I am a voracious reader, when I want to be. There have been some times where reading has sadly taken a back seat to other pursuits, but it’s always come back as one of my primary hobbies. I can’t go long without reading.
When visitors enter our home, the first sight they see (and usually comment on) are bookshelves. I’m quite proud of our little library. We’re always adding to it, but sometimes it takes big jumps in size.
IMG_3703.jpg
One time, when another book collector donated everything to a local library, I helped sort it all and got my hands on a dozen or so books related to J.R.R. Tolkien and his writings.
A few years ago, I did book reviews online and got lots of free books in the mail. That was awesome, but took up too much time which my family needed. I was reading and reviewing up to five novels a week at the height of it all.
All of this reading influences my writing, of course. But certain writers and their books have had much more of an influence than others.
It should be obvious by now that J.R.R. Tolkien is my hero. The man’s creative power amazes me. I can read The Lord of the Rings every year and still enjoy it. The sheer depth of his world-building combined with his meticulous choice of wording creates writing that I can lose myself inside, over and over.
C.S. Lewis is second. While I’ve loved the Narnia books since my dad read them to me very early, I’m also a big fan of his Space Trilogy. I adore the way he weaves deep philosophies into simple scenes.
The living writer who’s had the most influence on me is probably Stephen R. Lawhead. I have read everything he’s written, and while some of his more recent work isn’t as enthralling as it used to be, the Pendragon Cycle, the Song of Albion trilogy, and Byzantium rank among my all-time favorites. He excels at the first-person narrative, taking the reader directly into the story, full of blood, sweat and tears (but minus the nihilism of other modern writers).
I would be greatly remiss I didn’t mention comic book writers. The globe-trotting, history-based adventures of Scrooge McDuck as written by Carl Barks and Don Rosa filled my young head with short but well-crafted tales. The action and intrigue of G.I. Joe by Larry Hama gave me countless ideas for stories (and battles!).
Time would fail me to tell of Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, Anne Elisabeth Stengl, Tom Clancy, Athol Dickson, not to mention all the classic writers – Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, George MacDonald, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and so on.
It’s a great cloud of writers who have gone before (and are still going). I hope I’ve absorbed the best I can from each of them.