She came to Wellington a few years ago promoting the seventh book in the series, An Echo in the Bone, and spoke to a packed audience about her books.
At the end during question time, someone asked "What advice to you have for aspiring writers?" And she said, "Just start writing".
Then someone asked, "How do you find the time?" and she said, "How many hours a day do you spend watching television?"
Simple, I know. I mean, of course all you have to do to start writing a book is to "Just start writing", but so often we have this perception of an author having a degree in English Literature and a masters and a PHD to top it off - oh, and you have to be graying around the edges.
But - although Diana Gabaldon has three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and Quantitative Behavioral Ecology - she was just a woman who wanted to write a book, so she just started writing - in her thirties while raising three young children.
So that's how Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton changed my life.

What book, or books, changed your life?

It's NZ Book Month!

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

― Dr. Seuss

 

Guess what! Not only is March the beginning of my favourite season - autumn! But, it's also New Zealand Book Month - a whole month dedicated to books! Yes it's a tad nerdy to be excited about book month, but hell, I am a nerd when it comes to books, you learn to love it.

So I hope Dr Seuss, my favourite childhood author (I still have a very battered copy of The Lorax on my book shelf) has provided you with some inspiration, and you can look forward to some more in the coming weeks as I share with you more quotes from my favourite authors.

And here is my Top Five list of books I think you should read this month because they're really quite good.

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

A warning before you start reading this one: Put aside a couple of years because this is a seven-book series and once you get halfway through Cross Stitch, Jamie and Claire Fraser will rule your life.

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon--when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach - an "outlander" - in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in 1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire, and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. Link

Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Even if you have seen the movie, I still highly recommend you read Water for Elephants. The movie does the book very proud, but misses out a bit of detail - even some of the characters. It's one of the best books I have ever read.

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski is tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It is the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And Rosie, an untrainable elephant who is the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grows among this unlikely trio is one of love and trust, and, ultimately, their only hope for survival. Link

Goodbye Sarajevo, by Atka Reid and Hana Schofield

It is very hard to wrap your head around the fact that this is a true story, every word. But it's brilliant, and a poignant reminder that no matter how hard things get here in New Zealand with natural disasters and the up-and-down economy, we are one of the luckiest countries in the world to have been spared from war.

May, 1992. Hana is twelve years old when she is put on one of the last UN evacuation buses fleeing the besieged city of Sarajevo. Her twenty-one-year-old sister, Atka staying behind to look after their five younger siblings, is there to say goodbye. Thinking that they will be apart for only a few weeks, they make a promise to each other to be brave.

But as the Bosnian war escalates and months go by without contact; their promise to each other becomes deeply significant. Hana is forced to cope as a refugee in Croatia, far away from home and family, while Atka battles for survival in a city where snipers, mortar attacks and desperate food shortages are a part of everyday life. Their mother, working for a humanitarian organization, is unable to reach them and their father retreats inside himself, desperately shocked by what is happening to his city.

But when Atka finds work as a translator in an old smoky radio station, and then with Andrew, a photojournalist from New Zealand, life takes an unexpected turn, and the remarkable events that follow change her life, and those of her family forever. Link

One Day, by David Nicholls

Although it didn't blow my mind at first like I thought it would, being a bestseller and all, it grew on me. The thing I loved about it was how it focussed on the unique friendship between a guy and a girl more than a tear-jerking love story. Having male friends myself who I love to pieces I had many "that's totally us" moments while reading One Day.

15th July 1988. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year which follows?

One Day is a funny/sad love story spanning twenty years, a book about growing up – how we change, how we stay the same. Link

The Bronze Horseman, by Paullina Simons

It's the beginning of another series, but rest assured this one is only three books long - three long books you will struggle to put down. It is an incredible story of human courage, survival and finding love is the midst of World War II when the world felt like it was coming to an end in Leningrad, Russia.

Leningrad 1941: Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. It is a hard, impoverished life, yet the Metanovs know many who are not as fortunate as they.

The family routine is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. On that fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young officer named Alexander.

Tatiana and her family suffer as Hitler’s army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love. It is a love that could tear Tatiana’s family apart, a love that carries a secret that could mean death for anyone who hears it.

Confronted on the one hand by Hitler’s unstoppable war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world. Link

http://nzbookmonth.co.nz/

Want this

Super excited for the 20th Anniversary edition of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander! Apparently it's got a faux-leather cover, ribbon bookmark, and extra goodies like timelines and maps. It comes out on July 5th... Off to pre-order my copy!

Can't believe it's 20-years-old... it's nearly as old as me and I first read it when I was 14-years-old. Best book ever. If I can write a book half as good as this (and I plan to), I will be happy:)