Reading is easily one of my favorite things to do, so it’s very hard to pick a single book that I feel has had the most lasting impact on me. I guess I would have to pick the books that I keep coming back to, even though I have read them several times.

There are two books I find myself coming back to the most frequently. The first is The Great Gatsby. It is easily one of my favorite books and, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful books ever written. Fitzgerald was just incredible with words. There are certain passages in that book that I will never forgot and that still give me goose bumps. Though the story and language is really quite simple, the book is so haunting and heartbreaking I have never been able to forget it. I read it for the first time in tenth grade English. Though I have always loved to read, this is the first book I really remember having more than a fleeting impact on me.

The other book I feel has impacted me the most is Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I first read the book my freshman year of college in a Modernism class. It completely blew me away. The interweaving of time and the connectedness of characters is amazing. Woolf takes techniques in that book and applies them at a level I can’t even fathom. I’ve re-read the book several times in the past few years, and I always find some small detail I overlooked before. I really love when you can do this with a story.

It is terribly difficult to narrow this down to two, let alone one. Now I am thinking of about ten more titles I could easily write about as well. While I don’t think one book has completely changed my life, the subtle changes the culmination of my reading experience has provided is something I greatly value.