Wow: that list is so much "you" that I'm pretty sure I would have guessed its author if I had seen it unattributed.

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Seconded.

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LotR
Foundation
Dune
Earthsea
Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Tale of Two Cities
Kim
Christmas Carol
Wrinkle in Time
Hitchhiker's Guide
Prayer for Owen Meany
Three Musketeers
Count of Monte Cristo
The Past Through Tomorrow
Ringworld

Method for me - I didn't read your list, Tom, just the idea, and then jotted the first books I thought of. Most of them have quotes that I remember clearly:
"Dawn take you all, and be stone to you"/"Oh, yes, Fangorn is dangerous. You yourself are beset with danger. Unless you find yourself face to face with the Dark Lord, I am the most dangerous .... "
"When will the Empire fall? I couldn't say of my own knowledge. Could you say of anyone else's? How could I speak for another? Has anyone TOLD you..."
"I will not Fear..."
"The name is the thing and the true name is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing"
"It was the best of times...."/"It is a far far better thing I do now than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest I go to now..." [BEST opening _and_ closing lines in literature!]
"To begin with, Marley was dead. ... Dead as a doornail. I myself do not know what is particularly dead about a doornail, I would have said that the coffin-nail is the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade, but the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and if I change it the country's done for."
"And speaking of ways, my dear, there is such a thing as a tesseract."
"Going to the match this afternoon? No, no point. Arsenal without a chance then? No, its just....."

All amongst my favorites.

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Not Cyrano?

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I wasn't considering plays as 'books'. So, no Cyrano (best play ever written in the English language, and it wasn't even written in the English language.) Also no Shakespeare.

Oddly (and I am odd) apparently I was counting radio shows that were adapted.

And, in case there is anyone who thinks Xmas Carol is a play, it was adapted into a play, but the book is awesome.

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"A remarkable boy! A delightful boy! Yes, yes, the one as big as you..."

And, I often find myself telling me that, "The spirits have done it all in one night!" when I find I have one more day (particularly a weekend one) than I expected. :-)

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I counted "Cyrano" as a book because we had a beautiful, cunningly leather bound little edition of it in the original. It was the first really fine book I ever handled, back when I was a teen learning French.

The last time I visited my mother's library, it came home with me.

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You know, I was leaving out plays, but did wind up including Cyrano. Perhaps because, unlike so many fine plays, I think it is excellent as a written work, more of the feel of a book than Shakespeare is. Perhaps also because I've never seen it played, so for me it is largely a written thing.

And on the other, I often find myself thinking "there's more of gravy than the grave about you."

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1. Lord of the Rings
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. The Blue Sword
4. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
5. Starship Troopers
6. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
7. The Flying Inn
8. The Man Who Was Thursday
9. The Divine Comedy
10. The Deed of Paksennarion (I'm putting this as a whole book, like LOTR)
11. A Wrinkle in Time
12. Always Coming Home
13. The Telling
14. Ender's Game
15. A College of Magic

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I think that if you thought of the Bible as sticking with you more than one of those other books, you were supposed to list it. I listed a fair bit of science/tech, no reason why someone else shouldn't list religious works. (Leaving aside for the moment, how one might view the Narnia books.)

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Okay, kick out *Ender's Game* and renumber everything with the Bible as #1.

(No, don't kick out *A College of Magic.* If you've read it, you know why.)

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In no particular order:

The Lord of the Rings
1984
The Foundation Trilogy (yes, all three books)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Dispossessed
The Age of Reason
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
De Rerum Natura
Joyleg
Introduction to the Theory of Numbers (Hardy and Wright, in case somebody else was dumb enough to steal the title)
The Worm Ouroborous
The Roman Revolution
Falling Free
The Devil's Dictionary
The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy.

Which Strategicon? The Emperor Maurice?

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Which Strategicon? The Emperor Maurice?

Just so. Given that I didn't list the Boy Scout manual, though perhaps I should have, the Strategikon is probably the most practical book on my list. For years and years, my feet would hurt terribly at Pennsic. I tried everything - vaseline, changing socks three times a day, three separate pairs of boots so I could let two pairs rest between wearing. All for naught.

Then one day, I opened up the infantry section of the Strategikon, and the very first sentence said something like "Do not give your infantrymen boots. It will only make their feet hurt." So now, I wear boots for fighting and glorified slippers the rest of the time, and make it through Pennsic in much better shape.

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Fascinating -- I remember you raving often about Lord of Light, but I see it didn't make the list. For a complete list, I'd have to come back to this after long enough that the other lists have faded, but immediate thoughts include
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
The City and the Stars
Galactic Derelict
More than Human
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
I suspect there would be additional YA on a full list, where I note there are none on yours; when did you start reading SF? (I can remember Tom Swift Jr. for my 8th birthday, and the local librarian being in my family's ]social circle[.)

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(forgot sig)
/CHip

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Oh there are lots of other books that grab me - I just jotted down the first 15 important ones that came to mind, without trying to do a lot of ranking.

I started reading SF when I was five or six. Lots of the Mushroom Planet stuff, and Heinlein juveniles, and stuff my dad was reading (Lest Darkness Fall, and The Continent Makers both stand out).

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