One of my favorite Detroit-area writers, Cindy LaFerle, recently listed on her blog the books that changed her life. We’re talking influential works, soul-stirring and forever-etched-on-your-psyche kinds of books. She listed more than 20 and then challenged her readers to compose their own list.

This is no easy task.

We have one book in common, The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank.

My first copy of this stirring work was a gift from my father. I stayed up way past my pre-teen bedtime to devour this classic. As a young person, I couldn’t believe such a story to be true, that I lived in a world capable of such treachery.  I read it again in high school. I’m sure I’ve reread it at least once in adulthood. I’ve since replaced the original paperback in my collection.

Anne’s story piqued my interest in The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig. This is the true story of Polish Jews in exile. Esther’s family is captured by the Russians and sent to live a harsh life in a forced labor camp on the Siberian steppe. Ironically, the family’s suffering is their salvation.Had they remained in Poland, they would have been captured by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Esther wouldn’t have survived to pen her memoir.

Other influential books of my childhood:

Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White

The Little House Series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle 

Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (I visited her home on Prince Edward Island, Canada.)

The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton

And, Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous, which I found out recently was not really a true story but a propaganda piece. (Too bad, this was a must-read when I was in high school.)

Books that influenced my adult life:

1984, by George Orwell

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

The Rabbit Series, by John Updike

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

The Pearl, by John Steinbeck

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris, whose own personal history ultimately overshadowed any affect his books once had on readers. (Still, this book shook me when I read it in college.)

Speaking of shake-ups,  American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis, is the only book I ever read that made me physically ill. 

Pavilion of Women, by Pearl S. Buck (I read this book when I was in China.)

 

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood 

 

What are your most influential books?