I’m going to tell you about 10 books that changed my life, which is tricky for me, right now. Most of the books that changed my life are not currently in my possession. My library is in storage in the United States, the last 1000 books I could not bear to part with when we moved to New Zealand, so the interesting part of this exercise is — I have to see what really sticks.
In selecting my top 10, I want to scan my eyes lovingly over my bookshelves, to make sure that I can pick the ones that matter the most to me. But without my books here, I have to rely on memory and impact to make my choices — which is, I suppose, a more authentic method of selecting the books that mattered most.
The exception to this rule is the first book:
1 — Aesop’s Fables
I found this book here, in New Zealand, and it instantly gave me flashbacks. This is the edition I had when I was a young boy, and although that particular book is long gone, I found this version — from the same printing run, with the same pictures I remember from my early childhood — in a secondhand shop across the world. Although it was printed by Eurobook in 1975, making it a typical book to…
