Okay, confining myself to fiction, here's most of my list. I've tried to think of books that have been important to me for a long time, and/or that I have re-read frequently.
In no order of precedence:
1)
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card,
has to be on the list.
2)
The Princess Bride by William Goldman is another one that has been a recurrent reading for me.
3)
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey is a bit of a cheat, as it's a 3 in 1 mega-tome, but it may be the most re-read book I own.
4) Asimov's
I, Robot was highly formative to me, along with 75% of the rest of the world.
5)
Her Majesty's Wizard, by Christopher Stasheff. It's become the first in a series, but it was written as a stand-alone. I think it's also the best of the series, as first ones often are.
6)
In Fury Born by David Weber. Weber
has to be on my list, but most of his writings are parts of series. While I think that most of his "series" books stand alone just fine, I couldn't bear to be without the
rest of them, so I choose a stand-alone, that I've read twice in perhaps two years. Well, I should say I've read
Path of the Fury (the core of this book) twice, I haven't read the new version, but if I had to choose, the expanded is what I'd go for.
The Excalibur Alternative and
The Apocolypse Troll were close runners up.
7) John Ringo's
There Will Be Dragons makes this list, because Ringo also mostly writes in series (this being the first of one of those, for anyone who doesn't know), and I think of his series books, this one is pretty self contained. I did consider
Princess of Wands and
Into the Looking Glass, which aren't (yet) series...es, but I just
like Dragons better. (shrug)
8)
Talion: Revenant by Michael Stackpole. It's just a
really good read.
9) I think I should put L. Ron. Hubbard's
Battlefield Earth on the list. it's Huge, at 1,066 paperback pages, so it lasts a while per read, and unlike the recent movie which shared the title, a few character names, and
some plot points, the book is actually
good. It's been criticized over the years as clichéd, but is it really a cliché if your doing something
first?
10)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I checked it out of the library some 20-odd times in Junior High, so I guess it qualifies as "formative."
Holmes is still among my favorite characters.
I wanted to put Timothy Zahn on the list, because I really enjoy his writing, but his non-series books tend to have big twists at the end, which means they're not the best choices for frequent re-reading. (sigh) And there are many other authors who I'd like to cram in there, but, alas.
I suppose we could start another list of ten current favorite
authors, but I think mine would be largely the same folks, so there you go.
Like yvanleterrible, I've got a
much larger list of want-to-reads than that, but I think that's probably my top-shelf for fiction.
@doctorow -- Have you read William Gibson's
Neuromancer? I almost put it on my list, but it's a bit too harsh for me to
want read too frequently (though I do re-read it occasionally).