If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen the “10 books that stayed with you” meme that’s been floating around. For those of us who are book lovers, it’s the best kind of voyeurism– finding out what books left some kind of permanent mark on the people we know. The idea is to not pick with too much thought; you just come up with the 10 books off the top of your head that stayed with you in some way. My own picks (with favorite quotes!) are:
Anne of Green Gables (“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”)
A People’s History of the United States (“Tyranny is tyranny, let it come from who it may”)
The Secret Garden (“Is it wick?”)
Madame Bovary (“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
No Logo (“So, if consumers are like roaches, then marketers must forever be dreaming up new concoctions for industrial strength Raid.”)
The Catcher in the Rye (“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you’ll start missing everybody.”)
The Outsiders (“Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.”)
Holes (“When the shoes first fell from the sky, he remembered thinking that destiny had struck him.”)
100 Years of Solitude (“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover the ice…”)
The Great Gatsby (“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well I met another bad driver, didn’t I.”)
I don’t think I could tell you how often I’ve read these books! I wonder if they’ve stayed with me because of how often I’ve read them, or if I’ve read them so much because they left such an impression on me? I think I quote or think of something from each of these books daily, or certainly weekly.
If you like statistics as much as you like books, you’ll love the data that some researchers put together of the top books from this meme, which you can find here.
What are your ten books?
-Irene
Eleventh Stack 
100 Years of Solitude was on mine too!
Interesting, thanks!
It was interesting to see your choices and it got me thinking of what books I would pick from all those I’ve read over the years. I very seldom reread a book, so quotes do not stick in my mind. However, I often think of scenes or ideas from these ten books:
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Malevil by Robert Merle
The Incredible Voyage by Tristan Jones
The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann
The Amber Room by Catherine Scott Clark and Adrian Levy
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
Love and Pasta by Joe Vergara
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
These are in no particular order but memories of them have stayed with me even though I read some of them about 35 years ago.
Have read 5 of these – but only 100 years was on my list!
The Five Chinese Brothers – Bishop
Homer Price – McCloskey
Snow Treasure – McSwigan
Studs Lonigan – Farrell
Exodus – Uris
Armageddon – Uris
The Last Convertible – Myrer
The Best & the Brightest – Halberstam
The Palace Guard – Rather
Two Years Before the Mast – Dana
1) The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God – Edgar Keret
2) Big Fish – Daniel Wallace
3) Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
4) The Riverside Shakespeare
5) The World of Pooh – AA Milne
6) One Hundred Years of Solitute – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7) The Magus – John Fowles
8) Love Is A Dog from Hell – Charles Bukowski
9) Jane Eyre – Charlote Bronte
10) Wildwood – Colin Meloy