Tag Archives: books

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10 Books That Moved Me

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Stuart Turnbull, a frequent contributor to FiftyWordStories.com, challenged me on Twitter to share 10 books that “moved me”. My list, in some ways, may feel like a bit of a cop-out because I basically took the 10 most moving books from my Best Novels page. But these novels made it onto that page for a reason!

I’ve put these into some sort of order, but catch me on a different day and I might order them differently!

Here goes:

10. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hunchback is the novel that taught me about tragedy (in the artistic sense). It isn’t the first tragic story I ever read, but it’s the first one that really got me invested in its incredible emotional swings from sadness to joy, triumph to defeat, and loss to hope.

9. A Scanner Darkly

Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel about the surreal life and twisted reality of drug addiction invoked real sympathy in me for the characters, and for their far too numerous real-life counterparts.

8. The Power of One

It’s difficult to pinpoint what was so significant about this novel to me, but whenever I think of it I feel a kind of wide-open longing to find my place in the world, to achieve something with meaning.

7. Lord of the Flies

Nooooo! Piggy! :(

6. To Kill a Mockingbird

It’s a classic, with all of the ingredients needed to get the reader emotionally invested not only in the characters, but also in the book’s broader social themes.

5. The Great Gatsby

Part romantic tragedy, part diatribe against excess and consumerism. I only read this a few years ago, but it definitely moved me.

4. Of Mice and Men

I was hooked by the waning hope and tragic inevitability of the two main characters’ journey. Lennie Small is one of the most sympathetic characters I’ve ever come across.

3. Les Miserables

Victor Hugo’s masterpiece takes us along on Jean Valjean’s incredible journey to redemption. It’s packed with emotion. And historical essays!

2. Grapes of Wrath

The final scene of this novel may be the most impactful, moving scene I’ve ever read.

1. All Quiet on the Western Front

Everything about this novel is incredibly moving. If you haven’t read it, you definitely should, in order to redefine your understanding of World War I, and war in general.

Those are the 10 books that I think have had the great emotional impact on me. Would anyone else like to share their top 3?

 

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Some Goals

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I’ve never been one for formal “resolutions” heading into a new year, but there are definitely some things I would like to accomplish in 2014. It’s always a little easier to be motivated to do something if you’ve told other people you want to do it, so here goes.

In 2014, I want to:

  • Watch less TV.
  • Spend less time on my phone at home.
  • Catalogue my book collection.
  • Read more books (at least one novel per month?).
  • Release the third volume of 50-word stories.
  • Release at least one Special People novel in print.

I even have some ideas for practical ways to make a couple of these happen.

I’m going to stop carrying my phone around in my pocket when I’m at home; it can sit somewhere in the middle of the house with the ringer on in case I get a call. That should reduce the temptation to pull it out and check Twitter or whatever every five minutes.

I think I’m also going to make a “reading plan” of novels I’m going to read, in conjunction with cataloguing my book collection. That will help me have defined reading goals for the year.

We’ll see how it all turns out!

Writing News and Updates

An Update on This; an Update on That

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Boy, it’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. I haven’t felt the need to post any “life updates”, because Larissa has been doing such a great job of that over on her blog (a far better job than I could hope to do, in fact). She posts all kinds of photos and everything!

On the writing front, my output has obviously decreased significantly since the first half of 2012, so I haven’t had much to update there, either. I’m still putting out a chapter each week for Special People, though I took a break over Christmas, but any SP-related news items that come up get posted on that site, not here. (You should probably follow along over there, by the way. There’s been more progress on the comic project lately, and the current storyline is approaching its finale sequence.) I hope to put a few more interactive opportunities out there for people to get involved with soon, as well.

The Year of Stories is still on indefinite hiatus, and my Lucas Galloway novel is still somewhat in limbo. I don’t have the time or creative energy available to me right now to work on multiple projects at once, so in order for me to return to either of those I think I’m going to have to take a break for Special People, which is perhaps something I’ll do while the comic is posting, whenever that happens to be.

Something I really should get around to doing soon is compiling 50-Word Stories: Volume Three. All of the material exists on the site already, and I have the cover art, etc., so I just need to choose which stories to include, put the cover and some sort of essay together, and release it. I’ve been putting it off far too long, and it’s about time it went on my actual To-Do List. If I haven’t gotten it done by mid-February, someone give my a kick!

Beyond all of these things, life rolls on. I finished Volume 1 of Don Quixote last week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I want to wait until I’ve read Volume 2 before adding it to my 50 Best Novels list; I’ve heard that the second volume takes on a somewhat different tone than the first, and I think that may affect how highly I rank it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it land in the top 10 eventually, though.

There are plenty more books out there, including several on my shelves, that I’d like to get around to reading, and I’m going to try to share a few thoughts on them as I finish each one, if for no other reason than to make better use of this space, so that it doesn’t sit quite so idle, and also to get my brain and fingers used to more frequent writing again.

P.S. Hockey is back! Hooray!