As I had rambled on about in Only the Young and Dumb, the books I read as a pre-teen were pre-modern, and the books I listen to now are post mid-life, with a nod to a lot of the in-between. I wanted to take a moment to highlight a lot of these better, and here we are.
Pre-Modern: Anything that I enjoyed that was written before I was old enough to read. This includes the classics like JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Philip K Dick or Isaac Asimov, as well as the ones that were being written around the time I was born like Roger Zelazny.
The Hobbit: All fantasy should start here. Tolkien's linguistic artistry was not confined to English. The fact that he created an entire language out of whole cloth to back up his vision of Middle Earth, was what installed permanence of a mildly veiled epic of Christianity. Many would say it is overtly veiled, but trust me, when you read CS Lewis, you understand how amazingly subtly the Christianity was in this book. It may have gotten more righteous with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but there is still plenty of room to argue the doctrine of those books as well. All fantasy novels written to date will be judged by the legacy of Tolkien, and when my co-workers and I finish the next great fantasy epic, the first thing we do is rate it based on Middle Earth standards.
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe: The second great epic world that may or may not create scrutiny among the masses. Christians and anti-Christians alike have read and commented on this book. Almost all of them several times and often. While people have taken Tolkien's Middle Earth as dogma in the world of fantasy, far more have taken to trying to create their own version of CS Lewis’ Narnia, both for profit and to be a counterbalance to what CS Lewis had done. For every David Eddings writing a good epic based on wanting to be remembered, there is a Philip Pullman creating a set of books that just wanted to smear Christianity and drag down the other side.
The Man in the High Castle: The first truly dystopian book I read, and when I handed it around to my friends after I found it in my father’s collection it started a bit of a buzz among the teachers at my elementary school. While back in 1981 it may have been a little too much for a fifth-grade student to be taking on, I lived in New Hampshire, so it was what it was. My closest friends were able to put down the Dungeons and Dragons dice long enough to get through it, and we were all the better for it. It has shaped my view of Science Fiction ever since, and between it and the next book I have my set of standards for what good science fiction is. To be fair, Amazon did an excellent job with porting this to a streaming series, and along with The Expanse, they have two of the best science fiction streamers out there, if you are more of a visual science fiction fan.
Foundation: I love the triad of Science Fiction which includes Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, but Foundation by Asimov is the greatest of them all. I have read almost everything Asimov wrote several times over, and I always come back to The Greater Foundation series. I use Foundation because it was the first book of his I read, but thanks to secondhand books stores (God I miss those) I was able to fill my room with Asimov novels throughout my teen years. I have read all of these in order of release and order of occurrence, because they are that important, especially now a days when we see AI ravaging the landscape of what we used to know, and now have to scrutinize or give up on by lack of time to even care anymore.
Nine Princes of Amber: I got my love of secondhand book stores from my father. Back when Portsmouth NH was dumpy little city, it was full of used books stores, used comic book shops, and bars that sold beer in a can. My father left this book on the front porch, and I started reading it, because it was raining one morning which was the only thing that usually got me reading. The book was convoluted, and alluded to a lot of things I didn’t understand, but the author unapologetically kept on as if it was all common knowledge and we were supposed to be keeping up. Unlike many books in a series, if you find your way in the middle volumes, that are like this, this book was the first in what would become a series. No matter how strange the crazy man, who lost his memory sounded, as he talked about “the pattern” and other items in his quest to reclaim himself, I was instantly wrapped in it. The Chronicles of Amber was a series of ten books that spanned different world and brought them all crashing into each other based on one family from one planet, that genuinely had a hard time getting along with their greed and envy. Of all the books previous, this is still the one I gauge ALL novels on.
To be continued with the Mid-Life Books in I Existed - Volume 9
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