Julie has suggested that I might try my hand at this meme:

The Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. List, in no particular order) fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

Here’s the list I came up with, as quickly as I could:

• J.R.R. Tolkien
• C.S. Lewis
• Lewis Carroll
• Ray Bradbury
• Terry Pratchett
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• Peter Kreeft
• Thomas Aquinas
• Aristotle
• Pope Benedict
• P.G. Wodehouse
• Roger Zelazny
• Patrick O’Brian
• Jonathan Spence
• G.K. Chesterton

The order is the order in which they occurred to me, which is not necessarily the order of importance. Tolkien and Lewis are undeniably at the top of the list; Chesterton should be much higher, and Bradbury much lower; Benedict and St. Thomas should be higher.

The instructions were to pick the authors as quickly as possible; looking back at it a few hours later, I question how influential some of these authors have really been in my life. But there it is; it’s a meme, not a deeply reasoned analysis.