My book would be:

Arslan - M.J. Engh

First Line: "When his name first cropped up in the news reports, it was just one more foreign name to worry about, like so many others."

This book is horrifying and delicious. It is dark, bittersweet, and you will NOT be able to put it down.

I read this book and I thought, I want to write like this. Because this man doesn't even know what bad prose is. He just stopped doing anything that you'd ever seen before or been tired of. This book is brutal and takes *no* prisoners.

Someday, if I ever get anything published, I want someone to say the same thing about my book.

You can't leave this book the same person. You can't NOT be frightened and welded to it. The story becomes part of you. This book starts out with things you can't even think of and turns them into things you can't quit thinking of.

The plot is really neat. There's this guy, Arslan, who takes over the United States and he ends up in this small town of Kraftsville and through the eyes of two characters, Franklin L. Bond (a school principal) and Hunt Morgan (a student that gets brutally abused by Arslan) we see who this man is and what he's done.

OSC recommended this book at some point and so I picked up and I must say, OSC has good taste.

~~ Quiet Tone ~~
 

I got the impression that there was at least one adult out there that valued kids even while putting them through hell - I don't think I would have minded the hell in my family if there had been at least a minute sense that any of us children were something more than annoyances at best.

And, I loved the writing style. It was so different from anything I had read at that point. Succinct. To the point. Not a wasted word. And filled with impact.

[This message has been edited by HopeSprings (edited February 03, 2003).]
 

The Stand by Stephen King-- Beyond just plain loving the story (King was so good back in the "old days"), I enjoy how you just truly got immeshed in these characters lives. In some ways, it's almost as if the story is second to getting to know these characters as people. I think that creating really 3-dimensional characters is his gift.

Game of Thrones by George RR Martin & The One Kingdom by Sean Russell-- I love these 2 books for the same reasons. Character centered, massive epics that embrace an entire world, and wholly believable and lovable (or I suppose hatable if it's the baddies) characters. Game of Thrones perhaps influenced my writing the most in so far as each character behaves in the book as if the book were all about them... It's like living a portion of each character's life, as opposed to seeing how just the Hero perceives the world.

From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz-- Like most Koontz books, the ending kinda sucked. But up until then, pure entertainment from the very first line. What struck me as a writer (and of course, as a reader) was his gift for plot twists that truly hit you out of the blue. There were no less than four times when I turned the page, only to be gut punched by something totally unexpected. Plus, there are moments of just purely brilliant prose.

Harry Potter (any) by JK Rowling-- While serious readers out there will probably blast me for saying it, but the books are absolutely riveting. Yes, the editor in me sometimes wants to go nuts over her work, but you just fall in love with the characters. I don't think there's anyone who's read the books who wouldn't give anything to trade in their Muggle lives and go to Hogwarts.

Also, The Worthing Saga, by OSC.
 

Shasta
 

More than a book I think it would be an author’s note at the start of a book.

On a Pale Horse by Pierce Anthony

I was facing major surgery at the time I read it. I was struggling with writing and getting published. It turned out that Anthony was in the hospital when he wrote the book with the same problem I had. It also turned out, at the time, that I wrote much the same way he did---by hand first ect.

I don't remember the first line, but it gave me new insight into the world of writing.

 

WOLF AND IRON by Gordon R. Dickson: Character driven and thoughtful. Everyone, it seems, like to tackle the downfall of civilization but few choose to do so after the collapse of the world ecenomy. This story centers around the transformation of a think-tank researcher into a man of hard-living.

THE GODMAKERS, DOSADI EXPERIMENT, DESTINATION: VOID, EYES OF HEISENBERG, WHIPPING STAR: Frank Herbert is, of course, one of the greatest writers to ever grace a page with his imagination whether the genre be sci-fi or not. The Dune saga is, by far, his most well known series of works where he demonstrated his ability to fully flesh-out a completely realistic universe, populate it with believeable characters, and tell an intriguing story complete with prophetic and philosophical musings. However, not many people can name anything else this genius has penned...here are 5 short novels that I found grouped together in a collectors box set for 8 dollars at a local book store. I suggest you read them as well, if the Dune works just aren't enough to satisfy your Herbert-qoutient.

MIDNIGHT by Dean Koontz: I know everyone complains about the lackluster finales that this author often ends-up with (no pun intended) but this is the first novel of his I ever read and I have still not found one better...maybe INTENSITY...

THE ALIENIST by Caleb Carr: I have a morbid fascination with serial killers and with historical settings...this one was right up my alley.

LIFE DURING WARTIME by Lucius Shepard: Slow but very poetic.

THE ODESSA FILE by Fredrick Forsythe: Follows the after war plans of an organization dedicated to helping Nazi war criminals after their escape...very engaging.

THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH by Harry Turtledove: Alternate history of the Civil War...great premise, love the characterization though parts of the work were slow.

Anyway...

I could list dozens of my favorites but for the sake of space and brevity (if I haven't already breached that retaining wall) I will stick with these few.

Of course this partial listing doesn't even touch works like The Good Earth, Lincoln, Paradise Lost, The Lathe of Heaven...so many!!!

Hope some of you take my advice and read these outstanding (or just extremely interesting) works.

 

Ender's Game, I sincerely tell everyone, is my favorite SF novel and one story that really inspired me to write.

Lately, though, it's been just about anything by Neil Gaiman.

JP
 

GOOSEBUMPS: The Phantom of the Auditorium
My first chapter book--badly written, as if I noticed or cared. Then I went on to

MINDWARP: slightly-better series that got me stuck on the premise "kids with powers." For the LONGEST time, everything I wrote had kids who were telekinetic or turned into liquid or someting.

ANIMORPHS: At the edge of the juvenile realm, this still had a ridiculous premise, but the characters were slightly more believable, and it showed me that even dumb things can be relevant and talk about larger issues.

LEFT BEHIND SERIES: Other than one bizarre lapse of reading Jurassic Park in the 3rd grade, these were the first "adult" novels I read. Their size and grown-up characters made it easier for me to get into real novels and leave chapterbooks behind.

Now we can get to the "real" entries:

MISERY by Stephen King: I had read LB, some Grisham, but this book blew me away. I found (and still find) the style utterly intoxicating; the way it blended honest reality with a half-plausible premise seemed magical. And it didn't feel censored . . . everything I read up until this point was badly chopped up for little kids, or just written with such restrained uptightness (like LB) so no one would be offended. After this I read THE SHINING, PET SEMATARY, and THE DEAD ZONE, and I don't believe I have completely finished one King book since. This is probably a separate topic, but does anyone get like that, where they can't read one author to completion anymore? Or can't read at all?

ENDER'S GAME and FAHRENHEIT 451: I'm lumping these together; they were all in the last 2-3 years. ENDER because of the reasons everyone else gave, and Bradbury because not only did 451 feel honest, it felt like it meant something. And all of the imagery and style...

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE: Something I could relate to, FINALLY!

and now I'm reading EAST OF EDEN, by Steinbeck. I still have a hundred pages to go, but already I know that this has really changed my life forever. I always looked at classics like they could only be about trees or Victorian manors and would just be 400 pages of incomprehensible description. Reading "easier" ones, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Picture of Dorian Gray, 451, and The Catcher in the Rye helped me to fight that misconception a little, so I agreed to take my teacher's reccomendation and read E of E. I read 400 pages in just 4 days or so . . . It's brilliant! The scope, the characters, and the texture; it makes me angry that I wasted time reading so many other things, but I know that I couldn't be reading it without working my way up.

EDIT: That was so long; I'm really sorry. I don't contribute enough to this place anyway, and then when I do want to say something, it spews out like a self-absorbed journal entry. Anyone who reads all that gets a gold star, but the ones who skip it probably have more common sense than I.

[This message has been edited by writerPTL (edited February 08, 2003).]
 

At least, that's my impression. If I've got it wrong, I hope someone will correct me here, so you all will have the right answer.
 

This is the only book I've ever read that gave me a feeling of the spiritual - long before I even understood anything of what the concept meant. And, yes, I had actually read a lot of world religious literature.

 

1984 by George Orwell

His short but complete dismissal of political theory in the third section was truly sublime.

(cant believe I forgot that one)...Vonnegut is a genius.