I’m swapping this in from the Facebook supermeme because I think the idea deserved liner notes:
Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The writing is perfect. The crushed idealism is perfect. The shameless, relentless misbehavior is perfect. The rage — and this is a very angry book — is perfect. I suspect everyone has a book that fits into their psyche like the Tetris piece you’ve been waiting for. This one is mine.
2. The Old Man and the Sea
When I was too old for Dr. Seuss and the Berenstein Bears, but not too old to be read to before bed — especially since he was still reading to my four-years-younger brother, and fair is fair – this was one of the books my dad read to me, a little bit at a time. Interesting choice, in retrospect.
3. Moby Dick
This is one of the great adventures ever written. Schoolteacher goes to sea. If you have not read the original, and you are, like me, fond of sailing ships and daily-life-of-ordinary-people-type histories, you are missing out. The throwaway details are fascinating. Also good if you, like me, occasionally need cautioning about grudge-holding.
4. The French Laundry Cookbook
This isn’t a cookbook. It’s a book about doing things right, all the way down.
5. It Must Have Been Something I Ate, Jeffrey Steingarten
Steingarten’s books are just flawless food writing.
6. Memoirs of an Invisible Man, H.F. Saint
This is an obscure piece of sci-fi that was probably the first book I ever remember reading and thinking, “I could do this”. Not because the book is crap — quite the opposite, it’s a fabulous work of imagination — but because the author’s clearly just a guy who had a premise (”Wouldn’t being invisible present more logistical problems than you’d think?”) and kept pulling on the string til he got it all.
7. Kinky Friedman’s complete line of mystery novels. If I had to pick one, it’s probably Elvis, Jesus, Coca-Cola.
Kinky is a genius. These are the books I wish I wrote.
8. On Writing, Stephen King
This is a very reassuring book about how to write, something I’m struggling with right now. I have grudgingly accepted that I might be able to do it — isn’t that weird, to fight so hard against the idea you might be good at something? — but I have also realized that I have no idea how.  Okay, I wrote something. Now what?
9. I’m A Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson
People can get funny thousand-word essays published? Seriously? That’s awesome. I had no idea. Where do I sign up? Who’s your agent, Bill?
10. All The Trouble In The World, P.J. O’Rourke
How can you not love a book that visits all the world’s trouble spots and concludes — with extensive documentation — that everything’s much better than everyone thinks.
11. The Godfather
This, is one of the two books I would use — the other is “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas” – if I were ever asked to teach a course called “America In The Twentieth Century”.
12. The Dark Knight Returns/The Dark Knight Strikes Again
This panel has been my desktop wallpaper for more than two years. Optimism isn’t always sunshine.
13. Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer
My brother loves this book. I generally admired Chris’ sense of adventure, and his work ethic, but I absolutely cannot get around what an appallingly selfish person I found him to be.
Whatever you personally think of sentimentality, if you are lucky enough to have people that love you, you owe those people something for it.
14. Without Feathers, Woody Allen
This book made me want to be funny.
15. Ceremony, Robert B. Parker
I once got a very nice note handwritten and tucked in this book. I still have the note. And the book. (And the writer of the note.)
I don’t think I’ve read a single one of those. Any recommendations on where to start?