Ten Books That Had an Impact on Me

When the below suvey/contest/game thingie first circulated online, there existed multiple headers for it ('Ten Books That Affected Us the Most', 'Ten Books That Changed My Life', 'Ten Books that Impacted me the Most', etc.).  When I finally found the time to undertake the challenge, however, I preferred to compile my list using the fourth contest header I had seen ('Ten Books that had an Impact On Me').  I did this primarily because A.  I found the other headers to be a bit dramatic (I'm not sure I've ever read anything that I'd feel comfortable saying 'changed my life') or B.  I knew there to be a very good chance that my list would be very different depending on what era of my life I had been exposed to a given book (different books have different effects on us at different times in our lives).  Before undertaking the challenge, I also made sure I jotted down my titles relatively quickly;  taking too much time to hone my list, I reasoned, might unfairly muddle my decisions by allowing me to focus on my very favorite works of literature instead of those that actually affected me the most.

Anyway, here is what I came up with (again, without having given the matter too much thought):

1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

3. Watership Down by Richard Adams

4. Edgar Allen Poe:  ‘The Tales’ (The Gold Bug, The Fall of the House of Usher, Murders in the Rue Morgue, etc.)

5. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

6. The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss

7. ‘The Complete Calvin & Hobbes’ by Bill Watterson (though I realize that this is more of a compilation than a book)

8.  The Witches by Roald Dahl

9.  Grimm’s Fairy Tales (more of an assemblage than a book, I know, but great literature nonetheless) 

10. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Honorable mentions:

Beowulf (very much impacted, even though the title is not technically a ‘book’)

The Odyssey by Homer

The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson (though I suppose this is more of a compilation than a book)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

Calvin and Hobbes:  ‘Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons’ by Bill Watterson (more of a compilation than a book, and the reason why I felt obligated to include a more complete compilation of his work above)

Calvin and Hobbes:  ‘Revenge of the Babysat’ by Bill Watterson (more of a compilation than a book, and the reason why I felt obligated to include a more complete compilation of his work above)

Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (more impressed by the work than ‘impacted’ by it)

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (more impressed by the work than truly ‘impacted’ by it)