I would like to get completely off-topic for a change (I won't do this often at all).

I am a Disney-addict, as you all know, but I have another addiction that I must confess: books. I never ever stop reading and am quite eclectic in my choices. I am sharing this with you, because the addiction is so strong that the first thing I usually do when I visit the house of friends is to spend a lot of time in front of their bookshelves to understand what they are currently reading and what they've read, in the hope of knowing them better and of discovering a few books that I had never thought of and that might sparkle my interest (I am rarely disappointed and always have at least a hundred un-read books on my shelves even though I usually devour with pleasure two or three per week).

All this to say that I do not have access to your bookshelves, but that I would like you to share with me - through the comments feature on this post - the books that were the most important in your lives, for whatever reasons (style, subject, particular scenes, author,...)

Here are mine (listed in no particular order). Do note that some were read in my teens, others in my twenties and others way more recently. They all have something in common though: I felt either more happiness or more awareness after having read them, to a degree that was way above the one I had experienced with the other books I discovered throughout the years. They are some of the key books of my life.

Yours?

- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Ana Terra by Erico Verissimo
- To Kill a Moking Bird by Harper Lee
- Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Foundation series by Isaac Asimov
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Le Lion (The Lion) by Joseph Kessel
- Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene
- Memoires d'une Jeune Fille Rangee (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) by Simone de Beauvoir
- War and Peace by Leon Tolstoi
- Magellan by Stefan Zweig
- Le Comte de Monte Christo (The Count of Monte Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas
- Letters to Olga by Vaclav Havel
- L'Or (Gold) by Blaise Cendrars