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I tend to remember certain books as stage-of-life things.
I remember my father reading The Chronicles of Narnia to us kids after dinner, I have a particularly vivid memory of his reading from "The Last Battle". I see this as the start of my love of books, and without that I'd be a very different person today.
I read the Bible ("Good News" version) as an early teenager, and that definitely shaped my thinking on religion - though not in a way the church would have liked.
There are several books and short stories by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke that I see as shaping my thinking of the future and the nature of science.
"The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien. That a world of such immense history and scope could exist as a reality in my mind was beyond anything I had imagined before, and such a realisation changes the way you look at the world around you - anything seems possible.
"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding and "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque. Each very different, both of these shocked me into thinking more deeply about the nature of society and people.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee probably marks a wider awareness of the nature of justice and injustice, though whether it was an influence or simply gave expression to concepts that were already growing ... I guess there's no way to tell now.
Many of the books I've read have helped to shape who I am, but the above are a few that stand out. There is a more recent one ... but I'm not going to share that until I see how it comes out.
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