List time: books that influenced me. Influence is defined as either life-changing or transformative in reading patterns (which equates to the same thing). These are roughly in time order. Later I may explain what changed as a consequence. Here’s the list:
- Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson
- Dicken’s Great Expectations
- Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
- Kem Nunn’s Tapping the Source
- Winston Graham’s Angell, Pearl and Little God
- Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London
- Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
- Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums
- J. P. Donleavy’s The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman
- Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land
- Bruce Sterling’s Artificial Kid
- Sartre’s Nausea and Being and Nothingness
- Kierkegaard’s Either/Or
- Proust’s Rememberance of Things Past
- Roger Deakin’s Wildwood
- Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night
- Mann’s The Magic Mountain
- Woolf’s The Lighthouse
- Joyce’s Ulysses
- Josipovici’s Whatever Happened to Modernism?
Time's Flow Stemmed 
>I, for one, would be most interested in the changes which occurred. A fascinating list, sadly not many of which I've read.
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>It's far from a list of recommendations, Bellezza. These cover from about age 9 to the present day, and I am sure many would mean nothing to the reader/person I am today.
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>Not taking it as recommendations, but as influential books for you at one time. It's got me thinking about what that list would look like for me, which I've half created now. I hope to do a similar post soon as it's such an intriguing idea.
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>It took me a week to scour my memories for those books that were influential. I'll enjoy reading your list.
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>a great list anthony ,I loved wildwood , must get another from him soon ,such shame about deakin seemed be a writer getting in his stride ,all the best stu
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>Thanks, stu. Deakin was a unique writer; his Waterlog is outstanding, his Notes from Walnut Tree Farm also first-rate.
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>I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that so many of us went from science-fiction to "literature," but it still makes me happy to see nonetheless.
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>Yes, me too. One of your commenters referred to an alternative route via horror; I dabbled with Stephen King and Clive Barker, but opted for science-fiction.
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