About a week ago, I was tagged in the Facebook meme “Twenty books you’ve read that will always stick with you”. As is typical, instead of just listing off twenty books, I thought I would write a blog post (which will automatically get loaded as a Facebook Note), where I list those books, as well as provide a little back story on them.

Unfortunately, when I started working on this, I was thinking it was twenty-five books, so you get five extra books at no extra cost. Also, I’ve sorted them in terms of when I read them.

The first few books are from my childhood. Flip, by Wesley Dennis was written back in 1941 and is about a young horse learning to jump. He has a dream about having wings, and this enables him to make his big jump.

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf back in 1936 is another childhood favorite of mine. It is of a young bull that liked to sit and smell the flowers.

Lightfoot the Deer by Thorton Burgess rounds out the early childhood section. It was originally published in 1921. For some reason this book by Burgress is the first of his that comes to mind, although I read every book of Burgess I could find.

As I got a little older, I didn’t read as much. One series that I did read was the Danny Dunn books. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine is the one that comes first to mind. It was written by Jay Williams in 1958. I read may of the Danny Dunn books when I was around ten and I believe I did a book review on this one.

Yet I enjoyed science fiction and fantasy much more. I read many of the Roger Zelazny books in the Chronicles of Amber, with Nine Princes in Amber being the most memorable.

Of course, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as the whole Lord of the Rings series was also important to me.

However, the fantasy book that most stuck with me was The Last Unicorn written by Peter S. Beagle and first published back in 1968.

As I grew older a book that especially caught my attention was Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany.

Another writer that greatly captured my attention around this time was Hermann Hesse. Like other writers that I enjoyed, I sought out and read every book by Hermann Hesse that I could find. Siddhartha was one of the most influential for me. I also sought out books by his mentor, Gottfried Keller and read some of his books as well.

When I went off to college, I ended up studying philosophy and Plato’s: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito was one of the important early influences on my interest in philosophy.

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling was another very important book for me, as were the writings of Wittgenstein.

The other great philosophy book that I was introduced to around that time was Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. It is a book that I often go back to read.

My favorite philosophy professor encouraged me to take more literature classes, which unfortunately I ignored until my senior year, when I took some great literature classes. It was then that I discovered the writings of Virginia Woolf. Two of her books were particularly influential on me: Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.

Around the same time, I was introduced to James Joyce’s work. Ulysses is perhaps the one that especially jumped out at me, although all of his books have been important and I even read some of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to my daughters when they were young. They didn’t believe me when I talked about it being such an important piece of literature and then started reading about the moocow coming down along the road and meeting baby tuckoo. And yes, I had a hairy face when I the first few pages to them.

I also took a writing class in college where three books were added to my collection of very important books. Denise Levertov’s Light Up the Cave, Ezra Pound’s ABC of Reading and T.S. Elliot’s The Sacred Wood - Essays on Poetry and Criticism stuck with me as books that have greatly shaped my thinking about reading and writing.

After college, I lived for some time on a sailboat on the banks of the Hudson River on the Upper West Side of New York City. It was a great way for a young reader to live. In the summer, I would sit on the back of the boat eating a salad I would pick up from one of the shops on Broadway reading one after another great European novel. In the winter, when life on a boat in the North East was harder, I would huddle under the covers with a bottle of Scotch and a long cold Russian Novel.

There were many great books that I read during that time and many of them have stayed with me. A few of the more important ones included The Brothers Karamozov, Remembrance of Things Past, Pride and Prejudice, and The Mill on the Floss

Another important book for me from this time was William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways: A Journey into America. It is another one of those books that I return to from time to time. A while ago, I started my Long Blue Tail project, where I was following Blue Highways, and searching to see what I could find of various stops along the way looking through social media. It has been several months since I added anything there, but I hope to get back to it again someday soon.

As my career took twists and turns, I worked with an organizational consultant who had been trained in the Group Relations tradition of Tavistock. Through her, I found many interesting books about group dynamics in the workplace. I learn of ‘Social Dreaming’ and was introduced to the book The Third Reich of Dreams. It is an out of print and hard to find book, but it is a very important book for looking at how all our dreams are inter-related.

When my children were born, I discovered some old books and some new books for children. No list would be complete without Goodnight Moon, and at least one book by Robert McCloskey, such as Blueberries for Sal.

Two other books I should add to this group include My Great-Aunt Arizona by Gloria Houston and illustrated by Susan Condie Lamb. Ms. Lamb was the mother of one of my eldest daughter’s first playmates. The other very important book is The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story. It is also written by Gloria Houston and has a similar sensibility.

As my children got older, I read them Watership Down. It was an important family event, and now Fiona is reaching the age to read Watership Down to her.

One final book for the list, which has grown even further past the twenty or twenty five books originally intended. E. B. White’s One Man's Meat is a collection of his essays written on his saltwater farm in Maine. I’ve often thought that this collection of essays is a must for any aspiring blogger.

So, there you have my expanded list. What’s yours?