Monday, March 9, 2009

Influential Writers Meme

Tagged for this by Undine. If you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged, as I'm not sure I actually know twenty-five people who haven't done it already.

I have adopted Horace's idea of dividing the list into stages of life, and Undine's caveat that not all of these are current favorites. I'm not, for example, totally sure what was up with the Antonia White obsession, but an obsession it definitely was.

Preschool:

1) A. A. Milne

Elementary / intermediate school:

2) Elizabeth Janet Grey
3) Gordon Korman
4) Shakespeare (this particular Unholy Obsession started early)

High school:

5) Douglas Adams
6) Joseph Heller
7) Bob Dylan ("writers" includes writers of other things than books, yes?)
8) Walt Kelly
9) Federico García Lorca
10) Stephen Jay Gould

College:

11) T. H. White
12) Ludovico Ariosto
13) Emily Dickinson
14) Charlotte Brontë
15) Emily Brontë
16) Anne Brontë
17) John Webster
18) Antonia White
19) Sir Thomas Malory

Grad school, and after

20) Dorothy L. Sayers (whom I encountered for the first time in high school, but didn't really get until grad school)
21) W. B. Yeats (again, didn't really get him until grad school)
22) J. K. Rowling
23) Thomas Heywood
24) Wilfred Owen
25) Guy Gavriel Kay

Hmm, this appears to be a somewhat eclectic list. I'm not sure what to make of it.

3 comments:

Susan said...

Oh, I think it means you read a lot. And I'm delighted to see Anne Bronte on your list. I went through a stage in high school where I thought Tenant of Wildfell Hall was more interesting than Wuthering Heights, which I never really got into. . .

My word is traditic

Anonymous said...

Great list! :)

undine said...

What Ink said--great list! I read Dorothy L. Sayers in grad school, too; something about those academic settings for some of the books was very soothing even in the midst of a crime scene.