#ScribesAndMakers 27
a book that reordered my world?

I came from a family that didn’t read fiction. Then, when I turned 15, I was given LOTR.

I read it over the summer of 1974 in Wyoming, partly while sitting outside a tent beside the Titcomb Lakes.

An entire world taken from the imagination? It awakened possibilities, ignited my imagination, and made me, a poor English student, consider writing. It was the first literary domino on my long journey to Ontyre.

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#ScribesAndMakers 27Mar—What's a book that made you see the world differently? How?

Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle was the first book I ever read with an "unlikeable" female protagonist. Merricat is strange and rude, nothing like the milksop people-pleasers most books had offered me up till then. I wonder if my school librarian ever regretted handing me that one.

#ScribesAndMakers 27Mar—What's a book that made you see the world differently? How?

"The Dawn Of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It's not without its flaws but it looks at the dynamics of history and anthropology through some very interesting reframes, and flips the whole "another world as possible" slogan around into "another world has happened loads of times before, and can again."

#ScribesAndMakers 27Mar—What's a book that made you see the world differently? How?

I think The Brothers Karamazov fundamentally altered my brain chemistry as an older teen, in terms of challenging black & white thinking, universalism, and opening up a whole complex can of worms around how I thought about other people, psychology, faith, and other things.

27 What's a book that made you see the world differently? How?

I was assigned Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart' for several classes. It's been so long I can't fully remember my first impression, but I suspect I was more trying to extract the information I needed to answer homework questions and pass tests than truly understanding it, but even still, I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to an African author and it helped me understand that the world is much broader than what I had been exposed to before then.

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#ScribesAndMakers 27 Mar—What's a book that made you see the world differently? How?

I'm going all the way back to my very first eye opening college class text for my first Anthropology class (Religion, Witchcraft and Magic):

Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches by Marvin Harris.

I was 18, history was a subject that focused on questions about random white dudes and the dates they did something big like being born, starting a war or dying. It felt so pointless and disconnected from reality.

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#ScribesAndMakers What's a book that made you see the world differently? How?

The beauty of books is you can read the same story multiple times and you will take away different things on each reread.

Choosing one is impossible, but if I had to choose I would pick any of the Discworld novels. It introduced me to the power of satire and despite the humour, it never shied from holding up a mirror to reveal the immoral and stupid aspects of humanity.