Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Fifteen Novels in Fifteen Minutes

I was tagged for this on Facebook (which I actually remembered to visit today), but it is too good to just leave there. Influenced is harder than "liked" ... but here we go ...

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List, in no particular order) fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.
  1. Rumer Godden
  2. Agatha Christie (nonfiction)
  3. Harriett Beecher Stowe
  4. Robert Alter (his OT translations)
  5. Flannery O'Conner (The Habit of Being)
  6. Dean Koontz
  7. CS Lewis
  8. Shirley Jackson
  9. Samuel Shellabarger
  10. Fulton Sheen
  11. Francis Fernandez (author of the In Conversation with God series)
  12. Nathaniel Hawthorne
  13. Robert R. Chase
  14. Charlotte Bronte
  15. M.F.K. Fisher
You're supposed to tag fifteen people but I decline that part. Not that I wouldn't like to see what Jeff Miller, Stephen Riddle, Will Duquette, and Maureen (Aliens in this World) would pick. I'm just sayin' ...
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14 comments:

  1. Tante Léonie11/30/10, 1:31 PM

    OK, I'll play:

    1. Francis de Sales
    2. John Donne
    3. Jane Austen
    4. Dostoevsky
    5. Frederick Buechner
    6. Robert Farrar Capon
    7. Kenneth Grahame
    8. Gerard Manly Hopkins
    9. Tolkien
    10. Proust
    11. Isak Dinesan
    12. Martin Amis
    13. Frances Hodgson Burnett
    14. Shakespeare
    15. R.K. Narayan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Margaret E. Perry11/30/10, 2:15 PM

    Fisher is a great pick. I'm just reading "Serve it Forth"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Scott D11/30/10, 3:38 PM

    1. Arthur C. Clarke
    2. Isaac Asimov
    3. Orson Scott Card
    4. Stephen Jay Gould
    5. Harlan Ellison
    6. Stephen Hawking
    7. Billy Collins
    8. John Irving
    9. Clifford Stoll
    10. Stephen King
    11. Flannery O'Conner
    12. Ted Chiang
    13. Pope John Paul II
    14. Ravi Zacharias
    15. Ray Bradbury

    I have GOT to try Robert R. Chase out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Julie D.11/30/10, 5:21 PM

    Man, oh man ... there is some great stuff on those lists. I had thought of Austen and Tolkien but NOT Capon or Burnett, both of whom I love.

    And I had thought of King (chiefly for The Stand) and John Paul II, but NOT Chiang or Bradbury ... again, both of whom I love. Never even heard of Clifford Stoll, who I've got to look into.

    ReplyDelete
  5. newguy4011/30/10, 5:38 PM

    Let me try...

    1.) Robert Heinlein.
    2.) Isacc Asimov
    3.) Philip Jose Farmer
    4.) Bruce Catton
    5.) Burke Davis
    6.) Douglas Southall Freeman
    7.) Shelby Foote
    8.) St. Therese of Liseuix
    9.) Josemaria Escriva
    10.)tomas kempis
    11.) John Ringo
    12.)Stephen King
    13.) JRR Tolkien
    14.) RSV Catholic Bible
    15.) Frank Miller

    ReplyDelete
  6. Scott D11/30/10, 8:35 PM

    Clifford Stoll is on my list for one book he wrote that had a lasting effect on me called "The Cuckoo's Egg". He is an astronomer that got wrapped up in catching an international hacker. Non-fiction.

    I couldn't tell you WHY it was so important to me, but it was at the time I read it, and it definitely influenced where I ended up career-wise.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Julie D.11/30/10, 8:55 PM

    Will Duquette's list is here. I can't believe I forgot Peter Kreeft! He was much more influential than Fulton Sheen, who was very influential indeed.

    newguy, you've got more than one person on that list that I have never heard of and must investigate. I have had a large does of Josemaria Escriva thanks to the Daily Conversation books on my list ... and have found him very helpful and influential via that source.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ruth Ann Pilney12/1/10, 12:28 AM

    1. Mortimer Adler
    2. Etienne Gilson
    3. Gilbert Kieth Chesterton
    4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    5. St. Augustine
    6. Thomas Merton
    7. St. Therese of Lisieux
    8. St. Therese of Avila
    9. Myles Connolly
    10. Ruth Burrows
    11. Jessica Powers
    12. Caryll Houselander
    13. Evelyn Underhill
    14. Thomas a Kempis
    15. Susan Muto

    I didn't time myself, though.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Bob the Ape12/1/10, 7:08 AM

    Isaac Asimov
    Jane Austen
    G. K. Chesterton
    Agatha Christie
    Dante (Dorothy Sayers translation)
    Charles Dickens
    Shelby Foote (The Civil War)
    Homer (Robert Fitzgerald translation)
    C. S. Lewis
    Ogden Nash
    Patrick O'Brian
    Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast)
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Dorothy Sayers
    J. R. R. Tolkien

    There are others, but the rules say 15.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Tom12/1/10, 9:54 AM

    CS Lewis
    GK Chesterton
    Josef Pieper
    Hilaire Belloc
    Christopher Dawson
    James Schall SJ
    William Faulkner
    Sigrid Undset
    JRR Tolkien
    TH White
    Rex Stout
    Dorothy Sayers (fiction and non-)
    St. Augustine
    Anthony Bloom (Beginning to Pray)
    William Sampson, SJ (The Coming of Consolation)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Tante Léonie12/1/10, 9:59 AM

    @ Bob the Ape:

    Gormenghast! Yes! That would have also been on my list.
    I've met very, very few people who have read it, or even know what it is.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Julie D.12/1/10, 12:26 PM

    Wow, these are fantastic lists ... and there are so many who I'd have put on my list if I'd have thought of them. Houselander, Augustine, Bloom, and Adler being prime among them.

    I have always meant to find Sayers' translation of Dante, although I absolutely love Ciardi's translation. It was especially enjoyable over Thanksgiving to find that Rose is grooving on Ciardi's translation and commentary for Inferno for an English class ... so much so that she is planning on reading Purgatorio and (?) Heaven later on her own time.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Bob the Ape12/1/10, 12:51 PM

    Dear Julie,

    Here they are at Amazon:

    Hell
    Purgatory
    Paradise

    ReplyDelete
  14. Julie D.12/1/10, 1:44 PM

    Thanks Bob! I am still trying hard to adhere to my "book fast" resolution for 2010 ... but your kind and fast response made me go to the library website and see that they actually have her translation of Purgatorio (and I'm still laughing at myself that I didn't remember Heaven is Paradise!).

    Thank you and I'm putting those on my Amazon wish list. :-)

    ReplyDelete

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