so slate is doing this whole thing on college this week, and they asked some prominent people what books influenced them the most in college, and it got me thinking. now, i should be writing a paper right now. but what the fuck. i'll compile a list of the books that influenced me the most (not just in college).

in roughly chronological order:

little house in the big woods, et. al. (laura ingalls wilder). maybe this is cheesy, but my mom gave me these books when i was 8 and i have read them about a million times since. my interest in the west started about the same time, fueled by these books and multiple viewings of young guns. the fact that i can now read them with an academic eye hasn't really diminished my enjoyment.

the outsiders (se hinton). when you're 13, this is just about as moving as it gets.

catcher in the rye (jd salinger). see above, only at 16. but these two books, i can still read them now, and something different out of them every time.

satori in paris & desolation angels (jack kerouac). satori introduced me to kerouac's prose, and desolation angels remains my favorite of his works. it was one of those books that came into my life at just the right time and totally blew my mind.

howl and other poems (allen ginsberg). "sunflower sutra" remains my all time favorite poem.

the stranger (albert camus). as a senior in high school, i finally got to read cool books.

a different mirror (ronald takaki). this is an ethnic history of the u.s., and i find it influential on numerous levels. i read it as a college freshman and loved it; i hadn't really encountered a lot of ethnic history in my life before. and then i read it as a senior and ripped it apart for being overly revisionist and not considering interactions among ethnic groups. it was one of those moments when i realized how much college had changed how i think.

notes from a dirty old man (charles bukowski). never has filth been so beautiful.

the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven (sherman alexie). the first book i read by the delightful mr. a., which led me down all sorts of interesting paths. and it's funny.

lady chatterly's lover (dh lawrence). i loved this book, and it kicked off a year-long dh lawrence phase.

tales of the city (amistead maupin). aside from being hilarious, heartbreaking, and totally witty, it takes place in san francisco. i've BEEN to the marina safeway.

1984 (george orwell). i thought about this book a lot. i was 19 and i started devising class assignments that paired it with huxley's brave new world, which i had previously hated but re-evaluated.

notes from underground (fyodor dostoevsky). this is the only thing i actually remember reading in slavis literature. oh wait, i remember the turgenev too, barely. this class continually frustrated me, but never so much as when we read this book, because it moved me so much that i had difficulty discussing it academically. i was still at a stage in my life where i identified strongly with the underground man.

ecological imperialism (alfred crosby). i've now read this at least 4 times. and while i can tell you the major flaws in it (the lack of agency, etc), it really is a very dynamic and interesting study that's influenced environmental history for the past 20 years. there's a reason it's still being taught.

playing indian (phil deloria). i read part of this right after it was released, and the rest a couple years later, and it's stuck with me. i still cite it, and i haven't actually read it in 5 years. a really novel, interesting, and ultimately compelling argument about the role of indians in american public life.

good-bye to all that (robert graves). i took this 20th century european class that was deathly dull, but we read some really cool books. this was the first war memoir i read, and now i'm addicted to the genre (see below). i find that there's something elegantly heartbreaking about a really well done war memoir, something about it that stays with you.

general vallejo and the advent of the americans (alan rosenus). i love this book. vallejo is a fascinating and understudied part of california history. this book is part of the reason i fell into the 1840s and never really emerged. as dynamic and interesting as the gold rush is, the really cool stuff was happening in the decade leading up to it. it's a study in contingency and agency to watch the carefully constructed power balances and compromises become obsolete with the discovery of gold.

nickel and dimed (barbara ehrenreich). i first read this right after i graduated from college, when i was working 2 jobs, 6 days a week, and just barely paying the rent. i was exhausted, stressed out, and feeling trapped. i felt like the college education and mounting debt were all for nothing. reading this book blew my mind. i mean, in reality i wasn't really one of the working poor, i did have an education and eventually things straightened out, but reading this book at that moment made me feel like i wasn't alone. i read it again last year and found it just as compelling and moving as i did the first time around.

jarhead (anthony swofford). back to that whole war memoir thing. the books on this list have made me realize that i really go for vicious, brutal, filthy honesty - bukowski, war memoirs, ben hamper. maybe part of it is that i grew up near a military installation, and i like anything that complicates our view of soldiers. who knows. this clearly needs some further analysis. the point is, this book is great. i went to a reading right after it came out and was totally hooked. i think i originally read it in just a couple days.

rivethead (ben hamper). brutally honest about everything from living on the dole to his alocholism to his mental breakdown, ben hamper made me want to be his friend.

this house of sky (ivan doig). crying by page 5.