…about the ten most influential books of your life. So I’m going to give it a shot. In no particular order except roughly chronological…
1) Our Universe, by the National Geographic Society. An illustrated atlas of the solar system and beyond, unbelievable in its artistry and comprehensive in its information. It even came with a floppy vinyl record that demonstrated the doppler effect. For a kid who was a space freak (and had plenty of classmates willing to inform him of same), it was THE book.
2) Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. An anthology of vignettes of turn-of-the-century life in a fictional Ohio town, this was an assignment for summer reading when I donked off English 11 in the summer of 1988 so I could fit AP English in later. While the books in general were pretty good – Gatsby just missed this list – Winesburg is the one that first made me think, “I wish I could write that.” Still does, over twenty years on.
3) The Moon Goddess and the Son, by Donald Kingsbury. A recommendation in the summer of 1989 from my long-distance nigh-imaginary dream girl at the time, this one had everything: non-linear plotting, near-future setting, and a concept of simulation-based historical and political analysis that did as much as anything to start making a political science major of me.
4) The Making of the President 1960, by Theodore H. White. I read this in its entirety while waiting for a scholarship interview my senior year. A landmark view of a style of politics in transition, before primaries and television made party conventions irrelevant. Subsequent installments were also interesting, but this is the one that made White as a political commentator – and conclusively bent the curve from pre-law to political science.
5) V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The greatest graphic novel of all time, Watchmen be hanged, this is the book that opened my eyes to what anarchy really means…and to what terrorism can really accomplish. Also features the most compelling anti-hero of British fiction until the coming of DCI Gene Hunt. If all you’ve seen is the movie, you really don’t know the story.
6) Griffin and Sabine (and its sequels), Nick Bantock. An obvious hook for any English minor pining after somebody far away, the combination of “epistolary novel” and artwork that you actually had to open up and touch was unlike anything before or since. I think this got turned into an interactive CD-ROM at one point, and it’s the sort of experience that would be downright transformative rendered on an iPad. The quintessential grown-up pop-up book, and one that made me realize that a bad girlfriend in the deep South was no way to go through life.
7) The Macintosh Bible, 4th ed., by Art Naiman et al. I got my first Mac in the summer of 1994 before going to grad school. This is the book that made it possible for me to use it, and thus to wind up with the life and career I currently enjoy.
8) The Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson. Ultimately, this is the reason I am in Silicon Valley. Written at the height of the dot-com boom, the stories within – new arrivals trying to make it big, sales people trying to spike the hockey stick on the last day, or a young CEO trying to take the company public – made me wonder if I could do that, and if I could do it in Northern California at ground zero of the future. As it turns out, I can. Which is kind of a relief.
9) To Say Nothing Of The Dog, by Connie Willis. The most accessible of her Oxford time-travel books, this is just begging to be made into the first truly great sci-fi-rom-com. I keep going back to it (and forcing it on the wife) just because you can hear those characters in your head, pitch-perfect. (And if you don’t think I’m desperate to make sure I live until All Clear is published…)
10) Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson. The Bigend trilogy shows Gibson working in an entirely new world, full of idiosyncratic characters, too-real-to-be-real plot twists, and chockablock with brand names – in other words, ours. James Bond reimagined for the 21st century, with secret agents replaced by nondescript young women and gadgets you could probably pick up on eBay if you searched long enough. Cayce Pollard probably informs my wardrobe over the last 3 years more than any other influence – lots of plain solid separates that could pass muster anytime since the end of the war…