Matt’s “Five Books that Shaped My Life”

Back in February, Brandon and Amanda wrote pieces on the five books that shaped their life.  Since I spent Sunday’s Do Nothing But Read Day decidedly not reading while attending a Weird Al concert (which was awesome), I feel I should pay homage to the books that made me who I am today:

Jurassic Park

So for the hundredth time on this website, I’m calling out Jurassic Park as the defining novel of my generation.  If you are in your mid-20s, and you did not read this book at an age way too young to be reading Michael Crichton novels, then you seriously missed out.  Reading Jurassic Park at age 8 taught me that adult books were awesome, and that I shouldn’t be afraid to read above my age level.

It also imparted the important lesson that the book is almost always better than the movie.  So many great moments where left out of that film!  Dr. Wu giving much more detailed explanations of the science behind the cloning (in Chrichton fashion), Old man Hammond dying on the hill, and we were even led to believe that Ian Malcolm did not survive (his fate is revealed in the novel The Lost World).

The Far Side Gallery 2

Followed by many, many more books filled with Gary Larson’s timeless single-panel cartoon, the first compilation I got was The Far Side Gallery 2.  At some point between the seventh or eighth grade, being turned on to this comic strip was one of the defining influences of my sense of humor.

Dave Barry Turns 40

Picked straight off of my parents’ bookshelf at age 10, I think they must have given me a strange look when I decided to read the humorous musings of a now-middle-aged man.  The only “forbidden book” on the shelf was Howard Stern’s Private Parts, though, so this one was fair game.  I already covered The Far Side, but being as I feel my sense of humor is my defining personality trait, I owe Dave some credit as well.  Whereas Gary Larson spun everything into the absurd, Dave Barry has a knack for looking at the mundane aspects of our daily life and pointing out the ridiculousness involved.

Barry writes in a conversational tone, and where his stories truly influenced me was in learning how to make people laugh without having to resort to vulgarity of violence.  If I could recommend one other book of his, it would be Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States, where he writes an entire history book of our country seemingly off the top of his head, and inserts ridiculous humor wherever he can’t remember a fact.

For those of you who have never read any Dave Barry, I’ll leave you one quote I randomly just pulled from Dave Barry Turns 40: “Our old grill rusted out. It was your basic model, the kind where you put your charcoal in, you lit it, you noticed about an hour later that the charcoal had gone out, and you ordered a pizza. It gave us many years of good service.”

Stephen Biesty’s Cross Sections: Man-Of-War

Getting my hands on this book probably had a huge part in turning me into an engineer.  This is not a novel, but a large hardcover book that page by page, slices the decks off of an 18th-century British warship.  With each further deck, the reader is able to see more and more of what goes on inside areas of the ship.  Biesty accompanies the great visuals with some excellent descriptions, making the book rather educational.  Being able to take something so incomprehensibly large to me and gain an understanding the function of every last piece and person sparked in me a desire to know how things work.  That intellectual curiosity definitely put me on the path I am today.

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths / The Chronicles of Narnia series

Ok that’s more than five books now, so I’m a cheater!  D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths is one of the first books I can ever remember owning. It was so long ago that I am not certain at what age it first came into my possession.  This book is a very kid-friendly large print, with big beautiful pictures to help depict each of the Greek myths.  I later went on to read works by Joseph Campbell and Edith Hamilton, but the d’Aulaires took an impressionable young child and taught him how cool a fantasy setting could be.  Yes, I know, most young boys don’t need any assistance in thinking that dragons and mythical beasts are awesome, but I believe this compilation of myths primed my mind for reading fantasy novels as I would grow up, the next of which would be The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

Being that I was reading Michael Crichton and Dave Barry around this same age I discovered Narnia, I was in all likelihood ready to read The Lord of the Rings, but I was simply unaware of its existence for many years still.  Instead, I discovered The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in a small bookstore in Myrtle Beach, SC while on vacation.  The book gave me a taste of the long form fantasy epic, and I loved it.  From being raised on those myths and fables, I gobbled up this new picturesque universe, and before we left on that vacation, I had the entire 7-book box set.  These books are responsible for making me the geek I am today!