(2/12/2026)

The question

What three books influenced you most, and how old were you when you read them?

Results

Surprising: More than 30 titles, no repeats

Unsurprising: Books that made an impression were mostly read at an impressionable age

Notes

Quotes are edited.

Abbreviations: ES – elementary school, JH = junior high, etc.

Reader One
HS…..Voltaire, Candide
HS…..Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
HS…..Vercors, You Shall Know Them
45…..Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres AGE
“A Thousand Acres opened my eyes to King Lear. It’s not about an unwise king and his Pollyanna daughter. It’s about the harvest of fury planted by a controlling parent.”

Reader Two
16…..Orwell, Animal Farm
25…..Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
30…..Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
“Grapes of Wrath helped me understand my father’s childhood. It brought us closer together and helped me forgive him.”

Reader Three

8…..Sewell, Black Beauty
9…..Nancy Drew books
19….Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Horse books made me want to be a sulky driver when I grew up. Karamazov opened the world. Great class in the European novel. I can still visualize the teacher at the blackboard.”

Reader Four

ES…..White, Charlotte’s Web
MS…..Engle, Wrinkle in Time
HS….. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
60…..Coelho, The Alchemist
“Beatrix Potter darling tactile mini-books, the characters, adventures, illustrations, collecting the figurines.”

Reader Five
12…..Lowry, The Giver
16…..Chopin, The Awakening
18…..Steinbeck, East of Eden

Reader Six
18….Plath, The Bell Jar
20…..Hardy, Jude the Obscure
20…..Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Reader Seven

16…..Conrad, Heart of Darkness
16…..Twain, Huckleberry Finn
16…..Orwell, 1984
22…..Heller, Catch-22

Reader Eight
JH…..Tolkien, Hobbit and the trilogy
JH…..White, The Once and Future King
HS…..Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Reader Nine
10…..Illustrated Bible Stories
70…..Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
70…..Berry, Peace of Wild Things
“I probably visited every Christian denomination including LDS and Catholic [and a Jewish temple]. Next were years of books ranging from love stories to crime to sci-fi but none of these were significant.”

Reader Ten
16….Hesse, Siddhartha
20…..Eliot, Middlemarch
24…..Henry James, Golden Bowl
70…..Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men
“National Geographic, Life, Reader’s Digest… I waited for each issue to arrive and then devoured it (I was maybe eight years old) … As I was reading Siddhartha I knew that I was reading something at an adult level, and that I was understanding it. I can still picture where I was sitting as this recognition came to me.”