Top 10: Books that Stick With Me

A friend on Facebook tagged me in a note and asked if I could name ten books in 15 minutes that would always stick with me. Okay, I did not want to appear ignorant, so I had to skip all of those Harlequins I read as a teenager (and beyond!). Then I nixed those books that did not move me, yet I was glad I read them, like Moby Dick. Who isn't proud of being able to say that she read Moby Dick?

My final list fell into two categories: books that aroused an internal, primordial shift when I read them and books that led me to fall in love with reading. I couldn't differentiate between the two, for the books that led me to my true love of reading impacted me as much if not more than those books which caused me to feel a true emotion, not a sensationalized feeling of an emotion. The only book on the list that did both of those things for me was the Bible.

Here's the list, though I did not have time in my fifteen minutes to place them in any order of importance.

1. Native Son
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. Gone with the Wind
4. Holy Bible
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls
6. Where the Red Fern Grows
7. Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
8. The Yearling
9. The Sound and the Fury
10. The Boxcar Children

What's on your list?