What was the most influential book you ever read?

Can only one book be the most influential, or inspirational? Throughout the stages of my life there have been many important books.

I recently heard on talk back radio a discussion asking what was the most influential book in one’s life. The most influential? There have been many influential books, each from a key stage in my life.

In early childhood there was the first book I bought at a schoolbook fair, The Child’s Book of Dinosaurs! What great pictures! I must have read it hundreds of times. It wasn’t dinosaurs that made the book so influential; it was the first book I actually owned. It was the beginning of my love of owning and reading books, which led to a lifetime of collecting and reading.

Anything by Dr. Seuss. What a genius Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) was! He made it easy for young readers to read to themselves, with wonderful rhythms and rhymes. The wacky worlds and characters he created became friends for life. Along with Dr. Seuss were other picture book classics, such as Babar, Madeleine and more. But picture books eventually would give way, and it was on to…

Tom Sawyer, the first ‘adult’ book that I read in primary school, which introduced me to a whole new literary world. Tom, Becky, Injun’ Joe and, of course, Huck Finn captivated me and showed me that “big books” with no pictures could be even better than picture books. But there was also a world of non-fiction, of real people and their exploits, and it was…

Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck (more of him later). That nurtured my love of travel writing when I was thirteen, and, eventually, traveling. He plunked a trailer onto a pickup truck, and took his poodle, Charley, with him as he traveled across America. To travel with your dog and your home on wheels, stopping wherever and meeting people seemed fantastic, I’d love to do that someday! Quite a different book about traveling which I read in uni was…

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. This freewheeling, crazy account of beatniks crisscrossing America may not be great literature (Truman Capote once remarked ‘it’s not writing, it’s typing’, and Kerouac is no Steinbeck!) but the sense of freedom it conveyed led to future travels of my own, not as wild as Kerouac’s, but still, I traveled! The Vietnam War was then raging and the next most influential would be the classic anti war novel…

Catch 22, by Joseph Heller.  This was a challenging book, cycling back to its key scene about young Snowden a number of times until in graphic detail we saw the real effects of war. Luckily, I never was drafted and avoided Viet Nam, but Catch 22 in its darkly funny way convinced myself and many of my mates of the futility of war. Yossarian lives!

Another John Steinbeck masterpiece I loved was East of Eden. I never had much religious or biblical education in my youth, so to read the story of Cain and Abel played out over generations of a family in California through Steinbeck’s story telling brilliance gave me an appreciation of the relevance of the bible’s text, as well as insight into common, if not universal family relationships and tensions. (Plus the film with James Dean is great!).

Later, married and expecting our first child, another book would be influential…

The World According to Garp, by John Irving. It was Garp’s love of his children, and the fear of the mysterious, dangerous ‘undertoad’ and what ultimately occurred in the book, which drove home the awesome power the love of our children would have in ours. I finished reading this the month our first daughter was born, and Irving’s novel helped shape my love for her.

There have been many other books that have moved me greatly across the years: Catcher in the Rye; The Source; The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings; anything by Ray Bradbury. More recently there is Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which along with In Defense of Food has changed the way I understand food. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel is an incredible look at the history of the world and how geography, more than anything else, explains why there is a ‘first world’ and a ‘third world’.

Reading is my passion. Now, though, as a grandparent I find the most enjoyable books to be once again Dr. Seuss, Winnie the Pooh and all the wonderful picture books that our grand kids love. Reading with them I share their journey through the world of books. I relive the wonderful hours spent reading to their mums, our daughters. And I relive the wonderful times I read them as a child myself, when I took my first steps into the world of books, a world in which I will always travel.

What has been the most influential book (or books) in your life? Have any changed your life?