This week Rangeley Wallace shares her favourite books as part of her Things are Going to Slide tour.

Hello Rangeley, welcome to Inheritance Books. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama by parents who believed that reading was essential to a good education and a good education was critical to success in life.  During summer vacations, my sister and I were required to read a book every week or two and write a book report for our parents.   We went to the library almost every week where we checked out a box full of books, and, once a month, when my grandparents were visiting, we went to the bookstore downtown and bought a book.  I still remember the excitement of picking out a book that I could not only read, but keep on the little bookshelf in my room and re-read as often as I liked. 

Both of the books I will discuss today were purchased during those monthly bookstore trips, the first, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the second, A Wrinkle in Time.

Which book did you inherit from the generation above? Why is it special?

To Kill A Mockingbird was one of the most important books I read when I was a young girl.  It resonated with me for many reasons.  First, it was written by Harper Lee, a fellow Alabamian and a woman writer at a time when none of the women I knew worked outside the home.  Second, I identified with the protagonist, Scout, herself a young girl.  I remember casting directors coming to Birmingham trying to find the girl who would play Scout in the movie version of the book.  My sister Holly and I both read for the part.  Although she would have been perfect, neither of us was chosen for the role.

Third, the book addressed issues of racial inequality, the most important issue in the South during my childhood.  Although my parents were supporters of equal rights, most people in Birmingham, Alabama were not.  The Mayor, Bull Connor, directed fire hoses and police attack dogs against peaceful black demonstrators, including children.  Around the same time, members of the Ku Klux Klan planted sticks of dynamite outside the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.  The dynamite exploded, killing four young girls.  Seeing girls who were just like me, except for the color of their skin, attacked and even killed was heartbreaking; I couldn’t make any sense of the world around me.  Why were people so mean and hateful?  So evil?  What could one person do to make a difference?

To Kill A Mockingbird, set in a fictional Alabama town, answered my questions.  In the book, attorney Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, takes on the defense of a black man, Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white woman.  No matter what the prejudiced townsfolk said or did, Atticus courageously worked to exonerate his client. In Atticus, I (and many others) found an inspirational moral hero.

Which book would you leave to generations below? Why?

The book I would leave to the generation below is A Wrinkle in Time.  I read it several times as a child and many years later enjoyed reading my worn copy of the book aloud to my four children as soon as they were old enough to appreciate it.

I love this book for several reasons.  First, A Wrinkle in Time was written by a woman author.  Second, she used scientific concepts (such as tesseract) to craft a fascinating story line.  Around the time I read the book I devoted hours a week to the chemistry set I’d gotten for Easter, fancying myself something of a scientist!

Third, the book deals with some of the same themes as To Kill a Mockingbird: the negative aspects of social conformity, the struggle of individuals to make the world a better place, the never ending fight of good against evil.

Finally, I identified with the female protagonist, thirteen year old Meg, who was an awkward, unpopular and defensive adolescent, as I felt I was.  And, we shared a surname!  During the book, Meg reluctantly finds the strength to fight against the evil in the world.  I hoped that I too would be up to the challenge in a similar situation.

I haven’t read either of those books, but reading Noughts and Crosses (by Malorie Blackman) had a similar effect on me. 

Thanks for sharing your books with us, Rangeley. I hope the tour goes very well for you.

You can find out more about Rangeley at her website (www.rangeleywallace.com), on twitter (@rangeleywallace) and on Facebook. Her book Things are Going to Slide is available to buy now

Since it’s World IP (Intellectual Property) Day on the 26th of April, I thought I’d ask some IP related people to tell me about their Inheritance Books. So, this week Kalyan Kankanala, who has written a  thriller book with an IP lawyer hero, shares his Inheritance Books. 

Hi Kalyan, welcome to Inheritance Books. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am an IP attorney based out of Bangalore, India. In addition to practising IP law, I also consult for United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and teach at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. After publishing a few academic works on IP, I have now ventured into fiction writing. My debut novel, Road Humps and Sidewalks, has been recently released.

Which book have you inherited from generations above? Why is it special?

It is my pleasure to write this post for Ms. Rhoda Baxter on her request. After I agreed to write this post on the best book I inherited from my family, I went through a nostalgic and fascinating process of running through my legacy works and arduously rating them. Passing the likes of Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum, Jeffrey Archer, Mario Puzo and George Orwell, I arrived at James Herriot and got stuck there. Tattered and battered, though it was, Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small is my most treasured inheritance.

It was during one of those idling law school days that I picked this book from my uncle’s deteriorating book shelf. A vet himself, my uncle recommended it to me, with promises of great learning. The book stood to his assessment and I have read the book several times, hoping every time that the book would just go on and on. Starting with this work, I read all Herriot’s works and was quite disappointed that he had written very few works.

Which book would you leave to later generations? Why?

My love for animals, appreciation of beauty in small things and respect for farmers was influenced by all creatures great and small. I would not be exaggerating, if I said that this book that looks at the world through a vet’s eye impacted my life in more than one way. I would, without a second thought, pass this book to the next generation. It is my ambition to preserve this torn, yet highly treasured stack of paper intact for not just one generation.

You can find out more about Kalyan on his website  (www.kalyankankanala.com), or find him on Twitter (@kalyankankanala), LinkedIn or Facebook. His book Road Humps and Sidewalks is available to buy on Amazon.

Since it’s World IP Day on the 26th of April, I thought I’d ask some IP related people to tell me about their Inheritance Books. So, this week I’ve got the lovely Ivan Cotter, who has written a book with a patent attorney hero. I’m quite partial to a patent attorney hero myself…

Hi Ivan, welcome to Inheritance Books. Please tell us a bit about yourself.

I retired a couple of years ago after a stint of 40+ years as a patent attorney, during which time I wrote non-fictional legal documents.  During January last year I read three supposedly great new thrillers I had received for Christmas.  Two of these were indeed great.  The other, allegedly the joint work of an acclaimed author and an unknown, was a stinker.  I guess it was merely rubber stamped with the name of the author. Musing on this disappointment, I decided to write a novel myself.  After five intensely enjoyable weeks of writing and researching I had finished The Schmetterling Effect , drawing upon knowledge of law, technology, research and basic writing skills acquired during my previous career.  Like the characters Tom and Sean Cosgrave in the novel, I am of joint Irish and British nationality and was born in England.  Fortunately, however, since much of the action takes place in Ireland and between Irish (and Irish-American) people resident in Ireland, England and the USA, I was able to draw upon knowledge of Ireland and the Irish based upon visits there, my late father’s autobiography, the nuns who taught me at primary school, and my father’s extended family, all of whom moved to England after my father, who had to leave there at the age of 14 (hitching a lift on a Royal Navy destroyer) in the absence of any employment in rural County Cork.

Which book have you inherited from generations above? Why is it special?

Nothing from my grandparents, since my paternal (Irish) grandparents died before I was two and my maternal (English) grandparents were, as was commonplace for rural folks born around 1880-1890, wholly illiterate.  (I remember my mother telling me that she taught them to write their names; and that she accompanied her father to the silent movies so she could read the captions to him.)

From my father, I received his autobiography “Deprived? Not me!”, which he wrote in his late seventies.  More than this, I published it as a limited edition for family and friends.  Having also typed part of it and edited the final typescript, I was impressed at how a man who left school at 14 after education at a single-teacher school on Bere Island in Bantry Bay, could produce such a beautifully structured and very entertaining story with virtually perfect spelling and grammar.

Another book that perhaps qualifies is “White Fang”, because it was given to me as a prize (for English) at primary school by a nun acting in loco parentis.  Getting this prize was a major cause of my appetite for books. Over the years, the prize itself and my memory of most of its contents had disappeared. I could remember only that the book was about a wild dog/wolf, and that I had read it many times and loved it. While I explored how to use my first Kindle, I saw that “White Fang” was included in Amazon’s list of its top 100 free books.  I downloaded it, expecting to find a mere childrens’ book.  I was wrong! Although now a pensioner instead of a small boy, I still loved what I concluded was a perfect illustration of the power of good writing.  This century old book will be just as good a read for an eight year old (or a 69 year old) in another 100 years.

What a lovely story about your mum accompanying her father to the movies. Which book would you like to leave to future generations and why?

A novel that I read time after time throughout my youth was “The Cruel Sea” by Nicholas Montsarrat, an amateur yachtsman and member of the RNVR, who was called up in World War Two to join a band of now largely forgotten heroes called the Royal Naval Patrol Service.  The RNPS existed only from 1939 to 1946, during which time it expanded from a small organisation of professional seamen (but amateur warriors) who manned small ships such as armed yachts and armed trawlers, to become a large, small-ship component of the Navy operating throughout the world, especially minesweeping and convoy escorting.  My father, although Irish and thus a neutral, having been a seaman (sea cook – general hand) for three years since leaving Ireland, lied about his age to join the RNPS in 1940 and, after a three-day induction into becoming a military type sailor, was sent to join an armed yacht instructed to look for German raiders in the Atlantic and to radio home and then get the hell out if they found one.  My son has read this book and I will leave it to him to pass on.  Being concerned with small ships engaged in the bitter and frightening task of escorting Atlantic convoys, it has given me and him (and, in future, may give to our descendants) a picture of the horrors endured by men of 17 years and up (about which they are loath to speak) to ensure the advantages that we, their offspring, have.

Thanks you so much for sharing your Inheritance Books with us, Ivan. And for the fascinating stories about your family.

 Ivan’s novel, The Schmetterling Effect is available on Amazon now.

Continuing the IP day theme, IP thriller writer Kalyan Kankanala will be sharing his Inheritance Books next week.