List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
I was a lonely teenager. I didn’t relate to the other girls at my all girls school at all. I think I was 13 when the book box came to class and changed my life. I would sit there listening to the teacher read the blurb on the back of each book. We had to put up our hand if we wanted the book being described. Books went by of the like ‘Sam thought her life was complete, but then she met Dan’ you know, romantic nonsense. But one day the teacher read, “A tale of wizards, dragons and terrifying shadows, in which the young wizard Sparrowhawk strives to destroy the evil shadow-beast he has let loose on the world.” This book was Ursula Le Gunn’s ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’. My mind was blown!
I studied Maya Angelou’s ‘I know why the caged bird sings’, in school too and that had a huge impact on me, I still think of it to this day over 40 years later. It gave me knowledge of a life I could never have conceived. The pain and suffering of a young girl that really affected how I saw the world.
In 1984 my then boyfriend (now Husband) bought me Stephen Donaldson’s ‘The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever’, this was my introduction to the ‘Fantasy Epic’, which I adore and let me move into other worlds thus saving me from the real world where I felt no connection. My boyfriend then lent me ‘The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’, and that was my life redefined!
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