Favourite footnotes: 11

I may have been wrong about this.

- Umberto Eco, Confessions of a Young Novelist

Books I've actually finished lately: 103

After I publish a text on semiotics, I devote my time either to recognizing what was wrong or to demonstrating that those who did not understand it in the way I meant were misreading it. 

- Umberto Eco

Books I've actually finished lately: 93

Ellmann's biography of Wilde was one of the first big books I read (/finished), aged about 16.

From which event extends a trail of more-or-less predictable consequences...

Facebooks - I

So, this thing is going round that you name ten books that had a major impact on you.

Ten books is not enough.

--

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Disgrace - JM Coetzee
Oscar Wilde - Richard Ellmann
One of the many biographies of The Doors [I will endeavour to recall         the particular volume]
The New English Hymnal - various
Tintin [all of] - Hergé
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis - Wendy Cope
The Last Samurai - Helen DeWitt
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto - David Shields
The Collected Stories of... - Lydia Davis

--

Notes / Self-imposed Rules:

1) No particular order of importance.
2) Links are to editions read, where possible.
3) One book per author.
4) -ish. Book stipulated is either first read or first enjoyed.