On Bluesky, where I have been spending much of my online time, I recently began taking part in a collective social-media activity: posting the covers of twenty books that “greatly influenced” me over the course of my life. The Challenge (as it were) asks participants to post their selections without comment, presumably to make our postings resonate more with people who share the same selections. As I suspect that relatively few of my blog readers frequent Bluesky, I offer below the complete list, with some added links and comments:
The Cave of Time, by Edward Packard
The 79 Squares, by Malcolm Bosse
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Patterson
The Sword of the Spirits, by John Christopher
The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula Leguin
Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
1066: The Year of the Conquest, by David Hogarth
Silas Marner, by George Eliot
The Peopling of British North America, by Bernard Bailyn
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
The Worst Years of Our Lives, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Road to Wigan Pier, by George Orwell
Sandman: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman
The Age of Federalism, by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKittrick
A Spirited Resistance, by Gregory Dowd
Them Bones, by Howard Waldrop
Cherokee Women, by Theda Perdue
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber
Saga: Vol. 3 by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
I have reviewed some of these works here and on my other blog, the Ramshackle Vampire, in years past. Of the others I plan to say a few words in subsequent posts here at STHH.
