“What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that a life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny…the time of reading, the time defined by the author’s language resonating in the self, is not the world’s time, but the soul’s. The energies that otherwise tend to stream outward through a thousand channels of distraction are marshaled by the cadences of the prose; they are brought into focus by the fact that it is an ulterior, and entirely new, world that the reader has entered. The free-floating self–the self we diffusely commune with while driving or walking or puttering in the kitchen–is enlisted in the work of bringing the narrative to life. In the process, we are able to shake off the habitual burden of insufficient meaning and flex our deeper natures.”
– Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegie

Today i read this list of “great business books” and was inspired to make my own “21 books that inspired me” list. I am listing down the most influential book i read in that year, in the order of influence, starting from college days to present (approximate year when i read it in brackets).
1. City of Joy – Dominique Lapierre (1991)
2. Fountainhead – Ayn Rand (1992)
3. Electric Kool Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe (1993)
4. Notes to myself – Hugh Prather (1994)
5. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance – Robert Persig (1995)
6. Moby Dick – Herman Melville (1996)
7. Competing for the Future – Gary Hamel & CK Prasad (1997)
8. Mavericks at Work – William Taylor (1998)
9. Nudist on the late night shift – Po Bronson (1999)
10. Nuts – Kevin Freiberg (2000)
11. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard (2001)
12. Maverick – Ricardo Semler (2002)
13. Banker to the Poor – Mohammed Yunus (2003)
14. Start Small Finish Big – Fred Deluca (2004)
15. Good to Great – Jim Collins (2005)
16. Guts – Kevin Freiberg (2006)
17. Individualised Corporation – Sumantra Ghoshal (2007)
18. Confessions of a Venture Capitalist – Ruthann Quindlen (2008)
19. Game Changer – Lafley and Charan (2009)
20. No Mans Land – Doug Tatum (2010)
21. Leadership Pipeline – Ram Charan (2011)
22. The Method Method – Eric Ryan & Adam Lowry (2012)
Would love to see your list.