A Formative Reading List

Books which formed me, not those that will form you.

Many people have created excellent reading lists, covering many areas and which have stood up through the filter of time. A writer I admire, John Solomon Bain, recently published a list of ten must read books here for example.

10 Books Every Man Should Read

My list is not as deep or classical, it’s a lot more personal. In fact, it’s a list of the books I consider to have had an important role in forming me or aspects of my life.

The first set of books I’ll mention are the Willard Price adventure series, about two young brothers who travel the world collecting rare wild animals for zoos and avoiding the evildoers who always cross their paths. I was surprised that they were still publishing new ones up until 1980, they’re very much in the style of a 50s pulp adventure, but for kids. I imagine they’ll either be deleted from existence or re-written for modern sensibilities soon.

Next we hop across the divide into non-fiction and a book I probably borrowed from the town library 20 times before getting my own “gem” edition and finally picking up the big, old fashioned hardback last year. It probably filled the other half of my Indiana Jones mindset as a kid - the original SAS Survival handbook. I’ve probably still got sections memorised 30 years later.

To cross back to fiction again, another book I re-read time and time again - a whole series in fact - were the Earth’s Children books by Jean Auel. They meshed with my interests in the world and prehistory, and the second book, the Valley of Horses, is my clear favourite despite the first instalment Clan of the Cave Bear being by far the best known. Having a man and a woman on opposite sides of an ice age continent, with him travelling the breadth of Europe and all with very authentic paleolithic living skills is a great mix. They’re not child friendly books, and perhaps set off the trend to view hunter-gather cultures as more matriarchal in literature, but the first four are certainly worth reading. The fifth book is pretty devoid of story, and one to read if you love the characters and the sixth book is utterly dire and almost universally disliked by fans of the series.

It’s odd to think of a cookbook as having a big role in anyone’s life, and considering I’ve probably cooked fewer than five different recipes from it that’s probably even stranger, but Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s River Cottage Cookbook probably saved me from going concrete-happy during the last year of my first degree, stuck in the grim ugliness of the university of Bradford.

The book is equal parts smallholding instructions, takedown of industrial farming, love of the natural world and a selection of (slightly quirky) recipes. It’s beautifully written, and one I still go back to time and time again.

The next up is a series of books, which stand just between fantasy and historical fiction. They’re actually one of the best representations of the late bronze age Mediterranean I’ve come across. I stated reading David Gemmell’s fantasy books, mostly the Drenai saga, as a teenager and was still reading the new ones that came out when I was a student. The Troy trilogy were his last works, with the final one finished by his wife after his unexpected death. They are head and shoulders above everything else he wrote in colour, complexity, emotions and research. They probably convey more about the Männerbund of men on a 50 oared bronze age galley than any book I’ve come across, and I’ve looked at a fair few. One day I’ll probably write a wargame on the topic.

This trilogy takes an approach where the gods are unseen, but they clearly tug at the strings of fate throughout.

The last book I’ll share on this list is another I’ve re-read many times, Philip by Tito Perdue. He’s the greatest literary figure on the modern right, even if they do keep trying to delete his wikipedia entry. Many of his novels revolve around a the singular Southern Lee Pefley, but I find the books which have Lee as only a minor character are much stronger. This is a book which crafts a beautiful feeling and aesthetic, and as someone with Southern sympathies it’s an almost perfectly constructed book. It feels almost out of time, as if a fin-de-siècle Romantic jumped into the modern day. I’ll come back to more of Perdue’s work in future.

Do I recommend you read these books? Certainly, but they’ve formed me by hitting at certain moments in life, and in every case, a number of re-readings. I imagine I’ve read every single book here at least 5 times, with 10 being more likely.

Any readers have a similar list?