Not being entirely honest with myself

 

Twenty Books, Twenty Days

On social media I've recently been taking part in a challenge about books. The idea is that you pick 20 books that have stayed with you, or influenced you, in some way - you post one a day in no particular order and with no reviews or explanations.

I've enjoyed this a lot and it has made me think about books that mean a lot to me and I do want to write (briefly) here about why I picked each one and those posts will be coming very soon.

However I have a big confession - the book that has probably stayed with me the most since I read it doesn't feature on this list. Mainly because it remains the scariest book I've ever read and there's no way on this planet that I will voluntarily read it again.

That book is Neville Shute's On the Beach. 

I am a child of the 1980s and I remember the disaster at Chernobyl very clearly (and a radio play about it not long after), and books like Brother In the Land, Z for Zachariah and Children of the Dust featured on my reading lists as a young teen quite prominently - I guess that rather than the post-apocalyptic books that are popular now it was all about the nuclear apocalypse for me.

However while I remember the books aimed at teenagers pretty well and reread them more than once it is On the Beach that terrified me so badly that I've never read it again, and have knowingly steered clear of books about nuclear holocausts ever since!

I don't know if I read it slightly too young or if it just felt more real than the YA books but something about it got totally under my skin and event now I shudder thinking about it. 

I do feel bad about not putting it on my list of 20 books as it is probably the book that has lingered the most but I decided that I wanted to be a marker of books I want to remember (and maybe return to) rather than a nightmare inducer!