Most influential books

This is from Slate today: "In celebration of College Week, Slate asked journalists, cable-news personalities, novelists, Hollywood types, and other great thinkers a question: What's the most influential book you read in college? What made you slam down your café au lait and set out to conquer the world?" The list contains many people that are unfamiliar to me, with one notable exception: Harold Bloom. That's right, the venerated literary critic and professor at Yale. I thought that I would give my own list of books that influenced me in college. Since I am still technically in college, this should be easy. But I will limit my list to books taken in a class.

1. Surfacing - Margaret Atwood. I took this book in my first year from now-retired professor David Carpenter. He taught this difficult book in such a way that made me want to major in English.

2. Henry IV, Part One - Like Harold Bloom, I connected to this play more than any other Shakespeare work. I wrote a paper comparing Prince Hal to Hamlet and in the process determined that Prince Hal is a much more interesting character.

3. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie. I taught this while I was a TA for Professor David Parkinson. It's a complicated book and it was fun to see first years struggle with it. I also learned a lot about teaching. If Dr. Parkinson could get this book across to students, then anything is possible.

4. A History of Reading - Alberto Manguel. This non-fiction title gives a rather non-academic look at the history of the book, from the scroll to the digital era. It made me ask, "what is a book?"

5. "Bavarian Gentians" - D.H. Lawrence. This poem is not a book, but studying it in Professor Ron Marken's Techniques of Poetry in English led directly to my thesis topic.

That's my list. It is interesting to think about what books led me to think differently about the world, life, etc.; maybe tomorrow I will do a music list that asks the same questions.