Normally I would just answer the prompt, and for today’s one of them would be The Bible definitely, if for no other reason than its impact on Western culture. For the other two, its difficult bc I love to read and there are so many that have really spoken to me.
I’d guess the The Call of Cthulhu would be another, or rather the compilation of H.P. Lovecraft stories where I first read it. I love horror and his writing was a bit challenging for me at the time, but I think it helped me grow as a reader.
For the third one, I would probably say a fantasy or swashbuckler story. It’s hard to know which one, as I’ve read many and they all have different stuff I like about them. For example, The Privilege of the Sword was the first time I saw a female lead in a story about a swordsperson that felt like someone I could relate to. Too often female leads in fantasy books who are good fighter feel too much like they are no different from the male leads. Other books I loved were The Prisoner of Zenda, which was one of the first books of swashbuckling adventure I remember reading, The Prince of Foxes (which was made into a film that was good, but not as good as the book), and Scaramouche.
What I would like to also do here, though, is plug the short story I just wrote and posting on my blog. It’s called Twinkle and it’s about a young girl in the 1930s offering herself up to a wealthy older man as a human pet. It started out as a vignette I came up with while out running and I built on it from there. Despite what that very brief description, the title card, and the first chapter might suggest, it’s not a lewd story or anything – I wanted to suggest it was going that way before pivoting towards the actual theme of the story (I’ll cover that more in an author’s notes posting when I get the chance).
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