Ten Books That Have Stayed with Me

Recently I was challenged on Facebook to "list ten books that have stayed with you. Don't think too hard".

Here's what happens when I "don't think too hard":

My James Joyce obsession could have easily filled this list with books by and about him and his works. I finally decided to include just one, but which one? A couple of years ago it would have been Finnegans Wake, but since then I've reread Ulysses and Dubliners and gained a greater appreciation for them both. And Shakespeare deserves to be here, but does a single play constitute a "book"? I haven't read his complete works, so I can't list that. Moby Dick made a huge impact on me, but I skipped the boring technical chapters on whaling, so I can't really say I've read it. What about my love of hardboiled fiction? Raymond Chandler, Brett Halliday, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Ken Bruen? The Odyssey and the Tao Te Ching should be here but I couldn't decide on a translation for either. Yeats's poetry should be here but I never would have read it if not for Joyce. Is including a trilogy cheating? Shouldn't that count as three books?

Shut up Brett and just list ten books. Okay.

Journey to Ixtlan--Carlos Castaneda
The Hunger Games Trilogy--Suzanne Collins
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
The Diary of a Young Girl--Anne Frank
Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett
Something Happened--Joseph Heller
Ulysses--James Joyce
To Kill a Mockingbird--Harper Lee
Lolita--Vladimir Nabokov
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas--Hunter S. Thompson

Oh, I forgot the MLA Handbook. 7th edition.


- Trieste-Zürich-Paris, 1914-1922