5 Books that Shaped my Worldview

When my husband and I got married, my older brother warned us - only partly in jest - not to take any books with us on our honeymoon, or we'd never get any actual sight-seeing done. Spoiler alert: we didn't listen (and Yosemite was still there when I finally emerged from my copy of Neverwhere).

Needless to say, books have always been an important part of my life. But some books more than others have shaped the way I look at the world - and the way I approach my science. In no particular order, here are my top five.

1. The Other Wind, by Ursula K. LeGuin

My taste in reading skews heavily towards SFF. And by heavily, I mean I have an entire shelf on my bookcase dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien and another dedicated to Terry Pratchett (more on that later).

But the Earthsea cycle has always held a special place in my heart. Partly, that's because of the poetic terseness of the writing - LeGuin has an uncanny ability to paint worlds in a few short sentences that other writers would empty thousands of words over. I also love the simple beauty of onomancy (the magic of True Naming), and the way that the magic system so seamlessly dovetails with Ged's character arc in the first book of the series.

The last book is my favorite of the cycle for a very different reason. The Other Wind strips Earthsea of the patriarchal strictures that bind its magic and its lore, and puts power - soft power - back in the hands of the disenfranchised. For a book that deals with death and the nature of endings, it's surprisingly hopeful. And, as always, breathtaking in scope but jarringly simple in execution.

2. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett

I didn't know that fantasy could be funny until one of my friends introduced me to the inestimable Terry Pratchett in middle school via this book.

Maurice is an inversion and a celebration of fairy-tale tropes. It's a Pied Piper tale told from the perspective of the rats; a Dick Wittington retelling from the point of view of a snarky talking cat. But it's also a thoughtful and often incredibly sad story about the nature of stories.

Are stories just lies that we tell ourselves to hide away the pieces of the world that we don't want to see? Or are they an avenue for us to hold a light to the truth? Deep stuff for a book with an albino rat protagonist named Dangerous Beans.

3. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, by Carl Sagan

My "home" conference is the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting - a gloriously chaotic exuberance of scientists from all over the world who congregate every December to talk shop about the latest developments in planetary science.

One of my favorite things about Fall Meeting is that no-one ever "stays in their lane". I'm a hydrologist by training, but I spend the Meeting talking to volcanologists, atmospheric scientists, and community organizers. I also always make time every year to attend the Carl Sagan lecture on exobiology and science communication.

Carl Sagan is most well known (depending on who you talk to) for being a legendary science communicator and author: among other things, he wrote the sci-fi epic Contact and the visionary science history book Cosmos. One of his less-known works is a book called Murmurs of Earth, which details the thought process that went into the design of the Voyager spacecrafts' "golden record". It's intriguing to see the decisions that went into creating the modern equivalent of a message in a bottle... and what the contents of the record say about our species.

4. The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade its Rivers, by Martin Doyle

I came to this book relatively late, on a recommendation from my graduate advisor. But I had to include it on this list because it so clearly encapsulates my fascination with the intersection between policy and the natural world. Doyle does an excellent job of highlighting how the geography of American rivers shaped the politics of the nascent United States... and how federal, state, and local policies have channeled, dammed, flattened, widened, polluted, and are now cleaning up and "re-wilding" the nation's rivers.

Also, having spent much of my time in the United States in Illinois, it's a fascinating look at the impact that Chicago has had on the politics of engineering our rivers. Did you know that in the early 20th century, Chicago reversed the flow of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi to prevent contamination of the city's drinking water by raw sewage? Or that the city had to raise the foundations of every one of its buildings by two feet to allow sufficient elevation drop for the nation's first sewer network to do its job?

Yeah. Illinois is flat, y'all.

5. Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies is one of the few books of literary fiction on my go-to reading list. There's something about this collection of short stories that never fails to pull at my heartstrings - now more than ever as a newly naturalized American citizen.

One of the most gut-wrenching scenes for me comes from the sixth story in the anthology: Mrs. Sen's. In this short story, Mrs. Sen, a college professor's wife, babysits American-born Elliot after school and tells him stories of her home in Calcutta, India. In a moment of home-sickness Mrs. Sen shows Elliot her vast collection of saris, and laments that she has never worn a single one in the U.S., though her family at home think she "lives like a queen".

I have a sari at home - it's maroon and gold georgette. It's on a shelf gathering dust, because I can't remember how to drape in any more. Maybe that's why Jhumpa Lahiri's characters affect me so much - because I see myself in them. Maybe that's also why this same scene wormed its way into my subconscious and has echoes in my most recent writing project as well.

Bonus: J.R.R. Tolkien

This is a little bit of a cheat, but I decided to add Tolkien at the end because I couldn't select a single book from his ouevre to feature. But I also couldn't not include him because Lord of the Rings and its ilk have played such a key role in shaping who I am as a writer and as a person - it's the reason I met my husband and his family!

What I love about Middle Earth is the epic sweep of its world-building. Picking up a Tolkien novel is like stepping into a living, breathing universe complete with its own mythology, culture, history and - of course - languages.

More on this later... my next post will be about how I approach worldbuilding - and why I think this is an important exercise in science communication as well as in creative writing.