All the books that stayed with me...

It's the meme (although I hate that term) which has been going around on Facebook:

"List 10 books that have stayed with you in some way, not to over-think the process, not to worry over whether they are the 'right' books... just books that had an effect on you, for better or worse."

Any arbitrary limit will inevitably force you to leave out choices you would have included on a different day if your mind had landed on them first. I tried to approach it as a list of the books which I feel had the largest role in forming who I now am, the books which, for better or worse have had the biggest influence on my taste and the values/things which are most important to me.

Anyway, this is my blog, so I can include as many choice as I want.

C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Rosemary Sutcliff, Blood Feud

Michael Moorcock, the Elric of Melnibone series
Michael Moorcock, Casablanca

Jeff Noon, Vurt
Michael Moorcock, The Cornelius Quartet
William Blake, 'London'
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

Oscar Wilde, 'The Decay of Lying'

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems
Alan Garner, The Stone Book Quartet

Alan Garner, Strandloper

Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Richard Calder, Dead trilogy

Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writing

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

Elizabeth Young, Pandora's Handbag
Alan Bennett, Writing Home

A.S. Byatt, Possession

George Orwell, Essays

Geoff Dyer, Anglo-English Attitudes

John Berger, To the Wedding

R.K. Narayan, The Man-Eater of Malgudi

William Dalrymple, City of Djinns

A total of 23 authors. Several appear more than once because their work is that important. Also, they're mostly men, which is a little annoying. Some other observations: it's mostly work from the last century. More significant: The Tempest aside, there's no poetry. Something about my imagination seems to respond more to prose for some reason.

What I do like is the sense of a hidden autobiography below the surface of the list. Of course, it leaves out as much as it includes.

Edited on 1st October, 2014

Oh, for goodness' sake, this is getting ridiculous! No wonder the original challenge specified that you shouldn't spend too long thinking about it. Otherwise you could drive yourself to distraction, attempting to list everything. Before I know it, I'll have listed half the contents of my library.

The whole point of such an exercise is that it's governed by whim. You can't include everything, no matter how many choices you allow yourself. Anyway, now there's another woman on the list and a little bit of poetry. Choices that should have come to mind the other day when I put this up. There will be others, but they will not be posted here, or the exercise will become completely ridiculous.

And honestly, outside the realms of Facebook, why should anyone else care?