What an author reads often influences their own writing. Here are a few of the current books on my coffee table.
Cline’s Ready Player One has been showing up in pop media due to its upcoming movie release. I even discussed the book a bit in my recent eSports post. Armada, Cline’s second book, was suggested to me by a reader after hearing my opinions on eSports in fiction. I just finished Armada. The plot was simple and a little cliché, but it was well written and the characters were engaging. If you’ve read Read Player One you will feel like you already know the main characters in Armada, as well as their obsessive knowledge of 1980s geek culture. Easy reading. Fun characters. This novel appealed to my taste for a straightforward story. In writing the next Silhouette installment I will be looking to Armada and similar books for inspiration in style and substance. I see my Silhouette stories fitting into a similar vein as Armada, both being simple stories with strong characters and galaxies full of action which appeal to both adults and young adults alike.
I’ve lately been searching for eSports related fiction. There is not much out there. Arena is one of the few options I’ve been able to find and I was lucky enough to have this little-known recent release available at my local library. I’m halfway through the story now and am excited to finish the tale. This is a straight up YA novel with a strong female lead and a nice balance of surrounding characters. The world seems real, as well as the characters, though some parts are a bit overdone and corny. I really appreciate Jennings’ take on modern social conflicts in this near-future setting. The plot is focused around an eSports gaming tournament, but the characters and their social struggles give the story so much more depth. This is a great book which will surely have influences on my future characters and any possible eSports-related stories I put together.
I haven’t stepped into this short read yet, but I purchased this book to study Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis purely because I am interested in the scientific ideas as inspiration for my next Silhouette story. I stumbled upon the Gaia hypothesis Wikipedia entry in a search for general information around living planets, as if Earth were one gigantic organism.
Wikipedia:
The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
Intrigued by the summarization, I ordered a copy of Gaia which Lovelock purposefully wrote in layman’s terms for the general populace to understand. His others books on the hypothesis contain much more scientific detail and were specifically written for other scientists to read. This book was originally published in 1979, but the hypothesis is still a topic of discussion today in some scientific circles. The copy I grabbed is an updated edition with revisions and a new preface by Lovelock. Can’t wait to dive in to this book and see how the theory influences Silhouette’s next adventure!
What books influence your writing? Do you have any suggestions for me?
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