A Meme: Ten books that have affected me

A meme, picked up from Sally Brewer: Ten books that have affected me.

1. The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper
   This is one of the absolute best series I have ever read; I adore it, and despite my calling being to watch shitty movies, I have resisted ever seeing the movie of The Dark is Rising, because seriously, fuck that for a lark.
   The Dark is Rising is built around Arthurian mythology and its own cosmology involving the long war between the Light and the Dark. The servants of the Dark are manipulative, using humans to their own ends... and so do the Old Ones, servants of the Light. It was one of the first series I read in which magical power was not an unalloyed boon, and I think that was what I most took away from it. 
2. The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander
   Another series with its roots in Welsh mythology, The Chronicles of Prydain is high fantasy, rather than the modern fantasy of The Dark is Rising, complete with a giant cat and an oracular pig. It was also made into a movie that I haven't seen, but I hear that one isn't all that bad. The stories involved several instances of sacrifice, and I think that's what I took away from it. 
3. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
   One of the big names of fantasy, and one of my early influences. It's basically the ur-text for heroic fantasy, and one of the notable things about The Chronicles of Prydain was that it wasn't a Rings clone. The influence of Rings built up slowly for me, in part as a result of reading around it. Like Prydain, it's very much about the end of an age and the birth of the time of the ordinary human. A lot of these books are pretty melancholy. 
4. The Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
   I don't include The Amber Spyglass here. I liked that one, but the first two were - to my mind - better. Given that Spyglass doesn't follow the pattern set out in the front of either of the earlier novels, I've always figured that Pullman made a lot of changes to the plan while he was writing, and my feeling is that it could have done with a little more polish. Nonetheless, I like Spyglass and I love the first two.
   What I take from these... Okay, mostly it's the panzerbjorn. Who doesn't love a bear in armour. 
5. Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
   
   A number of these entries are relatively recent books, and most of them have more or less disappointing movie adaptations.
   Inkheart is a story about storytellers who can read characters to life out of books, and some of the less savoury characters who have escaped from the eponymous novel-within-a-novel as a result. It's weirdly meta, and extremely dark, where the film was... a little murky in places. 
6. Mortal Engines, by Philip Pullman
   This is a book that could make a great film, but is more likely to make a terribly disappointing one. It's another dark fantasy, this one couched in a post-apocalyptic tale of a mobile, predatory London. It's the imagery that got me with this one; the vast, hungry cities and the skeletal, tech-undead Stalkers. 
7. The Homeward Bounders, by Diana Wynne Jones
   I was a latecomer to DWJ, having read and not enjoyed one of her novels as a child (I know, right, but no-one is perfect and it was basically a musing on mortality and lost childhood, which didn't much suit me at 10 or whatever I was). Of the first batch that I read, The Homeward Bounders was the one that really caught at my mind. I think that what makes it stand out is the central idea that hope is a trap. So often, hope is held up as the last light in the darkness, but the Bounders are imprisoned by it, caught in a perpetual struggle and unable to escape because they believe that there is a way out. 
8. Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett
   Everyone has their own touchstone in the Pratchett canon, and mine is Wyrd Sisters. I love it; I love the Shakespearean references and the Marx Brothers bits, and the witches and Death at the absolute height of their powers. Love it. 
9. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
   
   However, this for a long time my absolute favourite work by either Pratchett or Gaiman. I feel that it is the first great work by either of them, because Gaiman moderated Pratchett's early whimsy and Pratchett moderated Gaiman's early pretension, and that as a result they both emerged from the collaboration writing better books going forward. 
10. Whales on Stilts, by M.T. Anderson
    If you don't know why I love this book, I guarantee that you're assuming that the title is symbolic.
    It isn't.