Published on 12, July, 2020
What books have subtley influence you, ones that you read as a child? For me it was Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, as well as being a good adventure story, it introduced me to a whole world of folklore and what I call mystic Britain. You have the history of Britain and then you have the mystic history, the Britain of the things seen from the corner of the eye, the things that you know are there, that you can sense and feel, but can rarely see and other people think you're being daft for caring about. As well as all the strange rituals and folk customs around the country, the fertility dances of Morris Men, to the Hobby Horses and corn dollies. The pull of ancient sacred places, stone circles, holy wells, some very ancient churches, a whole sacred landscape that we're only just rediscovering through the use of such technology as LIDAR. Some customs that cross continenets and generations, throwing coins in a wishing well, these places have often been in use for thousands of years.
That one book set me on a journey thats still ongoing.
I love the smell of books and I get the fascination with atlas's, I love old maps and can spend ages pouring over them.
I'm quite lucky in that the author that I liked as a teenager is still writing.
Most of F Paul Wilson's books are sort of horror-ish but bend the genre and are set in the same universe (long before Marvel did it).
His "Secret History of The World" now spans many books, and I've read them all, but when I was a teenager it was The Keep, The Tomb and The Touch.
The Keep starts out as a Vampire story but then changes into much more.
To still be reading new books in the universe, 35 years later is great.
I was bought a small atlas of the world, which I poured over for hours. The names of far flung places, their flags and capital cities still resonate with me today. Plus the book had a certain smell and feel which I loved.