- 1.Nightfall 1 by Isaac Asimov
This volume of short stories by Isaac Asimov opens with perhaps his most famous, Nightfall, the story that started his career. My father had bought it and left it lying around and I picked it up and started to read. I was perhaps eleven at the time. Up until that point I had read only children’s books, but the stories in those pages introduced me, quite literally, to two new worlds – the world of adult literature and the world of science fiction. This marked a transition for me as a reader, from children’s fiction to adult fiction and I don’t think I ever looked back.
- 1.The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
This is a pivotal book for me because it steered the way for my future career in oceanography. Reading science fiction had already instilled in me a fascination for science, but this story led me to the sea. In many ways it is a book ahead of its time. An alien intelligence is melting Earth’s icecaps and the descriptions of the impact on our drowning world are both powerful and, in many ways, prophetic. Only we don’t need any alien influences to melt the icecaps. We’re managing that all on our own.
- 1.Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
This is the novel that first introduced me to the thriller genre, but the added fascination for me was the Dorset setting. An area I know all too well. I still get a thrill when I’m out exploring and I walk along one of the Holloways and I think of the un-named character hiding out in such a place. It’s an exciting story of pursuit and survival, one man against the odds.
- 1.The Last Days of Pompeii by Lord Lytton
Whenever people saw me reading this they would say “Ah, I know how it ends.” But it is this knowledge that adds to the brooding sense of foreboding. I read this before I actually visited Pompeii, saw it for myself, walked the streets, visited the villas and saw the bodies described in the novel. I loved the way the people of that ill-fated city had been brought to life by this book. I visited Pompeii during my honeymoon which was a turning point in my life and Lytton’s novel will always be part of that.
- 1.Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
This is a book that I should have read a long time ago, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. Then I started researching my family history and came to my Antiguan Great Grandfather, Ernest. I had always suspected that his story was an interesting one and when my DNA showed up a cluster of West African countries – something I suspected but never knew for sure – I realised I had to know more about this part of my heritage. Research is slow because records are sparse and to try to learn more about where Ernest came from I sought out literature. That was when I realised I had never read this book. I soon put that right. It’s a powerful story of passion and not truly belonging, feminism and post-colonialism, written as a backstory for Mr Rochester’s first wife. I can see why people say it is such an important book.
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