Life Changing Books by Allison Symes

 Hi, I thought for my first post here I’d share some of my life changing books. They all show the power of stories!

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Tey’s Inspector Grant is confined to a hospital bed after  a nasty fall (and it was set some time ago! They’d have him on his feet and out now!). Grant is renowned amongst his colleagues for having an eye for criminal faces and he is brought a picture of someone he discovers is Richard III. 

The only thing Grant knows is what everyone thinks - Richard killed The Princes in the Tower to take the throne. Grant decides, with the help of a research assistant going to the British Library for him, to investigate.

Whatever your views on Richard III, this is a great detective story. (Colin Dexter uses the same  premise when his Inspector Morse is confined to hospital - see The Wench Is Dead). 

The book made me change my views on Richard III. It is renowned for being the catalyst for many joining the Richard III Society.  

It is probably still Tey’s best known work.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey is renowned for changing people's minds about Richard III. Image from Pixabay.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 

This is the book to demonstrate irony is wonderful in story telling! Elizabeth Bennett is well ahead of her time as a heroine knowing her own mind. I love everything about this and read it at home when I was 13 at about the same time as I was studying it in English Literature at school. Did I mind reading the book twice? Oh no! The characters gripped me and I regularly re-read this. 

It is a wonderful go-to book for a comfort read. I watched the BBC’s Big Read programme in the early 2000s. This novel was championed by Meera Syal who rightly described this as the blueprint for great romantic comedy. 

Stourhead was famously used for the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice featuring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Pixabay image.

Winchester Cathedral where Jane Austen is buried. They have held exhibitions about her in the past. Pixabay image.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
This wonderful trilogy showed me what fantasy writing could do and be. It is for me the ultimate good -v- evil story.  The film adaptations by Peter Jackson brought Tolkien’s world to life. What is great here is the fact some of my family would never read the huge paperback of this. They were gripped by the films though. Still got the story into them!

The breadth and scope of The Lord of the Rings makes it one of my favourite books. Pixabay image.

Being tiny myself means I quite fancy living in a cosy hobbit home surrounded by lots of books. What's not to like? Pixabay image.

Almost anything by P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett

Difficult to name anything specific (though I could choose The Code of the Woosters by Wodehouse and Going Postal by Pratchett. The latter starts with the hero being hanged! It is a fabulous story with the most likeable heroic rogue I’ve come across). 

What these gentlemen have done is shown humorous fiction is a fantastic art form and make it look easy. 

If there is one thing I’ve learned as a writer, it is that anyone who makes writing look easy has been putting in a hell of a lot of work over many years to reach that point.

What would you choose as your life changing books?

Terry Pratchett's magnificent Discworld. Image from Pixabay.