I guess it means I'll just make up my own rules, which is better anyway.
Also? How do you narrow it down to just 10?
Hundreds of books have impacted my life, for better or worse, so I guess I'll just list the first 10 that occur to me - in no particular order.
Probably I was supposed to put this on facebook but I do tend to run on (NO! REALLY?!) and who wants to read 10 or more paragraphs on a single facebook status? THAT IS WHAT BLOGS
Plus I think the average attention span on facebook is about 3 seconds per status - with a minute allowed for reading all the comments if there are more than 15.
10 Books I Always Remember
1. Girl Of The Limberlost: I remember spending the night at my Grandma's house...it was a Saturday and raining and Grandpa was working and Grandma was vacuuming and I was wandering around bored. In one of the spare rooms (the one I hardly ever went in because it smelled weird) was a bookcase filled with very old and very old fashioned books. I choose this one and it was so foreign to anything I'd read before (I was probably 10 or 11), with prosey, flowery language and ladies powdering their noses with rice paper and a short poem which stuck in my mind at the time and remains to this day. I learned about determination and perseverance before I really even knew what those things were.
2. The Witching Hour (Anne Rice): I remember this book because it took me approximately five years to finish it (true story) and it taught me that I will never be an Anne Rice fan (although I admit I've enjoyed a couple of her other books, like Pandora and Violin).
3. The Amityville Horror: This book scared the shit out of me. I mean seriously scared me. Whenever I see flies in the wintertime, I start getting nervous.
4. Love Story (Erich Segal): I read this at a young age when my heart was at its most romantic, and the beautiful tragedy of the story swept me away, sort of like the movie Beaches did to my older self.
5. Fatal Vision: I sort of blame this book for my overindulgence in crime dramas, my love of forensic procedures, mysteries and detective stories. Also? HE WAS TOTALLY GUILTY. Horatio's crime lab on CSI Miami would totes prove it in like an hour.
6. To Kill A Mockingbird: I think I saw this on most everyone's list...which is as it should be. This book is meant to be impactful and if it didn't make some sort of impression on you, then you read it wrong.
7. Cujo (Stephen King): Because I had a dog at the time which was half German Shepherd and half St. Bernard. I watched her with a wary eye for months after reading this book - we lived waaaay out in the country and rabies was a real Thing.
8. Macbeth: I'm sort of cheating, since this is a play, but was the first time Shakespeare made me fall into his work and be a part of it in my imagination. Everyone knows a line or two from Romeo & Juliet, but Macbeth is my favored quotable.
9. Flowers for Algernon: I saw the movie based on this book (Charly), and it moved me on many levels so I immediately checked the book out of the library. Still moves me - probably more now than then. I cry every time I read it or watch the movie.
10. Forever (Judy Blume): "Like my mother said, you can't go back to holding hands". Another line never forgotten. Also? Some of my friends' mothers were scandalized when I recommended this book to their daughters.
I could probably add about 30 more to this list without breaking a sweat - including all the Little House On The Prairie books, all the Anne of Green Gables books, everything ever written by Louisa May Alcott, all the Harry Potters, all the Oz books, Scruples (by Judith Krantz - I was probably a little too young for that one when I read it the first time), all the Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys mysteries...and I just realized this list doesn't really include any of my current favorite books or authors.
This meme is too hard.
Every time I read your lists, I'm all "OH YEAH!" "OH RIGHT!" "I FORGOT THAT ONE!".
So in addition to these, I also include most of your own lists.
