The books that have influenced me the most

This page is inspired by a blog post from Laudator Temporis Acti from July 11, 2004.

That's the C. S. Lewis' list of books answering the question "What books did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?":

  1. Phantastes by George MacDonald
  2. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
  3. The Aeneid by Virgil
  4. The Temple by George Herbert
  5. The Prelude by William Wordsworth
  6. The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto
  7. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
  8. Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
  9. Descent into Hell by Charles Williams
  10. Theism and Humanism by Arthur James Balfour

Having lived only 24 springs on this Earth (And not even mentioning how did I live them) I obviously can not provide a list that could match Lewis' selection. Despite that, being unruly and restless, I will try to form one anyway:

  1. Problems of Communism by Friedrich Engels
  2. The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell
  3. Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
  4. The Abolition of man by C. S. Lewis
  5. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
  6. The Orthodox Survival Course by St. Seraphim of Platina
  7. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
  8. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
  9. Memorabilia by Xenophon
  10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The order is basically within what came up first to my mind.

I will surely add up to it/fix it a little, but even then the amount of repeated authors, the spiritual contradictions between them, and the secondary character of the writings that I picked up shows the state of my mind pretty well. Each of these I remember quite vividly, I think that I can even recall the times when I've first read some of them and how did I came to know of them. Interestingly, the first three seem to be the ones that have lead to the biggest worldview changes within my life and the order in which I recalled them is chronological. Thinking of that, I feel old... I remember my first reading of Engels and how amazed and confident of the righteousness of his and Marx's thought I was when my mind started to process their ideas. Now, after losing faith in marxism in so many ways, I can not really bring myself up to find faith in the perfect good, even though it's much more believable and pure than any human concept could ever be. I lost the innocious confidence of youth, it seems.