The Best Stories You've Ever Read

[Kantarii]

I realize my reading tastes differ from the next person. I also realize they differ from my writing to a large degree. But, I took a hard look at 5-6 stories I have read more than once in my life time and really enjoyed reading. The one thing that seems common with all of them is the "Dark Atmosphere" that appears in the story at a certain point in most of them. I could have listed more, especially by E.A.Poe.


1. Washington Irving's " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
2. Lewis Carroll's "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland"
3. Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein"
4. Author Doyle's "Sherlock Holms" series
5. J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings"
6. C.S.Lewis "The Lion,The Witch,and the wardrobe"

So, my questions are, "Do the stories that you read have some type of influence on the stories you write?" and "What made it a great story in your eyes?"

 

[lovecraft68]

Mine are all horror except one.

1-The Exorcist. Anyone who thinks all this is about is a vomiting cursing demon who does sexual things with crosses, needs to read this. Powerful is the word that best describes it.

2-Shadowland by Peter Straub. A great dark look at real magic. Loved this book so much I named my Comic book store after the title.

3-The Necroscope series by Brian Lumely. Twilight and Anne Rice's vampires need to meet the "Wamphyrie." The baddest vampires ever created. So nasty they even have BDSM style sex.

4-Swan Song Robert McCammon. For those who like post apocalypse type stories this is the best in the genre. Blows King's Stand away. Sister Creep, Black Frankenstein and the two villains "Roland and Colonel Macklin" were some of the most compelling characters I ever read. Roland is in my top five all despicable list of fictional characters

5-All things great and small(and the series) James Herriot. I love animals and anyone who does would love this book and the other three in the series. Herriot was a vet in the Yorkshires in the 50's and the books are full of great stories, a few sad, but most happy, about his experience with animals and their owners.

These books stand out on a bookshelf loaded with horror and occult material. My one ray of light I guess.

Honorable mention:

Lord of the Rings.

Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Stephen Donaldson(first lagged and dragged, second was lights out the third? Don't waste time or money...cash cow)

The Belgariad. 5 books by David Eddings, fantastic fun fantasy series. Like Donaldson Eddings could not leave this be and had a second series The Mallorean. It killed everything great about the first series.

They Thirst/Wolf's Hour McCammon. Two great books with good spins on vamps and werewolves.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
the Gormenghast trilogy - Mervyn Peake
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Kublai Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
more recently, most anything by John Banville. He writes nearly perfect sentences. Long, convoluted ones, often using words that require a dictionary, which then reveal themselves as the perfect word for the context.

Do these writers have an influence on what I write? No. But I'd like to write an occasional sentence like Banville.

Although I did write an orgasm scene that was a paraphrase of a stanza from Kublai Khan. Nobody spotted it.

 

[lovecraft68]

I left out the part of influence. Blatty's Exorcist was an influence on my Every Dog has its day. During the investigation into Regan's case, Karris-a psychologist as well as a priest-must determine if she is possessed or if this is mental illness.

A lot of examples of true cases of hysteria and schizophrenia were given and I find that topic fascinating. I used a lot of similar 'psycho-babble' in Every Dog which features a serial killer with multiple personalities.

 

[CyranoJ]

The works that probably most influence my writing, or at any rate that I come back to and read the most:

Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness" and "The Secret Agent"
Samuel R. Delany (various but especially "Babel-17" and "Dhalgren")
Octavia Butler (various but especially "Mind of My Mind" and "Parable of the Sower")
Ursula K. LeGuin (various but especially "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Birthday of the World")
Stephen R. Donaldson (especially the Gap Cycle and the Mordant's Need books)
Susanna Clarke, "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell"
... and as erotic writing goes, various "Anonymous" writers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century (some of those writers were out of their freaking minds...) or vintage erotic novels of the Sixties and early Seventies (likewise)

I'll come back to the "why" later.

 

[Kantarii]

The works that probably most influence my writing, or at any rate that I come back to and read the most:

Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness" and "The Secret Agent"
Samuel R. Delany (various but especially "Babel-17" and "Dhalgren")
Octavia Butler (various but especially "Mind of My Mind" and "Parable of the Sower")
Ursula K. LeGuin (various but especially "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Birthday of the World")
Stephen R. Donaldson (especially the Gap Cycle and the Mordant's Need books)
Susanna Clarke, "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell"
... and as erotic writing goes, various "Anonymous" writers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century (some of those writers were out of their freaking minds...) or vintage erotic novels of the Sixties and early Seventies (likewise)

I'll come back to the "why" later.

I loved reading "Moby Dick" - great story

 

[Carnal_Flower]

I'm with you on Moby Dick. Not as a writer, but as a reader.

I had a sort of "transcendent" moment reading that for the first time. It is simply my favorite novel.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yeah, was never into the classics...sci-fi was my turn on as a kid and young adult.

My all time favorite -

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. I don't know how many times I have read that book and enjoyed it each and every time. So many of his are favorites, From Starship Troopers to one of the last books he wrote - The Number of the Beast. All treasures.

Next in line are Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsia series along with several of his other works.

Then there is David Drakes Hammer's Slammers series. Military Sci-Fi has always fascinated me.

The Pern series by Anne MacCaffery. A combination of Sci-Fi, if you read the prologue, and fantasy, if you don't read the prologue. Dragons, who would have thought.

Later in life I gravitated to more mundane writings...

John D MacDonald's color series or Travis McGee series of books. Along with him there was Robert B Parker's Jessie Stone Series.

I have reads others, but Sci-Fi got my attention at a young age and has never left.

 

[Areala-chan]

I shamelessly adore Richard Laymon. I'd started reading King early in my teens ('The Stand' and 'The Tommyknockers'), but when I ran across Laymon's book 'Quake' in 1996 I was floored. I'd never read anything like it, where the story moved at such a break-neck pace and the author could get away with describing things I'd never imagined. More than once I laid the book down and thought to myself, "Wait a minute, you're allowed to DO this in fiction?"

Then I picked it back up and kept reading. I've devoured everything the man wrote, have a copy of all but maybe 5 of his published works, and while he has more strike-outs than home runs, there are only a few that did nothing for me and will likely never be read. Sorry Beast House trilogy...you're staying on the shelves.

Reading Laymon is like watching a B-movie where shit just happens because OF COURSE it happens, but you're running along at such a relentless pace to keep up there isn't any time to think about the absurdity until you've closed the covers. By that point complaining about the not-so-hot stuff makes as much sense as haggling with the manager over a meal you ate down to the plate but claim was terrible. I have no excuses.

 

[R. Richard]

1. The Second Chance series, by R. Richard
2. Involuntary Nude, by R. Richard
3. The Beach Murders and the follow on series, by R. Richard
4. To Keep A Job, by R. Richard
5. Tails of The Pussycat Lounge, by R. Richard

 

[Absinth3]

1. The Second Chance series, by R. Richard
2. Involuntary Nude, by R. Richard
3. The Beach Murders and the follow on series, by R. Richard
4. To Keep A Job, by R. Richard
5. Tails of The Pussycat Lounge, by R. Richard

You definitely get props for your self confidence. Bravo!

 

[Absinth3]

Best fiction / worst fiction

The Bible

 

[rjordan]

Almost impossible task. I drop a book the second it doesn't interest me, so everything I've completed was the best at the time. I've listed only books that I've read at least twice.

Not all are fiction, but they are very well told stories with all the same elements.

Richard Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, read half a dozen times at least.
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, still a great detective story
David McCullough, biographies with story elements of the best novels.
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Margaret Atwood, anything SF. Can't get into the others.
Ernest Hemingway, nothing. Can't get into any of his crap.
Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke. Amazing. Not so much his others.
Cormac McCarthy, anything. He's the only writer I wish I could emulate, but never tried
Jim Harrison, anything he wrote. Dalma is extraordinary.
Hillary Jordan, Mudbound
Elmore Leonard, anything
James Michener, Caravans. The rest bore me stiff.
Khaled Hosseini, Kite Runner.
Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red, better known for Winter's Bone
Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead. The rest are crap.

All of these affected me strongly as a reader. Can't think of a single way any of them influenced my Lit smut.

rj

 

[Handley_Page]

Almost anything by Terry Pratchett, especially the last book ("The Shepherd's Crown") which is his last masterpiece. It's a 'Tiffany Aching' story.
I can and have read "Men at Arms" several times, and I find something new each time.

Wilbur Smith, Geoffrey Jenkins, Edward Marsdon all have the power to keep me reading at stupid o'clock am.

 

[Sammael Bard]

A Study in Scarlet by A. C. Doyle. I was 11 when I first started reading Sherlock Holmes. Back then, it felt dark as shit. The story of the killer was what caught my eye. Still a classic.


Arabian Nights (unabridged). I was 13 when I first laid my dirty paws on an unabridged version. A story within a story took a whole different meaning. It was interesting despite the hard-to-comprehend archaic language. And the NSFW illustrations were....enlightening.


Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Another unabridged dark as shit story for an 11 year old. The stories were great, especially the old war horse. And the moments when you think Darkie is in good hands and then something bad happens to the owner. Damn. That was a completely original thing for me to read back then.


Amorous Woman by Donna George Storey. I learned more about writing erotica from this book than anywhere else. Her narration as a woman who loves sex and the conflict that comes with it was awesome. The writing was delicate, beautifully crafted and, of course, very erotic.


And my favourite:

Gillian Flynn's Dark Places. 'Gone Girl' was ruined by newspapers and tabloids screaming spoilers, but I read this baby before anyone could say a word. I learned how it's okay to be fucking dark and mean and still be captivating. I learned that if you have a great story with a badass writing, you can still make people to overlook the fact that the central protagonist is big-boobed and ugly as hell. I learned how to effectively use bursts of short sentences to subconsciously catch a reader's attention.

D. G. Storey and G. Flynn, both ladies had a big impact in the way I view fiction and the endless possibilities that you can spin with 26 alphabets. I love both of them.

 

[MLClifton]

A Study in Scarlet by A. C. Doyle. I was 11 when I first started reading Sherlock Holmes. Back then, it felt dark as shit. The story of the killer was what caught my eye. Still a classic.


Arabian Nights (unabridged). I was 13 when I first laid my dirty paws on an unabridged version. A story within a story took a whole different meaning. It was interesting despite the hard-to-comprehend archaic language. And the NSFW illustrations were....enlightening.


Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Another unabridged dark as shit story for an 11 year old. The stories were great, especially the old war horse. And the moments when you think Darkie is in good hands and then something bad happens to the owner. Damn. That was a completely original thing for me to read back then.


Amorous Woman by Donna George Storey. I learned more about writing erotica from this book than anywhere else. Her narration as a woman who loves sex and the conflict that comes with it was awesome. The writing was delicate, beautifully crafted and, of course, very erotic.


And my favourite:

Gillian Flynn's Dark Places. 'Gone Girl' was ruined by newspapers and tabloids screaming spoilers, but I read this baby before anyone could say a word. I learned how it's okay to be fucking dark and mean and still be captivating. I learned that if you have a great story with a badass writing, you can still make people to overlook the fact that the central protagonist is big-boobed and ugly as hell. I learned how to effectively use bursts of short sentences to subconsciously catch a reader's attention.

D. G. Storey and G. Flynn, both ladies had a big impact in the way I view fiction and the endless possibilities that you can spin with 26 alphabets. I love both of them.

What did you think of Sharp Objects? Talk about a flawed protagonist--figuratively and literally.

 

[Kantarii]

Mine are all horror except one.

1-The Exorcist. Anyone who thinks all this is about is a vomiting cursing demon who does sexual things with crosses, needs to read this. Powerful is the word that best describes it.

2-Shadowland by Peter Straub. A great dark look at real magic. Loved this book so much I named my Comic book store after the title.

3-The Necroscope series by Brian Lumely. Twilight and Anne Rice's vampires need to meet the "Wamphyrie." The baddest vampires ever created. So nasty they even have BDSM style sex.

4-Swan Song Robert McCammon. For those who like post apocalypse type stories this is the best in the genre. Blows King's Stand away. Sister Creep, Black Frankenstein and the two villains "Roland and Colonel Macklin" were some of the most compelling characters I ever read. Roland is in my top five all despicable list of fictional characters

5-All things great and small(and the series) James Herriot. I love animals and anyone who does would love this book and the other three in the series. Herriot was a vet in the Yorkshires in the 50's and the books are full of great stories, a few sad, but most happy, about his experience with animals and their owners.

These books stand out on a bookshelf loaded with horror and occult material. My one ray of light I guess.

Honorable mention:

Lord of the Rings.

Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Stephen Donaldson(first lagged and dragged, second was lights out the third? Don't waste time or money...cash cow)

The Belgariad. 5 books by David Eddings, fantastic fun fantasy series. Like Donaldson Eddings could not leave this be and had a second series The Mallorean. It killed everything great about the first series.

They Thirst/Wolf's Hour McCammon. Two great books with good spins on vamps and werewolves.

The Exorcist is one of the few books I remember reading that stayed pretty true to itself when adapted into a movie.

 

[JackStrange]

Favorite reads:

A Confederacy of Dunces -- Toole
Too Far to Walk -- Hersey
L'Etranger -- Camu
Huckleberry Finn -- Twain
Moby Dick -- Melville
ALSO
The Sound and the Fury -- Faulkner
La Grosse Femme d'a Coté est Escente-- Trembley
Brideshead Revisited -- Waugh
A Farewell to Arms Rises-- Hemingway
How Few Remain -- Turtledove

My own stories are influenced by Faulkner and Hemingway for style, and Trembley and Waugh for storytelling. AND, Too War to Walk has had the greatest on my life... I

 

[NOIRTRASH]

James Michener: IBERIA. I went to Spain after I read it.
Hemingway: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: SOUTH MOON UNDER
Tolstoy: WAR AND PEACE
Willi Heinrich: THE CROSS OF IRON
LeCarre: All the George Smilley novels.
Alan Le May: THE UNFORGIVEN
Cormac McCarthy: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Dashiell Hammett: THE SCORCHED FACE
Raymond Chandler: TRY THE GIRL
Elmore Leonard: VALDEZ IS COMING
George V.Higgins: COGANS TRADE
James Agee: LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN

 

[jomar]

Ha, just getting started on Valdez is Coming after reading his Raylan Givens stories which were the basis of the tv series Justified...awesome show.

Not sure how to define best as lately I'm working though authors works and tend to lean toward action adventure...so maybe not best but drawn to lately.

Robert Crais

Michael Connelly

John Sandford

Bernard Cornwell-good stuff if you like historical war stories. Two of his series have been turned into tv series.

Patrick O'Brian-historical seafaring fiction, perhaps the most nuanced and pitch perfect word choices I've ever read.

Cormac McCarthy-No Country and Blood Meridian were good, a Pulitzer for The Road was lost on me so I figure it was a body of work award.

Robert B Parker

David Baldacci

Gave up on Michener after he'd taken 15 pages to describe a cup of coffee in one book.

Prachett doesn't grab me, but he's beloved by many.

I'll give a few here a try.

So, does what I read influence my writing. Probably, but I don't see any direct carryover other than trying to make dialogue as real-life as I can. I've experimented with a bunch of styles so each story has a different "voice" though are consistent within the series.

 

[HeyAll]

Anne Rice: The Vampire Lestat

Simon Kernick: The Payback, Relentless, Deadline, The Crime Trade, and a few others of his...

 

[beachbum1958]

Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Robert Heinlein - The Moon is A Harsh Mistress
Frank Herbert - Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune
Brian Aldis - Hothouse
John W. Campbell - Who Goes There? (the source book for the 'Thing' movies)
C.L. Moore - Shambleau/Jirel of Joiry
Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword, Three Hearts and Three Lions
Bram Stoker - Dracula
R.D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone
R.L. Stevenson - Treasure Island, The Master of Ballantrae, Kidnapped
Walter Scott - Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, Guy Mannering, Marmion
Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda, Rupert of Hentzau
Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers
Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe, A Journal of the plague years, Moll Flanders (punished properly for reading that one!)
T.H. White - The Once and Future King
Ludovico Ariosto - Orlando Furioso
L. Charlotte Guest - The Mabinogion
R.M. Ballantyne - The Coral island
J.M Barrie - Peter Pan
E.H. Shepard - The Wind In The Willows
C.S. Lewis - The 'Narnia' cycle
Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit/Lord of The Rings/Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight
Charles Kingsley - Westward Ho!
Jack London - The Call Of The Wild
Jane Webb-Loudon - The Mummy; A Tale of The Twenty-Second Century
James George Frazer - The Golden Bough
Eleanor Hull - Folklore of the British Isles

These are the books I read when I was young (and not so young), mostly because that was the most readable stuff in the stacks in my parents' library, with a couple of exceptions, and the sci-fi stuff I acquired at university. I grew up reading the Scott, Dumas, Defoe, and Stevenson adventure novels, and came to Sci-Fi fairly late in life; the very first one I ever read was 'Who Goes There?' and it creeped me out, it still does, but I still go back to it whenever everything else palls. I can't read horror, it stops making sense and just becomes strange and pointless after a short while; after working for so long with MSF, HALO, War-Child, and UNICEF in war-zones around the world, plus so long in Afghanistan, nothing on the printed page even comes close, so I confine my reading these days to military histories and biographies, and cod-historical fantasy by people like Katherine Kurtz.

 

[Jay321]

I am a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson's work. I have all of his books but a couple in the second Mistborn trilogy and the books that he wrote to finish off Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Even his young adult and children's books are fun.

The first Mistborn Trilogy was amazing. The man can worldbuild like I have never seen and weave it into the storyline so you don't even realize that it is done until you can picture the world like you are standing in it. No data dump at the beginning of his stories.

I found Stephen King at the ripe old age of 12. His stuff got hard to read after a while, but there are some real diamonds there. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile, It, the first 3 novels of the Dark Tower series, (for your sanity, DON'T read these, the last 4 were BAD) and The Body. I am sure I am missing a few that are excellent, but its all that's coming to mind right now.

Someone else said it, I never really got into classics, but I did find Poe, and there is something about his work that just strikes a nerve with me.

The Belgariad was a great series, couldn't force myself through the second series.

Some of George RR Martin's work outside of Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) is good. I do like that series too, but at this point I doubt that I will finish the books, assuming he finishes writing them.

I am enjoying The Expanse series by James SA Corey. SyFy channel has started making that into a series, Season 1 was half of Book 1. At the pace of writing and production, they will finish the books before the series catches up. (I say "they" because that is a pen name for two writers) I will have to re-read that series when the next book comes out.

 

[rjordan]

And my favourite:

Gillian Flynn's Dark Places. 'Gone Girl' was ruined by newspapers and tabloids screaming spoilers, but I read this baby before anyone could say a word. I learned how it's okay to be fucking dark and mean and still be captivating. I learned that if you have a great story with a badass writing, you can still make people to overlook the fact that the central protagonist is big-boobed and ugly as hell. I learned how to effectively use bursts of short sentences to subconsciously catch a reader's attention.

Crap. I did my list from memory and forgot Gillian Flynn. I read all except Utopia before the two movies came out (Both movies are very good) Read all three at least twice about a year apart. Dark Places was also my favorite of the three. Then Gone Girl. Then Sharp Objects. Just incredible characters and incredibly flawed protagonists in each one.

rj

 

[Hosebloke]

Christiane F.
Autobiography of a Berlin drug addict and prostitute when the wall was up. I read this when I was around eleven years old and I think it helped me understand the problems of using drugs which no teacher or other books did as I grew older. Coincidently I visited Berlin and fell in love with place many years later, it's a city not to be missed