Most Important Books and Why?

Everyone has their favorite books, well, not everyone; some people hate to read (If you gave my fiance a choice between reading a book, a newspaper, a magazine article, anything with words in it, or jumping off the Bay Bridge, she'd choose to explore her options in flight). 

What about important books?  It could be the Merck Manual, The Art of War,  the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, etc.  Whatever.  The fact that certain books impacted you in some way means that they should be included on your list.  No judgments.What are your important books?   

These may not necessarily be your favorite books, and not even be ones by your favorite authors, but for some reason these books impacted your life in a way that deepened your understanding of some subject, like love, or parenting, or grief, or the study of aquatic flora, etc. So here are mine, some of these just happen to be my favorites as well.  First I'll list them and in my next blog explain why they mattered and why they matter still.


A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Madame Bovary - Gustav Flaubert
Emperor of the Air - Ethan Canin
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Sons - Franz Kafka
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov

Cheers!