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Sunday Morning Book Thread (02/01/2026) [MP4]

Good morning, ‘rons and ‘ronettes. It’s time once again for the semi-regular MP4-hosted Sunday Book Thread. Dress is country club casual, but hats for ladies are required, such as this:

So ask the barman for an Old Fashioned, covfefe or tea and let’s get started!
Today’s opening topic is a two parter:

1. What was the first book you read?

2. What book (if any) changed your life?

First Book: I suspect most of you are like me, in that you can’t remember a time when you couldn’t read. My grandparents had a separate room that held not just their own books, but ones that my mother and aunt had read during college. There was the usual 1960s crap like The Organization Man and The Feminine Mystique, but also wonderful ones that have stayed with me to this day. The first books I can distinctly remember reading were Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and – oddly – Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both had me hooked from the start; Carroll not so much for the story or wordplay, but for Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations, which made Victorian fashion my go-to ever since. And as far as Orwell, who could stop reading after his opening sentence, It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen? I couldn’t understand the machinations of the Party and the constriction of Newspeak, but as I got older, the book became ever more chilling and so much closer to reality.

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Books That Changed My Life: Two other books I discovered fairly early in my reading life were the Victorian-era erotica Venus in Furs and A Man with a Maid, which, I suppose, could be considered books that changed my life, since they’ve colored my views of and relationships with women ever since puberty. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that.
But the book that I can truly say changed my life was one that I mentioned a few weeks ago: Donald Rumbelow’s The Complete Jack the Ripper. I knew nothing about the case when I first saw it – in fact, my first reaction was, “how can there be an entire book about Jack the Ripper?” – but after reading it, I delved deeply into the world of the Whitechapel Murders, eventually corresponding with and meeting some of the most respected names in true-crime writing, editing a magazine about the murders and the world of 1888, as well as writing a reference book and penning a to-this-day regular column in the specialist magazine Ripperology. It was after I finished my JtR book that I looked around for another subject, thought about tackling the idea of a silent film mystery with Theda Bara as an amateur detective. . .and here I am, with two Bara novels under my belt and a third on the way.
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What about you? Do you remember the first book you ever read? What book, if any, changed your life and made you who you are today?