2) Beowulf
Young Thinker wasn't the sickeningly pretentious Thinker he is today. Never would he have considered putting in the effort of reading a book unless he was forced to. Why would he, the television provides instant and effortless gratification.

But then, in Year 4 of school, he was forced to read a story with depth, narrative, and evocative adjectives. Gone were the Scholastic books with the anthropomorphic fox apologising at the end. No more Jemimah Puddleduck or Winnie the Pooh.

No, this story is very different. Firstly, people died. Lots of people. And they died in unhappy ways. There was power play, not just good people and naughty people. I became intrigued. Why did Grendel do this? It was the first time in a book that I wasn't satisfied with the "because he's a bad person" explanation.

Fortunately, Beowulf didn't just leave it there. The ensuing tale of the hunt, the killing, the graphic detail, the descriptions of feel, odour, atmosphere.. This book absorbed me, took me in, and I cared.

And the ending wasn't happy. To my young mind, this was fascinating. A story that ends on a low note? Such a thing was unthinkable. This book wasn't trying to preach to me the correct way of living. It was telling me the perils of behaving in the wrong way, of becoming cocky, and also- I suppose- it taught me some humility.

It opened my eyes to the power of books, and that things before the 20th Century in England weren't just steel mills, slave trade and Romans. There was genuine beauty and power even in the oldest of stories.
( Thinker, Fri 16 May 2008, 22:06, Reply)