A book can stay with you forever, and receiving a book unasked that shapes your life so significantly can feel particularly fateful.
Below, some of the Tor.com staff reveal books that they’ve received which have gone on to shape their lives. What will you unwrap this year, and what paths will it lead you down?
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Sparrow was one of the last books I received as a gift, before I began working in publishing and my loved ones assumed that I would want for neither books nor recommendations ever again. Maybe that’s part of why I remember so precisely picking it up under the Christmas tree in my childhood home, or my initial trepidation when my mother mentioned that her book club had read it. I doubted not her taste, but the taste of a group of moms who spent more time gossiping and drinking wine than analyzing the books—still fun, but I was surprised to hear that they had picked up a sci-fi novel from the ’90s.
That early-20s snobbishness kept me from reading The Sparrow for about six months, but I’ve since read the book at least four times—both cover to cover and a selection at a reading series a few years back. I revisited it this year, the 20th anniversary, to discuss it in conversation with Arrival about how human/alien gift-giving can be disastrous. One of the passages will be a reading at my wedding. It’s one of those rare books that has everything: naturalistic characters who contain multitudes; an easy way in to space travel and time dilation for the less scientifically-minded like myself; humor, pathos, the ache of unrequited love and devastating horror in ways that don’t feel contrived. I get something different from it every time I read.
The biggest impact that The Sparrow has had on me is that it’s the book I most often recommend. It was one of the first pieces of media I pressed upon my partner in the first few months of dating, and it was his father’s first impression of me (which, considering that the man is very religious and the book has a very anti-faith ending, had me worried). But both parties loved it, and it’s become a frequent conversation topic that’s led us to share subsequent books: Ancillary Justice, The Three-Body Problem, The Left Hand of Darkness. —Natalie
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
I have been given so many important books for Christmas over the years (Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, The Hobbit), but this one sticks out in my memory because it was my first Roald Dahl book, and the person who gave it to me—my aunt—got to read a good portion of it to me while she was visiting us. (I think I was seven. That sounds about right. I remember the apartment we were living in at the time, but my age is fuzzy—isn’t that always the way?) She did the greatest voices for all the characters, but particularly for Mr. Grasshopper, who was far and away my favorite.
The cover to the right was the cover that I had, for sure. And while I wasn’t a complete alien to Dahl’s sensibilities—I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on repeat from a very early age—there is something about encountering Dahl’s prose for the first time that really makes its mark on a kid. The journeys are harrowing, the characters bombastic, but you never really question if anything that occurs in his stories are possible. Not because kids have wild imaginations and whatnot, but more because… you’re pretty sure that what happens in Roald Dahl books has already happened to you somehow. His stories feel an awful lot like dreaming.—Emily
The More Than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams
By the time I was in middle school, I was a pretty solid fantasy reader. I read The Lord of the Rings every year—my own pilgrimage to Mordor and out again—and spent all my birthday and Christmas Waldenbooks gift certificates on the fattest fantasy novels I could find. I read everything on my mom’s shelves that had an intriguing cover (Kathleen Sky’s Witchdame!) or a feisty, troubled young heroine (Jo Clayton’s Duel of Sorcery series!).
But I rarely picked out anything funny.
When my uncle sent me the leather-bound, gilt-edged More Than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide, it wasn’t the first funny book he’d sent. (I read a lot of Xanth books. I’m not ashamed.) But it was funny science fiction, not fantasy. It took a while for me to commit to reading the whole thing, but I did, and my ideas about stories, about the way the galaxy might look, just bloomed. I’m a very visual reader; there are movies in my head that play whenever I think about a story I’ve read. And these movies looked different than anything I’d dreamt up before. People had fun in these stories. Adams’s sense of the absurd felt so familiar to me that it made the entire universe seem … accessible. And like a thing you could also laugh at, maybe. (Halfway through the book, I realized I’d heard my mother and stepfather listening to the radio production of Hitchhiker, years before. Once you’ve met Marvin, you don’t forget him.)
It’s hard to explain Adams to people who haven’t read him, to explain that you can laugh your face off and also feel like you’re reading some impossible truth about life (the universe, and everything). Adams informs my sense of humor, my references, my ideas about the world(s), in a way that’s somehow more down-to-earth than all the epic fantasy I adore. When I was a kid, those books felt like dreams of living in a different world. Hitchhiker felt like it might know something about being a grownup, here, on a mostly harmless planet. —Molly
Great American Novel Map, by Hog Island Press
All right, this technically isn’t a book, but hear me out. The Great American Novel Map is exactly what it sounds like: a map of the settings of books that the good people of Hog Island Press have deemed “Great American Novels.” From Moby Dick’s setting of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Midland City, Indiana, home of Breakfast of Champions, all the way out to San Francisco for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, forty-two classics are honored here.
Now I’ve spent the last five years working on a novel. As all of the writers out there can attest, writing a novel takes over your life. Since I’m still new at this, and haven’t sold the book, any time I spend working on it feels selfish… but since I want it to be good enough to eventually sell, any time spent doing literally anything else feels wasteful. (As you can imagine, that makes me an absolute treat to live with.) And as all the writers out there can also attest, my book has gradually taken over my partner’s life, too.
That’s why the last two Christmas presents from him have been the most thoughtful, touching gifts I’ve ever received. First, for Christmas 2014, he booked me a long weekend in a pod-style hotel, so I got to live like a monk for three whole days (!!!) and do a massive re-write on the first draft of my book. But then for Christmas 2015 he decided to do a triple backflip of gift-giving. He handed me an unassuming little tube, and I opened it to find The Great American Novel Map. Which was already a great present, because I love maps, and the press’ picks for GAN were so fun and eclectic. So, Christmas win, right?
But then he pointed at Vermont (my novel’s setting), and I see that he’s written the title of my novel down, and added my book to the map.—Leah
We hope there’s a bundle of literary wonder waiting for you beneath all that wrapping papers. Happy holidays!
I was 12 years old when my sister gave me The Wheel of Time as my first-opened present at Christmas. I have no idea what other presents I got that day, or indeed whether I did anything that day other than lie on the floor of the living room reading. For months after that, I lived in Randland. When my family moved from Ohio to Michigan the next year, when I was 13 and leaving behind my only friend for a new school and an uncertain future, I wrote in my journal that I would have to face the coming changes “like an Aiel.” (As it turns out, Aiel-like reserve did not serve me well in making friends, but at least I didn’t stab anyone!)
Books have been many of my favorite Christmas presents, both to give and to get. I still get a thrill whenever I see a rectangular package of a particular size under the tree…
There’s nothing wrong with recommending The Sparrow as a serious look at religious arrogance, especially the missionary kind that expects another culture to convert to an alien point of view (this being the human POV in this case).
But I fail time and again to get why people recommend this book without a trigger warning. Another website put this book on a “light summer reading” list. It’s anything but light.
The protagonist is repeatedly raped/tortured by his alien masters and the initial contact message interpreted as beautiful song is a celebration of rape.
By all means recommend the book with caveats, but perhaps not for what’s meant to be a joyful holiday. That said I’m willing to listen as to why some readers are fascinated with this book, while downplaying its horrors.
It wasn’t exactly a surprise, because I gave very strong hints and if I remember correctly, I even caught my mom with the book at the shop’s cashier, but the book I got for Christmas that has had the greatest importance for me was “Maailma Silm”, which is the Estonian translation of “The Eye of the World”, book one of WoT (and which, unfortunately, has remained as the only translation of WoT in Estonian that got published. I know the translators did “Great Hunt”, too, but for some reasons it was never published here). The first volume of the WoT series had come out in Estonian that autumn and I had heard nothing about it, but I read the introduction on the back cover and in the newspaper’s new books column and knew I had to have it. Fortunately, my parents took the hint. I was (does a quick math calculation) 20 then and it really had a great impact. I loved the book so much but the next parts just did not come out and I wanted to know how the story continued and that’s why I picked up reading books in English, something that has made my world so much richer and has even affected my studies in higher education to some extent.
I have had some other books for Christmas, but not overly much. People know I love to read and love books, but they more often give me book store gift cards for birthday and some other occasion so I can buy just the thing I want myself. However, I do remember one Christmas book more very vividly, though this one was asked, as well. It was “Bernard and Bianca Kängurumaal”, which in original would have been “The Rescuers Down Under” (Yes, the Disney thing). I was about nine and had asked for a fairy-stories book when I wrote to Santa Claus, but then saw this book in stores and talked everywhere how I wished this instead of the fairy-stories book (which wasn’t any specific book, just a book with fairy-tales) in hope that the elves that were supposed to keep an eye on the children to see if they are naughty or nice can hear me and let Santa know. Well, Santa delivered and the book was absolutely beautiful and I loved it very much. I just saw it on the shelf today when decorating the Christmas tree and it still waits there. Perhaps I’ll read it to my little niece next time she comes over :)
PS. It’s officially 24th of December here in Estonia (even more important here than Dec 25 and 26), for a whole full hour already, so Merry Christmas, everybody :)
Some friends of my parents gave me and my sister Super Paper Mario for Christmas when I was 14 – and though SPM isn’t a book, it’s definitely a story. They’d wrapped the disc in several nesting boxes, each one addressed to an imaginary character that my sister and I had made up. When I first saw the box I was surprised to see it addressed to “Jonax”, since I didn’t think my parents’ friends paid any attention to my sister and I’s games, and then I opened the next box and found another character that I hadn’t realized they even knew about…and then I opened the next box and found another character…and another. I was incredibly touched that they’d noticed the characters that were so important to me and my sister, and then created a thoughtful gift like that.
So the gift would have been important to me even if the actual object inside all the boxes wasn’t that exciting, but Super Paper Mario also turned out to be significant in my life. I think it was the first story I loved without reservations. SPM has a lot of flaws, both as a game and as a story, but I loved it anyways. I recognized the flaws and I decided to adore it wholeheartedly nevertheless. For the first time, I stopped being a snob and just enjoyed something that spoke to me. SPM is probably the reason I’ve been able to fully enjoy so many other flawed but wonderful stories, too, first among them being Brandon Sanderson’s books…and I quite literally don’t know what my life would be like if it weren’t for Sanderson’s novels.
So it’s partly because of that Christmas gift that now I can accept and love stories I used to think were silly: my sister and I’s weird characters or flawed, delightful tales like SPM’s story and Brandon Sanderson’s sagas. I think it couldn’t have happened unless it was a gift, since I wouldn’t have picked up SPM on my own. I guess gifts have a particular ability to shift your life into a different direction since they’re unexpected, coming from somebody else…
From the day I could read, I was an avid reader and book lover. My mothers sister who was also my godmother gave me books as presents, but was very insecure in her choices. She did not really understand my likes, but I appreciated the effort. And then on one Christmas she got it exactly right: she gave me The Black Stallion Returns by Walter Farley. This is the second volume of the series, but I didn’t know that. On the cover was a beautiful Arabian stallion standing in a desert. I could not keep my eyes and hands off that book for the rest of the night. When I finally was allowed to read, the story was all I had hoped for. Even though I now see it through critical eyes – the description of some of the bad guys is very racist, I think – I will always remember this book fondly as my introduction to the world of the Arabian horse. I did not grow into as brave and talented a rider as Alec, but there is an Arabian horse in my life now, and we have shared many adventures, happy and sad ones.
When I was in 6th grade, I was talking to an uncle of mine at my aunt’s funeral. We were talking about books and he said he thought I might like Lord of the Rings, which were some of his favorites. That Christmas, he sent The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. It’s really kind of interesting how that has set the stage for so many things in my life – I was always bookish, but that was probably my first real ‘geeky’ interest, and to this day (along with Star Wars) is definitely my most notable/visible and detailed in terms of knowledge of the lore. And in fact, despite my passionate love for Star Wars, and the fact that most people know me as a ‘Star Wars person’ – I still view LotR to be the superior work. Although with the success of the movies, I guess it’s a litlte easier to be a visible LoTR fan and have people know what you are talking about.
I love to give books as gifts…it’s a gift that can just keep on giving for your entire life!