0-9 yrs ~ The Three Investigators and the Secret of the Green Ghost Robert Arthur
Recommended for a boy of a comparable age.

Despite the lack of cell phones and the Internet, the book holds up rather well; I hope modern boys would find it as exciting as I did. This book was perfect for its time and intended audience. It features clever and capable boys of independent means, exciting adventures in exotic locales and cliffhangers to end every chapter – it’s a perfect “gateway” book to novella-length fiction. What’s not to love?

10-19 yrs~ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig.
Recommended for a confused and alienated teen or adult.

There is so much packed into this book, so many different tools it provides to be able to think more effectively. It features a guy suffering a relapse of a nervous breakdown; he is led to consider what is worth doing in life. In order to make that decision, the narrator confronts some basic questions. What is quality? What is value? What is the best way to make decisions? How can one make sense of the world?

20-29 yrs~Startide Rising David Brin.
Recommended for adults who have outgrown juvenile sci-fi.

Aside from the satisfactions of well-written, creative hard sci-fi, man’s place in the universe is considered in detail here. What makes us special and uniquely valuable? How are we different from the corrupt entrenched factions of society? Is it possible to stand for individualism and freedom of choice when you are ridiculed, threatened and ostracized for such a position?

30-39 yrs~Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope.
Recommended for anyone who never read beyond Jane Austen and the Brontes.

The interwoven plot threads center around the political sniping in a small town, and two young lovers caught up in opposing factions. The characters are finely drawn, the dialogue is rich and compelling, and the infighting is instantly recognizable. The language of description and setting is more baroque than in modern prose. With that in mind, there is still much to learn from how Trollope shifts among points of view in a given scene. This is particularly true with characters that are more self-serving, and hence unreliable, than others.

40 yrs – present~The Positive Power of Negative Thinking
Julie Norem.
Recommended for introverts everywhere.

Unlike the other books on the list, this is non-fiction, but it has some important insights into personality types and worldviews. Optimistic, hopeful extroverts are regarded as the ideal members of society; those of us who gravitate toward thinking of all the things that could go wrong are typically asked to stay quiet and not sour the milk. Why would people choose to look for the cloud behind every silver lining? This book analyzes why that negative outlook can serve to increase happiness and job performance.

In a nutshell, some people (like me) are really bothered by formless uncertainty; the act of identifying and understanding the risks of any given situation helps us to make rational decisions. I recommend the book because, whether you see yourself in it or not, as it aids introspection.

BRINKLEY MANOR by P.G. Wodehouse (published as Right Ho, Jeeves in the U.S.).

This is the funniest book in the history of funny. Wodehouse stands alone as the master of comic delivery. There are so many delicious scenes to choose from in this book, but all of them weave together to form a tangled Gordian knot of a plot. I wish that this were my book for one simple reason: it astounds the reader. Truly, it does, on the first read and on the tenth.

There you are, holding the volume upright on your lap, approaching the end of the book, with the well-intentioned but utterly hapless Bertie Wooster irretrievably destined for destruction. He has brought ruination on himself and everyone around him at Brinkley Manor, including Gussie, Angela, Aunt Dahlia and even Jeeves. Your right hand is holding the remaining ten pages, and after laughing and cringing for three hundred pages, you wonder to yourself, how in the world can all of these plots and subplots be resolved with so few pages remaining?

Wodehouse pulls it off with a touch that is light and deft. It’s breathtaking, both from the aesthetic standpoint of a reader and from the technical viewpoint of a writer.

If we assume the two are mutually exclusive for any one writer, either simultaneously or sequentially, this is a very tough question.

If I had to choose, I’d rather have critical acclaim without commercial success, because I would get a lot of satisfaction from the critical recognition and the validation of my writing. It would probably bother me that ‘lesser’ books were making ‘lesser’ authors rich and famous, though.

If I had commercial success without critical acclaim, I would certainly enjoy the money and fan adoration (or at least I think I’d enjoy the fan adoration). However, I would always have gnawing self-doubt working at me every time a reviewer dismisses my books as merely “commercial”.

The truth, however, is that I’m planning on having both critical acclaim and commercial success. I’ll use my real name for the Hollywood-bound blockbusters and an artsy pen name for the deep literary works. (How’s that for creative plot resolution?)

The first story I wrote for fun was a collaborative piece of science fiction I did with three friends when I was nine.

It was about four schoolboys who built a spaceship for a trip to the moon. The big twist was that they overbuilt it, and it became an ‘interplanetary space travel unit’, zooming them out for various adventures among the planets. It was fun to trade ideas around, but I seemed to be the only one who did any actual writing, scrawling it out in my D- handwriting on page after page of cheap, blue-lined foolscap.

Sadly, we ran into philosophical disagreements in the collaboration.

Even then, my bent as an author was of the hard science fiction school. I insisted on looking up the details of *exactly* how far away the planets were, where they were in their orbits relative to each other, making the numbers work out right for speeds, distances, times, atmospheric conditions, etc. I wanted it to be a realistic as possible.

My friends were much more of the soft sci-fi school, i.e. skip all the boring fact checking and get to the good stuff. Spaceman Jones pushes the big red button and five minutes later he’s on Venus killing monsters. I recall saying something like, “That’s not science fiction, that’s science fantasy!” I got irritated when they didn’t understand the distinction.

In the end, they lost interest (I can’t imagine why!), and I took over the story as a private project. I’ve been the same detail-oriented, opinionated fussbudget ever since.

There have been a lot of creative things that I’ve pursued at one time or another.

In high school and college, I was into drama. I acted, sang and danced in lots of different shows. Thanks to a large frame and a thundering baritone voice, I usually played the villain. Tenors just aren’t intimidating enough!

Off and on over the years, I’ve done some sketching, sculpture, balloon animals and artistic cooking among other things. Two creative endeavors have stayed with me, the first of which is woodworking. I laid most of the flooring and built most of the bookcases in my house, and made a number of small items as presents for friends and family.

The other creative hobby is singing. I’m a baritone, and I’ve sung in one church choir or another for sixteen years. During that time, I’ve sung everything from Bach to Ellington, from atonal medieval chants to eight-part orchestral harmonies to modern AME gospel .