'The Children's Animal World Encyclopedia', published by Paul Hamlyn in the late 1960s was certainly one of the reasons I eventually did a zoology degree and went on to a career in biological research.
'Roman Britain and the Anglo-Saxon Settlements', by Collingwood and Myres. Dry as dust to some, but it turned me on to history and archaeology.
'Stormbringer' by Michael Moorcock, opened up the worlds of Fantasy and Sci-Fi to me.
Most importantly, 'Treasure Island', by Robert Louis Stevenson. It made me a voracious reader, of everything, but especially fiction. It also made me convert one of my mother's largest knitting needles into a cutlass. Arrr!
That’s so cool that such an early book influenced your career choice. I’ve just realised that books in general influenced mine. Or rather, the feel of libraries. Heavenly zones of quiet, ordered universes on every shelf. More potent than a church for that most rarified of atmospheres: a sacred hush in the presence of something simultaneously modest and transcendent.
"[His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore."
"[His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore."
