I have been obsessed with the number 70 of late — go figure. And I have always been obsessed with lists. For this next week leading up to, well, my 70th, I have compiled lists of 70 things that have affected me over the years. I hope you find them interesting; if nothing else they’ll tell you something about me, probably more than I intended.
We begin with 70 works of fiction that shaped me into who I am, for better or for worse, presented in no particular order — I only numbered them to make sure I hit 70 — although this is the order in which I thought of them, so maybe that means something.
1. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. The Martian – Andy Weir
3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
4. Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury
5. True Grit – Richard Portis
6. Night – Elie Wiesel
7. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
8. The Haunted Bookshop – Christopher Morley
9. Bambi – Felix Salten
10. The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
11. Animal Farm – George Orwell
12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
13. Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
14. Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
16. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
17. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
18. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
19. The Archivist – Martha Cooley
20. Enemy Mine – Barry B. Longyear
21. She – H. Rider Haggard
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
23. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
24. An Enemy of the State – F. Paul Wilson
25. The Lost World – Arthur Conan Doyle
26. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling
27. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
28. Men in War – Andreas Latzko
29. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
30. Akata Witch – Nnedi Okorafor
31. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
32. I Shall Wear Midnight – Terry Pratchett
33. Rilla of Ingleside – L.M. Montgomery
34. Daughter of the Morning Star – Craig Johnson
35. Hell and Back – Craig Johnson
36. The Probability Broach – L. Neil Smith
37. A History of Wild Places – Shea Ernshaw
38. Secret Identity – Alex Segura
39. Iron Lake – William Kent Krueger
40. Olga Dies Dreaming – Xochitl Gonzalez
41. Crazy Rich Asians – Kevin Kwan
42. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
43. Wool – Hugh Howey
44. One False Move – Harlan Coben
45. The Wrong Side of Goodbye – Michael Connelly
46. Angels Flight – Michael Connelly
47. A Study in Scarlet Women – Sherry Thomas
48. The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
49. The Other Side of Everything – Linda R. Spitzfaden
50. Jexium Island – Madeline Grattan
51. The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek – Evelyn Sibley Lampman
52. Alpha Centauri – Robert Siegel
53. The Last Unicorn – Peter S. Beagle
54. Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
55. The Demi-Gods – James Stephens
56. The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton
57. A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs
58. The Man of Bronze – Kenneth Robeson
59. Lethal White – Robert Galbraith
60. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
61. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
62. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
63. Anthem – Ayn Rand
64. Anatomy of a Murder – Robert Traver
65. High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
66. Time and Again – Jack Finley
67. The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi
68. And Then There Were None – Eric Frank Russell
69. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
70. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue – V.E. Schwab