10 Books

All the best bloggers are doing it but I didn't think much about it because my books wouldn't be life-changing, mind-changing intellectual challenges like Sophocles or whatever. In fact, while my books changed me and the way I viewed the world, I really can't remember specifically why or how in any detail. Just that they impressed me at a time and it made a difference and I've never forgotten.

1. Gone With The Wind — Scarlett became my female role model, replacing Nancy Drew.
2. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. First, big, serious book I read independently, loaned to me in high school by a college boyfriend. I ate it up.
3. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
4. Shirley Jackson horror stories.
5. Catch-22.
6. The Alexandria Quartet.
7. A series of famous people bios for children that had orange covers. Babe Ruth taught me how to hit a baseball, important at the time, and the Zen of it has applied to most of my life. Keep your eye on the ball. Always.
8. All the Black Stallion books. And the Lad, A Dog books.
9. Little Women, Little Men, whatever else she wrote.
10. Richard Hofstader, probably The Age of Reform, but I'm not sure.
11. Confessions of An Ex Prom Queen, Fear of Flying.

Okay, that's 11. Take off the Quartet then.