5 Books That Changed My Life
Each month, writers, readers, book lovers and bloggers tell us about the books
that had an impact on their lives - and explain why.
NOVEMBER 2024
Stephen Cox
My grandmother told me I read too much. I remember walking in the garden when I was small, telling myself stories.​ I am the author of two books - Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds. In my writing, I usually include something different from our world, to help us see ourselves from a different angle. I hope my work is accessible and bridges audiences.​
I spent nearly all my childhood in Bristol, and I’m now an adoptive Londoner. I live with my partner - 30 years next September, which surprises both of us - and two adult children who come back from time to time. I’m a professional communicator, a science PhD dropout, a recovering poet, bi, and a Quaker.
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Book One: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken
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I remember today what it felt like to enter Earthsea. Yes, it has a lad who goes to wizard school, gets bullied by the posh boys, and struggles against dragons and dark magic. Disaster comes from Ged’s reckless intellectual arrogance. In the end, evil is not beaten, but Ged is healed by understanding himself. Challenging stuff for someone before puberty.
The world, the lore, the worldview was original and challenging. Ged was red-skinned, his friends were black, only the northern barbarians were white. From books like this I learned that books can have dragons in and still be about real stuff like bullying and honour and kindness and courage and self-doubt. And real children’s books are as much about real life as adult ones.
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Book Two: The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
In my teens, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, I ran into Mary Renault’s historical novels. Each one is brilliant, immersing you in the classical world - human stories of heroism, politics or adventure, well researched and imaginatively interpreted. For me, it was revolutionary to be shown, not told, a different view of sexuality. Her work showed that sometimes people love men, women, or both, and that’s fine.
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The Persian Boy tells the story of Bagoas, a slave and beautiful eunuch who was loved by Alexander the Great. He’s a brave survivor, assigned to a quasi-feminine role, and he takes pride in his dancing, taking as little nonsense as he can. Bagoas falls for Alexander, seduces him, and they have a wild and noble love affair while Alexander is conquering the world. I feel his spirit now, as I work on my current WIP.​​
Book Three: Easter by Michael Arditti
Easter Week, and in a single parish church in Hampstead, with conflict in the congregation, the vicar and his curate go through their own dark night of the soul, their own Passion. The story is told twice, each time from several different viewpoints, so we see it more wholly and more holy. Yes, it’s a satire poking fun at different factions in the Church of England. It’s about sex and sexism and bigotry and honesty and AIDS and racism and money. About how, to quote C S Lewis, the smell of sulphur can be strongest near the altar. It’s funny and sometimes savage and rather rude in places. One senior priest loses and then regains his faith, showing old stories can have bold retellings. In my life, I’ve swung from militant atheism to a personal faith which allowed complexity, and now to a new uncertainty. Easter is a book about how faith, like life, cannot be reduced to a glib sentence or two.​​
Book Four: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Diamond tries to explain human history. His central tenet is that people everywhere are smart, curious, and figure stuff out. In essence, he sees the rise of industrial power from natural conditions favouring certain parts of the globe, rather than any inherent superiority. It’s just good luck for Europe and Asia we had the most useful animals to domesticate and a wider range of food crops – that gave a head-start to build cities, industry and the big populations to subdue others. Not that we’re smarter or more moral. I am still figuring out how the world works, why many assumptions we have are wrong. This corrected some of my older attitudes. Diamond’s argument has been criticised, and in later books he advances views I really don’t agree with. It’s an encouragement though to not swallow the first viewpoint you are given.​​​​
Book Five: Wellspring by Sharon Olds
This stands for all her poetry, for all the poetry that lit a fire in me. For years I wrote poetry, backing off in the end, having reached the limits of my ability. Olds tells us we are bodies as well as minds, there is good and bad in the best relationships. Sometimes, she says, we must look at things anew, even moments.
Struggling to pick one book of poems, by one author, I remember Old’s poems about dying fathers and giving birth and growing children - the mess and glory of it all. Writing beautifully of her son growing up, she recalls the last moment he sang with a child’s voice, how at puberty he magically became clean and concerned with his appearance.
And in My Son the Man
I cannot imagine him
No longer a child, and I know I must get ready
Get over my fear of men now my son
Is going to be one.
It’s a punch in the gut. We men must know the darkness inside us, like Ged does in Earthsea.
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