I was meant to be interviewed yesterday on a writing podcast, but some scheduling wires were crossed and we had to reschedule.

Still, I had already spent some time prepping for the questions that’d be thrown my way, and I felt like it might not be a bad idea to take one of them on here.

I’ve chosen:

What is your favorite book?

I’m one of those people who can’t give a simple answer to questions about ‘favorites’, because I can’t get my head around them. I don’t have etched-in-stone favorites of anything, really, because my tastes change and my enthusiasm bounces from place to place.

And, like some kind of smug hipster (which I don’t think I am 🤔❓), I can’t help but believe that naming favorites is more of a signaling exercise or tribal chest-beating thing than any real insight into a person’s mind. Especially when it comes to music.

Anyway…I can’t name favorite books or authors, but I can point to some that I consider influential or particularly memorable. So let’s do that.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

I wouldn’t call myself a Stephen King fan, but I am a Dark Tower fan. The sheer weirdness and creativity of The Gunslinger is hugely responsible for making me want to write fiction. The idea of creating a completely unique universe with its own rules and language really compelled me, and I believe it was right after reading that novel that I participated in my first NaNoWriMo.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

A great entry into one of my favorite sub-genres…the ‘mysterious zone’ story. I almost want to name Roadside Picnic in this spot, but Annihilation is a full novel with several additional books in its universe, whereas the classic Roadside Picnic (which gave rise to a whole generation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and clones) is short and left me wanting a lot more.

Annihilation is a uniquely eco-horror take on this trope. A couple of the follow-up books are good, while others (or parts of them) are damn near unreadable through their purple prose.

Of course, my love for this kind of story is why I began writing Tales from the Fringe.

The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

These are the first fantasy books I read many years ago, and they were also the first series of any kind that I really got into. I don’t think they had any impact on my own writing desires (which came later) but they have earned a permanent place in my brain.

I have written some fantasy stories (and may again in the future) but I won’t be writing them like Robert Jordan. I’m not big into long paragraphs of description, and I don’t like the way he wrote large battles — because IIRC he didn’t write them, but mostly glossed over them. But his worldbuilding was top notch.

Various Michael Crichton Books

I read many of Michael Crichton’s bestsellers during my formative years, so I imagine books like Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, and (of course) Jurassic Park had something to do with turning me into a writer. As far as sci-fi goes, that’s about as close as I got until later in life.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

This book got me into reading sci-fi probably two decades ago. From that point, though, I can’t say many of the novels I read left quite the same impression. This one, along with a couple of his other books (Lucifer’s Hammer, A Mote in God’s Eye) were great reads.

Various Kurt Vonnegut Books

I started with Slaughterhouse-Five and binge-consumed four or five of his other works immediately after. Big fan of the humor and oddness in these books.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

One of my other favorite genres is post-apocalyptic, so this one stood out. I’ve read quite a few random “world went to crap and we’re surviving” books, but this one is a classic. Despite the fact that when I first opened the ebook, I thought I’d downloaded a corrupted file…because of the punctuation. Or lack thereof.

So, there we go! A rapid, off-the-cuff roundup of what I would consider some of my favorite and/or most influential books and writers. Do you think this list makes sense based on my own writing? I’d be curious to know!