A little game went around the books and reading community on Bluesky recently called Twenty Books. I loved it, especially for the memories it spurred.
Here was the prompt: Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
And so I did. Here, presented in a single blog post, with no particular organization, order, or individual explanation, with some revision, are my twenty. Update: I thought of more books that really influenced me, so I added five more to 25!
Note: These are not necessarily my favorite books, though many of them are that also; they are the books that most stuck with me for some reason or profoundly influenced me in some way, per the prompt.