Influences

Here are a few selected books that have particularly influenced me, and how

• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson convinced me of our need to live in harmony with our environment
• Swallows and Amazons and the rest of the series by Arthur Ransome convinced me of the essential equality of female and male (and kindled my interest in sailing)
• The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdayl fed my interest in sailing and travel
• Ulysses by James Joyce spoke to me of the decency of every human being, and the wonders of language
• Time is the Simplest Thing by Clifford Simak introduced me to the concept of aliens who were simply friendly
• The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein is the book that I have re-read most often
• The Complete Walker by Colin Fletcher crystallised my love of backpacking, and gave me the inspiration to go backpacking solo
• Book of the Eskimos by Peter Freuchen hit me in the heart and gut with a picture of a people, the Inuit, living with dignity in an utterly unforgiving environment
• The King Must Die by Mary Renault gave me a love of history and of legend
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey demonstrated for me the subjectivity of history
• The Medieval Machine by Jean Gimpel showed me the renaissance within the Early Middle Ages
• Rebuilding by Bruce Fisher opened and healed my heart
• Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix helped me to realise how much I value conscious relationships
• The Faded Sun (trilogy) by C J Cherryh took me further inside the minds of people with an entirely different world view than almost any other book
• So long, and thanks for all the fish by Douglas Adams was such a sweet love story
• The Hidden Dimension by Edward Hall showed me the fundamental importance of design in space, and of cultural assumptions
• The Squares of the City by John Brunner which told me more about the power of careful design
• The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner creates cyber-gentle nine years before William Gibson creates cyber-punk
• Oxford English Dictionary is just simply the greatest reference work
• Njal's Saga by an unknown Icelander is a novel hundreds of years ahead of its time
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is perhaps (for me) the best novel ever
• Bloodtaking and Peacemaking by William Ian Miller significantly altered my views of Viking Age Icelandic society, and had me enthralled while reading about law (no mean feat)
• Semantics by Geoffrey Leech related the word and the conscious mind in a meaningful way
• The Physical Foundations of the Psyche by Charles Fair related the physical brain and the conscious mind in a meaningful way (and has the dubious distinction of being the hardest-to-read book I've ever enjoyed struggling through)
• Good News for a Change by David Suzuki and Holly Dressel – I adore the title – showed how anyone can make a difference