I recently posted on Facebook a picture with a motto that tickled my fancy. It said: Books are dangerous. The best ones should be labeled: This could change your life. I forget who said it – Helen something-or-other – but going by the spelling it must have been an American. (US spelling = one l, UK and AUS spelling = 2 ls; labelled). Since then I’ve been mulling over the question: What books would I put on my list of “life-changers”? It’s not as easy as it first appears. Just because I loved a certain book, does that mean it had a life-changing impact on me? Then again, it’s most likely that every book I’ve ever read has influenced me in some fashion and therefore I could say that they have all changed my life. Ah, philosophical questions: the bane of an over-active mind trying to get to sleep in the wee small hours.

I decided I’d make a little list of books that have made an impact and therefore still float around in my subconscious as: books I can’t forget. The fact that I remember them, especially the ones from my childhood and teen years, means that they are significant tomes. After all, I’m a person who has trouble remembering my own phone number! Before I get down to the nitty-gritty, please keep in mind that in my life I have read a myriad of books. I exhausted the children’s library in my capital city when I was 10 and had to get an older sister to borrow books from the adult library for me. When I was little I was so desperate to read that, when I ran out of books, I began to work my way through the dictionary. (Comes in handy when I play scrabble.) What I’m trying to say is that I have most probably read your favourite and, what’s more, thoroughly enjoyed it, so don’t be offended if it’s not listed here. I’ve merely chosen the few that floated to the top of my memory, first.

1. The Narnia series: C.S.Lewis. I never looked at another wardrobe in quite the same way. I’d already read Alice in Wonderland, so I was aware of the magical possibility of “other worlds” but unlike Alice, this story was believable. It made sense. It was “real”. Alice was, to be polite, odd.

2. Many collections of folk and fairy tales from around the world. It’d take too much space to list them all, but of course they include the Brothers Grimm, Larousse’s Greek Mythology, Sinbad, Persian tales, Icelandic sagas etc etc. For a few years, in late primary school and early high school, I was obsessed with reading these stories. I found that many cultures from all parts of the globe, told the same kinds of stories, wrapped up in different clothing to allow for cultural differences. This gave me much to ponder about the “family of man”.

3. Gone With the Wind: Margaret Mitchell. Read it when I was 12. Took me three days. Engrossing story with the most annoying heroine I’d ever met. What did those men see in her?! Why did she obsess over wimpy Ashley, when she had such a winner in Rhett? Of course, the real story was the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves. (Hooray for Abe Lincoln!) What a saga!

4. The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway. It was required reading when I was in high school and I approached it with a liberal dose of apathy. It wasn’t the sort of book I’d have chosen for myself. After all, it was just about an old man who goes fishing. Big fat whoop. But, the story, the rhythm of the words, the difference in style, sucked me in. This Hemingway bloke didn’t just write stories, he hand-crafted them! It awoke in me a deep desire to be a writer, too.

5. The Wall: John Hershey. The story of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto in W.W.II. I read it in my late teens, while I was living in America for a year as a foreign student. It’s the first book that made me sob as I read. I knew about man’s inhumanity to man (after all, I’d read Gone With the Wind) but this took it to another level. It made me so mad I wanted to SMACK someone!

6. The Dragons of Pern series: Anne McCaffrey. At last, a kindred spirit who obviously, like me, thought that dragons had been given a bad reputation and deserved to have their side of the story told.

I’m beginning to regret starting this, there’s just so many: Wuthering Heights, Wilbur Smith’s Courtney family saga, everything by Terry Pratchett, Haley’s Roots, King’s The Shining and The Stand and The Shawshank Redemption, Blyton’s Secret Seven… And that’s just fiction! There are all those lovely history books, and archeology, and theology and “How to change a tyre” and Asterix and Oblelix…

Okay, I’m stopping now before I have a brain aneurysm. I think I was right after all: every book I’ve ever read has “changed my life”. But, before I close I have to mention the two books that have remained my life-long companions: a Dictionary and a Bible. Both continue to shape my life. And, it is a constant source of amazement to me that there are so many people who read the same books and yet do not think (or spell) the same as me! Isn’t that fascinating? Isn’t it annoying? That’s books for you: dangerous stuff.