The Influencers

To a writer, author, blogger or journalist nothing seems greater than the written word. 

It’s happy. It’s sad. It’s romantic. It’s diabolical. It’s informative. It’s expressive.

It is an art form.

And those who write are the influencers of the world. Whether you have a teeny tiny blog in this vast space of internet, or are a powerhouse author continuously topping your latest bestseller… your words are important, they are meaningful.

All of this came to me after my friend posted something online in reference to World Book Day.

“Name the three books that have defined you. #worldbookday”

It stopped me in my tracks. What a powerful thing to think about. Out of the enormous world of literature… how does someone who loves books, loves the written word, narrow their life down to three books?

There are so many powerful influencers who have written beautiful pieces of work. Authors of the past and to the future: from Shakespeare to Jane Austen, Hemingway or T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens or Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming and J.K Rowling or F. Scott Fitzgerald, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde… the list is never ending and all consuming. I couldn’t possibly carry on.

And there are the other writers, who now influence the online word. The bloggers, the journalists. It’s exhausting to keep up.

Your favorite people change in and out as you get older and as your world changes. Friends from the past are no longer in the present… but what about literature?

Does that stay with you forever?

I think so.

So after much deliberation, I’ve come up with my three life defining books. These are my influencers:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Philosopher’s Stone to the UK readers) by J.K. Rowling – I remember when I was about nine years old, my teacher at the time read this aloud to our class. We’d never heard of J.K. Rowling. She only had two published books… (The Chamber of Secrets was out then too). I may have been young, but my teacher reading these books to us made such a difference to the rest of my life. I couldn’t wait until we started reading the second novel and well, from then on I’ve been hooked. It was my childhood. It was the first book I can genuinely say I loved.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – There was something so hauntingly beautiful about this book. There are no redeeming characters and yet it’s the ultimate in love stories. Gatsby spends his life tirelessly working to become someone who would be worthy of his true love, Daisy. In the end he does it. But in a twisted way, it was never meant to be. And it’s a heartbreaking reflection on society to see the unsettling unveiling of how money and power drives people. Devastatingly sad and a beautiful novel all the same. I’ll always love this book.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusuk – Appropriately enough, this is my final book on the list. The Book Thief takes place during World War II and it’s the sort of gripping novel that takes its good old time as it slowly draws you in. In fact, I started this book several times before I read long enough to become entranced, not able to set it down. Of course, it’s a story about the war, but it’s about more than that. It’s about the loss of literary during wartime and a young girl’s journey discovering her love of reading. It was a phenomenal read that leaves you emotionally drained. In a great way.

There you have it, the top three books that I feel have defined me, leaving a deep impression on my soul. It was immensely difficult to narrow down my third book, but I think that’s okay. Like I said before, as your life changes, so do your influencers.

Just be sure to ask me again next year.

So tell me, what three books define you? What great pieces of work are your literary influencers?

Kelly xox