At our Annual Writers Retreat in March 2007, we asked, what are the books that had such a strong impact on you, that you couldn’t live without them. Here’s what the group said:
Todd
The Lord of the Rings
Dresden Files
Dragonlace Series
Eon/Legacy
Dune
Tech Heaven
History of the World
The Traveler
The Uplift Series
Hammer of God/Anvil of Stars
Asimov’s Robot Series
Stacy
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Women Who Run with Wolves
Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Hobbit
Cold Mountain
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Teachings of Don Juan
The Great Gatsby
Bridge to Terabithia
Ann
Cathedral
Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
Catch-22
Invisible Man
Complete Shakespeare
Me Talk Pretty One Day
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Mark Twain Anthology
Great Gatsby
No Name
Atlas Shrugged
Atonement
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
A Prayer For Owen Meany
The Great Gatsby
The Hours
Huckleberry Finn
Power vs. Force
Nancy Drew
Susan
Poisonwood Bible
Lovely Bones
To Kill a Mockingbird
Grapes of Wrath
S King – Geralds Game, It, The Girl Who Loved
Tom Gordon
Great Gatsby
Widow For a Year
About a Boy/High Fidelity
Bridget Jones
Bill
Trout Fishing in America – Broughton
Revolutionary Road
Something Happened – Heller
Saturday – McKewan
Reading Like a Writer – Prose
Writer’s Block
Yukio Mishima – any
Raymond Carver – any
Ellen Gilchrist – any
Candy
Stacy D
Secret History – Tart
Trinity – Uris
Godfather – Puzo
Valley of the Dolls – Suzanne
Fortress of Solitude – Letham
We the Living – Rand
Round Ireland with a Fridge – Hawks
Love Story – Segal
The White Boy Shuffle
The Alchemist – Cohello
Mary
Westing Game – Raskin
Down a Dark Hall – Duncan
Sula
To Room 19 – Lessing
Heartburn – Ephron
The Hardness Scale – Joyce P
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe
Streetcar Named Desire
Hold Me – Phieffer
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Amy
Hopeful Monsters – Mosley
The Following Story – Nooteboom
Midnight’s Children – Rushdie
Conspiracy of Fools – Eichenwald
Lolita
The Book and the Brotherhood – Murdoch
War & Peace
The Westing Game
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.
Frankweiler
Fatal Vision – McGuiness
Tim
Geek Love – Dunne
Dry – Burroughts
Prayer for Owen Meany – Irving
Middlesex – Euginedes
Barrel Fever – Sedaris
Shipping News – Proulx
Cathedral
Breakfast of Champions
Nights at the Circus – Carter
Love in the Time of Cholera
Darren
The Great Gatsby
The Grapes of Wrath
Naked – Sedaris
Where the Wild Things Are
The Known World – Jones
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Middlesex
On Writing – King
The Things They Carried – O’Brien
The Great Santini – Conroy
No Name
Shelter for the Spirit
Eat Pray Love
On Writing
Artist’s Way
East of Eden
Gone With the Wind
Andrew Henry’s Meadow
Nancy Drew
Jill (Just what comes to mind right now!)
Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver
To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
Jane Eyre, Bronte
Wuthering Heights, Bronte
Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig
Collected Stories of Flannery O’Connor
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver
Reading As A Writer, Prose
Anything by EM Forster
Madame Bovary, Flaubert
