Top 10 Most Influential Books

Hello one and all! I thought that for my first post on this blog I would focus on what I love most about the arts: books. Having just completed my English undergraduate degree, I have encountered such a wide variety of texts in the past three years, as well as everything else I read before my degree, and everything in between. So let's press on, dear reader, and discover my top 10 most influential books.

1) J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter series (1997-2007)
The list has to start off with Harry Potter, one of the most iconic figures in British literary history. Rowling's work had me engrossed when I was but half the age I am now. I re-read the series last summer and it was just as magical as the first time. I grew up as Harry, Ron, and Hermione did, and I found myself moved by so many events. The characters and the plots create a simultaneous environment of identification and fantasy, I was on the verge of tears throughout most of the last book, and there was always a part of me which longed to be Hermione Granger.

2) Caitlin Moran - How To Be a Woman (2011)
My, oh my. How I wish that I had read this book when it was first published. I read this book at the start of this year, for one of my university modules. IT IS SO GOOD. I recommend that everybody reads this book, no matter what gender or age. I found it so humbling that even accomplished writer, journalist, and mother Caitlin Moran has been through the same adolescent experiences as you and everyone you know. Such an eye-opening read.

3) Amy Poehler - Yes Please (2014)
Amy Poehler is one of my favourite people on the planet. I absolutely fell in love with her as Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation and found her book so wonderful. Poehler has been through such a lot to find herself the accomplished woman she is today, and it was fascinating to find out how she got to where she is now.

4) Andrea Levy - Small Island (2004)
This will forever be one of my favourite books. It absolutely blew me away. I rarely find myself so engrossed in a novel, but this one completely sucked me in. The multiple viewpoints and different angles of the same event were wonderful. You know how everyone uses the phrase 'I couldn't put it down'? I literally didn't put this book down until I had finished it. I am so eager to read this again at some point, and I know that I will love it just as much.

5) Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet (1887)
This was the first Sherlock Holmes text I read, way back in the summer of 2012, after having watched the Guy Ritchie films and BBC adaptation. It was then that I became ever so slightly obsessed with anything Sherlock-related, and my passion has grown since. Heck, I even wrote my dissertation on Sherlock.

6) Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
I first encountered this book at GCSE, and at fifteen years old, I don't think I fully appreciated it as much as I do now. Harper Lee has the most eloquent writing style and teaches the most wonderful morals. Lee's penning of the phrase 'You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it' has become one of the most significant quotes within English literature, and rightly so.

7) Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1818)
Only very recently did I read Frankenstein, and I was so intrigued to finally read the original story. Victor Frankenstein's creature has now evolved into a figure of popular culture, and so it was thrilling to discover its origins. I actually just wrote an exam on this book, as well as an essay! I love Shelley's style and beautiful language, and the way that she uses the Gothic to draw attention to the limits of Enlightenment thinking that permeated her society.

8) Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Possibly the first Victorian book I read, with the exception of Jane Eyre. This is the book which sparked my interest in Victorian literature, which remains one of my favourite literary periods to this day. I love the way that the book slowly declines into debauchery, vice, and Hedonism. Such a gripping read from start to finish.

9) Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway (1925)
I absolutely LOVE Modernist texts. Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence, Mansfield... Such wonderful writers who fully encompass the age. Another book in which I was thoroughly immersed from start to finish. Never was such a simple plot articulated with such flair.

10) B. S. Johnson - Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973)
I think this is the only postmodern novel I've actually enjoyed... I'm not the biggest fan of postmodernism at all, but this text just knocked me off my feet. It's hilarious. I can't express that enough, it's honestly so so so funny. There is so much innuendo and wit that I was crying with laughter at several points when I was reading. And that's such a great thing.


I hope you enjoyed reading about the books which have had the most impact on me, and look forward to hearing from me soon.

- Hayley.